by Debra | Nov 5, 2018
Picking the perfect retreat is really an important decision.
There are so many different types of retreat to go to like my couples retreat, individual intensive retreat, rejuvenating retreat, adult mother-daughter retreat or the teen mother-daughter retreat. Going to a retreat can be a very powerful way to process things that are going on in your life.
Spending time away from our daily life situations where we can reflect and heal, gives us time to go inward. When we set up time to go to retreat we have set the intention to do our handling and learn more about our spirit and the behaviors we have that are keeping us from living in our higher self.
We all see the world differently through our own lens, from our experienced life. It’s very important to choose a retreat where you resonate with the facilitator and the work that they do. Even if it is a highly recommended retreat it may not be the retreat for you. This is going to be a time where you will trust your intuition and select the best retreat that connects with your souls desires.
Once you are in retreat being able to stay open, and explore any feelings, thoughts or issues that are rising and understanding they are simply a part of the process, is powerful. It’s important to put your trust in the process of the retreat you are in and try to look at any resistance that is going on. By letting go of the resistance you are able to go deeper into your souls work.
Going to a retreat may feel somewhat like you are going on a vacation and if you pick my rejuvenating retreat, it would be more like a vacation. If you pick my intensive retreat you will be doing very serious soul-searching where you will be digging deep into your limiting beliefs to shift patterns that you have had your whole life. So again when choosing the right retreat for yourself make sure you are very clear about which one you’re choosing. At Sedona Soul Retrieval, we offer both the rejuvenating and the intensive retreats.
When talking to the person that will be facilitating your retreat, make sure you feel aligned with her process and also feel comfortable with her. It’s so funny that when people call me to ask questions about my retreats I know immediately from our consultation if they are going to come and experience my retreat. I can just feel the connection with them.
In all of my retreats, whether it be, the individual intensive, mother-daughter, or the couples retreat you will learn how to recognize your inner child, love yourself, shift these old beliefs and show up differently in the world.
by Debra | Oct 29, 2018
Making the changes in our life to keep moving forward!
The entire process in my personal retreats and mentoring have to do with changing your behaviors that don’t seem to be working for you in your life. If we continue to do the same things that aren’t working for us, we will continue to have our life play out the same way. Have you ever seen Groundhog Day? This is exactly what I’m talking about.
There are certain things that we notice in our life that just simply aren’t working for us. When we notice they aren’t working for us because of how we feel. The feelings are an indicator that something needs to shift inside of us. This is when it is a good time to be self reflective, to go inside and explore the feelings so that we know what action to take so that were not reactive.
One of two things can happen when these feelings come up, the first one could be reacting without thinking about the issue and the second one is that the feelings paralyze us and we don’t take action. The first one we may do something that we regret, the second one we will do nothing. In both cases a positive shift will not happen. This is why it is important to find that balance in the middle, which is just being with the feelings, understanding them, and taking the action that will actually shift the beliefs to make a positive change.
The beauty about change is that when we make even a small change, we will notice things changing around us. I noticed this when I work with clients in my retreats or mentoring, that they start making changes and their family dynamics completely shift, it’s so fun to watch. I have seen this many times with my clients.
It’s a good thing to write down what things aren’t working in your life and look at how you might be able to change the situations, while also looking at your feelings around the situation and shifting old patterns.
In all of my retreats, whether it be, the individual intensive, mother-daughter, or the couples retreat you will learn how to recognize your inner child, love yourself, shift these old beliefs and show up differently in the world.
by Debra | Oct 22, 2018
Are you acting out of the wounded part of you and your old beliefs?
Does your mother or daughter bring the wounded parts of you up to the surface?
There are a few old beliefs I have noticed that play out regularly in most people’s lives. Here are two that I see often: I’m not good enough and I’m always doing something wrong. I have been doing this work for quite a few years and these two beliefs seem to hit me the strongest. When people get triggered and then snap at me, the little girl in me goes right to; I’m doing something wrong and I’m not good enough.
The first thing I do when I get triggered around these beliefs is get to my little girl as fast as I can. If I don’t, my ego will and my ego will have me defending my position, making sure that they know that I didn’t do something wrong and I am good enough. Usually it takes a bit to calm my little girl down. The good thing is, that I am aware that it is the wounded part in me that is upset, not the adult higher self in me.
There is nothing we can do to return to the past and make our parents, parent us differently. They did the best that they could do, taking into consideration how wounded they were from their childhood. The only thing we can do to heal these wounds and shift these beliefs is to parent ourselves in the present moment with empathy and compassion.
