Tag Archive for: TammyWise

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.

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.

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.

 

 

From Duty to Delight

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Storytelling in a maze of art. A true story about love, duty and delight.
In a search for one’s Self.

All eight storytellers of The Courageous Messenger Collective were intended to gather at the Gary Marshall Theater in Burbank, CA. to speak to a live audience and be streamed on-line. Due to COVID we were asked to tape our talks and the interviews were organized on Zoom.

The show must go on, as they say!

 

Enjoy all the speakers and our host Jeffrey Van Dyk.
My contribution: From Duty to Delight can also be viewed HERE.

Second Chance at the Truth

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Tammy on left; Bruno on right.

 

How do you keep internal peace under external pressure?

There are times that your mind analyzes a situation with clarity, yet you’re still triggered emotionally. You can feel trapped in your reaction and blind to a peaceful resolution.

Your mind and body are misaligned. The information your mind gathers and the story your body conveys seem to be on two different tracks, or different intensities of the same track.

The other night, sitting outside for dinner in the chill of winter (the only COVID option) I was met with this kind of mind body misalignment. My dinner date was sharing with me her newest business venture––herbal care. A healing art she had no education in.

I was stunned. My mind was clear that she was putting herself in liability danger and possibly endangering her customer’s well-being. As a 4-year herbal medicine graduate I tried to explain. The conversation was, to say the least, challenging for me.

Returning home with frozen feet and a chill that rose up my spine like a piercing icicle, I huddled in front of my space heater to thaw out. I was still reeling from the conversation and questioned my heightened emotions around the situation.

I felt mentally sound in my position, but emotionally triggered by my friend’s choice.

The next morning my head was nailed to the bed. There was a muscle spasm under my right shoulder blade that prevented me from lifting my head off the pillow! I felt like my body had been high-jacked by an incensed internal being. The aftermath of tension/stress overload!

So, I used a 3rd Eye Practice that allowed me to ask my body questions. It’s a practice that encourages my mind to take a backseat, while my body’s remembering can feel for the answer.

I place one finger lightly between my eyebrows. I let the sensation penetrate so deeply that the base of my skull widens back away from my neck, my eyes float upward and flutter under closed eyelids.

In this expanded position I asked my body, “what are you holding onto, what’s got you so triggered?”

After a quick filing of visuals, I settled on a childhood memory about my Saint Bernard Bruno. I thought, this can’t be the trigger! So, I asked again. And again, I landed on the Bruno story. So, I dug in and looked around to see what I could find.

At the age of 8 or so, I was letting Bruno out of his dog-pen to play in the yard. When exiting the pen his tail got caught in the gate’s hook lock. He pulled and all the fur and skin ripped off the end of his tail! As he wagged his tail blood was flying everywhere!

I screamed for my parents to come quick!

They came running and wrapped Bruno’s tail with paper and plastic. Then off to the vet we raced.

Bruno was fine. But I felt responsible for letting such a horrible thing happen. After all, I let him out of the pen. So, it must have been my fault that he got hurt in the doing. I decided, and formed a belief, that it’s very easy to hurt someone unintentionally.

BINGO! That “feeling state” was the very same “feeling state” I was having in regard to my friend practicing herbal medicine without a license. The guilt and protection my body held––my childhood trauma––was entangled in my clear-minded response to her.

It’s been a week of heating pads, epsom salt baths and resting on a foam roller, while feeling compassion for the little traumatized Tammy who loved her dog. I realized that I hadn’t unintentionally hurt my 4-legged friend, but rather, he’d had an accident. I wasn’t at fault.

In rewriting my old story’s belief, I’ve also soothed my emotional charge toward my friend. My mental position has not changed, but my emotional tolerance has. I can now extend out of my story into hers. And an ease, for her to be on her journey without judgment, has ensued.

I’ve gotten a second chance to align with my life and correct my skewed judgment of fault.

I can thank my friend for the opportunity to reframe this belief-forming story. As I look at it now, it’s been a constant undercurrent influencing my life. I have always looked at life through the lens of, “I could hurt someone!”

Self-aligned strength asks us to dig beneath the surface of our reactivity for a greater, more meaningful, self-aligned truth.

This Holiday Taught Me that Less is More

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In these isolating times, we’re all asked as spiritual beings to have gratitude for our aloneness. Those alone for the holiday adjust to take delight in less or we’d crumble.

