Christmas Tree Quartz Crystal

A Truthful Thanksgiving: Aligning Family Relations

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Christmas Tree Quartz Crystal

A Family Tree

After 3-years of silence, my Thanksgiving blessing was getting a phone call from my nephew. He has ghosted me since his mother’s death.

We spoke for an hour about my sister’s (his mother’s) illness and passing, his father’s behaviour then and now, my aging mother’s (his grandmother’s) care-giving needs, and our individual reactions to all of it.

Rather than focussing on how I couldn’t and didn’t live up to expectations around my sister’s plight, judgment was replaced with understanding and shared disappointments re-bonded our relationship.

The timing of his call, however, was uncanny.

The day before his call, I had a heart to heart talk with my mom regarding my boundaries in her care-giving needs. I had taken on the responsibility of paying her bills and driving her to doctors after my sister’s death.

Sis took over these tasks when mom had open heart surgery. It was an emergency situation that required extra care-giving. But after mom’s physical recovery, she never took back her personal responsibilities. She just let sis take care of her year after year.

From a very young age, my sister and I were trained to care-give mom. Are daily chores were traditional mother tasks. We’d follow a daily check-off list that was reviewed end of day. Not done or not done well resulted in being grounded!

Mom never even had to ask us to help her, it was set-up and expected to be done. And, we obeyed to ensure our own freedom and parental approval.

As a grown woman, it may seem shocking that I’m still vying for mom’s approval. But, the pattern is well laid; and though, a new aligned path comes with personal freedom, the same disapproving consequences lay heavy.

I recently learned that mom gets free rides to doctors through her insurance and she’s still sharp enough to write her own rent check. So, I thought it would be better for her to reclaim her own life and take responsibility for her own affairs.

And, practically speaking, sis lived 1-mile away from her and I’m 60-miles away in another state (NYC) without a car. So, this arrangement was costing me professional time and financial strife. This was not sustainable.

Practicality, however, has little influence in emotional matters.

As anticipated, mom responded to my needs with, “Sherry wanted to help me, but if you don’t FINE!”

She had an opportunity to say, “thanks for your help the last 3-years.” Or conversely, “I really need your support, could you please still help me with…” But instead, she focused on how I can’t and don’t live up to her expectations.

The girl in me was twisted in angst to speak of my own needs with her, while the woman felt empowered to stand up to her life-long entitlement. I hung up the phone shaking with a mixture of terror, uncertainty and relief.

But, when I heard from my nephew on the heels of this stand off, I felt validation.

The Universe showed me that owning my own boundaries, as I did in both these familiar relations, makes the other person as uncomfortable as it makes me. At least for people-pleasures, like myself.

But allowing the discomfort the time to fully expand and express offer’s personal maturity, deep connection, and mutual respect.

It strikes me how my mom never asks for help, yet finds people to give it. Without the humbling act of asking for help, the giver is given no opportunity to say no. Instead, they have to remain the obedient child, a people pleasure, or create a dialogue where they can say no.

May my mom and I follow in my nephew’s and my footsteps… only quicker.

 

Trauma is an Entangled Bird’s Nest of Fears

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Human Size Bird’s Nest

Trauma is not the traumatic event.

Trauma is the aftermath of self-sacrifice. It consists of beliefs, confusions and tension patterns that unfold after traumatic circumstances interrupt love’s natural earnest. Patterns that can take a lifetime to discern and dissolve.

Healing from childhood paternal sexual abuse has asked me to repeatedly tell my story in an effort to find the gift within the hardship. And there was a gift. The experience inspired a mind body approach to physical alignment—BodyLogos.

BodyLogos means, the body’s Divine wisdom; and, the BodyLogos practice dissolves tension patterns that plague a traumatized body.

BodyLogos has offered me (and others) a way to exorcise trauma held in my body as I exercise. Utilizing my body as my therapist, I’m able to recognize habitual tension patterns, discern the lost-self that fear created, and restore alignment in mind and body.

This restoration of self has not included forgiving my perpetrators: my father’s repeated assaults and my mother’s inability to protect me.