The beautiful thing about this work is that while we are giving our inner child empathy and compassion we can also feel it for parents. It is so important for us to show up for that little girl inside of us, so that she can start feeling safe with the world. When we feel safe in the world, we show up for others through our higher self, not our little girl.
The little girl in us can be very emotional and very needy, so if we try to show up for others through this emotional and needy place, you can see how we might be trying to get something from someone else rather than give.
This healing process is so magical, because it doesn’t only affect us, it affects everyone in our lives. It’s amazing to se how doing this work, shifts the mother daughter relationship.
In all of my retreats, whether it be, the individual intensive, mother-daughter, or the couples retreat you will learn how to recognize your inner child, love yourself, shift these old beliefs and show up differently in the world.
by Debra | Oct 15, 2018
How difficult is it for you to be with your feelings?
When we get triggered and feelings come up, our first reaction is to run from them and avoid them at all costs. The problem with this is that there is never healing done, the feelings just lay low until the next trigger. It is very difficult to just surrender and be with whatever feelings we are having. When we move away from what we were feeling they are just laying dormant in our minds and our bodies and this is when other health problems can arise. Rejecting what we are feeling can create problems in the future, which is why just allowing our self to be in the feeling no matter how frightening they seem to be, knowing it’s the best thing we can do for ourselves.
Our society trains us to hide and avoid our feelings and just pretend like everything is happy-happy. Traditionally our culture has not supported being emotionally aware. But it is becoming clearer of the importance of feeling our feelings for our emotional and physical well-being.
It is really just a process of allowing our feelings to arise and bring our attention to our feelings, whether it be anger, sadness, anxiety, hopelessness or frustration, whatever the feeling is, allowing it to be there and being able to sit with it. Letting our tears flow and removing the mental story attached to the feeling and simply being with the feelings.
When we allow ourselves to feel our feelings fully they tend to dissipate a lot easier than when we continue to push them away. Don’t complicate the situation with why we are feeling this, or blaming someone else, these are all ways to avoid our feelings. Keep it simple by just being with the feeling and possibly going into the sensation in your body.
The deeper reason for us to move into the feelings inside of us and feel them is to transform what’s going on with us in our inner world. So it’s as simple as allowing our feelings to come up, being with the feelings, and then allowing the process to be transformed without having to know or be attached to what that looks like.
In all of my retreats, whether it be, the individual intensive, mother-daughter, or the couples retreat you will learn how to sit and be with yourself, love yourself and replenish your spirit.
by Debra | Oct 9, 2018
I grew up having to care for myself because I had parents that were not emotionally available to care for them selves let alone me. I actually prided myself on being self-sufficient and strong. Because of my childhood it set me up to have a hard time asking for help, even when I desperately needed it. Unfortunately, we all need assistance sometimes.
I found myself three months ago in a situation of having to ask for help due to a health issue. I noticed the feelings of guilt that arose and an old belief of not being good enough or something was wrong with me. It gave me the opportunity to really explore the depth of my inability to be vulnerable and work through old beliefs and wounding.
I started noticing it in other people as well. My friend needed help and as she was reaching out, she was saying that it was okay if I couldn’t help. She really felt like she was imposing. Why is it so hard for us to rely on others?
It’s critical for us in times of need to be able to let go of our feeling that we should be able to do everything ourselves so that we can accept the help of others. Many times because we are so hell-bent on doing it ourselves we prolong our recovery. We also miss the opportunity to be able to practice humility and acceptance. One thing I have done in this last year with my health concerns is surrender, surrendering is a huge part of accepting a situation, so we can move into allowing help.
When we allow ourselves the experience of being fully vulnerable, this helps us realize we are one with the world and not out there, all on our own. It is tough to admit we have limitations, but as humans we do. Accepting these limitations, allows us to be human and to accept others for their humanness.
What a gift it is for others when we are vulnerable and what a gift for us to surrender and then to sink in to the gratitude.
by Debra | Oct 1, 2018
How alone time is critical to self preservation.
Do you set enough time aside or do you need to come to a personal retreat?
It is easier for us to move through the difficulties of our life when we give ourselves enough alone time to figure things out. When our own physical and spiritual needs are met we have the ability to show up in our lives with greater ease.
Each of us has a certain well of energy that we must replenish regularly. When we don’t spend enough time alone tending to ourselves we will bottom out. When we are constantly going, scheduling every minute of our life we will start to feel depleted and exhausted. Through this exhaustion we will start to feel very disconnected from others and ourselves.
We need to find the time to nurture and care for ourselves through enough “me time.” Most people I know give a lot of themselves to others and very little to themselves. When we give to ourselves we are viewed as selfish, but this is actually not the truth. Do you know how they say when you are flying if something happens to put the bag over your nose first then a child next to you? There is a reason for this. If I am completely depleted from giving constantly and I’m not giving to myself I will have less to give to others and what I give to others will be full of resentment.