Creativity and kitchen traditions kept me on track as the holiday neared. But when the holiday countdown started, the absence of grounding human contact triggered my deepest wounds around belonging.

Shadows crept in. No holiday gatherings to distract my attention. Alone with my feelings, entrapped in long dark lonely nights, the winter solstice haunts my hopes with self-doubt.

I’m humored by Lao Tsu’s words:

“Less is More.”

In this moment it feels like he’s saying: less distractions lead to more unresolved emotions?
Great! *%!?^¥!
But I believe his sentiment was: do less and more will take care of itself.

My feelings and Lao Tzu’s sentiment were miles apart.

So, I did less.

Rather than distracting, convincing or devaluing my unpleasant feelings, I stop fighting them and let my haunting emotions express themselves. I allow hopelessness to surface. Experience the emotional upheaval and physical wail of disappointment to be amplified at the mic of my life.

O My God, I even broke down crying during a client session. In between tears I pleaded, “I just need some Christmas Magic!” Very unprofessional!

The beliefs that haunt me are given a voice. Beliefs that need my attention insist that they be witnessed. An under the surface posture that needs realigning feels like it’s resurrecting itself. Change is a choice that is starting to be visible on the horizon.

But really, did my haunting beliefs have to use my client’s time to amplify! I’m hired to amplify Relaxed Strength—yikes, my reputation is sunk!

Hopelessness was my over-riding emotion through five-days of tears. I might define this experience as believing in my deepest, most crippling, fears. But in an odd way, fully experiencing it felt like scratching an itch that had been there for as long as I could recall.

I don’t know how to feel differently in these days of decompression. Accumulated disappointments are unleashed and unharnessed. Yet, I continue to reflect on

“Less is More.”

I continue to non-do. Deliberately listening to my fears, and doing nothing to defend or embellish them. I just allow them to surface: words made me teary; silence or music made me cry out loud; flowers delivered made me wail.

Christmas Day was a Zooming whirlwind. Distractions filled with delight were the perfect respite. I’m bathed in gratitude.

The following morning I learn a client died Christmas Day. The outward spin of Christmas quickly returned to an inward reflection.

I wonder where the Christmas Magic really is?

A text came in from the client I cried uncontrollably with, “I just emailed you a special Christmas card!”

What followed was the Magic I pleaded for!

A video of loving sentiments from three generations, from three states, and the family dog, were edited together to give voice to their love for me. Not just what I do for them; but who I am and what I represent in the world as a being was seen, expressed and appreciated.

An ensemble of hope-filled messages challenge my haunting beliefs.

This wasn’t a card, this was Christmas Magic.

Magic that recalibrated my beliefs. Reminding me that I am lovable, I am relevant, and even in my times of need, I am respected.

I share this story to remind you to ride the turning tides of hope. Rest on rays of light, be they delightful distractions or gracious sentiment, as you let hopelessness teach you what your deepest fears are.

“Less is More.”

Stop fighting, relax and see your shadow clearly; feel it wholly. Without this clarity, creating the change you want to see in your life is like playing darts blindfolded.

Less should-be’s lead to More could-be’s!

I am grateful to be in a safe enough place to let my greatest fears surface, knowing that I have the support and tools to regain my sense of wellbeing. There are so many people who live in unsafe places, that have no freedom to dive deeper into their suffering, so they can learn to realign with and reclaim their own unique Magic.

I recognize how privileged I am to explore the shadow’s in my life. Privilege, however is, by no means, without struggle! But, I am delighted that my struggle is being lived out with the people I now surround myself with.

May we relax with Less to realize what More means.

Happy New Year ~ Tammy

Relaxed Strength Challenge

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WATCH VIDEO!

Hello Shape-Shifter,

APPLY NOW:  Relaxed Strength Challenge 

The Challenge follows the BodyLogos Method. BodyLogos applies Tao principles to resistance training and is the how-to for living relaxed and strong. You’ll gain a comprehensive awareness of how energy optimally flows through the body and how tension obscures that flow.  BodyLogos practice offers an understanding of your unique blocks to living the power of your intention and a method to create positive change.

