My greatest teacher is the MIRROR. 
Out there is always a mirror --a reflection of the rejection we have within us.


As I learned to look into the mirror in Bikram Yoga class, I learned how to use that mirror as a reflection of the {rejection, shame, doubt, fear, anger, negativity} I have within me.  Realizing that we all have pattern addictions, patterns that we adopt to keep ourselves from being in present time, as a way of getting away from being where we are and from knowing what's really going on, then I became more accepting of myself and with others.  Addictions go beyond just the chemical kind.  We can be addicted to food, finding fault in people, fear, debt, and rejection. 

Now, I am less afraid of "seeing" myself honestly, for noticing thoughts and patterns, for experimenting with new ways of thinking and being.  As I love myself more, I don't feel rejected by anyone and even if they do reject me, I don't pay any attention to it.

With mindfulness, I grow more confident.  More patient.  More accepting.   I'm learning how to go inside to look to see what's there. 

Daily journaling and positive affirmations help me to recognize patterns so that I can begin to change them.  

Practicing inner peace helps me to connect with Spirit, to tune into my higher Self.  I like feeling connected on a soul level.  I like sending out good vibes into the world.  I love feeling intimately connected with Source, especially  with the realization that I don't need a middle man to do the job for me.

As I see how thoughts make me feel, especially when I'm connected with Source in meditation, I can hear my own inner wisdom. 

Trusting that I have the answers I've been looking for within is empowering.  I simply need to quiet my mind down long enough to hear them.  


Change comes when I make up my mind, not to just sit back and wait for the world to change, but realizing that changing my thoughts gets me on my way to greater change - to finding inner peace and harmony so I can see that inner peace and harmony reflected in the world.

The world can seem angry, chaotic, and blaming - especially if that's how I'm feeling on the inside.  Violence, unrest, disharmony, and negativity stream incessantly on our radio waves . . . if I choose to tune my attention outwardly.  Life may appear to be a race to nowhere, where I feel stuck treading on a perpetual treadmill, where time seems to be quickly slipping away.  But I have the power to change my course, and it's as easy as making up my mind.

If you're feeling like I do, like there's something missing, that there's more, THERE IS!   There are more joyful things in life than simply paying bills, clocking in, cooking dinners, cleaning toilets, grocery shopping, and mowing the lawn. When all I saw was the routine and the drudgery, I wasn't eager to jump out of bed in the morning.  Nope, I wanted more but I wasn't sure exactly what it was that I was looking for. 

CHANGE is something I wanted everyone else to do. 
If everyone else would just change, my life would be different! 

I learned, like most, the hard way.   

Change that I am going to see must come from within myself. 

Change is about moving myself from feeling separate, isolated, lonely, fearful, angry and in pain into a state of peacefulness where I could relax and really enjoy life as it comes to me. 

Lasting change only comes about when I genuinely believe that everything will be alright. 
******************************************************************

Letting go of fear is not an easy task! 
*I had to learn how to replace my fear with love, especially with loving myself. 
*I had to tell my mind to ease up long enough to let my heart feel: love, safety, nurturance, meaning, identity, and belonging. 
*Mostly, I had to feel deserving of love.

******************************************************************

Yes, life conditions and hardens us.  We all have our fair share of sh*t, and fear does a number on us. 
*Fear keeps us from going within. 
*Fear can keep us from finding out that we have all the power to save ourselves.  *Fear kept me living as a victim, looking outside of myself for answers. 
As a victim, I felt isolated, in pain, and searching for someone to do it for me.   

Responsibility is scary.  It's easier to make excuses and to blame others, but how could I change my experiences if I didn't take responsibility for my own life.

Bikram yoga helped me to find space to observe my thoughts so that I could change them.  This wasn't easy at first, but in time, with practice and much patience, I learned how to release old beliefs and habits and began trying out new beliefs, behaviors, and methods, and in turn, experienced newfound FEELINGS! 

I'm not going to kid you . . . this period of back and forth had me angrier than ever.  Trying on anything new takes time.  As I learned how to become more patient with myself, I accepted the anger as part of the process.  With more and more acceptance, I eventually settled into new habits and slowly began building myself up with more positive thoughts rather than beating myself down with negativity.

