Tag Archive for: heart

The Hidden Treasure in Pain

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As I embark on a second tattoo I am often asked, “Why would you put yourself through so much pain?” As I listen for my answer, I’m flooded with various images of painful activities that I’ve chosen to endure. I retort with, “Pain is temporary, but the ‘result’ is forever.”

So what is the ‘result’ I am searching for?
And, am I any different than you?

The burn of my tattoos results in a shared celebration of my life story and values; the ache of my muscles from a workout results in my ownership of grace and power; the lingering buzz in my head after 100’s of miles on a motorcycle results in knowing that I’m a survivor.

Pain magnifies, amplifies and actualizes a desired result. If you allow it.
Pain also magnifies, amplifies and actualizes the fear of more pain. If you allow it.

It’s so easy to complain about our pain. But complaining is what causes the suffering. After considering our pain’s request for our care, can we look a little deeper?

When we realize we’ve chosen our particular pains—created the life we’re living—we see that there’s a pleasure that all pain leans on, or we wouldn’t have chosen it.

Together, pleasure and pain create a flow. Like death and rebirth. Allow the current to flow between them—refrain from bracing against the fear of more pain—and you simply become the mid-wife to a deeper pleasure.

I’m not talking about a kinky fetish where pain is a turn-on. I’m talking about pain as a turn-off to living a full life.

Bracing against pain keeps you in pain. Appreciating pain as a journey into your heart, soul and conscience imparts self-knowledge.

The same lesson is shared in mind and body.

The pain in my heart from losing my sister to covid results in knowing the depth and beauty of my love for her; the frustration of being distracted by my monkey-mind results in creating conscious change in my mindset; the uncertainty that surrounds my aging mother’s care results in learning how to prepare for my own aging needs.

Allow the pain and you allow the pleasure. A hidden treasure that results in a sacred appreciation for the ups and downs of your life. An appreciation, l believe, we are all searching for to be happy.

Pain defines pleasure by being opposite in nature. Pain also delivers hidden treasures by swimming with the current through it. Hold course to find your deeper you.

Feel. Heal. Live. Explore. Love. Change.

 

The COVID Split

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My Heart Split OPEN with LOVE

COVID split my heart in half when my sister died of it 3-months ago. It felt as if I couldn’t hold my heart together. But 1-year ago today, my heart was also cracked open, allowing love to flow into it so freely and fully. It felt then as well that I couldn’t hold it together.

I wonder how loss and love can feel so similar?

This second year of COVID has been much different from the first year. In fact, the years propelled me in opposite directions. The first year I aligned inwardly; then, in year two, I was pushed to stretch outwardly.

I started the pandemic single in a home/work virtual environment. I was alone most of the time. I worked with clients through an iPad and created videos building a mind body strength training App I entitled: The Mind Body Adventure.

I was beginning to wonder if I was turning into a crazy cat-lady?! (Only kidding)

I connected with my self. Designing ways to explore the relationship within me to find peace and companionship. Although I imagined connecting with people through my work’s message, it was ultimately to connect deeper within me.

Then things took an abrupt change.

Remember when the original COVID strand was dying down. We thought we were on the other side of a 1-year plague. We had a few weeks, maybe a month, before the new strands started showing up, extending the plague to now 2-years.

In that magical month, as spring awakened, I ran into a man I had met just before the COVID shutdown. We met unexpectedly over and over again! Our sidewalk encounters were so frequent he soon asked me to dinner.

Though still leary to override COVID protocol, I said yes to a house party for two.

A connection with a real, not imagined, person enticed me to stretch outwardly, seemingly away from the trust I had built inwardly. To stretch again toward a trust that the outside world was for me not against me.

For the past year I have continued to stretch into the most fun-loving, nurturing, impassioned love fest I’ve ever known.

As I reclaimed the permission to touch and be touched, breath each other’s air, and abandon caution to fall in love, my heart felt more and more intact. What at first felt like a breaking open became a surrendering. I felt safe with my feelings and with him.

When my sister died, and the split in my heart again overwhelmed me, I thought it was because I was losing someone I love. But what I realized was, I again reclaimed the permission to love her, absent of our vaccination differences which had began to silence our love. I felt safe with my feelings and with her again.