Instead, recognizing trauma’s wake within my own being has helped me see that the person I need to forgive is me.

The process of forgiving is like dismantling a bird’s nest, one stick at a time. In my case, each stick represents the places I fell short. The places I sacrificed myself, and as a result, live dishonestly.

Why couldn’t I just scream, “get out dad!” Loud enough for the world to hear?
Why couldn’t I value my body’s cry? And, silence my mind’s fears.
Why couldn’t I stand up to his misjudgment, so it wouldn’t have continued for 3-years!

If I had stood up at 10-years old for what I needed to love myself, rather than what was needed to gain his love, I wouldn’t have continually questioned if I’m lovable? And, I wouldn’t continually struggle with feeling irrelevant and dispensable.

Many of you will relate to this struggle, and live in a similar trauma, even though your traumatic events are different than mine. Living in trauma is living in the shadows of your story without knowing it.

Instead of feeling empowered by choosing ourselves earnestly and honestly, we fear being punished: losing a job or client, losing a friend, losing a lover.

When I state my own needs the stick I’m trying to pull out of the nest gets snagged on the lack of love and protection I suffered as a kid. The same love and protection I still crave.

The forgiveness I need to embody now reflects this snag.

To forgive myself is to recognize that the fear-based decisions of my youth were, in fact, based in love and protection. Love and protection for my parents. Not the lack of love and protection for myself.

I wasn’t motivated by self-loathing or being unworthy of love and protection. I was simply navigating through a high-stacks game where saving-face for my parents was a matter of survival.

I have the capacity for love and the instincts to protect in spades. It’s now just a matter of directing it toward the life I want.

I’m not the irrelevant dispensable child who was sacrificed to save-face.
I’m a passionate woman who loves deeply and fiercely protects her world.
And for this, I am proud.

May we find compassion for our shadows and restore the light in our world.

 

The Heart is Always Searching for Love.

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Anthony Maulella clay art

Why can it feel like a heart-punch when someone doesn’t express gratitude, care or affection when you’ve demonstrated yours to them?

In theory, it’s been said, the need to hear others express their love spikes, when our belief in being loved or lovable dips. Reassurance feels like the only way to soothe the body’s ache and the mind’s worry. So, we seek it out.

If you’re anything like me, you hate feeling needy. Especially when asking for love.

Like it or not, this search for reassurance creeps into my world when I feel taken advantage of by my mom or unwanted by my man. When I don’t get the reassurance I need from them, I feel heart-punched.

It’s like a One-Two-Punch! First, I don’t feel loved by them. Then, I don’t feel lovable by my own deduction. A punching match with myself that’s un-winnable!

Matters of the heart are a layered cacophony. A mind-body maze.

There’s the real-time dynamic that flood’s your senses, triggering physical urgency for requited love; followed by trampled expectations that flood your mind, questioning how to think when that urgency is unrequited.

This mind body energy-surge bombards our hearts and we feel an eruption of emotions. An eruption that directs the heart to be IN love or OUT of love.

  • IN love means to choose love. To love yourself and invite others in.
    • Feel generous, even when mom doesn’t see it.
    • Enjoy wanting, even when my man doesn’t feel it.
  • OUT of love means to witness love. To invite others to love you while you don’t.
    • Feel generous only if mom sees it.
    • Enjoy wanting only if my man feels it.

To soothe a heart-punch, I’m learning to keep the whole situation in tact. Not just focus on the rejection or slight, that offers proof that I’m unlovable. But also, stay connected to the generous, uniting spirit that I offer to the world, that demonstrates my lovability.

When I love what someone else isn’t seeing or feeling in me or with me, I don’t have to feel unloved. I can simply feel alone in love… rather than, lonely in life.

For the mind and body to have a balanced inquiry about love, stay true to what you feel, unabashedly so. Feel what’s true for you, no matter what someone else is doing. Just because someone else isn’t responding to your love, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your love.

Love to love. No matter what.

