Alice is soooo inspiring. She radiates the energy of a well-lived life. In her interview I was touched by a couple of things she said that brought joy into her life:

• loving and being interested in other people
• music – playing and sharing it (a passion)
• laughing
• staying optimistic

Here are 4 well-researched and proven strategies that can help us process difficulties and bring our awareness into a balance:

• writing: write about your pain rather than just talking about it…apparently writing is more effective because we start to create a storyline to make sense of what has happened and this helps us work towards a solution
• recollecting what’s good: write about good things that have happened each day and your part in them – gratitude heals
• imagine a perfect future: write (realistically) about your best possible future – this increase optimism and the likelihood of achieving your goals.
• affectionate writing: write affectionately about the people in your life each day. Doing this has been shown to reduce stress and cholesterol!!

I’d like to share this  response that Ann Weiser Cornell wrote recently in her Weekly Tips and Support Newsletter.

“Focusing is a simple matter of holding a kind of open, non-judging attention to something which is directly experienced but not yet in words.” –from the introduction to The Focusing Student’s and Companion’s Manual by Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin.

Something which is directly experienced but not yet in words? What is that?
Well, that’s what we call a “felt sense,” and it’s really the heart of the matter.

A “felt sense” is what a problem or a situation “feels like” when you pause and get a sense of the whole thing. It’s not your usual emotions or thoughts–which can get stuck and keep you going around in circles–but rather it’s fresh, immediate, and often contains new information or a new perspective.

People are not used to pausing and getting felt senses. If more people would do this, I believe the world would be quite different!
Focusing starts with that pause…

18 Self-Healing Exercises

We all have the capacity to generate healing in our own lives and to help others to do the same. Are you ready to experience the benefits of energy healing? We invite you to select whichever category on the right is most interesting to you, and jump right in to explore this fascinating field.

The first section, Working with the Life Force, begins with two foundational relaxation exercises where you will be introduced to the flow of energy in your body and how to work with it to stimulate healing and combat stress and fatigue.

Breath, Prana, and Qi

•   1. The Relaxing Breath– Andrew Weil
•   2. Yoga Relaxation– Shiva Rea

The next section on Energy Medicine Exercises awakens your subtle energy body through powerful practices involving the chakras, including a daily energy routine you can do each day to infuse your life with clarity and vitality.

Chakras, Meridians, and Aura

•   3. A Tour of the Chakras– Anodea Judith
•   4. Chakra Healing– Cyndi Dale
•   5. A Morning Chakra Exercise– Caroline Myss
•   6. Purification and Balancing– Layne Redmond
•   7. Five Minute Daily Energy Routine– Donna Eden
•   8. Matrix Energetics– Richard Bartlett

Our Sound Healing section introduces three practices which give you a first-hand experience of the unique power of sound to connect you with deep levels of healing and transformation.

Sound Healing

•   9. Chanting the Chakras– Layne Redmond
• 10. Self-Healing with Sound and Music– Andrew Weil and Kimba Arem
• 11. Vocal Toning the Chakras– Jonathan Goldman

The next section on Using the Hands for Healing provides an effective exercise for tuning into the innate healing powers which exist right in your very own hands. By learning how to activate our hands for healing, we prepare ourselves to bring forth powerful energies of transformation.

Using the Hands for Healing

• 12. Your Healing Hands– Jack Angelo

Guided Imagery and Visualization includes five simple, yet transformative exercises, each of which opens a doorway into a more awake and alive experience of life. 

Guided Imagery and Visualization

• 13. Imagery for Self-Healing– Martin Rossman
• 14. Healing Lake Meditation– Jon Kabat-Zinn
• 15. Combating Energy Vampires– Judith Orloff
• 16. Meditation for Pain Relief– Shinzen Young
• 17. Color and healing– Laura Alden Kamm

We conclude with Soul-Level Healing where you will learn to enter the "non-ordinary reality" of the shaman. As a part of this journey, you will discover useful information and ways of healing that are not ordinarily available in the normal waking state.

