“The pinnacle of self-love is not ecstasy, it is the heartbreaking process of undoing the life that our unloved self built when we didn’t know better. “
Becoming who we really are begins with learning to love every aspect of our lives – but most importantly, it is learning to love ourselves. It is an unbecoming of who we were when we didn’t know how to love ourselves.
It is chaos before order; a difficult and messy unspooling of the heavily bound threads of dysfunction and neglect that we have wound around ourselves, all too often in a cocoon several sizes too small to contain our vast spirit. But unwind we must before we can step into the fullness of our purpose and truest self; before we can learn to spread our wings and soar.
Before self-love becomes freedom, it must first be a burden that we carry with minds and hearts just beginning to open to new possibilities.
We must carry the weight of the anger that we feel towards others for not being treated with the care, love, and respect that we should have asked for all along. We must carry the weight of anger towards ourselves for what we allowed, often not realizing that there was ever a choice.
There is the anger for not asking; for not insisting that we were worthy of care and respect.
For those of us who experienced childhood trauma, this unraveling of emotions is an especially perilous journey, for dragons often lurk in those murky places of our subconscious minds that we fear to tread. But the journey is a worthy one and the reward of integration with those lost parts of ourselves can not be understated.
When we have processed the anger, then comes the heavy grief of time lost – sometimes many years’ worth.
Eventually, we feel lighter. We learn to set boundaries and say “No” to those things that are not right for us. We become deepy accountable to our own self-care and growth; a process that is not an easy one.
At some point, we begin to recognize the truth of the saying that we become the amalgamation of those that we spend the most time with. And so we learn the painful necessity of cutting away or holding at at careful distance those people and things that have hurt us in the past, or don’t currently serve our highest good. Sometimes those closest to us decide to grow with us, even if their pace does not match our own. Sometimes they don’t, and we must make the difficult decision to allow them to continue their journey on their own, in their own way.
In the beginning, this can create isolation. Loneliness. But as we remove those things in our lives that were creating darkness, light can begin to enter those empty spaces. Our tribe begins to find us. We begin to fall in love with not only ourselves, our lives and those souls around us, but we draw in and create close friendships and partnerships that are fulfilling rather than stagnant. That lift us and allow us to better lift others, in turn.
We begin to create, or rather, I believe that we learn to consciously collaborate with Source to become the architect of our lives, shaping the fabric of our reality with intention. We learn to see the infinite possibilities within and before us. We find our wings, and begin to soar.
Today and all days, beloved, I want to see you soar. I wish for you the feeling of freedom as you create a life of abundance and beauty. A life of light, and of love.
Life is a dream; a self-created reality in which our subconscious programs largely direct our thoughts, moods, and actions. Most of the time, these programs keep us in a state of sleepwalking as we react and respond to life based upon what our past experiences have dictated. But frankly, it’s all bullshit.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…Life is but a dream.
– Row, Row, Row your boat.
It’s all a construct. The human brain is wired to survive, not to thrive. As a result, we build these supposedly “safe” walls and edifices with our minds until at some point, whether we realize it or not, we are locked inside a fortress of our own making.
These constructs are often (usually) based on childhood experiences and family dynamics that lay down neurological programming – such as taking on the identity of one of the six “roles” of a dysfunctional family life: the Hero, Scapegoat, Lost Child, Mascot, Caretaker/Enabler, and the Golden Child. Because these egoic identities were built as a result of our early neurological programming, they become the pathways that we continue to follow well into adulthood, and sometimes until death.
I don’t know about you, but this just feels like a huge Ouch.
I think of myself as someone who is fairly #awake. I’ve had a deeper sense of “knowing” for as long as I can remember. I think I may have been born a little less asleep, or perhaps I’ve just been around the block enough (#reincarnation) that I am usually pretty good at seeing through the veil. Through the constructs. Through the Bullsh#t.
But for any of us, no matter where we are in our soul’s evolutionary journey, I believe that in this life; what the Buddhism and Hinduism call the “Maya”, or veil of illusion, we wake, then fall asleep again, only to awaken wondering when it was that we lost our awareness of the Maya.
I don’t know that we ever become fully enlightened, full time. That’s part of the process. Part of the contrast that is necessary to keep things interesting and to keep us engaged.
But here’s the thing – the more often we awaken, the longer these periods of awareness will be, and the more observation and awareness that we bring into the Who that we are keeps these periods stretched out and more frequent.