The heart is always searching for love. But remember, you already have it within you. Dare to choose it, even when someone else doesn’t.

If this speaks to you, please comment.

Returning to Nature Deepened My Way to See

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A view of the Adirondack Ridge

As I relaxed into my Adirondack vacation, complete with a mountain view; cooking on campfires; hiking through wooded paths; canoeing through lily-pads; and, watching the sky drift by, I began to see better without my glasses.

I started to notice that when I was physically “in-feel” with the natural world I would remove my progressive lenses because they made me feel nauseous. But, as soon as I needed to be “in-think”mentally, I would put my glasses back on.

It seemed that my glasses were most useful in the man-made world of written words, driving cars, doing needle-point, and even, organizing my thoughts.

As I reflected on this phenomenon, I noticed that the layers of mountains on the Adirondack ridge looked more and more blurry with their distance (of course) and their unknown dangers (hmmm). Or when l looked deep into wooded underbrush, exploring the scary unknown shadows, what was blurry elicited caution.

Blurriness offered me obvious information about distant formations; and, the less obvious recognition about my fear of the unknown.

Did vacation offer the time and space to play with the scary unknowns?
Was I prompted to remove my glasses to deepen my comfort level with the ever present “I don’t know abyss?”

Being in-feel—sensing from my body—always incites these kinds of questions.

This attention to blurred vision reminded me that when I look at someone’s physical alignment in a workout I look slightly past them so they’re slightly blurry. In doing this, I’m able to see them more clearly, to see their underlying formation or skeleton accurately.

Blurriness offers me information about what’s invisible to the naked eye, what’s going on under the body’s surface, and it allows my understanding of human anatomy to be seen.

Perhaps there are two ways of seeing?

One way of seeing is coupled with mental scrutiny, eliciting a sense of safety and “in-think” knowing. The other way of seeing is coupled with physical connection, eliciting a sense of soundness, or fear, and “in-feel”conditions. Together, they elicit right-action.

The saying, “I’m home safe and sound” comes to mind. Might “safe”refer to the mind’s understanding of safety, and “sound” refer to the body’s experience of safety.

Allowing blurred vision to be a part of the way we see, I’ve come to realize, offers us a whole spectrum of information. Seeing both, what’s known and unknown. Seeing with, the mind and body. Seeing for the sake of safe and sound conditions.

20/20 vision may only be half the purpose of sight?!

Please comment and start a mind-body conversation here!

 

Aging into Physical Grace

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Age is often the excuse for having less physical or athletic potential. But as we are witnessing in the Olympics, mindset overrides physical performance. And for the aging, emotional intelligence is your greatest asset to manage mindset.

How often do you hear, from yourself or friends, “I used to be able to do that!”

This is a statement that could be said with personal pride and joy, or with self judgment and defeat.

We all have the choice to appreciate what we’ve HAD, or reject what we HAVE.

A critical difference between young and old bodies is how they respond to injury. Young-body injuries are typically acute breaks that heal quickly. Old-body injuries are often wear and tear chronic conditions that heal slowly.

Of course, this is a very general comparison. But under the surface of most injuries is this basic truth. And, it’s often experienced as going up or down the ladder of life.

When we climb the ladder of life there’s a lot of Creating Forward and Determined Power energy eagerly motivating our mindset.
• Creating Forward sparks the heart’s potential to FLY.
• Determined Power drives the body’s fight to FLY.
When we descend the ladder of life there’s a lot of Suspending Judgment and Coming Home energy delicately comforting our mindset.
• Suspending Judgment GROUNDS you in the moment.
• Coming Home GROUNDS you in yourself.
We’re either preparing to fly or grounded!

But what if we change the visual?

What if a hierarchy of life replaced the modern-day ladder. A sacred system that deepened our connection to living and allowed potential to shape shift, rather than a mere rise and fall from grace.

Take walking, for example. Our first steps are celebrated when we traverse from one pair of outstretched arms to another. No one teaches us how to walk. We simply power ourselves through. And everyone values us for it.