I learned . . .
*to take baby steps -
*to take each day as it comes.
*to start from right where I am in each moment. 
*to watch my words and to make little alterations.  For instance, when I catch myself using the word can't, like in:  "I can't do that."  I change "can't" to "won't."  "I won't do that" gives me a whole different imagery. 

I replaced old habits with rituals: 

NOW . . .

In the morning, I take some time to reflect. I write.  The first page or two that I write is simply a mind dump.  I dump all that's there to get it all out onto the paper.  After a good dump, I have space to get creative.

Throughout the day, I stop to take a few deep breaths. 
Whenever I catch my mind wandering, I simply bring it back to my breath.  It takes only a few minutes to enjoy a few cleansing breaths to feel grounded and to get back on track. 

Here's a quick grounding exercise that I do: I take a  deep, six-count inhalation through my nose, breathing in love. I hold this sense of fresh, loving, new breath at the top for a couple of seconds, and then I firmly blow out all the stale, stagnant energy on a eight-count exhalation from my mouth.  It feels good to imagine blowing out all the negativity, stress, and fear.  With focused, intentional breathing, I'm able to let go of all the stuff that's keeping me from experiencing the new.

In the evening, I take time to review the day and to show gratitude.  I write.  I make sure to acknowledge the little things for which I am grateful.  A smile.  A thank you.  My warm bed. My health.  Reviewing each day is important for seeing what I can do better.  Where did I do well, where I can I do better?  Living mindfully, with gratitude, makes living joyful.

We live in a world that trains us to feel disconnected, fearful, and disempowered. Religion, politics, and the educational system are systems of control through fear.  Our beliefs become patterned, built around protection.  Living in a chronic state of protection prevents us from broadening our sense of humanity.

The potential of individuals can only be realized in a context of safety.  Can you imagine schools that offer environments that make our children feel safe?  With teachers who have time to truly listen, to offer cues of safety such as vocal intonation, positive facial expression, and gentle touch?  Can you imagine a place where kids truly want to go?  To play, to create, to sing, to dance, to talk about what's really going on in their lives?

Unfortunately, many of our elementary schools have thrown out art, physical education, and recess in exchange for laptops, "academics," and for greater time spent in preparation for tests.

Apparently, the drive to dismantle the jungle gyms of America is in response to Common Core examinations, according to Arthur Caplan.  Dr. Stephen Porges, author of The Polyvagal Theory, emphasizes the importance of time for play and stresses the fact that "we have to have a place to go that is safe." With a sense of safety we can express our innate human desire for uncertainty.  

Uncertainty is something that all human beings, and animals, crave.  

However, we can only truly crave uncertainty when there's safety in the background.  For example, a dog likes to play; he likes uncertainty, but he can only really play when he's reassured that you won't be aggressive.  Similarly, babies love to play games like "peek-a-boo."  This game proves to be fun, however, only when there's a clear sense of trust and when the child knows it's playful, that it's safe to "play."

Dr. Porges recommends inserting neural exercises such as playing wind instruments, singing, and lots of free play into the curriculum.  By doing so, he says we can change our physiology, our health, and our sense of connection.  Our children can grow and allow their creativity to enhance all of humanity with a background of safety.  Essentially, Dr. Porges is telling us to shut our textbooks, to be cautious of our language as words can distort meaning and makes understanding difficult.   We must, instead, learn how to listen to our nervous systems, listen to what our bodies are telling us.   When the nervous system is safe, it promotes the ability to engage socially, supports positive affective experiences, relationship building, and opportunities for spirituality.  

Porges calls this neuroception, the idea that our neural receptors are always picking up a sense of safety or risk, and this is not occurring on an aware level. We are constantly being informed by our nervous system, by our gut, by our physiology, whether we feel comfortable or whether we should prepare to fight or flee.  But we are conditioned to overlook ourselves in school.  We learn to distrust the self and instead are forced to rely upon outdated, irrelevant, dispassionate external sources to guide us.  

​Basically, when we are with people who make us feel safe, we feel good and feeling good shifts our physiological state - especially at the heart center.

