by Debra | Jul 10, 2017
Is your spiritual practice a priority?
We live in a very hectic, stimulating world where we have schedules and routines for everything. We have a work schedule mixed in with our personal schedule, which can be anything from our workouts, doctor’s appointments and any other obligations. We are always trying to be as productive as possible so scheduling the events of our life helps with this.
The one event that I notice that doesn’t usually get put in our schedule is our spiritual practice. We are conscious about making sure we meet all of the other obligations in our scheduler to stay on track. The only problem I see is that we haven’t scheduled our spiritual practice so it takes a backseat. I notice for myself if I don’t put it in my calendar something will always come up and override my practice. So I have my daily practice in my calendar every morning and daily reminders throughout my schedule to connect me with my higher self. If I don’t put it in my schedule I will go on autopilot and that’s when I get out of alignment.
I feel so much better in my day when I started it with my spiritual practice. It gives me the grounding and energy I need and allows me to do my day more consciously. Our spiritual practice seems like it is the most important item to put in our calendar and yet many of us fail to do so. In my personal retreats we talk about the importance of a daily spiritual practice.
How we choose to take care of ourselves is of course a personal choice. For some people they may need a daily meditation practice to help them stay in alignment with themselves. Just allowing that time to quiet the mind always brings me back in the balance. Another great practice is journaling, writing down your thoughts and processes. This is something I do after spending time meditating, praying and maybe reading, Journaling always helps me connect to my feelings.
You can see how not scheduling this, your day may take off without you and leave little or no time for your spiritual practice. Scheduling time to nurture your soul each day will allow you to stay more balanced so that if something difficult comes up in your life you may be in a better place to handle it.
My spiritual practice and my personal growth are extremely important to me so setting time aside is something that is a priority for me.
by Debra | Jul 4, 2017
WOW! I have been on this planet 60 years and my learning has been exponential.
I turned 60 years old Sunday, June 25, wow! This is what 60 plus looks like. I never thought it would. When I look at my learning, it has been such a progression and feels like it’s in hyper drive. Not just this lifetime but also many lifetimes before that have led to this moment.
My mother passed away when she was 56 years old and my father when he was 62. For a long time I believed that my lifespan would be short. Then a Buddhist friend of mine talked to me about why I might want to live longer in this lifetime. She explained to me that I was on a roll with my learning and that I want to keep the momentum going. To actually get as close to enlightenment each life time as possible. It made a lot of sense to me actually.
It’s interesting to me how I have been doing this work for such a long time and the universe still throws me fireballs for my like higher learning. I have been doing intensive spiritual work since I was 30. Even though it started when my mother died when I was 26 I didn’t dive in deep until I was 32 years old.
I am still learning to love myself. I think it will be a lifelong journey!
One of my biggest lessons turning 60 years old was that it truly is a celebration not something that I should be upset or sad about. I am so excited that I’ve been in my body for 60 years and I can still get up and hike whenever I want to, laugh hard at myself, and accept this 60-year-old body totally. The last one is something I work on every day. Learning to have an understanding for this body and compassion for this body, even though I am not of this body. This body of mine seems so real to me and with age is getting realer with every year. Although with my learning I become less of my body and more of who I truly am, Spirit.
So even though with age I seem to feel my body more, with age I let go of my body identification more. That is what my journey is here to realize I am not this body that I’m spirit.
by Debra | Jun 26, 2017
Why do we think we are really in control, when clearly we aren’t?
What does it mean to trust in the universe and surrender and I think this is an easy statement let go? To say “oh I trust in the universe.” but what does it really mean?
I have been dealing with the personal situation that has been really testing my ability to surrender to source, the universe. What I have found is that it is really coming up against my need to control everything. Some things are pretty easy to let go of, let’s say a situation dealing with some friends, but this situation with my family is really tested me to see how willing I really am to let go of the need to control and really surrender. I must admit this was a doozy!
Trusting that things are exactly the way they’re supposed to be for our higher learning can be extremely challenging. What I have come to know is that the more I resist surrendering, the more it settles in my body. It is interesting how I can meditate and pray and say I am surrendering but my body is saying that I haven’t. I am observing my body, knowing that it will tell me the truth about my real surrender. I also notice that it takes a few days for it to follow.