Soul-Level Healing

• 18. Intro to Shamanic Journeying– Sandra Ingerman

I have a spiritual practice. Indeed, grammatically I should write I have a few spiritual practices. Why? Well, I am a pragmatic woman.

I want a practice that is given plenty of opportunity for expression in my daily life. Both through stillness and movement. Through silence and voice.

I want a practice that helps me feel good about myself – not just my mind feeling stroked – one where my body feels good about itself somehow. Both emotionally well and physically well.

I want a practice that can hold my paradoxes – that of wanting to grow and transform and wanting complete acceptance of myself all while “letting go”. A crazy-making fully-accepting, releasing of self through the attention to self.

For me this is a felt process of becoming. By felt I mean that I experience it in my body. The body becomes the bridge to Presence, to the transcendent experience. I don’t write “transcendence” because so far I have experienced fleeting experiences. Wonderful and momentary. I unfold gently and with inner wisdom at my own pace. I sense for what is alive in the here and now. I feel at the edge for needs my attention, what is new, fresh and vital. I learn to trust myself. I learn to watch and be with myself in a caring way. I learn to hold all of me with the same acceptance.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from my paths of practice which help me to stay connected to what really works for me. Mindfulness, Focusing, valuing oneself, transformation and peace. This is what I practice – literally. And practice is not the same as “this is what I do and am good at.” It is simply what I pay attention to and what I teach. Mindfulness and Focusing as a way to find one’s own unique path while joyfully watching everyone walk their own paths.

Buddhism

“There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced, leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centred on the body.” Gautama Buddha

Focusing & Spirituality

Experience is a myriad richness.
We think more than we can say.
We feel more than we can think.
We live more than we can feel.
And there is much more still.

“You need to stand again in your own experiencing – in your own felt ongoingness, which is that intricate complexity inside of life – to put into the world what hasn’t been said yet that you are carrying from your particular experiencing” Eugene Gendlin

“A subtle, bodily feeling with vague meanings that brings new, clearer meanings involving a transcendent growth process.” Elfie Hinterkopf

How do I live each day so that a felt consciousness of living in a Presence can grow and deepen right within the experiences of daily life? The habit of felt sensing (Focusing) is a practical, physical way to open my body’s consciousness to the transcendent giftedness of everything, including events that threaten biological life. Living itself can be prayer. Our body itself, which we so identify with mortality, is meant to be our conscious bridge into immortality. It is the body process that creates an experiential faith. The habit of felt sensing gives us the body-feel for how in the practical order we can live connected in this world of gift, no matter what happens to us. Rev. Ed McMahon

You – as a gift to the world

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost. The world will never have it. Martha Graham, American dancer and choreographer

Spiritual Transformation

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation. J. Krishnamurti

Peace as spiritual practice

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. Unknown

A few weeks ago I did an exercise from Mark Silver’s called “finding your Jewel”. This exercise is about finding out what is your unique gift in this world. In business there are thousands of massage therapists, life coaches bloggers, for example, but what is it about you that will attract particular clients.

Mark believes that  what our heart most deeply yearns, or thirsts for is the very same quality that our clients yearn or thirst for.

So, following his guided mp3 I sensed into what my heart yearns for. What came first were all the qualities that I am told are my strengths and that help my clients; clarity, insight, support, intuition.

Then, inviting still more. Going into the more vulnerable heart-felt space the word acceptance came. I yearn for acceptance; just as I am and just as I unfold and grow in the light of life’s experiences. Then, inviting still more I knew I hit upon a deep inner truth when the word trust came.

At first, my mind says, “Of course you want trust, who doesn’t want trust, how can you live in a world without trust! Obvious!”

Then, more came.  I yearn to trust my own heart. I yearn to trust my own judgement enough to be able to hear how other’s experience life. I yearn to trust my own reactions and emotions. Not to be swept away by them but to sense into what they are trying to tell me and paying attention to that responsively. Now I know when I have touched in to something essentially true for me when a sheen of tears come and my heart turns. TRUST & ACCEPTANCE.