But a recent circumstance in my life made it abundantly clear that I was still holding long-standing #childhoodpatterns of low self-worth and people pleasing. In my desire to see someone I care for happy and whole, I lose parts of myself. In my need to heal and be invaluable, I allow myself to be de-valued.
In my own #toxicchildhood, I alternated between Hero, Scapegoat and Caretaker, and perpetuated those cycles into my first relationships. I thought I had healed those parts of myself years ago, but this experience showed me that I was still holding those roles – those identities – close to the heart.
Seeing my own dysfunctional childhood programs and huge egoic constructs staring me in the face felt like being punched in the gut and tbh, I had a week’s worth of wobble as I tried to decide if I could just ignore it all and keep #pretending that the years of #therapy and #selfwork had left me fully #woke. Enlightened.
In the end, I opted to look that sh#t straight in the face and run towards the storm rather than away from it. The fastest way through, right? Until we choose to be #relentless about our continued growth and do the damned work, we can not move into greater #wholeness and #authenticity. We can not achieve the life of freedom and joy that we may be seeking.
And sometimes, that f#cking sucks. The work is hard, and often creates more chaos in our lives before it opens up to peace and joy. I guess that’s why it’s called “work”.🤷♀️
But here’s the thing – Once you get past the initial shock and pain of seeing those hard truths revealed, you realize that your conscious mind and highest self is navigating the waters of your life, moving you towards greater freedom and fullness rather than continuing to be a slave to your past programming and #toxichistory.
Our highest selves are always communicating with us, trying to show us the way to release those outdated programs and patterns that no longer serve our highest evolution. But it is up to us to listen. To pay attention. And when those hard truths come, we must confront them rather than turn away.
Going into those unfamiliar waters, confronting our “demons” and doing the work may be difficult – but it is also incredibly rewarding and an exciting journey. It can be beautiful and joyous, even.✨ Ultimately, being awake and aware not only makes us more happy, caring, and compassionate humans, it’s a whole lot more fun.😁
What unhealthy #childhood programs might be holding you back from living your best life and the fullest expression of who you are?
This article in Futurism is an Interesting read and makes a lot of sense to me.
Does anyone remember those old educational cartoons – “Schoolhouse Rock” that taught about the human body, mathematics, American Politics and much more more? 🤔
I specifically recall one of the episodes on the body – “red cells carry oxygen, white cells fight off germs”. Watching these cartoons very possibly started my interest in the human body and physics. Probably also part of the reason I have thought of humans as individual cells in a much larger macrocosm for a long time.
I’d imagine that something like say, a red blood cell doesn’t have a strong sense of awareness of anything outside of itself, right?
It is an individual cell, doing exactly the job that it was created for. But that one individual cell is really a part of a huge macrocosm and wouldn’t survive very long without the rest of the system. And certainly wouldn’t be very productive in supplying oxygen and nutrients if it was on it’s own, right?🩸
I think that humans have a tendency to be similar in this. We have difficulty in viewing ourselves as anything but individual entities and often act from this narrow perspective, sometimes causing pain to those around us or the world at large as we only think about what is best for our own survival or self-interest.
But what if we broadened our perspective as a collective? What if we could view ourselves as small, individual components of a much larger creation; individual drops of water that make up an ocean or, like a Seurat pointillism painting, individual dots of color that when seen together make up a breathtaking piece of art? What if we stopped the “me against you” mindset that seems to be so rampant today and instead considered everything from the viewpoint of the greatest good for all involved?
What if we put our incredible collective intelligence to good use to find sources of energy, sustenance and information that supported each other and our planet rather than enslaving others while stripping the earth of its resources and reserves?
I know that this topic may feel a little deep or intense for a Saturday morning, but if not now, when?
How long can we keep up the hostility and animosity that so many hold towards our neighbors, communities, leaders, and planet – before we well and truly go into self-destruct mode – or our earth decides that we are an invasive species that she is damned tired of supporting?
An interesting fact to consider is the fact that the “Doomsday Clock” just hit 90 seconds to midnight. This means we are closer than ever to world destruction.
Just sayin’…😒
Here is what I would put forth as an idea for today: that we create a personal and societal mantra along the lines of:
Or perhaps – “I am an individual human in a much, much larger body of humans and other species. How can I work as an individual, but also with other humans, to create greater unity, greater cohesion, greater entrainment – to achieve the healthiest, happiest self and ecosystem/biosphere/body possible?” 🌏.