We can only be big in the world when we are full inside, through fulfilling our own spiritual and physical needs. If I am empty inside, empty is what I bring to the world.
I’m a firm believer in making time for yourself, whether it be in meditation, a creative endeavor, hiking, or anything that you are doing alone to assure self-preservation. When we take time for ourselves we are preparing ourselves for our day in a different way. It is critical to your well-being because it ensures that you aren’t left with an empty well, with nothing to give to yourself or others.
This is one of the main reasons why a personal retreat is so powerful. It sets aside 2 to 3 days of “you time,” that is completely uninterrupted. Besides filling your well, the breakthroughs will be amazing.
by Debra | Sep 24, 2018
Is your Soul Evolving?
When we actively work through our old beliefs and patterns we lighten the load of our souls so we can evolve. If you believe in past incarnations, you may feel like you are carrying the weight of all those past lives with you. When we rid ourselves of our fears, our limiting belief systems and the patterns that we are stuck in, it frees our soul to continue moving forward.
It seems as if some of the issues we face are easier to deal with because maybe they are on the tail end from a past life. Other issues can appear to be more challenging because either we have not been able to work through them or we have just begun to do our work on them. Our evolution is an ongoing process that may take many lifetimes. It may seem that we continue to work on the same issues over and over and seemed to make very little headway. It is a matter of accepting that we are doing the best we can with the situations and people and also accepting where we are.
We are always doing some amount of healing and releasing each time we circle around so that we can grow more to help our soul evolve. I notice sometimes that even though certain issues continue to surface some of them break easily and others don’t. We may not move through all of our patterns in this lifetime but just knowing that we are breaking them down to possibly make it easier the next lifetime is nice to know. The more we take an active role in the growth of our soul by doing this work, the more freedom you will have and less suffering.
I have learned throughout my lifetime that just surrendering to what is even though I am working through many patterns, allows me to have peace during the process.
by Debra | Sep 17, 2018
How do we age gracefully?
When we wish for something that we are not or that we don’t have, we take our self away from the present moment. So when we wish we were younger or older it really doesn’t allow us to sink into the joy of exactly being where we are.
In every stage of our life, we have more wisdom and growth because of our current and past learning. If we just concentrate on the way we look or the way our body is behaving it really pulls us away from the beauty of aging. I remember at 32 a girlfriend took a picture of me in a bathing suit at the beach and I remember thinking yuck. Now being 61 looking at that picture I’m like, “What was the yuck about?” I spent so much time disliking my body that I was never really able to appreciate it and love it.
So remembering that, I am always looking at my body with appreciation and love, although it is not easy for me. This society is the set up for thinking aging is ugly. With all the plastic surgery and the fight to look younger than you are is a recipe for not loving where you are. The truth of the matter is we are getting older, our bodies are eroding and our bodies will die. This is just a fact.
The more we fight this the more dissatisfied we are with where we are in this present moment. Taking pleasure in the joys of your age, whether it be in your 20s, 30s 50s or 80s can help you see the magnificence of all the years in your life.
In her 20s our body feels like it in its prime but our mind is lagging in wisdom, so we make a lot of foolish decisions. When we start edging into our 30s our body is still holding strong and are mind is starting to develop a little bit more. Our 40s is where we really notice that our mind is starting to see things clearer while our bodies shift from being youthful to start showing its age. Then in our 50s our wisdom seems to be peaking while our bodies are definitely starting to show more age.
Now that I am 61, I am loving the wisdom that I hold. Thank goodness I have the mind to see my body and love it for exactly the way it is. Enjoying every step of the way in this life, can be challenging, but when we bring ourselves back to our present moment, sinking into the beauty in that moment it makes life way more pleasant.
by Debra | Sep 10, 2018
Have you ever experience loneliness? Most of us have.
Have you ever explored your feelings of loneliness? We have days when we feel lonely or disconnected. The idea of loneliness stems from the belief that we are separated from everyone and everything. In looking at our loneliness we can begin to explore our belief about who we think we are. Are we this solid body that we so connect with, that we feel, that we see? Or are we spirit?
The actions we take to satisfy loneliness when we are connected to our physical self is always outside of us. We look for someone or something that can make the loneliness go away. When we know who we are, spirit, we don’t feel lonely because were connected to everyone and everything. We can know we are spirit in our minds but do we feel it in our knowing?
