emotions

What is your legacy?

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Dear ones, Please do not underestimate your contributions, your necessity to the web of life. No matter what your calling is, what work you’ve chosen to do, your feelings, words and actions in this life leave an energetic legacy for all living beings.

Amazing spider web

Think of the gardens you’ve planted, the trees you’ve nurtured, the love you’ve expressed and shown, the meals you have lovingly prepared, the pets you have held to your heart, the smiles you have freely given, the songs you’ve sung; the empathy, kindness, connections, the heart to heart connections alignment with divine light, the joy you’ve felt, the seeds you’ve sown, the lives you’ve touched with thoughtfulness, wisdom, and attention, the unconditional love for others that flows from your heart – these are the lasting legacies that you have bequeathed to the web of life, your families, and your communities.

I ask – is your true legacy measured in stocks and bonds, dollars and cents? Money can be spent, lost or stolen in a heart beat, leaving your heirs with only their inner resources, courage, wisdom, integrity, honesty and the clothes on their backs.

Your true nature is to be mortal. Every living thing must pass through the final transformation. One day your hands will relax and release their hold on objects and the material wealth of which humans are so fond.

Your body will stay behind while your spirit lives on. You will leave this material world which is so precious, so dear, yet so impermanent, ever shifting and changing.

Late winter landscape, dusk

So while you are here, find joy in your embodied life with the senses and emotions and intelligence you’ve been given, love with your whole heart and express that love in ways others will feel and understand. Do the work that satisfies your soul. In this way you expand and strengthen the web of life.

You are an essential participant in the web of life whether you know it or not.

Let your life create strength and resilience and peace and love in the web, your lasting energetic legacy.

A time for transformation

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Life spins a chrysalis around you right now, a container for transformation.

Like a caterpillar within a chrysalis, you must face darkness and uncertainty, let go of all you’ve known, trust and surrender to the transformation life requires of you right now.

Painted lady butterfly on gold marigold

Remember this, even in the darkest hours you are alive. You have what you need in this moment. You breathe, your heart beats. You have been given the most precious gift – life.

This period of great adversity will transform your life. You can choose how that will play out –

Will you stay in your metaphorical chrysalis and get stuck in the past, or will you thrive and adapt to the new world reality, drawing on your inner resources, your ingenuity, and spirit?

If so, you will be required to develop stamina, courage, patience, and perseverance.

Orange butterfly on elderberry bush

I wish for all humans an emergence into a soul satisfying new life when this is over, a beautiful transformation.

Calming Through the Heart

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Do you feel stuck with no escape, ungrounded and flighty? Are old addictions coming back to haunt you during the pandemic and the times of social distancing and isolation?

I offer another way to calm and soothe yourself in times of high anxiety.

Find a quiet and calm space and get comfortable. Take a few deep breaths to settle yourself. Now bring your awareness from your monkey mind with its whirring machinery of worry and fear, its endless capacity for self argument, the unkind inner critic, the constant mindless chatter, the never ending ego complaints to the peace of your heart.

Tune into the gentle beat, the quiet rhythm. You might be able to feel your pulse by gently placing a hand on your neck right below where the ear and jaw meet.

Now hold your heart with both palms on the center of your chest. Imagine that you can breathe through your heart. Feel the exhalation, the emptying. Imagine the breath flowing from your heart, releasing the stale worries, the old thoughts that bring you down, spent energy you are ready to let go of.

Now as your lungs fill, know that you are bringing in fresh new air, new energy, new possibilities to your heart, the seat and center of your life.

Tune into the steadiness the cadence of your heartbeat that’s been with you since before your birth. Even before your heart began to beat, you knew your mother’s heartbeat, and before her birth she knew her mother’s heartbeat, the underlying rhythm, the legacy of life.

Trust that right now as your heart beats you are alive. You are safe. You belong here.

4 Ways to Raise Your Vibrations

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Dear Friends, to raise your thoughts and feelings from fear, anxiety, and worry to a calmer more peaceful place, a frequency of being that supports health and wholeness, raise your vibrations.

Some ideas to help you raise your vibrations in the time of the novel corona virus…

Reframe your thoughts

Tune your awareness to the content of your thoughts. If they are consistently negative anxious and worried, search for and find new thoughts that are a little more positive but that you can still believe. “I am safe in this moment.” “I will find a way to get through this”… “I am a survivor”…

Do this daily as you find yourself thinking thoughts that diminish and bring you down. Notice what you are thinking, then use your creative powers to put in place more loving and uplifting thoughts about the conditions of your life right now.

Release stuck emotions

Blocked emotions that can’t flow sit in your body mind and spirit like lead weights, holding you back. What feelings are you blocking from your awareness as you put one foot in front of the other to get through each day?

To clear the stuck emotions and raise your vibrations, you must tap into their powerful energy and let them flow. Yes, this can be scary. Yes, you will need a quiet time and space to do this. But you will be stronger for this practice and feel lighter.

Sit with the emotions that hold you back, feel them in your body. Let the tears flow, the sobs shake your body, whatever is needed to clear and release them. Experience the waves of feeling building, coming up and peaking, then changing and dissolving.