Feels good, doesn’t it?🌈✨🌞
Incidentally, for those parents that are looking to provide a little more educational content than “SpongeBob”, The Magic Schoolbus had one episode where Miss F. took the kids through a human body, and there was a really wonderful series of French cartoons “Once Upon A Time – Life” from the 80’s that covered pretty much every aspect of humans in 26 episodes. They can be found on YouTube, as well as the “Schoolhouse Rocks“ series. 😎
Charlie Brown, in the comic strip Peanuts, expressed it perfectly – What if today, we were just grateful for everything?
Better yet, what if every day, we were grateful for everything? What if we were grateful for every single experience life has or is bringing to us?
This may seem like a strange way to think. Why would we be grateful for all of the negative or even awful things that we experience in this life?
It can be so easy to regret and lament past decisions and the “negative” experiences life has brought to us. But this can keep us in a negative loop – holding “victim mentality”, and inhibiting our abilities as creators.
So what if instead we learned to be grateful for it all? What if we viewed all of the negative experiences of our past as opportunities for growth – to gain wisdom, to learn greater compassion, to experience the contrast of those things that don’t work for us to better know those things that do?
What if we considered the possibility that we came to this life as spirit, ready to be born into flesh to learn those lessons and to fully experience every single aspect of life from the sunsets to the sh#t on our shoe?
You may be reading this and rolling your eyes, thinking that I am being a wide-eyed idealist rather than a realist. What could possibly be the motivation to be thankful for the sh#t on our shoe or any other “crappy” experience life throws our way? (pun intended )
Would you reconsider if I told you being grateful not only increases life quality, overall happiness, physical and emotional health but also builds a better brain and significantly fatter wallet?
I thought that might catch your attention. Read on…
Dr. Laurie Santos, Professor of Psychology and creator of the wildly popular “Happiness Lab” at Yale University, teaches that gratitude is one of the key factors of happiness – and science is backing up this previously “woo woo” theory. In her course “Psychology and The Good Life” (most popular course at Yale in 300 years) she teaches much of that science.
For example, it has been shown in research that when we feel grateful, our brain produces greater concentrations of dopamine; a feel-good neurotransmitter. That dopamine increases when we express that gratitude through writing, speech, or compassionate action.
Gratitude also increases creativity and performance – professor SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY,, author of The How of Happiness, conducted an 8-month study of happiness at Harvard University. The results of this study showed that when a daily gratitude and affirmation practice was used, people were 19% more productive, analytic problem solving increased by 29%, and here’s the really cool one – revenue was increased by 36%. { Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2004, 2006a, 2007}
Crazy, right?
So what if we woke each day feeling happy, energized and ready to set intentions for an amazing day? And on those days that weren’t quite as amazing, what if we were grateful for the contrast – and even more so the ability to wake tomorrow and try again?
What if we made the conscious decision to begin to overlay those old subconscious programs of lack and negativity with something better?
What if we started a gratitude practice each and every day, in which we spent just a few minutes writing or really feeling into the space of gratefulness?
What if we wrote letters to our loved ones expressing all the things we appreciate about them?
What if we wrote a letter to ourselves expressing all the amazing things we loved and appreciated about us? Can you think of five things off the top of your head that you love and appreciate about yourself? 🤔
I’ve had a morning gratitude/affirmation journaling/meditation practice for several years now and I can tell you that not only do I feel better and more joyful – even in the times of intense stress – but my day flows better and I am able to create and manifest just about anything I can put my mind to.
Some days I like to “supercharge” this practice with a “handsa” – I write my daily affirmation on my palm to come back to throughout the day. Today’s handsa is “As my heart fully opens, my mind expands and that space is effortlessly filled with wisdom, freedom, joy, and abundance.” But there are days where I keep it super simple, too – “Big Juicy Life”, “I Create” “I am love” or “I hold myself in the space of”: (gratitude, joy, contentment, prosperity,etc.)
How can you make space each day for gratitude? What would a daily practice look like to you if you knew being in a place of optimism and gratefulness would absolutely improve the quality of your life?
We’ve all heard the adage “Fake it until you make it”.
This advice can help us to get to the place that we want to be – or cause an emotional trainwreck if we aren’t being honest about where we currently are at the same time.
Does this sound like a bit of a contradiction? 🤔
In simple terms, we are creatures of habit. Our brains are vast fields of neurological pathways, and these pathways are the tracks for our physiological, emotional and psychological patterns, conscious and subconscious.