I know that I am here to really connect to whom I truly am and that every situation is pointing me in the direction of this truth. It is only my ego mind that keeps me from knowing this truth. The weird thing about it is that I know this and yet still the battle between my ego mind and my higher self persists. So I know who’s winning out by how I’m feeling. When my ego has the upper hand I am usually suffering on some level.
My job is to step outside of myself and pay attention to who is running the show and make sure I adjust accordingly. To sink into this place of knowing and trusting that everything is the way it is for a particular reason and I can’t change or fix the outcome. That I need to just simply let go and surrender.
by Debra | Jun 19, 2017
It’s isn’t easy to recognize who we really are without someone to bounce our self off of.
I sat with a friend the other day and we were having a good conversation about either living in our ego or recognizing who we truly really are. Recognizing that we are spirit, pure love and living from that place is simply a practice. We are not going to be able to get up in the morning and go about our daily life without bringing our attention or intentions to living our life from a place of love.
When we live our life from an automatic place we end up falling into our ego minds. When we live from our ego mind it is from a place of fear. When we react from a fearful place it will not be from a loving place inside of us, and the people around us will not feel loved. This is why it is so important to slow down our lives and be intentional about coming from a place of love and not fear. When we come from a reactive fearful place and not a loving place, not only does it affect other people it affects us because we feel shame and guilt. If we feel shame and guilt, that is not feeling love for our self, so goes the cycle of not being able to live from who we truly are which is spirit or love.
The more I practice the better I get!
This last two weeks of my life have been filled with many events that have been so love packed that it is help to me live from who I truly am. There were also a couple of situations where my ego has sneaked in and created havoc and made me feel fearful. I think that this happens in our life where situations are going to happen that will activate our ego minds. The key to handling the situations are to recognize when our ego mind gets activated and to take action from a different place, which would be our true authentic self, which is love.
It’s not realistic to believe that you’re going to live on this planet at this moment without your ego being activated. It’s really what we do when this happens that is so important. It’s been such a great learning for me to recognize those moments and to act in a different way than just out of fear and drama and cause a big mess.
For me it’s easy to know when my ego is up because I don’t feel right in my body. As soon I recognize it and act from a more loving space I move myself back into alignment and feel differently in my body. I feel calmer, more at ease, more loving, more my true self.
by Debra | Jun 12, 2017
What is the story about our worrying?
When we worry we are in fear. We worry mainly because we feel out of control in our life. We may worry about the weather being good for an event we have planned or if we are going to get a promotion. The reality is this is something we can’t control. We have choices every day around these types of worries. We have all experienced worry in some form or another. And we all know the type of person that is a What If person, a habitual worrier. If we are worrying we are imagining a worst-case scenario.
Sometimes when we understand the insanity of worry and how we create it ourselves, it makes it easier to let go of control. I remember when I was younger I used to worry that when I was older I would get cancer, like my mother did. And then I remember being in my late 20s thinking what is all this worrying doing? Is this worrying going to stop me from getting cancer? Worrying about this didn’t ensure me not getting cancer. Most likely my fear around this concern will draw it to me.
Another reason we have worry or anxiety is not taking care of unfinished business. I remember when I needed to complete my living trust, and every time I would get on a plane and fly somewhere I would be filled with anxiety and worry. It’s always a good idea to take care of unfinished business like this so you can truly let go. If you’re able to take an action to relieve worry then do so. But if it is a worry that you have no control over, letting go is the best.
If you are a chronic worrier you are releasing chemicals in your body that stress out your system and lower your immune system, consistently. Worry creates stress and stress lowers our immune system and allows disease to come into our bodies.
My suggestion is to look hard at what you’re worried about. If the worry is something that requires action, and the worry would go away if you took action, then do so. If the worry is something you simply do not have any control over, then just imagine with that scenario the best possible outcome. When we worry we are thinking the worst can happen, so this is something we can change in our minds.
by Debra | Jun 5, 2017
Unexpressed feelings usually play out in negative ways.
As children we are are trained to not feel and stuff our negative emotions. Be a big girl, boys don’t cry, or that’s not that big of a deal, don’t be a baby. The world teaches us to be strong at all costs.
I remember when I was 26 years old and just divorced. My Mother died 6 months later and I had to buck up and be strong. Besides never being able to share my feelings when I was younger, then in that moment I wasn’t able to express my sadness, fear and high anxiety because I felt like I needed to be strong.
