Tag Archive for: tension

Second Chance at the Truth

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.

Rottweiler with big stick

How My Rottweiler Taught Me To Submit

Rottweiler with big stick

An animal on its back with paws folded up by its shoulders disarms a fast track world. We stop to breath in its self immergé, wishing we too could open ourselves so freely.

I’d find my Rottweiler Hilda in this submission. On a hot summer day, in an empty cool bathtub, she’d delight in her self-soothing remedy. I’d find her with tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, giving me a look of complete nirvana.

Can you imagine, in the midst of my intrusion, such a vulnerable posture continuing to feel delightful?

Opening your physical body feels like opening your secret chest of hidden imperfections. And, if they were to be seen, would ensure the humiliation of being unloveable.

Hilda accepted who she was. Although she was nasty when protecting her bones; insistent about dragging the biggest stick home from the park; and, she could not share her toys! She never questioned the value of her character.

The same qualities that made her a lot to handle, made her my champion. She was a guard dog by nature. She protected me with the same commitment she had to her bone and toys. And, dragging a big stick felt good to her teeth and gums. And maybe her ego too?

My point is. She didn’t judge her nature. She accepted it and fully engaged with it. And so can we, to our nature.

Self-awareness is at the root of your potential. But if becoming aware of yourself causes you to want to change yourself you have skipped the most important step. Delighting in yourself.

Delight in who you are. The parts that you define as good and not so good. Every perceived bad habit, shortcoming and defect has a yin and a yang.

Never forget, you are a part of the natural world, created out of star dust and Goodness. Believing that Creation has an intelligence beyond your own offers you room to explore your self-doubt.

Creating positive change is about surrendering your body’s tension and mind’s judgment to align with who you are, not change who you are. Look beneath judgment. Align with what was created in you.

 

Please comment with your experience around surrendering tension.

Tales about the Relaxed Strength Challenge!

WATCH THIS VIDEO!

 

This is a 5-week challenge that kicks off Oct. 19th!

The Relaxed Strength Challenge:

    • Daily Mind-Body Strength WorkOUTS that use Dynabands for resistance;
    • One-Minute WorkINS that keep you in your body between workouts;
    • And, Body Journeys that realign you in your body for lasting posture shifts.

In addition, you’ll get: 

  • Weekly Group Coaching Calls, to personalize your Relaxed Strength action plan and ask questions about your concerns or challenges.
  • Private FaceBook Community to ask questions and post video questions between Coaching Calls.
  • Six Months FREE Membership to BodyLogos App.
  • Two FREE Dynabands to support your Challenge!
  • Ten Free Active Meditations for Everyday Living to customize a self-aligned and meditative lifestyle.
  • Surrender Tension in 8-Minutes Video, to relax––down to the bone!
  • Neutral Alignment Video, to experience your strength––on purpose!

SIGN UP NOW!! Comment below with Relaxed Strength! 

Then I’ll send you the details to schedule a FREE 1:1 call with me to see if this is a Right-For-You Program.

Doubt Your Tension

Hello Shape-Shifters,

I’ve also been asked these questions:

What’s included in the Relaxed Strength Challenge?
You’ll get: Daily Mind-Body Strength WorkOUTS that use Dynabands for resistance, One-Minute WorkINS that keep you in your body between workouts, and Body Journeys that realign you in your body for lasting posture shifts.
In addition, you’ll get: weekly group Coaching Calls, A Facebook Community for support between Coaching Calls, Active Meditations for everyday living, videos and Dynabands for your keeping. And a FREE 6-month BodyLogos App Membership!

When does it start?
On Monday October 19th, 20 Members of the BodyLogos App will kick off their Shape Shifting journey with the Relaxed Strength Challenge, working closely with me for 5-weeks to transform their misaligned tension into aligned strength.

What equipment do I need? 
Body weight and Dynabands, which I will supply for you.

How much time do I need? 
30-45 minutes a day broken into 3-settings––20-30 minute Mind-Body Strength WorkOUTS; 3-minute mid-day WorkINS; 7-10 minute Body Journey.

If you’re ready to schedule a 1:1 call with me to see if this is a Right-For-You Program, grab your space by replying to this email with… Relaxed Strength!

Then I’ll message you back the scheduling details.
You’ve only got 48hrs before application submission closes!

Reply to this email to reserve your space.

Embody Success ~ Tammy

Shape Shift Your Life!

Coming Soon… The Relaxed Strength Challenge!

A Personal Experience:

“Exercise… The first sign of struggle and I was done.
 
Stress about the world, the country, my work, was overwhelming me and I needed to do something to help myself. My health was suffering and I was having a now or never kind of feeling… I was feeling trapped and had to focus on me, on my health.
 