And so it goes in life. We power ourselves through until we get injured or are taught another, more effective, way.

Experience—age, time, wisdom—teaches us to value what it takes to fly, what it means to ground, and what is empowered by standing still. This holistic capacity offers choice, so a right-for-you life can be crafted. Maturing out of powering through, to right-for-you, is emotional maturity.

For some Olympic athletes, this meant not attending the opening ceremony. Right-for-you adjustments are made at every age. It is a sign of maturity. Thinking that it’s only when you’re old, that limits infringe on your choices, is not only false, it’s misleading.

Considering your limits doesn’t take you out of your potential—doesn’t make you less than your younger self—unless you decide it so. It simply shifts your connection with it. Emotional intelligence is having appreciation for the journey and having the courage to make right-for-you choices along the way.

Learning to walk effectively through life takes a lifetime. First you connect to your own weight, then you connect to the weight of the world, then you connect to a universal weightlessness.
• Universal Connection deliberately stands STILL.
Stand in your potential. Know when to fly. Know how to ground. And be still, so you can hear the deep guiding voice within you that lives for your potential.

All bullet point references are reflected in my upcoming program: The Art of Posture. I look forward to walking “deliberately”with you soon!

 

The Gratitude that Lives Beneath Pain

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During my nine-months of foot pain due to a ruptured fascia, I yearned to be back in dance class. I feared that life as I knew it could be over. Now that the pain has decreased to being without a cane, I am grateful to just walk to the grocery store.

But here’s the thing, and I’m unexpectedly comforted by saying it…
Life as I knew it is over!

Life is now a series of deliberate steps that consider what speed, aggression, and distance is best for me. Rather than single-mindedly sacrificing all else for my goals, angered by anything in my way, my COMFORT has become as important as my AMBITION.

You see, I couldn’t be angry at my foot. It granted me a dance career into my 50’s?!

Many people have said through the years, “dancers are masochists.” And in a way, it’s true. Without pain we don’t know if we’re working correctly. Being sore in the gluts and inner thighs means it was a well executed ballet class. Being sore in the quads and hip flexors means it was not.

Pain was a part of life.

But pain that keeps you from living your life asks you to DIG rather than QUEST. The questions change. Rather than, how could I execute movement better moving forward; it becomes, how have my life choices brought me to this juncture?

Has being tough sacrificed my foot, my future, my wellness and strength?

A client recently inquired about my dance career. As I gave the chronology of my career, I realized that my choices to go from one dance form to another was due to my feet. I didn’t want to wear point shoes anymore, jump anymore, wear heels anymore…

My experience of these choices, at the time, was simply wanting something different. I adapted again and again to experience all that the dance world had to offer.

Now I’m considered—at 61-years of age—to be in the Autumn of my life. The time where we reap the benefits of our younger years’ hard-labor. But what does that look like?

This 9-month reflection has delivered a renewed vision of myself in the world. While my body will always inform what I do, I need not physically do it all. The mind-body relationship, I’ve grown expert in, has informed my dancing and aided my healing.

These nine-months has birthed an understanding that my next chapter is to educate practitioners in mind-body alignment: fitness trainers, physical therapists, psychotherapists, nurses and the like. Those who know body mechanics already and are interested in the emotional healing added by understanding the mind-body connection.

My toughness surely contributed to my foot’s present condition. But even that, now gives way to gratitude. My future feels on track; and, my wellness and strength are enthused by this interruption. It’s been a reality check directing me toward the next step of my life’s work.

Adapting my focus through my dance career gave my career longevity. Considering each step I now take will give my life longevity. We learn to be more deliberate and present as we mature so we can recreate our place in the world as we age.

Now my choices will give BodyLogos longevity. So that, my work lives longer than me, through the commitment and promise of other practitioners. This is my promise.

Whose Life is Mine?

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It was after 8-months of foot pain and 3-months on a cane, an MRI report showed that my foot condition was severe and chronic. Something the doctor said we’ll manage. But, it is not repairable.

