BodyLogos Blog

Grieving to Healing

Fire burns the darkness away.

It’s the morning after my sister’s funeral and I’m relieved I took the day off.

Exhaustion plagues my body and I’m keenly aware of a black hole in my gut. It’s a deep chasm of sadness and heartache. To be expected, I thought. This must be what grieving feels like.

Days passed. Everyday I had to crawl myself out of this chasm of darkness and find my light again and again. It was exhausting. It was getting scary.

But, I also felt aligned and beautifully connected with my sister spiritually. In some ways I felt closer to her than ever before!

I began to wonder if this internal darkness was something other than grieving?

The two-months leading up to her COVID death I was the easy one to hate by her husband and youngest son. I was vaccinated, and they and my sister were not. It created separation. I was attacked with mean words, hung up on, and completely disregarded.

Maybe the black hole was a pocket of hate that I absorbed?

I knew it was possible from my experience with Inca medicine. So, I returned to the native way of healing… FIRE!

With a Shaman’s support, I spent 3-days burning hate away, theirs and mine.

Each day I made an urban fire and surrounded it with five tea candles. Each one representing a different direction. I’d burn a stick, wrapped with the hate, and explore all the ways I had created separation. Both personally and worldly.

Fears and injustices, pain and trauma, ignorance and indifference were all covered. With each story of despair I spoke the words: “I forgive me and I forgive you, because I love me and I love you.”

It would take 6-hours for the fire and candles to burn out each day. And each day I experienced a different kind of exhaustion, coupled with emotional tears and physical pain. But the black hole is now gone!

What is left is a constant and everlasting love between sister’s.

The onus is on each one of us to live in our own light. No matter what happens around us, we decide to be happy or despairing.

There are so many ways to support personal alignment. There will be times when your daily disciplines fall short and additional support is needed. I share this story to share a way that helped me pass through a dark and lonely choice I was making.

When I made a new choice to stand in my light, to shed the darkness that I perpetuated, the hole inside of me filled with love. The love my sister and I share.

Decide to be happy, no matter what!

Urban Fire Recipe: metal bowl, epsom salts, ethyl alcohol and a match.
Shaman Contact: morgan.millogo@gmail.com / www.roseinfire.com

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Redefining Strength

I want to change our perception of strength. Strength is the ability to meet resistance and influence an outcome without compromising ourselves. And we already have it.

Strength is not an attribute; it’s a state of being. Gladiators, bodybuilders, and football players demonstrate strength through brute force, sheer willpower, muscle mass, and relentless pursuit. But we’re also quick to identify dancers and martial artists as strong. Their medium taps into a sense of vulnerability, balance, alignment, controlled power, and grace—but no one can deny their strength. Strength may look different on each of us, but it is an inherent part of who we are.

You are not weak by nature; you are stronger than you think. Your strength is not something you need to kill yourself to gain—it is already within you, waiting to be excavated. The key is to stop chasing something you already have and tap into it, so you can manifest that strength in your everyday life.

Because we don’t think we’re strong, we approach resistance with the idea that we’re not enough. We throw everything we have at it and push past our physical, mental, and emotional limitations. We see strength as domination, but it’s not.

When you learn to listen to your body’s divine wisdom, you cultivate a sense of where your body is developing tension instead of standing in its strength. You end the vicious cycle of unrealistic expectations, injury, and self-criticism and learn how to consciously embrace responsible growth. You stop compartmentalizing your strength into emotional, physical, and mental pieces and operate from the strength of your being at all times.

You learn how to align yourself with gravity—instead of working against it—so you can channel your strength to meet life’s resistance. As you meet resistance with equal parts power and alignment, you transform tension into strength

As in the sword dance above, the power lies in bringing just the right amount of force—not too little and not too much. By meeting the sword’s weight, I meet gravity. I am tapped into a larger source of energy, free of tension, and discover a strength that is wholly and uniquely mine.

About Tammy Wise

Tammy Wise is a widely respected mind-body fitness expert based out of New York City, owner of BodyLogos, Inc. author of The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind. A former Broadway dancer turned Tao minister, Tammy was voted the Best of Fitness by Time Out New York and has appeared in Martha Stewart’s Whole Living magazine, New York Magazine, Natural Health, Shape, and Thrive Global. She’s a Transformational Authors Contest Winner and regular contributor to Honeysuckle magazine and Medium. Visit her at bodylogos.com.