Let your emotions be what they are. As you feel and process them, the emotions will dissipate and you will feel lighter. If you hesitate, try to witness this release from the observer standpoint, as though you are sitting with and comforting a beloved friend .

Release tension in your body

Pay attention to sensations of your body in the here and now. Where do you carry tension? Where is your body relaxed? Do you notice pain, aches, tingling, lightness, heaviness? Pay attention to the sensations you feel with focus and compassion.

With pain or other sensations you want to escape from or block, try to focus on them until the feelings dissipate or change. Breathe deeply. Send love and compassion to those places in your body that need attention and care.

Tune into Spirit

Tap into your wise self, the larger part of you that knows the truth, lives in the moment, knows no fear, your indestructible spirit that transcends lifetimes, journeys with you through trials, times of danger, famine, disease, drought, that has been your guiding light from the beginning of time, that knows your purpose.

You can do this through intention or meditation, writing, creative projects, reading inspirational texts, doing shamanic journeys, praying, visualizing….

Gather your courage! Keep at your chosen practices with stamina and endurance. You are worth it! Try to do a little each day, a peeling back of inner layers of blocked energy and storm clouds that obscure your light and keep your vibrations low.

You can reclaim your inner light step by step, you can raise your vibrations and feel better.

A Practice to Energize You

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Drum! if you don’t have a drum get a wooden spoon and cooking pot lid, an old wooden box, a metal wastebasket…

You don’t need to be a student of percussion, you don’t need to have any practice or expertise, you don’t need to be good at it, you don’t need to perform for an audience.

Now begin! Match the rhythm of your heart as you beat your homemade drum. Now add your feet and get moving. Let your body sway and express what you are feeling. Let your whole self dance and move and twirl and stretch and twist and flow with the beat. You need this!

Try new patterns with your makeshift drum. Go slow then speed up, start with a simple pattern, moving into more tricky rhythms. Try multiple noise making objects that you can beat on shake or rattle without breaking or damaging them.

Now as you drum and move, let yourself vocalize and sing. Make beautiful sounds and not-so-beautiful sounds, let them express what you are feeling- joy, freedom, frustration, anger, fear, worry… happiness…

Try growling like a tiger, singing like an angel whooshing like the wind through an evergreen tree. Make up new words, create personal lyrics, specific to your life, or have no words, just the sounds of your voice.

Go high, go low, spin your voice like sugar, let it slide and play. Cut loose and let yourself be one with the sound that originates deep within you and continues outward into the web of life.

Celebrate your life with sound and drumming. Get your heart and body and voice activated. Energize yourself!

Raise up your deepest requests and desires on this wave of heartfelt sound and rhythm. Ask for the world you wish to see and for the life you wish to live. Ask for all the inhabitants of our dear planet, animal vegetable and mineral to prosper with full and robust health, for the web of life to be repaired.

Red winged blackbird

When you drum and sing with focus and heart and sincerity, the spirits cannot fail to hear you and be moved by your requests.

A Practice to Calm and Raise Your Vibrations

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Dear ones, as you try out this practice, set an intention to raise your vibrations and calm yourself during this time of great uncertainty.

Breathe in Earth energy, breathe out fear

Visualize beautiful deep roots like the roots of a large tree growing down into the Earth from your hips, legs, feet. Now breathe in through your roots and feet. As you inhale, allow your feet, legs, hips, abdomen and lower body to fill with Earth energy. This will anchor and connect you with Earth’s loving vibrations, the energy of home.

Take several deep breaths in and out through your feet and roots. On the out-breaths, let tension, stale energies, old emotions, fears, and worries you no longer need to carry within you drain into the Earth for energetic recycling. This will ground and clear you.

Connect to the Earth

Fill yourself with divine light and color

Visualize a beam of pure clear golden light filling you through the crown of your head. Allow it to pour down through your entire body, permeating every cell like liquid gold.

Imagine every hair follicle, skin cell, blood vessel, every nerve, all organ systems, every bone, connective tissue and tendon, all muscles, your immune system and glands, respiratory and circulatory systems, every energetic particle of your physical being filled with this sacred light, bringing all body systems and organs into balance and harmony, clarifying your aura.

Now, as you visualize this beautiful light, allow it to become any color in the spectrum, whatever vibration of color is needed in your body to bring wholeness, healing and well being. Let the colors change and flow and mix as needed.

No need to think too hard about it or consult a chart. Ask for the colors to be just right for your body’s needs. Allow yourself to sit with the healing colors and light as long as needed.

Yellow swallowtail butterfly on deep pink Zinnia

Create sound and connect with all that is.

Set an intention to use your voice to resonate those areas of your body that feel out of balance. You will fill them with the healing vibrations and loving waves of your voice. You do not have to be a good singer, the only requirement is that you can make sounds with your voice.

Begin by humming, then make vowel sounds. Change the pitch and sound you are making and feel the vibrations resonating in different parts of your body that need attention. Intend for the sounds you create with your voice to reweave and harmonize the subtle energy of your physical and spiritual being and fill your being with peace.

Flowing stream, light dancing on shallow water

Connect to the Earth through your roots, fill yourself with divine light and color, weave all together with sound. Experience the oneness of all creation.