A few days of tears were followed by various problem solving ideas to possibly keep me in ballet classes, and more dire, keep me in my livelihood as a personal trainer. I began to regain hope. Then my mom called!

Bringing mom up to date on my prognosis was met with, “Well I have back pain everyday!”
“Yes mom, I know. Thankfully you don’t have to make a living on your feet any longer.” This sentiment was met with more layers of self-proclaimed hardships and her thick skin until I hung up and burst into tears.

There’s a big black hole that children raised by narcissists or addicts can easily trip back into. The belief that they’re UNIMPORTANT and IRRELEVANT.

Thankfully I have another, more helpful, belief: the greater the pain, the greater the potential for growth. And, I’ve learned that, the only way to the other side of a hardship is through. There is no getting around it!

So, I allowed myself to feel unimportant deliberately. And a funny thing happened. It felt easier than wishing or insisting on being important.

I am UNIMPORTANT. It’s root sentence being, I am me, helped me discern the difference between the “I” and the “me.” In that moment, the grander “I” encompassed who I am inspired to become; while the “me” represented who I’d been.

But it can be challenging to surrender the importance of who you’ve been. It can be interpreted as giving-up on yourself. But it isn’t that at all. It’s stepping-up within yourself. It’s understanding the power struggle between “I” and “me” within your own consciousness.

  • When speaking with mom: “I” share my circumstances so mom can align with my life, but her self-absorption makes “me” invisible to her.
    • “I” was aligned and visible to her. Her self-absorption made “me” invisible. Visible versus invisible.
  • When dressing for a date: “I” consider who I’m meeting and align my outfit to unite us, then others indulge “me” with an above the rest attention on my style.
    • “I” aligned and united with my date. Their compliments made “me” superior to another. United versus superior.
  • When sharing my course details with potential clients: “I” want to impress upon them the merits of mind body alignment, while closing the sale validates “me” as an authority.
    • “I” align with the merits of mind body alignment. Selling them on its merit validates “me” as being needed. Mind body alignment versus me.

“I” and “me” often experience conflicting truths. Letting “me” be unimportant meant that I could focus on the greater RELEVANCE of “I.” The “I” that is in alignment with her own life and relieves others of any responsibility to that end.

My big black hole lit up!

Others may or may not validate “me” as IMPORTANT, but “I” am always RELEVANT. Relevant because, it can elevate my “me” into alignment with my “I.”

IMPORTANCE and RELEVANCE were synonymous before this insight. The purposeful, inspired, expansion of “I” is now able to deliberately oversee the goals, impressions and judgments of “me.”

To keep myself RELEVANT, “I” commit to the RELEVANCE of all “me’s.” Whether they inflate or deflate “me” with their own inner conflicts.

To turn up the light in my big black hole is to:

  • Recognize the importance of making my mother visible… for my own visibility.
  • Give attention to having been inspired by my date… for our union.
  • Validate the merits of my clients, before me or my course step in… to demonstrate the value of mind body alignment.

It is not selfless to make others important. It elevates your own relevance.

Pigeon Pair

My Pigeon Babies have Flown the Coup

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Pigeon Pair

Story Timeline: March 20 – April 29, 2024

During the past two-months of nursing an injured foot, I was joined by a nursing pigeon with two hatchlings. They transformed my, all but, house arrest into a sacred retreat.

I nested in my apartment convalescing, refraining from as many activities that created stress mentally or physically; while they were nestling, in a ceramic pot of soil, just outside my terrace door growing into young squabs.

Together we created an oasis for growth that forged a special bond.

Vastu experts’—who offer physical and spiritual guidance—state that the arrival of a pigeon-nest at your home is a sign of happiness , good fortune and peace. But, at the time of their arrival I was battling foot pain that was dismantling my life.

I wasn’t exactly peaceful. I was panicking. There must be something deeper here?

I couldn’t show up for my clients, family and friends in the way they or I was accustomed to. I was afraid I could lose what’s most precious to me: my love interest, personal training clients, and a newly launched virtual fitness program.