The easiest way to know where you are, is to look at how you Medicate around your feelings of loneliness. Loneliness is very hard to sit with. The feelings can be extremely overwhelming. So I urge you to explore what you do to suffocate the feelings of loneliness. Most people reach out to connect with other people, just to not feel the utter emptiness. Other meditators can be alcohol, drugs, shopping, or even negative thoughts.
I would say that loneliness is one of the main feelings with most people. I think Facebook is a way to medicate loneliness. Have you noticed how many people seem to post and check their Facebook obsessively? They seem to be fighting their feelings of loneliness.
We do seem to be social creatures needing contact but what if we could stop needing the contact? There is a part of me that believes that we are meant to be with people, to be in partnership but I also believe that it is our learning to grow from our aloneness. To just know that we are connected to everyone and everything, which would mean that we are never alone.
by Debra | Sep 3, 2018
Can we embrace ourselves and other women in our pure femininity and beauty?
When we as women can look into our past without regret or shame knowing it was a learning experience and is brought us to our wise self, we bring all women closer to becoming their true self. When we self realize we help others become present to their strengths and wisdom.
When I witness another woman having self-respect and honoring herself, it reminds me of the importance of standing in my power and how it affects others. I’m not sure we understand the impact we have on others just with our behaviors.
When we see this divine in ourselves we start seeing it in other women, this is when we start seeing our body and mind as a holy vehicle, appreciating the feminine in us regardless of our age. We can look at all her beautiful sisters and appreciate their experiences as well rather than seeing other women as competition. It’s a beautiful thing to look at another woman and see the cycle she is in and honor her for where she is.
There are so many reasons for women to honor and embrace who they are. And every time one woman chooses to do this, all women move closer to this as well. When we do our work around ourselves and we bring our authentic selves out into the world, we help people to see who they are. This is one of the biggest gifts that I see in my retreats, people coming into whom they really are and finding inner peace.
Embracing our womanhood will allow us to shine from the inside out with all of the beauty, strength and wisdom that we will ever want to possess. In this aging process I have had to adjust my mind and embrace his beautiful being that I am and with that I can show up for other women in their journey.
by Debra | Aug 27, 2018
Is a mothers support critical?
I have found that no matter what age we are it is so important to have the support of your mother. I lost my mother when I was 26 years old and even though she wasn’t the most supportive mother, the little bit she did support felt lost when she died.
I notice in all of my mother-daughter retreats whether they are teens or adult daughters, the daughter is always looking to the mother for advice, support, and love, the need for a mothers care never seems to dwindle. The mother-daughter relationship is a very sensitive connection and it’s important to make sure that it’s healthy. This is why my mother daughter retreats are life-changing.
I just wrapped up in adult mother-daughter retreat where both mom and daughter came in completely closed off to each other and it was breaking both of their hearts. The daughter was very sensitive and needing love and acceptance from her mother. Through the retreat they came out the other end after looking at their own behaviors, projections and old beliefs and shifting them. One of the biggest things I noticed was the adult daughter still looking for the mother’s love and support. It just doesn’t seem to ever go away.
The daughter will see herself through the mother’s judgments unless she does work on herself to know that no matter how her mother shows up she is okay. Even though we work on them owning their own feelings, when a mother shows compassion and support it helps the daughter reconnect with herself.
The mother-daughter dynamic is so special and when it is broken it is hard for a daughter to be big in the world unless personal work is done and she has moved through it. It is possible for a daughter to not have the support of a mother and be perfectly healthy although when the mother is involved in the transformation, it makes a big difference.
by Debra | Aug 20, 2018
How do you move into your center, to be with yourself?
It’s interesting that most of us avoid our life. It seems like this would be a pretty tough thing to do. Our lives are so busy with day-to-day activities like sleeping, showering cooking, running errands, work and also a lot of busy stuff that actually distracts us and keeps us from looking at what’s going on in our life.
One of the best ways to go inside and be with your center is be quiet and be with ourselves so that we can hear what’s going on with our inner voice and see what comes up. It’s also nice to find silence and just watch our thoughts and not attached to them.
It’s exhausting to not even know what this inner voice is saying and be on autopilot, just acting out of it. If we just take the time to quiet our minds it allows us to connect to what it is saying so we can either make a decision to act out of it or not.
To start the process of being more present and less absent in your life, you may want to set aside just a few minutes in the morning and maybe at night to just sit and be with yourself. Not reading a book or watching a movie but just sitting and going inward so that you can see what you may be avoiding inside.
I love sitting in the morning. I meditate and to see what comes up. It’s a moment when I get to be with myself, loving myself, exploring myself and giving my body a moment to not be in action.
In all of my retreats, whether it be, the intensive, the mother-daughter, or the couples retreat you will learn how to sit and be with yourself, love yourself and replenish your spirit.
