Posts

The Power of Words

"You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” -Guatama Buddha I was speaking with some old friends recently and we got on the topic of words, and the power of words. Words are very powerful, and our choice of words means so much more than we often are aware of. Often times our word choice comes out unconsciously. Yet, when we really listen to them, which we often don't, what we said made much more sense than we consciously meant. And, as we look at the words we choose, they say so much about us now, about our past, and about what we are creating in the world.  One of the things we were talking about was what words spoke to us  this past New Year. The words that are important to me for this new year are: create, joy, prosperity, peace, and choice. As these words were taking shape for me I put them into a sentence: I choose to and am creating a life of joy, peace, and prosperity. In fact, what I would like the world to

Change and Our Bodies

Image
"Progress is not possible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." -George Bernard Shaw This year is a year my plans involved focusing more on a book I am writing about relationships than I am on my blogs. Yet I find that life happens, no matter what we are planning, and there is a bigger plan if we let ourselves follow it instead of trying to control things. As I am making room for the book I am writing, things keep happening which prevent me from doing much writing. One of the things happening is that I am and have been in the process of selling my house and buying and moving into another house. This, as you know, is a lot of work, time and energy. In addition, every time I sit down to write on my tablet where I enjoy writing, I find something isn't working right and it won't let me save or share what I have written. When you write, you want to know that you can build on what you have written, so this has been a frustr

When To Let Go

Image
"The only way we make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." -Alan Watts Life can be so much fun. There is such a richness of being with our feelings as opposed to trying not to feel our feelings. And in a shift of consciousness, it is actually more work intensive to try not to feel than it is to just feel. Much of our time, though, we do spend distancing us from our feelings, staying in our heads and our cerebral intellect, allowing anxiety to live within us, or even harboring feelings of guilt with which we can hide from our deeper feelings. There is a good reason for this. Our intellect, our reason, our anxiety, our guilt, our trying to stay busy all help to protect and defend us from feelings that are too much for us to be with. As the saying goes, life happens when we are busy planning.  With that said, as things get tough in life, as things look like they are falling apart, as houses flood, as forest fires destroy our ho

Compromise As A Gift

Image
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change we seek. -Barack Obama When we think of the word compromise, we often think of it in a negative sense. In relationships compromise can be necessary. This is not a compromise of the self, but a noticing and an awareness of the other as separate from us and also that there is great importance to valuing the other as equally important as we are. I don`t know about you but it can be difficult for me to find that beautiful dance between honoring myself and honoring my partner or any relationship. Partners can be more difficult because it is a daily living continual dance.  I had an experience recently where my partner had a day where he was in his own space and it seemed to me that he wasn`t able that day to be in an emotional space in which the two of us could occupy space. This happens to all of us at times. I think this becomes a problem when

Feeling Numb

Image
"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from indomitable will.” -Mahatma Gandhi Have you ever felt that you had so much going on, or so many feelings that instead of being able to feel them you actually do the opposite and feel numb? I see that a lot when I work with patients on a physical level through chiropractic work. When muscles get so tense and what I call splinted that they don`t or can`t respond as they should, there is often a sense of numbness instead of pain or discomfort. I often do accompanying muscle work with my patients to help to restore natural movement and to release tension and to help adjustments hold. When the muscles get splinted or tight frequently they experience a lack of feeling rather than intense feeling. It is when the muscle releases that they begin to feel pain. The same holds true for us emotionally. I was speaking with a friend recently and she was explaining how with the revelations that she was making regarding her

Unnecessary Battles

Image
"You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength." -Marcus Aurelius Have you ever found yourself fighting a battle that doesn`t really need to be fought? There are so many things going on in the world that are examples of that. Fighting about gun laws, fighting about the right to abortion, fighting about who is the best team, or which is the best country, gun rights, or even who has the most power or the best way to accomplish something are fights that are happening now. Some of these fights have been going on for decades and some for millennium. Do these battles really accomplish something? Yet we continue those fights knowing they really cause more pain. We would rather be right than learn and communicate and compromise and be part of a solution.  We can look at this in a global way or in a more personal way. It doesn`t matter which for the same dynamics apply no matter the scope of the fight. We hold so tightl

Reclaiming Our Lost Selves

Image
"If you wear a mask long enough you begin to forget who you are beneath it.” -Anonymous We can go through our lives feeling perfect, or mostly happy. We eat, breath, love, sleep, work, have relationships, and feel we are living good lives. We are living good lives, or good enough lives. And yet, something is missing or we get reactive to certain people or certain situations. This reaction could seem so innocuous and can seem like it is to something so unimportant. It is this very reaction which in fact leads us to our lost selves. Think about the times you got upset at the driver driving slowly in front of you preventing you from passing him, or getting angry with your child or partner for spilling milk or drinking from the bottle, or some other kind of silly situation in which you got inappropriately upset. These are silly examples, yet the kinds of things that can happen every day. When we react in an extreme fashion which doesn’t equal the event itself, then it is time to lo