Some examples of what makes us feel good:

Sound.  It's no revelation that melodic music makes us feel good.  Female vocals, Gregorian chants, Disney songs all have melody and thus affect our frequency. Sound frequency enters through the ear, is sent up to the cortex, and then travels back down to the middle ear -- to the muscles that regulate and change our facial muscles.  When we hear melodic music, we feel love and a sense of trust and when we hear dissonant or cacophonous music, we may want to march and fight.

Breath.  Long out breaths help calm the nervous system.  Playing a wind instrument, like the clarinet, allows inhalation, followed by an exaggerated exhalation, while listening or paying attention to tone.  Similarly, Yoga, particularly pranayama yoga, focuses on the breath and exercises the facial muscles.  It is at the middle ear where we integrate the striated muscles of the face with the heart.  The middle ear houses nerves that are shared with our face.  A flat face indicates a middle ear with weak muscle tone. 

Facial expression, which expresses a heart connection through the vagus nerve, is a principal part of our social, interpersonal behavior.  It's so vested into the features of who we are as human beings that when we use our facial expressivity and we use intonation to engage people using our voices and people turn away from us, we get a visceral response.  That visceral response prepares us to fight or to flee. 

Compassionate listening is good for our health. When we are kind or compassionate, we activate our vagus nerve. Activating our vagus nerve often can improve the tone of this nerve. High vagal tone is correlated with a healthy heart and increased resilience to stress. It is also correlated with better emotional regulation. Somatic Experiencing such as TRE (Tension & Trauma Release exercises) stimulate the vagus nerve. Scientists believe it can help with depression. 

The Listening Project.  Stephen Porges has gone as far as to set up “The Listening Project” encouraging peoples’ ability to listen and attend to human speech. It is also designed to promote social engagement behavior in children with problems in social interaction and communication and to help to strengthen the important middle ear muscles, as the middle ear is linked into the sympathetic fight and flight response.

When we are in Fight and flight mode, in other words when our sympathetic nervous system is in a high state of arousal, our ability to be friendly, sociable and to evaluate others is compromised. As the Polyvagal theory emphasises, it is social engagement itself that tends to “down regulate” (calm) the sympathetic nervous system, and the fight and flight response.
​
“Safety is a powerful metaphor… And it is a metaphor that carries with it a physiological state. So if we feel safe, we have access to the neural regulation of the facial muscles, we have access to a myelinated vagal circuit that is capable of down regulating more traditional fight/flight and stress responses, and we have an opportunity to play … An inability to play is a frequent characteristic of many individuals with a psychiatric diagnosis. And what I mean by play, is not playing with a Game Boy or computer. Instead it requires social interaction. Play requires an ability to mobilize with the sympathetic nervous system and then to down-regulate the sympathetic excitation with face-to-face social interaction and the social engagement system” Stephen Porges.


 

My experience working with clients with chronic tension and trauma unveils story after story of seizures, migraines, gastrointestinal problems, sciatica, autoimmune disorders, inability to sleep, anxiety, ADHD and so on.  The connection between trauma and health is complex, not surprising because there is still so much to learn about our bodies. 

Trauma is being overwhelmed due to seemingly unbearable life experiences.  Traumas can be categorized as "hard traumas" or "soft traumas." 

Hard trauma is an incident that is easily identifiable such as a car accident, personal injury, serious harm or a natural disaster.   It is a moment in time that one can identify as a disturbing experience; but one that likely can be healed. 

Whereas a "soft trauma" is less identifiable.  These are experiences such as prolonged psychological or emotional child or spousal abuse, domestic or social violence.  These traumas may be more unconscious rather than obvious and physical.  These types of abuse are often more difficult to identity but are no less traumatizing than hard traumas.

Everyday life is stressful and the body registers stress in the form of muscular tension patterns.  

Trauma overwhelms our entire sense of self, limiting choices, as we lack awareness of healthy tools and resources.  Oftentimes we must hit "rock bottom" before finding new ways to think and feel.  Those who have healed successfully from trauma discover that life is richer, fuller and more caring than ever experienced before.  This inner development of compassion, caring, and sensitivity is self-renewal and it happens when one is forced to explore the painful depths of humanity that they were previously unprepared to do; an exploration that creates a deeper sense of connectedness to life and stronger bonds of connectedness to others and even to the universe.