So, we keep stuffing and stuffing all of our emotions and feelings and we are shocked when these stuffed feelings come out in less than positive ways. We can only repress our feeling for so long before they surface eventually. In my Personal Retreats I teach people how to connect to their feelings and learn how to express them in a healthy way.
Here are ways that our unexpressed emotions play out:
- We Care Take-When we take care of others by trying to fix their situation, it’s because we don’t want to feel our own feelings that are coming up. It’s also way easier to spend time on someone else’s problems than look at our emotions.
- Stay Busy- If we are always busy, running from one commitment to the next, it’s impossible to be connected to how you feel.
- Be Positive- Pretending that everything is always good, never allows unexpressed feelings to surface. Only allowing positive feelings to come out and discounting negative emotions, only creates more stuffing.
- Rage Explosions- We can only keep our emotions or feelings contained for so long. Eventually those feelings will surface in anger through yelling or even worse physical violence.
- Withdrawal or Depression- Both of these behaviors come from not expressing feelings and allowing them to sit inside us. When we have unexpressed feelings we may run away from the situation or feelings either physically or mentally.
- Control Everything- The need to control everything that happens to you is because you want to actually control the way you feel. If I control this situation, I can feel good.
- Hypochondriac- Constantly thinking your sick all the time could possibly be emotions sitting in your body for too long. You are either having real sickness that the stuffed emotions are creating or you just think you are sick to occupy your mind so that you don’t have to feel.
- Being With The Wrong People- If you were with people that you could connect to, you would develop intimacy. It’s tough to have intimacy without feeling.
- Everything is a Joke- Joking constantly is a way of avoiding how you are feeling. Look at me, everything is great, I’m laughing and having fun and maybe dying inside.
- Stay Strong- As long as I’m strong and I can handle everything in my life, I don’t have to feel my feelings. I can handle it, is an exterior way of being that often indicates stuffed feelings.
by Debra | May 29, 2017
Being with your feelings can seem impossible!
Sitting with your feelings can be extremely difficult, especially when those feelings come from deep-seated wounds. Let’s talk about the different things we do to get away from our feelings.
So looking at the things we consume to get away from our feelings could be:
- Sugar, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, food, prescription drugs, illegal drugs, chocolate, gum, candy, or soda.
Now let’s look at the things we do to get away from her feelings:
- Shop, gamble, work, sex, relationships, binge, purge, affairs, care take, rescue, enable, fix, worry, spend, religion, music, TV, computer, exercise, blame, focus on others, criticize, judge, gossip, rage, depression, lecture, manipulate, control, keep secrets, thinking, keeping busy, focus on the negative, perfection, sleep, take things personally, bite nails, chew on objects, self-harm, isolate, withdraw, shut down, argue, fantasize, sarcasm.
Some of the things that we consume or do, seem pretty obvious, but some of them are very insidious. Some of the sneakier things we do to avoid our feelings are fixing others, focusing on the negative, criticizing, shutting down, taking things personally and blaming.
When our anxiety from a triggered situation gets so high, we go into autopilot and start medicating and don’t even know that we are doing it. We want to escape the anxiety, fear, or sadness so badly that we might do anything to get away from it.
It’s important to notice when you are fixing others, blaming others, withdrawing or any medication. When you notice this, immediately pause and notice what you are feeling. After pinpointing the feeling, sit with it, without the story, just the sensations of the feelings. What you will notice is that you will not want to sit with them for very long, you’ll want to escape them.
For whatever reason the feelings that we have around situations that trigger us are very intense. We are not used to sitting with our feelings, we are actually taught to ignore and stuff them. So this is a new way of being for us. Try sitting with the sensations until their exhausted, until they just lift. The only way to heal our old wounds is through the feelings and sensations not bypassing them.
by Debra | May 22, 2017
There are so many different meditation types and the benefits are amazing.
Meditation is a great tool for rebalancing ourselves. Sometimes just sitting in silence is enough to clear our minds and move through whatever funk we are in. We very seldom just sit in silence and watch our minds. We are usually on the go, getting things done physically and also on the go in our minds, not paying attention to the present moment. Meditation allows us to connect with our higher self and sit and watch our busy thoughts go by.
Check out the different types of meditations to experience.
Here are just a few:
- Focused Attention-focusing on a single object. This may be the breath, a mantra, external objects or part of the body.