The route we take to go to work each day is a pathway. The apple oatmeal and black coffee that we enjoy for breakfast each morning. The way we respond to our partner, parents or friends when we are joyful and excited – or feeling criticized and devalued. Our habits of industriousness or sloth. Our temperament, routines and rituals, tendency to isolate or our extroverted qualities, the way we value others – or ourselves.
All of these and every other thing we do and think are pathways through the dense field that is our mind and brain matter.
This is good news because it means when it comes to pulling ourselves out of the mud to begin the trek to the top of the mountain – that place of expansive views, joy, connection and the deliberate creation of our best possible life – it is, more than anything, just an action that we continue practicing until it becomes a habit.
In the same way that we learn and improve when we practice the piano, painting, a new profession or study habit, picking ourselves up out of the mud to move on to something better after a period of grief, depression, anger or inertia is essentially the same mental action as picking up that paintbrush, textbook or laptop to prune old programs and replace them with new habits and neurological subroutines.
It might feel uncomfortable, difficult or challenging to begin, but once we practice envisioning a new reality for ourselves – or maybe a new identity would be more appropriate – and we begin to act upon what it is that we wish to see and become, eventually, that vision becomes our new way of being – our new reality.
Imagine • Practice • Do • Become
So what is it, ultimately, that you would like your life to look like in six months? A year? Three years? Five years?
How would you like to see your personal reality unfold? What would your close relationships look like?
Where would you like to live? Do you see yourself in a villa by the ocean, living in an urban setting – or maybe a tiny cabin in the woods?
What would you see yourself doing for a living – what do you think or feel that your purpose is?
What would your income be?
What would you imagine your daily habits being? Do you go to the gym or run each morning, do you meditate, or sleep in until 10?
How will you change your life? Whatever you can envision, you can achieve.✨😎
Let me give you an example from a friend/client of mine:
“Rebecca” grew up in a dysfunctional home. She was taught that her value was in what she did rather than who she was and it was best if she was “seen and not heard”.
So of course, Rebecca grew up to behave in ways that reflected this value system.
She neglected her own well being. She put all of her energy into caring for others. She withdrew when there was conflict or when she was emotionally uncomfortable.
She topically believed she had successful relationships, all the while avoiding real intimacy.
Eventually Rebecca found herself depressed. She assumed it was just the “pressures of life” and took antidepressants – but while it seemed like she wasn’t really depressed and unable to function anymore, she still didn’t feel emotionally connected to her life. 😓
In fact, she didn’t feel very emotionally connected to anything other than a growing sense of desperation and anger, emotions that she desperately tried to suppress.
Can you relate to Rebecca’s story so far?
Eventually, Rebecca began to see a counselor 🥰 who helped her look at childhood patterns that were causing huge blocks in her ability to experience joy, to value herself, to adapt and evolve – and how those patterns were reflected in her current relationships.
She spent some time grieving for the many years she had neglected to care for the physical and emotional needs and wellness of herself and her inner child as a result of those patterns.
She learned to reset her vibrational field to allow good to come to her rather than repelling her wishes and dreams due to her subset programs of scarcity and lack of value.
She discovered that she had to learn to self-care and nurture her personal growth, set healthy boundaries with others, and began to prune some of the toxic people who couldn’t accept her boundaries, growth and the radical responsibility for the shaping of her personal reality. This was a process that was deeply painful but also deeply cathartic.
Fast forward three years. Rebecca is living the life that she hadn’t realized she was missing. She has a truly successful relationship with a partner who enjoys healthy dialogue and honest communication. This honesty also means intimacy and she understands what real vulnerability and intimacy means.
She has taken up several hobbies that had interested her in childhood and although she reports that it is sometimes frustrating to not be “better” than she is, she loves the process of learning and slowly gaining skill.
She had quit her corporate job a couple of years back, and now works largely from home contracting her skills to large companies. She loves the freedom this gives her.
She also makes it a point to spend time with friends and family each week to recreate and build personal relationships.
In short, she has radically turned her life around.
Rebecca still has occasional days when she feels a little blue. But knowing that feeling connected, happy and deliberately creating her life is just so much better, she gives herself some grace and space to deeply feel on those days, but also keeps envisioning an ever-expanding future – and joyfully continues to expand into that future.
And you know what? Rebecca’s blue days will become less and less the more she practices bliss, curating and cultivating the life of her dreams, healthy communication and community with others and most importantly, loving herself into wholeness. How cool is that?
If Rebecca’s story resonates with you, I’d love to hear your story, too. How do you lift yourself from the mud after those days that you need to give yourself a little more grace and space to feel deeply and acknowledge those past parts of yourself that might still feel a little broken?