Now, I have been sitting on this post for a few weeks. Not quite sure what comes next and yet sensing its not quite finished either. And today I saw a quote in Davina’s blog Shades of Crimson.

“Heaven and Earth can never meet as long as you hold even one person outside of your heart.” from Devrah Laval, The Magic Doorway into the Divine.

Davina asked herself “When a person can’t even hold themselves in their heart, how could they possibly attract their dreams?”

When a person can’t even hold themselves in their heart, then what?

How many people do you know who can truly hold themselves in their heart? All of themselves? In Davina’s blog her life coach asks why should she be in a lifeboat if her ship is sinking.  This brought Davina closer to the qualities she admires about herself. What about you -would you be able to let of all the parts of yourself  on to the lifeboat? Would you be able to accept all of you and bring them on board? Or would you turn some parts away? Or maybe you might not even notice some parts that need to get on?

And then who would be left on the lifeboat? Would that actually be “you” at all? Or just the you you have been told to be by your culture, your parents, your school teachers, priests, counsellors, and your inner critic to name just the obvious sources of advice and admonition we receive as we grow up. Would you really be “living” if all of you didn’t come on board.

For me, this raises the question what do our shadow parts bring to us as a gift? Do they bring energy, vulnerability, compassion? What is the jewel hidden inside our judgement of them? Why do these parts we shy away from, deny existance know they should be on the lifeboat?

How does it feel to even be considering bringing them all on board – and who is the part that thinks it gets to decide who stays behind and who boards?

When you can’t even hold all of yourself in your heart, then what does that mean for how you live “the all” of your life?

I am hearing so much talk about the how tough times are getting. Underneath all of this talk is a subtle message about reining in our lives: our spending, our expectations, our lifestyles.

However I say NO! Let’s look at this differently. Rather than shrinking we can THRIVE!

No, I’m not advocating new age positive affirmations that will miraculously turn your life around if you say them often enough, loud enough and with great gusto.

Neither am I advocating wildly ignoring the environment around us. We probably will know people who will experience the harsh reality of job displacement or retrenchment, loss of a regular income and the related personal and relationship challenges that come with that.

BUT, what if we perceive 2009 as a year of recalibration rather than recession. This is an opportunity to REVIEW, RECOGNISE, RE-FOCUS, RELEASE, RE-SET & RE-CALIBRATE. We can review the highs and lows of 2008 exploring our journey and the meanings we have made from it. We can recognise where we expend our time and energy and how aligned that is to our what we really want. We can pay attention to what’s working – and what’s no longer serving us. We can re-focus on core essentials and strengths. These essentials give us pleasure, confidence, outcomes, joy and integrity. These are underpinned by our values which become our new focus and motivators.  We can release our blocks to action, our limiting beliefs clearing a way for the new and fresh to enter our lives. We can re-set our compass bearings setting a course which takes us to where we CHOOSE to go. We can consistently re-calibrate by committing to staying focused, paying attention to our daily intentions and actions through self-awareness and keeping an open mind to what needs changing or adjusting.

The biggest variable in how this year goes for you is

WHAT YOU DO!

Personal responsibility and taking action is going to be what makes the difference between a year you can celebrate and a year you may wonder what happened – it just slid by or a year you’d rather forget.

Now, I’m not saying that we, literally, bring everything into our lives by our thoughts. Nonsense. People don’t bring earthquakes, hurricanes, accidents, and the like upon themselves. No!

I am saying the only thing we are in control of  is our intentions, our reactions and being a living expression of our core values.

And by paying attention to these we can choose to have a certain quality of life, our inner life holds our bearings no matter what is going on with our outer-life. We can choose to have a certain quality of relationships  and we can choose to spend more time on the things that make us feel great. If we are doing things that seem unavoidable, like driving the kids to school we have the choice to explore ‘the how of doing that.”  We can choose to recognise the underlying value we are meeting (contributing to the kids well-being & safety for example), and from that place we can find plenty of ways to meet those values (form a group to share the driving, pay a teenager to escort the kids on the school bus, move closer to the school so they can walk etc.)