- Open meditation- monitor all aspects of the experience, without any judgments or attachments.
- Zen-seated on a mat or cushion in a lotus or half lotus position. Eyes focused on floor 3’ in front of you, watching thoughts go by.
- Vipassana-this is similar to focused attention meditation, moving on to developing “clear insight” on bodily sensations and mental phenomena, observing but not clinging to any.
- Mindfulness-this is intentionally focusing on the present moment, accepting all and not judging it, paying attention to sensations, thoughts and any emotions that arise.
Here are some of the benefits of meditation:
- Stress Reduction- The biggest impact that meditation has on our health is a reduction of stress. It has been proven that chronic stress causes all sorts of problems including high blood pressure, decreased immunity, and impaired cognitive function. When we have stress, our body releases the “stress hormone,” cortisol. Elevated levels of cortisol in your system are a problem on many levels and finding a way to reduce cortisol could help prevent a number of health issues. This is where meditation comes into play.
- Lower Blood Pressure- Meditation can help normalize blood pressure because of what’s called the “relaxation response,” which helps produce more of the compound nitric oxide. Nitric oxide helps blood vessels open which then helps reduce blood pressure.
- Increased Immunity- A healthy immune system is crucial to living a healthy life. A number of recent studies have shown that meditation can also play an integral role in maintaining and even strengthening your immune system.
- Brain Development- Quite a few studies have come out linking meditation with an increase in cortical thickness, an increase in grey matter in both the hippocampus and frontal areas, and an overall increase in brain volume. With medical imaging technology, researchers can actually watch what meditation does to the brain in real time and over an extended period of time.
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome- In 2011 a study published in theAmerican Journal of Gastroenterology shows that an 8-week program of meditation targets issues linked to IBS, such as anxiety, stress, and depression, and helped to reduce the severity of the IBS symptoms compared to a control group who did not participate in the meditation program.
You don’t have to meditate for hours to obtain results. As little as 5 minutes a day can make a difference. In all of my individual and couples retreats, I teach and incorporate meditation.
Hopefully this has helped you get more acquainted with the different types of meditation and their benefits.
by Debra | May 15, 2017
How do we decipher the many voices inside our heads?
Sometimes it feels as if we have many different personalities living within us, expressing different needs and desires. The voices seem to be distinct from each other. When I first start to work with a client and we begin to pull the different parts of the self away from one another, it can make you feel a little crazy. It’s not that you weren’t feeling a bit crazy before separating these voices out, but just in a completely different way.
When we start to identify the Ego/little girl and maybe the addict, we are able to become aware of the way they operate, therefore stop our behaviors. The process I use in mentoring or individual retreats is first understanding how we operate through our wounds. I teach people how to heal using their experiences from the outside.
Usually these different voices come out when we are triggered. The best thing to do in a triggered state is to do nothing! Pause, and maybe ask our ego voice what story it is wrapped up in, realize it is a story and don’t take any action. When you start to have an understanding of your inner voice and why you are reacting, you can then make the conscious decision to not react from that lower part of you. After you process, then and only then can you take action because it will be through your higher self.
It is always very important to recognize that every experience we are having in life is for our higher learning and has nothing to do with the actual situation at all. Most of the time it doesn’t matter which of the voices is chattering, if it’s the lower self, we need to make sure we don’t get hung up in the story it has created.
by Debra | May 1, 2017
What does caring for our body, mind and spirit look like?
How do we blend the care for our body our mind and our spirit? Our body is our temple and it deserves love and caring. On a physical level, caring for our body means eating the right foods that nourish us, exercising, and getting enough sleep. It also means loving and accepting the way our body looks or behaves. Another way to care for our body is to care for mind and spirit. If we do not care for our mind or spirit it will settle in our body.
A way of caring for our mind is to pay attention to the way we are thinking and attaching to old stories. Keeping our minds in check and not buying into limiting beliefs is part of how we create a healthy mind and healthy body. Our spirit can then be free to be in its heart space full of love when our mind is of clear thinking.
The spirit in us is always pure love, the problem is our mind is full of limiting beliefs, fear. When we start shifting our limiting beliefs we are left with more love and less fear. Our mind seems to be a major contributor to a healthy body and spirit. Even though we know our spirit is perfectly healthy, we may not reap the benefits of a healthy spirit if our mind is polluted with a negative belief system.
