Please Breathe

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As my sister remains hooked up to oxygen day after day, week after week, with Covid double pneumonia, I realize the richness of each breath I take.

My sister is instructed to lye on her stomach with the oxygen mask adhered to her face to give her lungs the freedom to inflate. In tandem, bent over our legs in daily hamstrings stretches I instruct my clients to take a full expansive breath into their lungs.

With each inflation my back muscles yawn a release of tension; with each depression I relax in the trust that a next breath will follow. I feel a relaxed strength that I experience as freedom.

Each breath puts me in the moment, reminds me that I’m OK, and readies me for the next moment. I breath in and breath out, I move from one moment to the next, I feel nature’s grace.

How easy is it to forget to breathe deeply? To be fooled into thinking the stresses of our days are more important than the riches of each breath. We hold our breath, breath shallow, and breath quietly as not to disturb others.

Breathe. Please breathe deeply and fully, awake to the grace of you.

Every waking moment my sister thinks about breathing. Eating little and talking less, she focuses on the mechanics of each breath.

Be reminded every day, with every breath, that your life is only as deep as your breath.

Breathe deeply. There is nothing more important. 🧡

 

In Limbo for the Holidays

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Five days before leaving on our holiday journey my boyfriend tests positive for COVID.

I get the more trusted PCR 24-hour test to reassure myself that I can follow through with the holiday solo. 24-hours turns to 48-hours, and I’m now into the 72-hour stint awaiting test results.

So many people are in the same boat. Getting exposed and getting tested. Results are backed up and tension is rising.

The fall out…
I’m dis-invited to the 2-day solstice event that was to kick off my holiday journey.
Even if I test negative, another friend doesn’t want me to deliver her gift.
And, on top of this, it’s now too late to cancel my rent-a-car!

I’m in limbo for the holiday.

I can’t make plans or cancel them.

While I understand the fear of COVID. Right now, everyone’s afraid of ME by association. I represent both the fear of being exposed to COVID and having COVID (even if not confirmed yet). I’m understandably outcast.

Am I holding onto Christmas too tight? Or, am I just hungry for some kindness?

I believe: be the world you want to live in.

So, I try to keep Christmas alive with kindness. I deliver a holiday gift and supplies to my boyfriend daily, and drop off gifts to the friends who will accept them.

But the negativity of COVID repeatedly shadows my Christmas efforts. My light is dimming.

Being in limbo is being neither sick or healthy; neither wanted or unwanted. Although “limbo” reflects being out on a limb, it feels like the middle of a circle… trapped in emptiness.

I dutifully call the car garage to change my reservation.

Here’s where my story shifts…
She recognized me and thanked me for being a loyal customer. She took $100 off the new pick up date and said, “Let’s not do a down payment, so if you get a positive test result you can cancel without losing anything.”

Someone, I barely knew, said thank you and actively showed their gratitude to me in the midst of my crashing spirits!

Fear, disappointment, and uncertainty can cause us all to forget the power of active gratitude. Feeling gratitude isn’t enough. Saying thank you isn’t always enough. Live, act on, and share gratitude, especially with those who give the most!

Before that call to the car garage I felt very alone for the holiday. But, now I’m in the middle of the same circle of disappointments feeling celebrated.

Merry Christmas to everyone and may the spirit of your holiday shine light on the love you have for each other.

YOU Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For Your Whole Life.

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Finding the light in the dark.

~ A Stream of Consciousness ~

Every certification or degree earned, book read or letter written, friend made or lost, you get closer to YOU.

Every compliment made, insult received, or opinion shared, beckons YOU into focus.

Every boundary passed and challenge met births you more and more into YOU.

Life shines through you like rays of light keeping you on a path to YOU.
If this ray of light is Source, then you are its flame.
If this light is love, then you are its muse.

This light is what illuminates LOVE as life’s most powerful source of healing, growing and manifesting.

When your peace is disturbed, quiet your mind and feel where it lives in your body. Feel it fully through the light of love. Breathe love into what aches, until you are once again at peace with you.