But, their arrival restored the happiness and peace that had been thwarted by my unaccustomed limitations, by making me a witness to NEED. Theirs and mine.

Committed to incubating the pair of eggs for two weeks and continuously warming the hatchlings for another. My single pigeon parent must have been hungry!

When I found the babes alone, the parent forsaking the responsibility to warm and protect in need of food to feed, I spread bird seed around the perimeter of the nest.

Upon the parent’s return, the seed swiftly disappeared and was regurgitated for the, voraciously hungry, chicks.

As mentioned, I haven’t been as helpful to humans as usual, because I can’t walk. But I felt successful helping the pigeons. I placed window screens at the bottom of my terrace door so, when open, my cats wouldn’t endanger the chicks. And, I planted pansies all around the nest so they’d feel enclosed and cared for.

Knowing pigeons mate for life, I wanted to offer my friendship to the mourning and single pigeon parent and make the nursery welcome. Everyday I’d sit on the door sill and talk to the chicks reassuring them food and parent would return. And indeed, daily reunions would be met with greater and greater enthusiasm and hunger!

The squabs kept each other warm. They exercised regularly, at first walking around the perimeter of the pot-nest before sinking into exhaustion. Then, they’d hop from pot to pot learning to use their wings a bit. And finally, walking beyond the pots to strut along the entire length of the terrace.

I was like their fairy God-Mother watching with pride as they grew up.

Like some dogs, squabs are so ugly they’re cute! Their beaks, from day one, are twice as long as an adults making them look like miniature Vultures!
• Week one they resembled the Abominable Snow Monster from Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer covered in yellow kinky down.
• Week two they grew wing feather quills, or skeletons, without the barbs, or soft colorful portion. They looked stark naked! But at least they looked like a bird!!
• Week three their tails developed quills, while the wings filled in. They looked like my high school prom date dressed in a tuxedo, topped with a kinky blonde afro.
• Week four their tails started to fill in, while their new head feathers only partially cloaked the kinky yellow down. They looked like an old Red Skelton.
• And, week five their heads had nearly grown into the size of their beaks and they looked like young adults.
It was at this point that I woke up to find an empty nest. My heart sank. My little nursery just disappeared.

But then, to my surprise, twice a day, morning and evening the duo would meet their parent on my terrace for a reunion. They’d celebrate with a quick feeding outside the railing of the terrace, then frolic around the terrace pots that awaited spring plantings.

Bent over the screen, leaning my hands on the terrace floor to get closer, the adolescent babes walked right up to me unafraid. All of us independent, not NEEDING the other, just wanting to be together.

Then off they’d go. Without ever stepping foot in their already vacated nestling-pot.

Does the heartache of an Empty-Nester lie in not being NEEDED anymore?
I decided to transform and elevate that sentiment to having the good fortune to have been NEEDED.

Typically, once pigeons leave the nest they don’t return. But they did return, repeatedly, just to celebrate the bond we all share

I now trust that the humans in my life, personal and professional, that can celebrate—even rejoice in—having NEEDED, will remain through my convalescence to celebrate the journey once I am once again fully-fledged.

The Emotional Yo-Yo of Healing

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Between internal scrutiny—examining how an injury could have been avoided—and external perception—experiencing how your world responds to your injury—the ups and downs of healing goes beyond the body’s health. It’s an emotional yo-yo!

Being diagnosed with plantar fasciitis accompanied by a fascia tear led to months of physical compromise. I gimp around with a cane; I can’t demonstrate while training clients; I struggle with a single grocery bag.

I haven’t felt free to be me. And, the worst part is, I don’t feel beautiful.

Finally, it was explained to me by Ming Chew, a NYC PT fascia specialist, that I was quite dehydrated and my fascia was brittle. In addition to his therapy, he put me on a hydration regime with minerals to condition the fascia and permit healing.

I felt responsible for and irresponsible about this depletion!
I blamed myself for the tear and drank water like my life depended on it!!

After 2-weeks of this regime I was thirsty for the first time in possibly a decade. I was thrilled that my body’s hydration meter was back on the clock and my general condition was improving.