Even if we eat right, exercise and get eight hours of sleep at night if our limiting belief systems run us, our bodies may still be sick. So it is so important to look at what our mind is saying, acknowledge it and let it know you’re not going to buy into it.
I see our spirit as our connection to source and pure love. If you think of your spirit or soul it is perfect and joyful. It is only our limiting beliefs that keep us from knowing this. Our mind can cause a disconnect with our spirit and either ruin or heal our bodies.
by Debra | Apr 24, 2017
How do we work through our pain and heal our unhealed wounds?
Throughout our life it is hard to realize how our unhealed wounds affect us. If we are processing and really paying attention to our behaviors, it will be easier to recognize what woundedness we have ignored.
Many of us are aware of this underlying current of either pain, anxiety or fear that we have felt for quite some time that has been left unresolved. These feelings have become a part of who we are. We get use to them. It isn’t until we are in crisis, when our feelings are too strong to ignore, that we wake up and must do something.
It’s important to realize that whether we’re in crisis or the pain is constantly residing, it needs to be understood and processed. It’s when we don’t attend to our feelings that they become a crisis and will be tougher to deal with. Even when things seem impossible is important to take small steps toward our healing. If we sit back hoping they will go away they will usually get bigger.
Just thinking about moving through our wounding gives most of us feelings of anxiety and resistance. If we can connect and embrace any pain or feelings that we are having and look at what old beliefs are attached to them, we will have a better chance of shifting them. You can only sweep issues under the rug for so long before the pathway is impossible to get through.
Taking on our pain is a brave path!
If the crisis is too big for you to handle, it’s important to seek outside help and support of family and friends. Seeking a mentor, counselor, spiritual teacher or therapist is critical because friends and family are not equipped to handle such crisis. If you are not with a therapist and you only depend on friends and family, there’s a good possibility that you will deepen your wounding and expand your old beliefs. Talking incessantly about your pain and how you’re unable to handle it isn’t helpful.
In seeking healing for our selves is important to look at all options. For me the most important option for healing is making sure I have a spiritual teacher, then looking outside for other practice’s to move my healing along. This could be through spiritual healing books, meditation practice, sitting and exploring my pain, yoga nidra, craniosacral, exercise and eating right. Taking care of our self is a critical part of our healing. If we aren’t eating, sleeping or getting the proper exercise during these times it will put us deeper into our wounding. Whatever path you choose, commit to going deep into your pain so that you may release it and free yourself. No matter what age you are, if you are experiencing deep sadness and pain, now is the time for your healing.
The reason we are on this planet, using this physical body that we have, is to heal the wounds that bind us and stop us from being pure love.
by Debra | Apr 10, 2017
Do you have a daily practice or ceremony to start and end your day?
When we have a daily practice or ceremony it brings us into our awakened consciousness. Instead of just waking up in the morning and running for your coffee, try first stretching and smiling before you get out of bed. Then maybe brush her teeth and sit for a moment and contemplate on everything in your life that you are grateful for.
When we start the morning with our practice it invites us to pay closer attention to our life and embrace all that is good. I usually wake up in the morning brush my teeth, make my celery juice, and then sit in my practice. Sometimes my practice is just being grateful for all the abundance in my life around money, health and the love flowing through me and to me. Other times I might do transcendental meditation, whether that be music or a primordial sound.
I always start my day stating what I am grateful for and feeling it in my body. After doing this I move into my meditation. This helps me start my day awake. Then throughout the day, I check in with myself to see what my ego mind is saying to me. This is my daily Practice.
My practice helps me stay in tuned to how special life is and how being present helps me stay connected with myself and others. Otherwise I just run through my day unconsciously, totally asleep.
You can view your morning meditation as a practice, ceremony or a ritual. Ceremony and rituals have been around for a long time to make an event have significance. So if you start your morning in ceremony or practice, you will bring significance into your daily life.
“If our lives have meaning and purpose we have a better chance of staying in alignment”
Sometimes we think it has to be a wedding, a baptism, a rite of passage to have a ceremony. What if a simple practice of gratitude and meditation is as meaningful? These practices can be as meaningful if we make it. So something as simple as waking up and smiling, stating what we are grateful for and doing a simple meditation can help us stay awake to what is very meaningful.