What habits do you practice that keep your vision clear and ever-expanding and your vibrational field humming at a frequency that allows good to come to you – rather than repelling it with hidden subconscious programs?
Drop me a comment below!⬇️☺️
And just in case you needed to be reminded today, you are amazing. You are valuable. You are a magnificent creation and capable of achieving anything you can dream of, and babe, you are so very loved.🥰
How are you feeling today? Are you feeling fabulous and shining bright? If you are on-task and feeling amazing, I see you – you glow, girl!
But maybe today is a little rough. Maybe you are going through an especially difficult period and even the idea of getting out of bed to face the day is a struggle.
If this is where you are today, I also see you. I feel the pain you are going through. I have been there myself, more than a few times – and am sending you so much healing and love.
We all go through times like this. We all experience days that are challenging; days when we feel blue, irritable, or under the weather. Days when we don’t want to adult, and coping is a challenge. Frankly, these days suck – but are a necessary aspect of the human experience and can help us to grow.
There will be times when we come up against challenges, grief, new or unresolved trauma, or sometimes we just hit a wall because we are tired.
But here is a secret that modern society tends to ignore or overlook – if we are to get back to feeling fabulous and creating a joyful, connected life, it is vitally important that we acknowledge and honor our honest feelings on those days when we are struggling with keeping our “spirits up”.
In the same way that in healthy relationships with others, we validate another’s truth and emotional state, we need to do the same with ourselves in order to move forward and move on to a higher resonance and better vibrational state.
So babe, if you are in the mud today, it’s ok. Give yourself permission to squish your toes in that gooey mess a little. Talk to yourself or someone you trust about where you are at and why you are there.
Allow yourself to cry – tears release stored cortisol in the body, which is why we almost always feel better and lighter after we let go of the negative feelings we may have been holding or hiding, sometimes without even realizing it. 👀
Once you have validated your experience and given yourself time and permission to access and acknowledge the sh#ty aspects of your emotional or physical reality, start looking up again.
It’s ok and even healthy to be in the mud for a little while but babe, don’t stay there too long. Remember that our emotional states are neurological pathways that can become trenches and even personality traits when we dwell in them over-long, and ultimately, we go through the shiznit in our present to get to a healthier, happier place in our future, right? 😎🥳✨💫
Stay tuned next post for some tools on finding our way out of the mud once we are ready to start climbing that hill again. 🏔🏔🌄
The views up here are spectacular and beautiful, I can’t wait to give you a hug and a hand up. You’re going to love it here.🥰
Just in case you had forgotten – you are amazing. You are worthy. You are capable, beautiful, valued and so very loved.💖💖💖
When we are in the midst of a difficult situation, the last thing we want to hear is some well-meaning person telling us “there is a reason for everything”, right?
But what if we just re-framed our suffering a little? What if we looked at those difficulties as a way to bring us closer to the wholeness we might have been missing before?
What if all of life was happening for us, not to us, and that in the karmic/grand scheme of things we are here to learn to re-structure who we are despite our circumstances to become the greatest possible version of ourselves? 🤔
Painting is one of the ways I express my need to create. Probably because of this, I’ve always liked to think of life as a spectacular, massive painting.
Have you ever been in front of an art piece so large that you could only take in small portions when you were up close?
Let’s say that someone puts you right in front of just such a painting.
What you see directly before you is a big stroke of dark grey or even black paint. It makes you feel a little sad.
But when you step back, you realize that that stroke of dark paint was the pupil of the most amazing set of eyes you have ever seen.
You step back even further to realize that the painting is of a beautiful woman reclining beside a still lake, perhaps smiling up at someone she loves. The sun is shining and the sky is blue with small grey clouds behind distant mountains.
Poignant, right? When we are right in front of our adversities it is so very challenging to remember that what we are experiencing is dark but necessary portion of a much larger story, and the overarching story is a breathtaking work of art. Like you.💕✨
If you are one of those people who are in the middle of something challenging or even heartbreaking right now, I see you, and am sending so much love.
Breathe, allow the experience – and whatever emotions might come with it.
But also remember that life is an ever-unfolding painting, and when you are able to create some space between yourself and what you are going through, you will see how your challenges provided contrast to make a truly magnificent piece of art.
We talked yesterday about the importance of finding a sense of gratitude in the present moment – in order to become more aligned with the future we wish to see. The more often we can hold ourselves in this state of gratitude and presence, the closer we become to accessing the quantum field of possibility and achieving resonance with Source – putting power behind our prayers.
