Does fear reside in your body? Where do you feel it? It is in your gut, heart heart… do you feel it in your throat?
Are there other emotions that live in your body?
Can you sit with this and notice what happens as you tune into the feeling? What happens in your body? What happens to the feeling as you sit quietly noticing it in your heart, your stomach, your jaw…?
Take the time, make space In your life to truly love yourself. Feel your feelings with compassion, without judging or trying to control anything.
It is safe to feel! If it frightens you, ask for help on your healing path. Do this in private or with a trusted friend, healer or counselor.
No frowning adult will punish or make fun of you for crying sobbing, or feeling your true feelings as someone might have done when you were a child…
To live at your full capacity, it is vital to feel what is moving through you, to allow the energy of emotion to pass through your body like ocean waves. All waves start small, build and build, finally peak, then release and dissolve into the water around them.
When you learn to accept and feel your
emotions, you are learning self love!
Note from Betty: Dear friends, GCW has a lot to say about emotional healing this month. This and the next two posts are variations on that theme.
Dear ones, do not carry the past forward, for it will accumulate and pile up like thunderheads on a windy spring day. It will weigh you down more and more as you grow older.
Let each moment of your life be new. Let the moments of yesterday, last year, decades ago be healed and released. Do not carry the old stale feelings forward for they will taint your present moments.
To let them go, feel them, experience them for that is to live fully in the moment. Listen to your body, do a scan and notice where you feel the emotion. It could be your throat, heart, gut… anywhere.
There is no need to blast a person you are angry with. Anger and other strong emotions need not be harmful to you or others. Use it as fuel for a passionate life!
Love yourself and feel what you feel. You can use your voice to express the emotion, to safely and privately release.
If you let yourself experience your emotions in your body then you will not carry it forward into your future as a dark storm cloud waiting to burst when you least expect it.
Let each moment of your life be sacred
as you pay attention to what you are feeling with compassion and self
love.
Can you imagine with your heart and mind and all your senses, your body dissolving and becoming one with a stream of water? First, imagine yourself there in the stream, floating. Feel the silky water supporting your body as you float.
Now breathe and relax any tension in your head and face, your neck, shoulders, trunk, arms and hands, back, buttocks, legs, feet and toes.
Feel your physical reality gently dissolve and merge with the stream of water, allowing more and more space between your cells, letting any pain or anxiety drain away, releasing all worry, all fear, just letting yourself be. Don’t worry about breathing as water, it will come naturally.
Sunlight on shallow water
Can you imagine your cells gently becoming water droplets and moving easily with the flow of the current? Can you imagine yourself growing transparent? How does it feel, smell, look and sound like?
Nothing is more relaxed! You are suspended in the water, one with the water. You are the water!
There is nothing you have to do, nowhere to be, nothing to grasp, clutch, hold on to or resist. There is no need to hold yourself up, to think or worry or fight against. You float free, allowing the current to carry you.
Can you feel yourself flow easily around boulders, rushing where the stream bed is steep, falling over stone ledges, standing still in deep pools? Can you feel the warm sunlight striking the water and see it bending into the vibrant colors of the rainbow?
Now your stream merges with a larger river. Enjoy the beautiful landscape as you drift past; the trees, the wide river valley, as you flow smoothly, one with the life-giving water.
Now after many hundreds of miles, you enter a huge estuary, full of birds and wildlife of all descriptions, drawn to the life-giving waters. The river widens out and becomes salty as you enter the ocean surf and move out beyond the crashing waves into open water. Finally, you are home, where all water joins to become one. Here you can expand even more, suspended. One with all that is.
Enjoy the sensation of oneness with the water as long as you want to. Allow the water to clear and heal you. Allow it to sustain and support you. Let yourself be.
When you’re ready to call back your physical being and find your way back to solid earth, let your feet touch the floor, tap your cheekbones and chest, breathe.
Revisit this water journey whenever you want to relax and know your oneness with all that is.
My bark may feel cold and rough to you this winter’s day. Do not let this fool you, for my heart is warm and welcoming!
I may seem silent, separate, apart. Do not be fooled, for in my own way I am fully engaged in the web of life on this planet!
I may seem irrelevant to your human world, your worries, concerns, and solutions to your problems. Do not be fooled, for my energy interweaves in intricate patterns with that of all living things including humans. We are in this together!
My quiet existence matters in the web of life. My existence creates a ripple and a powerful filament of love in the tapestry of the universe. I belong here!
I want you to know each thought, word and feeling of yours has energetic reality that affects the web of life, just as my tree energy does. You make a difference ! You matter and you belong here!
You don’t have to move mountains or bring peace to the Middle East. Simply tune your thoughts and feelings gradually to happiness and joy and kindness and laughter a little more often.
Turn off those news programs and avoid those people that manipulate you into anger and fear. Guide your time and energy to uplifting, soul satisfying activities, thoughts, words, beliefs, friends, and entertainment.
In this way you will affect the web of life for good! You are a creator whether you know it or not!
Take your job seriously! You and I, along with all living beings on earth reweave the web of life with each thought, feeling, and action.
Take a tip from the animal community and hibernate a little while – otherwise known as taking a long winter’s nap…
Also the society of deciduous trees recommends that you go dormant awhile. Let go of excess baggage & rest during the dark and cold months when you feel the need.
Can you let go of racing thoughts, to-do lists and rest when your body signals the need? Can you let your awareness dissolve into dreamspace for a time and renew, repair, and rejuvenate your body, mind and spirit with high quality sleep?
Does your brain command you to do, do, do and give you no time for rest or relaxation? A revving engine in a rusted, broken, worn out body will get you nowhere!