The darkness of blame and judgment, anger and fear, will interfere with your life for a little-time or a life-time. To resist or reject what feels real and just is to abandon a piece of YOU. Instead, double up on your love and be with your dark feelings.

Experience your darkness with the same love as you experience your light.

Love all of you to heal all of you.

You are what you are looking for. Every experience is for you to find YOU and align with YOU.

So be it, and so it is.

Love Hurts… but always serves

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Love can turn bad or grow strong. They both hurt.

Heart wrenching moments happen when you question someone’s alignment with you or yours with them. But the first question, that we sometimes neglect when in love is, am I aligned with myself?

The hurt of love is a deep sword. It asks you to soul-search, with an unspoken promise of self-aligned positive change.

This kind of change asks you to dig beneath the intellect to raw emotions.

Recently, in an emotional conflict with someone I love, I realized that when experiencing my heart’s ache I was judging both of us. I wanted both of our stances to change, so the conflict would disappear.

I felt like an ostrich with my head in the sand, unable to see my way out.

Then a friend pointed to the judgment, “that’s right-wrong thinking.” As she put it, “can you both be right?”

I recognized that making us wrong was, very effectively, distracting me from feeling unchecked, unwanted emotions. And I know, you can’t think your way out of heartache, you feel your way out.

What feeling was I avoiding?

I revisited the emotions of the conflict and surrendered into the heart of it. I tracked where it lived in my body, stayed with it, and listen. (The Peace Process)

What I heard through my fear of losing alliance with someone I love was: I’m not allowed to feel this way. I was hating myself for feeling my own truth. Because it was interfering with, what I perceived, theirs.

What if, I allowed myself to feel this way? And loved myself for being truthful.
What if, I gave myself permission to love what matters to me.

Suddenly, the fist in my heart released its grip. A surge of “I matter” cursed through me. Tears flooded my cheeks. I’m not insignificant or broken. What I feel matters!

The question always exits: How will differences effect relationships? But exploring the options in an environment that is loving rather than judging feels hopeful.

First step is, love yourself. Second step is, share that love with another.

Own Your Beauty

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Photographer: Charlie Chessler

Most people I know question their beauty and judge their body.

So they hide it with baggy clothes, beat it with fitness, or starve it with diets. But, even if you change your body’s appearance to what you deem preferable, the only thing that can change your relationship with it is trust.

Trusting that your body is an expression of beautiful.
Trusting that your beauty is an expression of love.

Trust goes beyond looking beautiful, to being beauty.

Your body is a bridge. It brings face-to-face what the mind deems important and where Spirit wants to take you.

I was recently asked to participate in a Body Positive photo expose’. It was explained that all the women involved would pose nude, and write an essay to accompany the photo about their relationship with their body and the project.

I accepted.

Women from different cultures, ages and sizes were asked to sit in the same position for the photo. Nineteen women had gone before me, so I was able to see the ensemble of photos chosen before taking my clothes off.

They were all so different. Beautiful in unique ways. They adorned themselves with tattoos, hair-styles, make-up, hats, jewellery and nothingness. I enjoyed the creativity and sensuality we all shared.

Most of all, the grace in our willingness to be wholly seen took my breath away.

I was about to join these women in a trust.

A trust that physical beauty is something we each have.
A trust that beauty has the wisdom of diversity.

And, what I learned was, beauty needs our permission to be experienced and shared.

Without giving beauty permission to exist, it stays trapped inside the body unable to shine. And our expectations and uncertainties overcast the body’s wisdom causing us to fear ourselves.

But when you trust you are beautiful, an inherent wisdom outshines your fear of being you.

Before this photo shoot I was terrified of a camera lens. Would it see me as ugly, afraid or lacking? I was afraid to really see me.

But something about the willingness to be seen wholly, mixed with the integrity of the shoot, I felt relaxed in my imperfections. I felt free!

Suddenly I was more curious than judgmental. The lens was a place I could learn about myself and everything I could-be.

Everything I thought I should-be, by comparison, seemed unimportant.

Is your relationship with your body based in judgments or love?

This photo shoot was an extension of my work. A place where mind body alignment dissolves the judgments that shadow love.