At this juncture I felt relieved that this dehydration issue was caught before it caused problems on a deeper organ level. Shame turned to celebration!

At every incremental improvement, a celebration would soften the blame for having allowed such a condition to creep up on me. After all, I’m an athlete and trainer who’s in constant dialogue with her body!?! How could this have happened?!?

Initially, my limp prompted questions from folks, and a huge percentage of them had experienced plantar fasciitis before. Nearly everyone recommended calf stretches, including the doctor. But it felt wrong to me. It produced the wrong type of pain.

Reluctantly, I followed these orders until a cane became my constant companion. It was after this that Ming came onto the scene and determined that stretching likely worsened the fascia’s tear.

With every well-meaning person who gave stretching advice I’d be seething under my breath. They’d say, “I know just how you feel. I experienced the same thing.” I’d think to myself, “If your advice helped you, you really don’t know how I feel!”

Humanity redeemed itself, in my eyes, at my boyfriend Anthony’s gig one night. He leads the stage on the drums, while historically, I’d lead the dance floor on my feet. But, I only had one foot!?!

If you’re a dancer or know one, you know that you can’t keep a dancer down when they love the music. It’s in the blood!

Friends enjoyed my chair/cane dance, and fellow dance floor companions borrowed some of my one-legged moves. But the greatest moment came when Anthony and I danced together to the next band.

Alone on the dance floor, onlookers were visibly inspired. They saw a man loving his woman, and a woman untethered by her limitations, doing what they too wanted to do—dance with abandon.

I felt happy to be moving, cane or no cane. I felt free to be in the moment, injury or no injury. I felt innocence and acceptance, perfect or imperfect. I felt beautiful again.

My smile stretched from ear to ear, and I finally elevated above my condition.

What happened that night, with the help of many onlooking strangers, friends and Anthony, was I realized I AM HEALTHY. Healing is a process that takes time, but the miracle of regeneration was in tact, no matter the fault or learning curve of my circumstances.

We are self-regenerative in mind and body. The only thing that we can always count on is change. And as long as we strive to be our best, without constantly scrutinizing our performance, that change will elevate us.

No matter your circumstances, accept your innocence and expect positive change.

Doing Nothing Can Change Everything

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Our bags backed, goodbyes made, we wait for our ride to the airport home bound. Anthony says, “so much has changed since we got here!” I reply, “but we’ve done nothing?”

One week of not having to do the things that shape our daily lives and satisfy our ambitions. One week to relax and recline. It was an intellectual vacation filled with experiential bliss.

In reflection, I realize we didn’t do nothing we experienced non-doing. The Tao concept of Wu Wei—to align with the natural flow of life.

The primary difference between doing nothing and non-doing is, non-doing does not fall into laziness or apathy. But instead, elevates you into a state of open-mindedness and receptivity to a new reality.

The only mental activity we engaged in was choosing a restaurant for a dinner reservation. Everything else we engaged in happened for us: watching the birds, listening to the sea, tasting the salt air, feeling the breeze tickle our sun drenched skin, and seeing each other enjoy the sensually of living.

Our minds rested from our constant demands and our bodies rose to frolic in its newfound freedom.

Spontaneous happenings, orgasmic stillness, and nature’s embrace guided our days. No one or no thing directed us beyond the current of our environment. We lived life as an Active Meditation.

So much had changed…

We were transported into a state of trust. A trust, that the Universe is for us to enjoy and engage in so totally that we feel encouraged to loose our minds. No books to loose ourselves into. No expectations to satisfy a sense of value. We simply lost ourselves in living.

Letting your mind’s constant chatter stop influencing your state of being is a gift that keeps on giving. It leads you to your senses instead of your emotions. Senses that connect you to each moment as you pass through them.

Upon our return home, I find myself slowing down to sense my reality. I see the places I judge, race and push myself––away from my senses––away from being happy. Places that I can transform into a more pleasant presence that feels good.

Presence creates positive change—a flow of goodness that is under the surface of what our minds think is important, but isn’t.