The BodyLogos Relaxed Strength program were not “exercises” to struggle through, they were ways to connect to yourself and to help your body… There’s no competition; there’s no pushing to do better. It’s a ‘connect to your body’ where you are now and a semi-meditation at the same time. It’s about  how the muscles work, what their function is in a purely physical way; and in “spiritual/emotional” terms, how they help you move through life. I found the talking that Tammy did engaged my brain just enough to distract it from the fact I was “exercising” and gave me something to think about then and later.”

Sherri Kendricks ~ Reference Librarian

DancerInWhite

Jeffrey Epstein Cohorts

DancerInWhite

How Sex, Dad and Dance Woke Me Up!

There have been many reports regarding sexual misconduct, sexual abuse, sex trafficking and pedophilia. Little commentary from these report’s share the actual experience beyond the victim/perpetrator dynamic.

Jeffrey Epstein’s story is no exception. Even with the stream of young women who bravely confirmed his disgraceful schemes, the high drama was created by the who’s, the how’s, and the outcomes.

An experience is felt. It may be felt all at once or as awakening layers of deadened sensation. An experience exposes feelings not scandalous facts.

My story is an account of my experience, not the facts that could accuse and convict a perpetrator. My perpetrator is dead and I seek no revenge. What I offer in this story is faith building…

Asleep only a few hours, I am awoken night after night by my dad. Hearing him enter my private space curled me up into a ball of tension. My eyes wide open under closed eyelids. Even the first time, at the age of ten, I knew nothing good was going to follow.

Then suddenly, I am plucked out of the terror, from what felt like a hand from the heavens, taking me to a place that I can only describe as nirvana––a place where the soul is free from worldly possessions (including my physical body)––a place where I felt safe, relaxed and strong.

This is referred to as a disassociated state in psychology, where the person experiences a detachment from reality, different from a loss of reality as in psychosis. My experience of this state was not one of mental scrutiny; rather, it was a spiritual awakening.

When in this surreal state I felt plugged into both earth and sky. A relationship with my energy body, separate from my physical body, was woken. My central plumb line––the body’s innermost relationship with gravity––was plugged into a relaxed stretch that carried a current of pure life force. I was infused with a spiritual strength that cursed through my energy centers.

I felt like the channel connecting earth and sky. I felt important. I felt like an integral part of the whole of Creation.

Then suddenly, I would be snapped back into my physical body. Usually dad would be gone by then. Sometime not.

My life was like a Ping Pong game. For the 3-years dad visited my room at night to satisfy his sexual need. Back and forth I would bounce, between feeling the relevance of unifying earth and sky, to feeling unworthy of the most basic parental protection.

I had no control over these disassociated experiences. Just as I had no control over what was happening in my reality. But what I gained from these experiences was twofold:

• I have clear reference points for tension and strength.
• And I can distinguish between energy movement and physical movement.

At this time in my life I started dance classes. I wanted the physical mastery to maintain the energy alignment I experienced in my surreal life in my real life. I knew undoubtedly that spirit lived through me, and the way to connect with it was through my central plumb line––my posture.

I learned to transform the static energy of tension into the fluid energy of strength. I found the quiet balance of energy movement inside the demands of physical challenge, and understood the inner grace of poised posture.

Through years of practice, the tension of my curled up body learned to elongate into a channel of life force. Gaining the mastery, embodied in my surreal life into my real life, landed me in the Broadway cast of A Chorus Line at the age of nineteen!

Posture matters. It has the capacity to break through tensions grip and transform misaligning beliefs. It rescued me from the potential downward spiral of my childhood trauma.
Your plumb line connects the essence of you with gravities force and you plug into a universal belonging that is safe, relaxed and fiercely strong.

Strength is experienced as ease-full, not tough, rough and rugged.

It has become clear to me that many of the ways we are taught to strive, prepare and compete for the lives we want are tension building rather than strength enhancing. And by relating to an end goal, in leu of being on the journey, keeps us detached from our energy body––Spirit–– and exhausts our physical body.

What I have concluded from my experience is, the aligning energy that connects our energy body (or Spirit Self) to our physical body is the energy we each borrow from the greater whole. It took trauma for me to experience the gift of spiritual belonging. Showing me that there is a sacred thread that runs through all our life experiences.

Listen inwardly and trust what feels safe, relaxed and strong.

 

To learn to access the relaxed strength found in your posture check out: The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind, a Book-3D/Video Learning System that helps you feel relaxed on the inside and strong on the outside.