To be curious about what judgments cause you to not trust yourself, keep talking to your body’s pain and discomfort, adjust your stance, and breath a new alignment into being, until all that remains is a recognition of the beauty that is you.

Please comment with how you experience beauty or this story.

Choose YOU

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We all want to be chosen, but choosing ourselves can be riddled with judgment and uncertainty.

We get a break from this internal scrutiny when someone else approves of us. This distraction offers belonging… but WITH CONDITIONS.

How do you know when self-love overrides the habit of satisfying outside expectations to get love from others?

You feel Peaceful belonging.

From the start, I was a bouncy baby. I found being in my body’s movement and strength a refuge. It was a place where I felt like my own person; and a place I could improve myself with practice and discipline. So, what I didn’t have yet, I could develop. Dance and athletics offered me peaceful belonging WITHOUT CONDITIONS.

How does peaceful belonging show up in your life naturally?
Infuse that place into other aspects of living and you up-level your life!

I didn’t experience delight in belonging with family relationships or any intellectual study, until I was introduced to Tao Philosophy. So, it was clear that, peaceful belonging came from a small niche of interests.

Later in life, when the tension of competing for Broadway dance jobs started to put CONDITIONS on my physical refuge, and I let the FEAR of not being good enough chip away at trusting my personal safe place, I entered Tao seminary for 4-years.

What I learned there was, delight is a discipline; and self-love is choosing delight. The discipline of delight leads to self-love.

That understanding continues to inspire me to share my BodyLogos Method as the mind body strength training practice that helps you let go of needing outside validation and open up to loving yourself.

Tao see’s our Original Natures––essential selves––as Nature’s way to establish wholeness. Each of us is appreciated as a spoke in the wheel of life. What delight’s you in you, is what makes you love you, because it’s what the world needs from you to flourish.

There are 3 requirements to activate self-love:

  • Exercise your mind toward who you want to be.
  • Become aware of your emotions with curiosity, not judgement.
  • And, energize your body’s strength.

Exploring what delights you in these daily practices will reclaim the self-love you were born with. And, they’re all integrated in the BodyLogos Practice.

Self-Love is: a self that has the courage to see and appreciate all parts of you; and, a love that trusts the being-to-becoming journey as a magical journey that insists on self-mastery.

To belong to your Original Nature is to invest in your purpose.

A baby’s gaze reminds you of your Original Nature’s peaceful belonging, but with NO AWARENESS. And that Original Nature is what you are learning to reclaim as an adult, WITH AWARENESS.

This is life. Self-love is a way of life. Having the discipline to follow delight toward self-love is the way to choose you. And in that choice, you experience belonging for the world… NO CONDITIONS.

Please share a comment about your Original Nature.

Feel Better, Not Bitter, Working Alone at Home

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When you love your work it’s easy to mistake it as play.

The danger, in our present times of 24/7 on-call home offices, is you can become isolated from unstructured exchanges with the world. You lose touch with where you BELONG. And, a bitterness starts to fester.

Belonging leads to intimacy, inwardly and outwardly. And, it’s the underlying juice of your passion.

Intimacy develops when there’s an exchange between your inner self and outer world. But what does that mean?

In the last year my home has become a working gym, recording and editing studio, and virtual classroom. The long cold COVID winter was spent imagining my brand: The Mind Body Adventure! I love the subject, so with the COVID isolation in full force, it was all I focused on!

When the first days of Spring arrived I was feeling uncharacteristically deflated and unmotivated. I found myself hungry for a distraction from the very thing I love doing?

Happy Hours we’re beginning to spill out onto the sidewalks in NYC. So I started to stop by sidewalk tables and connect with neighbors. I laughed. I played dress up. I made new friends. I started to be drawn to playing, rather than working.

It was a draw that interrupted the workaholic lifestyle I had adopted.

As entrepreneurs and creatives, we often get consumed in projects and lose the balance between work and play. When we love what we do, balance between nurturing what we love and nurturing ourselves can feel confusing.

When busy working, my body would feel exhilarated; while my mind would worry about whether the world would want what I was creating?

When out playing, my body would relax; while my mind would wonder about what I wanted that the world was offering?