In this moment

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Take a moment to celebrate the fullness of your life. Know that all is well in this moment.

Your heart beats in your chest, your in-breath expands your lungs, the out-breath releases and contracts, the slow and sweet rhythm of life flowing and ebbing like waves on a beach.

You have been given the simple yet miraculous gifts of sunlight, fresh air, birdsong, eyes, hands, ears… the senses through which you experience life in your body.

Robin in late winter

If you are a worrier, anxious, fearful or regretful, you might miss the perfection of this moment here and now, the still point between breaths, the simple yet most precious gift of life.

Bring your awareness to your now. Yes, life here on our planet can be difficult and dangerous, fragile, fleeting, unjust, and heartbreaking. Please do not allow fear grief and anger to steal the fullness of this moment here and now as you partake in the beautiful mystery of life on Earth.

Let your mind rest and bring full awareness to the perfection of this particular moment. In this moment, you are safe, you are alive.

Allow yourself to enjoy and appreciate the most precious gift you’ve been given. Life on Earth in a human body.

Time for Spring Cleaning!

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Are you surrounded by an accumulation of too much stuff? Is your brain filled to bursting with too many thoughts, ideas, worries, fears, or emotional baggage?

It’s time to spring clean, time to release the old, the worn out, that which no longer floats your boat, makes you happy, gives you joy. That which holds you back in life.

Do you have the confidence to let go of objects that gather dust, furniture that over-stuffs your rooms, knick knacks and tchotchkes that came into your life for some reason years ago that you keep out of habit, things others chose for you, clothes that no longer reflect who you’ve become or who you are becoming?

Making room in your home will allow more flow in your life! Your space will breathe with more light and air and better energy movement.

Do you have the courage to face and heal the tired old habits of thought, the stale and possibly smelly emotions that keep you stuck, the fears that hold you back, the worries that muddy your precious days?

Clearing emotional baggage will help raise your frequency and assist in bringing clarity of purpose and more joy and creativity to your life.

De-clutter your mind and spirit, spring clean your soul and glow with clear energy, thoughts and actions that support who you’ve become, who you choose to be, who you wish to become.

You are the interior designer of your entire life! You get to choose what to think and feel, what to bring in to your physical presence, how you want spirit to express itself in your life.

Every design choice you make – what to keep, what to discard, what thoughts to entertain in your brain, what emotions to address – creates your life now!

True beauty

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Paying attention only to your outward beauty, that which is “skin deep” is getting your beauty regimen backward!

To truly shine and glow with light, to look and feel and be your best and brightest, begin at your center. The center of your being, your spirit.

Hackberry bark

This glow of inner health, the authenticity of wholeness and well being can’t be faked or mimicked with makeup, hair color, surgery, lasers, botox.

Old emotions stuck in your energy field from the past, fear, anxiety, worry, weigh you down and dim your light. Others can feel it and sense it in you.

If you do not like yourself when you look in the mirror, if your spirit is flagging, go deeper into your heart and soul, to your inner light and begin here to reclaim your true inner beauty.

You know you are not at your best when you feel stuck and you worry and fret about your looks. This is a distraction from the true work of your life, the true and joyful work of living from your center.

Begin to gently clear and cleanse and heal and release the stale and stuck emotions of the past. Like exfoliating the skin, it gives your spirit a brighter and healthier glow.

Find help in a trusted healer, counselor, friend, or clergy person when you are ready to begin your healing journey, your journey to reclaim the light you were born with.

Grandmother Cottonwood

This will allow the true light of your inner spirit to shine through and illuminate your life. When you are lit up, you are vital and vibrant with well-being and health. You are unconcerned about how others perceive you.

When you have tapped into this wellspring, you will know it and feel it. You will be too busy doing the true work of your life, you won’t have time to fret in front of a mirror, and won’t need others to validate your looks.

Remember this: True beauty is soul deep.

You belong on this Earth!

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While you walk on this planet, breathe her air, drink her water, eat the sustaining foods that come from her fertile grounds, you belong here – all of you – body mind and spirit.

You are meant to be here at this time in this body. How do I know this? Because you are here right now in a body. Period.

Your spirit has chosen to live fully as a human being on this planet. You are part of a larger pattern you might not see now. There is a purpose to your life that is integral to the web of life, that is a vital filament in the pattern of all things. You are needed here!

When you are aging, when life hurts, when you are grieving, your body and mind may get tired and you may find yourself living in your head, possibly forgetting at times that you have a body.

You are meant to live fully embodied and to be whole. Your entire being is meant to fully experience what it is to be human; When it hurts and when it feels wonderful; When you are sick and when you are bursting with health; When you are unhappy and when you are vibrant with joy; When your soul is frustrated and when your soul is inspired and fully satisfied.

When you feel doubtful, when you are not sure you belong, you must choose life again with your body, heart mind and spirit so you can live life at its fullest and richest.

Find someone to talk to – a healer, counselor, dear friend, doctor, member of the clergy for help if this becomes difficult for you.

Recommit to living a fully embodied life, rich in the full spectrum of human experience.

Choose life!