Another of the beautiful aspects of coming into alignment with our highest selves is that we obtain a sense of peace and gratitude in the moment that causes heart coherence – our heart beats with a steady rhythm. There is no irregularity or arrhythmia; only too common occurrences these days.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, heart coherence reduces cortisol and adrenaline and increases output of Immunoglobulin A which increases immune function by up to 50% (!) and creates greater access to available energy.
Studies have been done on measurable photons in the energy field surrounding the body while in a state of heart coherence. The increase in these light waves – accessible energy – is typically more than doubled.
Wow, right?
But here’s what’s extra cool about achieving heart coherence: When we achieve this state, our bodies produce a chemical hormone called Oxytocin. Oxytocin is the “love hormone” that puts us in a state of bliss and connection. This release of Oxytocin causes the heart to release a chemical called Endofillial Derived Relaxing Factor.(EDRF)
EDRF causes the vessels of the heart to expand, not only creating greater oxygenation and blood flow, but also acting as an amplifier for all of those positive hormones and neurochemicals.
The amplification of these hormones not only causes intense feelings of bliss but can also reset the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for processing fear and holding past trauma. This means achieving heart resonance can literally rewire the brain. Now that is just pretty frickin’ AMAZING.
Stay with me, because here’s where we begin to learn the practice behind all that we have been learning about so far.
It’s important to recognize that we can’t always immediately get into this blissful state when we have been stuck in negative thought patterns – but we can get closer to it.
And just practicing being closer today means eventually, Bingo! You will find yourself heart-centered, healthier, and amazed by the feeling of joy that your brain and body produce.
When we are in this space, we begin to arrange our values, thoughts, habits, and energetic vibration (vibrational frequency) to reflect the person and reality that we want to be and see.
We become a vibrational match for that wonderful reality that we have dreamed of.
So how do we begin to get closer to alignment and coherence when we feel stuck?
We start by leaning into the feeling of any thought that is better than where we currently are.
Here’s an example – If you, like me, are someone that has suffered from Insomnia, you know that when you wake in the middle of the night, the mind tends to start racing.
Often the thought patterns that keep us awake for hours on end aren’t necessarily happy ones. Many years ago, I would find myself awake most nights from midnight to 4 or 5 am. This went on for months.
At first, I called it “doing the work” as I processed through trauma of the past for hours on end, but eventually I realized that I was no longer processing through but was instead stuck in that past pain.
So, on the advice of Wayne Dyer, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Bruce Lipton and other experts and self-development gurus, I began to shift my thoughts to one thing that felt better in my life.
Walking the beach with my beautiful children and happy dogs.
Chatting with my dad over coffee on religion, mechanics, and co-creation.
The brief but meaningful exchange I had with a beautiful stranger at the grocery store or the park that morning.
Time spent with friends.
Teaching classes.
A beautiful bouquet of peonies or Stargazer lilies
Or whatever else I may have recently experienced that made me feel good.
Before I knew it, a sense of peace and gratitude lulled my mind back into relaxation and I was fast asleep.
What is vitally important here is that we don’t just think about those things that make us feel a little better but we feel or lean into the positive emotion of those memories. This changes our neuralchemical output and begins to re-structure the brain.
We don’t have to suffer from insomnia to practice this.
The best time to start this feel-good meditation is in the morning, before any obstacles of the day can influence how easily we are able to access the feeling of gratitude, (I highly recommend beginning a gratitude journal each morning) but we can reach for that next good feeling any time of the day or night, bringing us closer to that place of alignment with our future selves and blissful heart coherence.
Practice:
Find someplace quiet to sit or lie down in a comfortable position. Close your eyes and take your focus to your breath, breathing deeply into your abdomen from your nose.
Allow your mind to quiet, bringing the focus back to the breath each time your mind becomes busy.
Observe thoughts without engaging, like watching clouds float across the sky.
Think of one positive thing from the day, or the day before if you are practicing in the morning – or even something you are excited about that is upcoming. Feel into the gratitude of that thought and space.
Try to notice if that feeling is in your heart center. If not, see if you can bring it closer to the center of the chest, just behind the sternum. Try to stay in that place of feeling good for at least five minutes, or longer if possible.
Each time you feel yourself beginning to cycle downward during the day in your thoughts or emotions, try to come back to that place. Practice makes perfect.😎
Tomorrow – Part 5 in the Anxiety to Alignment series:
This Blessed Sacred Life 