What I learned was, no matter how much work feels like play, it’s a giving, while playing is a state of receiving.

As I balanced giving and receiving, an intimacy with myself and the world created a greater sense of belonging. Stretching into the world through my work’s message and mission started to feel less scary. I stopped feeling alone in the world.

To feel better, not bitter, I needed to stay connected to all of me. What I wanted to give and what I wanted to receive. My attention had gotten too narrow. To stretch into the world with my work, I needed to stretch into the world with my self first.

Life ignites your passion, when you allow it to nurture you.

Balance giving and receiving, mind and body, work and play, and you will celebrate the process, as well as, the destination.

Align With What Matters

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Where Do YOUR Guardian Angels Show-up?

Have you ever been shocked into a sense of belonging?

When unsolicited help suddenly shows up right when you need it, it’s a peaceful reminder that you must matter.

When this kind of grace unfolds, it can make you believe in angels.

During COVID, I didn’t ride my motorcycle much. So, getting back on my 1200cc, 600 pound BMW, came with its challenges. There’s a lot to think about driving a motorcycle in NYC besides the mechanics, like watching for pot holes, oil slicks and bike chasing dogs!

Backing into a parking space, I blindly stepped on a squashed paper bag (a misstep I would have avoided in the past, but missed because of being new in the saddled again). The bag and my foot slipped out from under my backward push and the bike leaned out of control. I found myself squeezed between the bike and the neighboring parked car.

The bike was past the tipping point. As I struggled to shift into neutral and get both legs on the same side of the bike to hoist it up, my new boyfriend comes running out of the restaurant to help!

He rescued my heart, but we are now both struggling with the bike’s weight.

Without warning, another fella comes into the mix and lifts the bike upright from behind. I get the bike stable on the stand and turn around to thank my rescuers and only my boyfriend remained.

The man who rescued me from under the weight of that misstep was gone.

I’m reminded that the Universe is for me, not against me.

I’m reminded of the guardian angels that sweep down at the exact moments I’ve needed help or hope. And I’m magically elevated above the hardships of mundane living by tenderness.

I’m reminded of the extended “biker family” that has always stepped in when I was in need. I have always counted on these strangers on solo motorcycle trips. (I can’t help but believe the mystery man was a biker!)

Once the bike was parked for the night, a peaceful calm came over me. Feeling a lack of grace, doesn’t mean grace is absent.

I was embarrassed by my careless misstep, but my new boyfriend had only concern for me. And the mystery man was happy to help, with no reward or accolade. Being vulnerable is real. And it acts as a bridge between feeling separate and belonging.

Thank you to both my rescuers. The mystery man was my guardian angel that day. But, as the days have moved forward and my boyfriend’s affection guides me into new territory of the heart, my vulnerability continues to be the bridge that lifts the weight of the world off me, so I can align with what matters—love.

Real life is filled with missteps, but your angels are watching. Be the bridge, embrace what feels vulnerable, and a peaceful alignment with what matters unfolds.

Let me know where your guardian angels show-up below?

Love: from a concept to a feeling

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Fred with cone and bandaged left talon.

Have you ever experienced love as a concept?

You know you’re loved. You feel gratitude, inclusion, even safety, by being in the inner circle of people’s lives.

But you feel like you don’t really belong anywhere specific. You’re a free spirit who dances with the wind.

As a single, solopreneur, woman who rides a motorcycle, I’m alone a lot. My family are four-legged and winged-ones. Even the wild NYC birds congregate and nest on my terrace.

It’s no wonder that when my 25-year-old conure––the smallest of the parrot world––got badly hurt, my free spirit crumbled to the ground in a heap of uncontrollable tears. We have shared a life for 20-years.

O my Goodness, life without my little man––Fred––felt too barren to bear. Please stop bleeding! Please don’t leave me! Please LIVE!!

My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a fist. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around how to text the vet tech (as instructed) when I arrived at the hospital doors. And, having to pass him over to a stranger on the sidewalk, because Covid prevented me from going inside, left me standing in the rain with tears streaming down my cheeks.