The bottom line is we only have 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  How do we  spend them? How do you want to spend them?

How are you spending them now? What percentage either brings you joy or meets your values?

Curious about how to thrive not survive in 2009?

1. REVIEW

What was great? Mapping the peaks & valleys of 2008. Find meaning in what happened.

2. RECOGNISE

What are you already saying “yes” to? What are your “yes” opportunities?  What can you say “no” to? Where is your energy being drained or displaced? Where are you expending your time and energy? How much of your time and energy is actually supporting your deepest values and aspirations?

3. RE-FOCUS

What do you want to focus on? Strengthen your strengths through identifying your core values and deepest passions.

4. RELEASE

What do you need to let go of in order to allow the entry of the new? Beliefs? Relationships? Busyness? Habits? Explore and embrace your blocks to transformation. When we listen to ourselves with non-judgmental curiosity what one always finds at the bottom of the barrel is precious life-going-forward energy.

5. RE-SET

Reset your compass bearings for thriving. Making choice-full-conscious decisions for self-care and growth. Once you’ve listened to all the concerns and worries of any specific inner voice then you can begin to listen for what that voice, that part, does want – what it’s passionate about. Experience the sense of wholeness and ease that comes when your joy and passion for living are lined up with the intentions that hold your hopes and dreams.

6. RE-CALIBRATE

Practice a simple technique for consistently checking in with what your body knows about how you are tracking; for me this is Focusing, for you it might be mediation, listening to your inner voice while watching the ocean, surfing, running, dancing. Learn to re-calibrate with sensitivity not reactivity, building your capacity for self-empathy, self-trust and emotional resilience.

Thriving is a choice for life ~ your life.

  My yoga teacher often refers to back bends as opening our heart and releasing negativity.

While doing moves that bend backward I stretch across the front of my chest while simultaneously allowing my shoulders to drop and relax. I let my shoulder blades fall gently down my back and then I can feel my heart expand and open.

So, while doing back bends yesterday the phrase “bending over backwards” came to my mind. How, when we bend over backwards, metaphorically, we make a real effort. We put our heart into what we are doing, for ourselves or for some one else. When someone bends over backwards for us we certainly feel their generosity, effort as an act of caring or love, a action from the heart.

Each move in Yoga works not only with our physical body, but also with our emotions and where they are being held in our body. By moving into, breathing into different parts of our body, in different combinations we work to release stuck energy. In every yoga class each person has areas of fluidity and stretch and areas of tightness and resistance depending on their life experiences.

Forward bends encourage introspection and are very grounding.

Back bends are exhilarating and allow emotions to surface and release.

Inversions (headstand, shoulder-stand, and handstand) enable us to change our perspective, after all we have turned our world upside down.

Balancing poses promote inward focus and calmness.

Twists help us release what we don’t need (on all levels) and get us out of habitual patterns of movement.

I found this sentence inside a blog written by Susan Piver. She was talking to Stephen Mitchell about the difference between positive thinking and wishful thinking.

Susan wrote,

I asked him if, in his lifelong study of the core teachings of all religions, he’d ever come across this idea. I wrote down what he said, because it was so excellent. Here it is:

The teaching of every one of the great sacred texts is that control is an illusion. When you understand that ultimately you are not the doer, you can step back from yourself. That is the only path to serenity.  In other words, letting go of the illusion of control, and realizing that you never had it in the first place, allows you to live in the most dazzlingly intelligent, beautiful, and kind reality that you could ever have imagined—and beyond what you could have imagined.

"All I have to do is relax, to allow the world to dazzle me instead of the other way around."

STOP. STOP READING NOW.

GO BACK AND READ THAT SENTENCE AGAIN AND SAY IT OUT LOUD. TAKE SOME TIME TO PAUSE AND ALLOW YOU BODY-HEART-MIND TO PROCESS THAT SENTENCE.

WHEW!!! What a relief.

An underlying, background striving tension just  slips away and long, deep breaths get sucked into my body where the tension used to be. I’m going to make this my modus operandi for a while.

I am Cheshire-cat-curious about what will come!