When your heart splits open it brings you in relationship with your deepest feelings, surrendering you to love’s depths. If your relationship with yourself is aligned when this split happens, you feel safe with your feelings and with the depth of love’s roots.

COVID brought me closer to me, to my sister Sherry, and to my lover Anthony. COVID gave me the time and pressure to learn of this vastness of love. COVID has plagued us with suffering, but within all suffering may be a gift.

To heal is to find the gift.

 

Share your Covid gift.

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?

Unseen Things that Collapse Your Chest

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Common Loon Opens the Silver Lining of its Heart

The heart expresses its emotions through the characteristics of your chest muscles. Like a looking glass, everything from your joy to sorrow is visible through this physical transparency.

When you cry sad tears your chest muscles collapse inward into the protection of your back. But when you cry tears of joy your chest muscles bounce outward into the world with each gasp.

While the expression of any real raw emotion is essential to experience your life fully; resilience, toward balance, is also essential to your well-being.

Sadness, by the way, is not the only thing that crushes your heart. Doubt, uncertainty and shame also shut down, what I call, your Smile of Truth. This smile across your chest embody’s more than joy, it expresses your self-worth, assurance and confidence.

To smile at the world through an open curiosity of your chest, even when it seems that the world has let you down, is to remember the silver lining. The gift left in the wake of discouragement.

Believing that the Universe is on your side is the opening that reveals your silver linings.

How the Body Aligns You on Your First ______! And how you align it thereafter.

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Malayan porcupine in nature

You meet someone new. Maybe in an interview or on a first date or a spontaneous introduction, and your heart responds openly. Your chest naturally rises, as if your body were smiling; and, the width between your shoulder blades retreats, like a porcupine retracting its quills.

 

More often than not you trust your heart’s message. You, almost without noticing, reorganize your inner self and let this new person into your life. Your passion to create alignment in business, creativity, friendship or love is ignited!

 

Then one day your body responds differently. Your chest contracts and your back widens—you are on high alert.

 

It is accepted in the West that the heart is our emotional seat and that the chest’s carriage expresses our heart’s emotional state. But in the East, it is understood that the heart carries our joy and the lungs carry our sadness, including the back’s carriage in the expression of our emotional wellbeing.

 

… Trust your natural responses;

And everything will fall into place.

                                                                   Tao te Ching

 

Your body expresses a smile of truth through your chest muscles that relate to your heart’s joy. It expresses the need to protect your smile of truth through your back muscles that relate to your lung’s sadness.

 

Cocooned between chest and back muscles the Heart Center’s rainbow of emotions are communicated through your chest and back’s alternating rise and fall. This oscillation acts as your barometer regarding what you want to align with in each moment. Your chest and back muscles take turns aligning with the situation in question.

 

When passion turns to high alert this emotional yo-yo, exhausted by extreme alignment swings, locks into one extreme or the other. Tension is the result—a physical holding pattern—that steals physical strength and mental resolve.

 

Here’s the thing…

Passion leads to purpose. What you are passionate about does not.

 

When what you are passionately aligned with is leading you away from what feels purposeful, a deliberate realignment is being asked of you. The internal alignment that happened initially, without much thought, is now demanding thought.

 

Allow your body to express what you’re feeling before you try to reason through the situation. Restructuring does not mean your more assertive—yang —nature of your back shadows the more sensitive—yin—nature of your chest, or visa versa. This restructuring asks you to meet the conflict as an aligned team that represents your smile of truth.

 

The conflict is about your relationship with the other person, not the other person.

 

Posture is the first thing that cues you in on how you feel about your relationship with something. Dialogue with your body before it shouts out with pain and fatigue. Listen when it gets energized, relaxed and sits upright. Ask yourself:

 

  •      Can passionate choices be, less about the choice and, more about being lead toward your purpose? The teaching tools that ask you to explore your values and value.
  •      Can protecting your passion be training the muscles needed for you to be purposeful? The call to action that asks you to step into unfamiliar territory.

 

What have we turned our backs on because we didn’t know what questions to ask ourselves? Living life in shades of gray offers way more options that living in black or white choices.

 

If you let yourself be blown to and fro.

You lose touch with your roots.

If you let restlessness move you,

You lose touch with who you are.

                                                                Tao te Ching

 

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