In addition to WorkOUTS, WorkINS, and Body Journeys you’ll get:
• Weekly Mind Focus’ that ground everything your body’s learning in Tao philosophy and fitness physiology.
• Weekly Group Coaching Calls to personalize your Relaxed Strength action plan.
• Private FaceBook Community to ask questions and post video questions between Coaching Calls.
• Six Months FREE Access to the BodyLogos App. 
• Two FREE Dynabands to support your Challenge!
• 10 FREE Active Meditations for Everyday Living, to help customize a self-aligned lifestyle.
• Surrender Tension in 8-Minutes Video to relax––down to the bone!
• Neutral Alignment Video to experience strength as ease––on purpose!

The Relaxed Strength Challenge helps you take effective steps toward aligning your body’s strength with your mind’s ambition, so you stop chasing and can enjoy peace under pressure!

Schedule a 1:1 call with me to see if this is a Right-For-You Program.
Respond to this email with Relaxed Strength and I will personally send you the details to apply.

 “Tammy’s bright positivity and uplifting posts help me stretch as if I were opening the blinds of my body so that I may let the light inside out.”
John Bidwell – Kessler Rehabilitation Center

 

The Discipline of Delight

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                        Watch Video!

Hello Shape-Shifter,

Strength is compromised when you’re bound in tension, uncertainty, and overwhelm.

You may ask yourself:
• How do I stop the chase and stay in the game?!
• Am I doing too much or doing too little?
• Is there some relaxation/strength training ratio to follow to live in the sweet spot?
• Is it possible to be relaxed and strong at the same time???

If any, or all, of the above questions run through your head… I can help.

I’ve helped 1,000’s of people in my 40-years in the fitness industry.

As a Broadway dancer turned Tao Minister, my mind-body strength method––BodyLogos––that unites principles from Eastern and Western philosophies, creates a bridge between fitness and wellness.  BodyLogos guides people to release pent-up chronic tension WHILE strength-training. They learn to recognize their strength and influence, so they experience “relaxed strength.”

• Time Out New York voted me and BodyLogos “Best of Fitness” twice!
• Dance Spirit Magazine called BodyLogos, “a zen workout;”
• Shape Magazine described it as, “body sculpting that uses weights to enlighten you;”
• NY Magazine named it, “Mindful Fitness.”

After publishing my book, “The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind,” I wanted to create something that could implement that foundation into a guided practice, and reach people everywhere.

So here I am building a BodyLogos Fitness App that kick-starts you with the Relaxed Strength Challenge––a step by step plan that shape shifts you from ‘worn out chaser’ to ‘relaxed strength’ in 5-weeks.

Watch for tomorrow’s email with all the details on how to apply for the Relaxed Strength Challenge!

PASS THIS MESSAGE ALONG to FIVE friends who you think want to SHAPE SHIFT too! And we’ll learn the discipline of delight all together!

Embody Success ~ Tammy

 

Dr. Ruth and me. Steve Friendman photo

How is Hutzpah Learned?

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Dr. Ruth and me!

Where does your hutzpah come from?

Dr. Ruth made a documentary about her story last year. Here’s my short-story!

Years of childhood trauma taught me to be tough, and tension was its cohort. I believed strength was the capacity to endure hardship and pain––physical and emotional. And if I was tough enough the tension would subside.

I was wrong.

When the traumatic moments became greater than my capacity, I began spontaneously and unintentionally leaving my physical body. My experience of physical tension and self-denial would suddenly shape-shift. I’d experience my energy body as a flowing current precisely aligned between Earth and Sky. A posture steeped in self-regard that was tension-free and pain-free.

I experienced Relaxed Strength. A posture that is now my foundation for living strong––in my body.

My practice––the BodyLogos Method––is committed to Relaxed Strength. I know, first-hand, that self-acceptance and self-love––the gift of my childhood shape-shifting––inspired the current that aligned my strength with the life I wanted. And, that self-proving and self-betrayal are tensions that exhaust our strength.

Consciously aligning between Earth and Sky, and listening to my body’s tension-cry with interest, has offered me a bridge from fighting to healing, from being fit to being well, and from living tough to living strong.

It is my mission to pass on what I learned from Earth and Sky.

This is the hutzpah that has influenced my NEW BodyLogos Fitness App. It will launch next month! I’m so excited to offer a private experience for BodyLogos teachings.

Keep your eyes open for the launch details and the start-up 5-week Relaxed Strength Challenge!

 

Steve Friedman Photo