So, take good care of your body! Take it in for regular maintenance! Sleep, wholesome food, movement, fresh air, relaxation! This is your soul’s vehicle on earth. Surrender to its needs, pay attention to its rhythms and messages.
The wisdom of your body is subtle. Pay
attention and come into balance, body, mind and spirit.
Do you live in the clouds thinking the physical body is not worthy of your attention, that it is not spiritual enough? Or do you spend most of your time in your lower body, rejecting all messages of the spirit and whisperings of the heart as woo woo and irrelevant to your needs?
My dears, in both cases, you are out of balance.
You came to this earth with a human body! You are meant to live fully in your body on earth while connecting with the divine! It is your birthright!
When you live in your head and constantly float in the spiritual clouds – to find balance, gently bring awareness to your lower body.
A tree without roots cannot stand!
Go slowly, learn to feel what you feel. Be gentle and kind to yourself as you do this. Get to know your root, sacral and solar plexus chakras. Get to know the sensations in your feet and legs, your gut and stomach area, the center of your chest.
Learn to decode your body’s signals as you tune in to your real feelings and emotions. Let yourself feel your body communicate its wisdom in this way. Remember to breathe!
Find a healer or therapist to help if you need it!
When you live mostly in the lower body – to find more balance in your life bring your awareness to your heart, throat, brow and crown chakras.
A tree cannot grow without a crown of leaves to collect life giving sunlight!
Let yourself be open to intuitions, feelings, little whispers and messages from your heart and spiritual guidance that represent true wisdom. Can you allow yourself to connect to something larger than yourself, to become a receiver for spirit while living fully in your body?
See what happens! Try to find some quiet each day, and gently tune in, open your heart and mind to new possibilities in life as you create true balance.
We are meant to live fully in our bodies while receiving guidance and wisdom from spirit!
I welcome all who wish to rest here under my spreading canopy. I invite you to renew your spirit here, leaning against my trunk.
Message from Grandmother Cottonwood
Let me take your weight as you lean on me. Let your body and soul relax. Allow your batteries to recharge with my energy. I am a safe place for you to let go of stress, to tap into the energy of earth and sky.
Do others think you’re crazy when you hug a tree?
You know what they do not – It just feels good to hug a tree! You are sensitive enough to feel and know the peaceful loving tree energy that flows from heaven to earth.
GCW in winter
I am here for you – an anchor, refuge, healer, a solid peaceful presence, loving and kind.
Every season, every feeling, every kind of weather, every person in your world has their place in the great panorama of your life. If you feel irritated, unhappy, too cold, too hot, too wet, too dry, if you are blocked by snowstorms, that is simply your reality in the moment.
Do you push your current reality from your mind and curse the weather, wishing the sun would shine, the snow melt? Do you try to avoid the irritating person and pretend they aren’t part of your daily landscape?
Do you resist what is and hope for better things and nicer people? Do you believe the fiction that cold weather is bad, that winter is awful?
In this way, your monkey mind sets you up for unhappiness. Can you take a step back from the whirling thoughts and simply accept what is – the weather, the people, the conditions? …and that they are not going away any time soon?
Can you gradually learn to stop the resistance against what is? It takes a lot of your precious energy to push back against reality day after day, year after year.
When you slow & stop the resistance and live in the pure present moment without judgment, life flows more easily. More energy is available to you to do those things you enjoy.
Of course, I am not advocating staying with an abuser or putting up with misbehavior or dangerous conditions. Do what you can to free yourself if you are stuck in these patterns, and work to change the unhealthy conditions you have some control over.
As you get out of your head and into the present moments of your life, feel the change in you!
When you return home after a long trip or a day at work, or hours of rushing around doing errands, you can relax, be yourself, let down your guard.
At home you can do whatever you want to – wear sweat pants, drink right out of the milk carton, sing out of tune at top volume, feel what you feel.
At home you can lay on the ground under a tree in your yard, watching the branches sway, the shifting shade. You can ignore your to-do list for weeks, if you want to.
Squirrel with a walnut
Likewise when you’re living in the past or future, when you’re hooked by feelings that drag you down, when you’re worried about problems in your life, you can come home to your heart and breath.
Place your palms over your heart and breathe. Bring awareness to your heart and chest Relax into the rhythm and familiarity of your heartbeat, your inhalation and exhalation.
This is your calm place in a storm, a safe and peaceful home that is always with you. This is the haven where you regain your center and find clarity.
Your heart and breath offer a loving space where you can be yourself, can feel what you feel. In this place you can rest and go inward, you can be fully yourself and know the truth of who you are without having to defend or bargain, with no embarrassment or worry.
Dear one, is your heart heavy with fear for others? Do you worry about your family?
You can help them without depleting yourself by seeing and witnessing their power, their strengths their capabilities, their talents, and reflecting this back to them in words and actions.
You are saying to them – “I know you can do this… I know you are capable… I know you can figure this out… this is what I’ve seen in you before…” This is gentle coaching – leading by example – inspiring those around you.
GCW in winter
Let them know you trust them to step up to the plate and do what needs to be done. Your job is not to rescue, or save, but to be a light, to shine a light for them.
When you feel the familiar fear, go inward and feel it in your body. It might be a tightening in your heart, a resistance in your throat, a roiling in your belly. Pay attention to your feelings with love. Breathe deeply for a few moments and allow yourself to be fully present to your body’s signals.
Feel your fear. “Give it your compassionate attention.” – Pema Chodron
This will help you find the courage to tune into the power within you. Go deep into the living well of your life force and draw up the strength and fortitude and will to heal your life! Even though you feel fear, you can shine brightly and stand in your power.
You teach by example! Those you worried about in the past can learn to stand in their own power, reach deep within themselves and find the resources to thrive.
Ask Grandmother Cottonwood 