I tried to busy myself with work, but could hardly speak. Tears were all I had to share. My heart ached with a depth of love I hadn’t let myself fully know… until it was breaking open.

I didn’t see him again for nine hours. At 8pm I picked him up with his head in a plastic cone and his talon bandaged up making him lopsided and toppling over.

Manic, he went from spinning on the floor of his cage wrestling with the cone––unable to climb to his perches or food bowls––to collapsing with his head leaning sideways on the cone passed out.

There were times that the vet’s words, “It’s pretty bad,” echoed in my head, as I desperately tried to will him well.

Between my tasks he’d scramble to the edge of his cage to be held. Our cuddle time eased both our hearts. We’d take deep breaths together and purr like the kitties at my feet watching with wide-eyed concern.

Fred is my little man. A bird-man who has taught me of trust, loyalty, commitment, play, and most of all, love. He has melted a frozen part of my heart. The part of my heart that has been petrified to let love in again.

Well, I finally FEEL love again. It’s not a mental concept, it’s an emotional fierceness. It tugs relentlessly at my insides, until it’s quenched with touch on the outside.

Fred lives and love prevails.

Never get too busy for cuddle time. It offers belonging. Love your animal.

(Perhaps now, there’s even room for a trustworthy, loyal, committed, playful, tall, dark and handsome two-legged?!)

Please Comment Below!

My Vaccine Experience: Relax into a New Strength

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I got my first vaccine yesterday.

Relieved to be half way to freedom, I left Mt. Sinai Hospital with a swift and energized stride. Off to Riverside Park to workout with my next client.

As I neared the park, about a half mile distance, I started to feel an urgent need to sit down. I began to hope that I’d beat my client to the sand pits, so I could just sit for a minute before getting started.

I wasn’t sure if I felt physically or emotionally tired. My energy level just quietly descended. Joy was still my emotional expression, but suddenly I didn’t want to move or think.

This morning I woke up with a cry of pain! I can’t lift my arm. It’s like when I got a tetanus shoot. Although I’m not sleepy, I feel fatigued, like I’ve already done a day’s work.

Resting every free moment throughout the day, I widen back to get present with myself. I ask my body what is going on? Am I OK? Is this vaccine a good thing? I want my body’s answer, not my mind’s reasoning.

I could feel my body’s nature more serious than usual. Not tense, not worried, not afraid… just serious.

Both mind and body are busy. Its attention entirely inward, not outward.

This sensation is different from feeling a cold coming on, where my mind still wants to plug into something outside myself and my body can’t keep up.

Instead, I’m aware of my mind and body working together as a team inwardly.

Between moments of quiet inner teamwork, I witness myself suddenly swimming while lying still. I feel a little queasy in these moments, it’s as if that inner team would shift to a new location inside me. Then the deliberate teamwork would begin again and the nausea would subside.

I marvel at the subtle knowing my body exhibits. And feel the most peaceful when my full attention is inward with it––where I don’t split my mind’s attention between inner and outer tasks––to align my mind’s witnessing with its regulating of my body’s know-how, to create what it needs within.

It was clear that the best way for me to maximize, support and align with myself was to relax into a new strength. Plug into this inward task, rather than a typical outward responsibility.

I realize that this heightened sense of subtle energy––mind body alignment––is an opportunity to awaken more deeply to mind body alignment.

Subtle energy, is as its name implies, subtle. It’s like a whisper. But the serious effects of the vaccine, and the work it’s asking of my life force, adds volume to the subtle synthesis of mind and body. It’s easier to hear right now.

For those who want the peaceful, self-aligned, confidence of mind body alignment. Use this heightened experience to feel your subtle inner alliance. And without judgment, follow its wisdom toward self-aligned strength.

I’ve heard that most folks normalize after 24-hours. So, I will use this day as a gift to listen to what’s inside me… to learn and recognize my inner voice more intimately.

It’s so easy to think that the body alone needs to rest for your antibody defenses to grow strong. But, from my experience, your mind and body are in this together, combining their skills to reinforce itself as a whole for the world we now live in.

Observe this day of heightened awake-ness.
Be well; stay well.