BodyLogos Blog

My Sister’s Scheduled Death

As I float on a train through backyards filled with yesterday’s snow, I prepare myself for my sister’s 6pm death. The creep-factor of the extended days on a ventilator are pacified by her healthy organs being paired for donation. She will die a hero.

I wonder… when a ventilator keeps a body alive does our Spirit body stick around?
Am I going to visit a heaving corpse?

When I get there, I witness mechanized breathing with perfect rhythm. Her body is like a self-driving Tesla with all the sound effects. She’s expressionless, motionless and powerless, except for her heaving chest.

Days before I was in Vieques, a small island off of Puerto Rico with wild horses, roosters, pigs and peacocks wondering about minding their own business. An albino horse pranced up to me on the beach (an unusual behavior for a wild horse). We frolicked around and she let me pet her angelic white mane for as long as I liked.

As I walked away I was sure that that was my sister saying goodbye. She used to own a black horse named Raven’s Wing. She loved horses and we shared this affection.

When I returned to my resident friend down the beach and shared my experience he said, “That was a ghost horse. I’m sure it was your sister!”

But here I am today, looking at her alive… sort of.?! How could she be here and there?

After watching her for hours, it was time to say my final goodbye. I spoke of how our parents had not said I Love You when we were kids. But that, at some point in her adulthood, she started to say I Love You to me. While at first it felt like koodies; I told her that after years of her saying it, I started to consider the possibility of Love being a kind, caring and forgiving thing.

Just as I said, “Thank you for helping me feel Love as goodness,” she started to gag.

I ran to the nurses desk, “HELP, my sister’s in distress!”

As they attended to her, I felt certain her spirit was here in her mechanized body. She heard me and responded to my heartfelt story of how her Love healed my cautious heart.

As I journeyed back home in the dark, I meditate on how the veil between our earth-walk and spirit-walk is not a straight line. We evolve and grow through physical, mental and spiritual planes at different speeds, times and levels of consciousness.

We’re multidimensional mortals. We’re spiritual beings borrowing physical and mental bodies.

My sister was becoming immortal. I’m witness to her spirit body dominating her other bodies. In Tao they say, Transformed Immortals can walk in both worlds and Love is their guiding force.

I believe my sister frolicked as a horse, gagged on her ventilator, and continues to say I Love You to me. I believe she is free to walk in either world to help human’s Love.

I Love You sis.

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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.

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