Woman Lying Supine

Find Your Natural Posture

Woman Lying Supine

While learning posture’s subtle balance between surrendering and aligning, a student questioned, “shouldn’t good posture be natural––balancing attention between tension and strength is hard?!”

I felt that his sentiment should be true, but my experience working with bodies showed otherwise. So I slept on it. (My go-to place when stumped!) As I laid down that evening and felt my spine unfurl into its rightness and enjoyed my muscles’ surrender from a day’s work, it struck me. He’s right!

The precision of posture is natural—when horizontal!

Since then, whenever a client expresses uncertainty about what is correct posture, I lay them horizontal and help them answer the question from a supine position.

Gravity is a blanket that guides you to your best self.

Do You Want to be Tough or Strong?

Chase the Carrot or Eat the Carrot

The choice between being tough or strong is a conversation about what you want running your life, tension or strength.

I’ve come to realize that tough is protective gear masquerading as strength. So, when training folks, I work to keep it honest. Challenge their strength’s potential AND learn its limitations.

When a client was failing in his workout due to exhaustion, not muscle failure, he averted his gaze.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“You’ll be mad if I tell you,” he replied.

He was in the middle of a digital fitness challenge where he had to have his heart rate elevated for a certain number of minutes within a month’s time. He was over-training. Rejuvenation time was shelved until the challenge was over.

It was clear he was disheartened. His tension pooled in his chest muscles; broadening the protective shield of his back.

Looking at the floor he mumbled, “I’ll be fine. I’ll just walk everywhere today instead of my peloton run.”

Can you see yourself in this?

Use minutes to meditate was my advice. Use the time for active restoration versus active progression. But the digital minute-counter shutoff when his heart rate stabilized.

Penalized for self-care. Hmmm?!

  • We look away when we know in our body that we’re hurting ourselves, but in our mind, we have an insatiable need to progress.
  • We look away when we believe that we would lose our strength––be traumatized––if we didn’t triumph over a challenge.
  • We look away, when we know, deep down, that some nonsensical belief has triggered our tension into the driver’s seat.

What is our tension chasing?

Survival––Survival of the fittest! (richest, skinniest, smartest…)
We’re chasing a carrot on a string. That carrot is the belief that we’re not the fittest.

Here’s the truth of it. Chasing will never change the belief. In fact, the tension that keeps the belief running is getting stronger by the act of chasing it.

Stop being strung along and eat the carrot!

We feel most balanced when we can look life straight in the eye. Balance asks us to look in both directions. What if we stopped chasing? What if we just dropped into our bone’s stillness and reevaluated our habitual chase to prove ourselves?

What is in our body’s stillness?

Neutral Attention––Neutral to life’s flow. (truth, unfolding, evolution…)
When we eat the carrot, we reassess what we want to align with. An outside expectation or an inside truth. A distorted judgment or good sense. A past trauma or your present realness.

“Trauma is a fact of life, but it doesn’t have to be a life sentence.”
Peter Levine, PhD & author, Waking the Tiger

Trauma is a physical experience. Any level of trauma––disappointment, judgment, expectation––lives in the body as tension until it’s resolved.

The mind forms beliefs to make sense out of the body’s sudden invasion of tension. Very often, self-damning beliefs that are mis-taken.

The body’s tension template and the mind’s twisted beliefs are locked in with each other, until the body’s tension can surrender its grip.

When we bump into this chase, we feel like a wimp and feel we need to toughen up!

But what if I were to say, when we bump into this chase, we need to feel into its vulnerability––experience our inner-wimp––until we are introduced to our strength.

  • Experience your body as a wimp. Don’t focus on your mind’s judgments or your emotional reactions. Feel for your bone’s perspective. What is under your judgment and reactivity?
  • What are your bones hungry for? What does your inner-wimp need, to feel cared for?
  • Be that care-giver.

This is self-care not self-indulgence. You know this because you’re not perpetuating Self-denial (with a capital “S”), nor are you ignoring the chase. You are reassessing who you are, and what you need, to feel aligned with your deepest, richest, wisest Self.

When we chase the carrot on a string, we lose our selves. When we eat the carrot, we find ourselves. This is strength.

 

Please share this with anyone you feel could use its message. Thank you.

When You’re Aligned, You’re Never Alone

Search For Nothing and Find Everything

 

Do you experience your body as a spiritual instrument or a mechanical frame?

If we recognize “spiritual” as a connection with the greater whole––Creation––and the body’s relationship with gravity as a connection with the Universe, then our physical relationship with gravity is a spiritual practice. Our physical posture is a part of Nature’s spiritual artistry.

This has been my experience since childhood. When I’m aligned I’m never alone.

As a young girl I was traumatized regularly and would regularly disassociate—leave my reality without warning—into an altered-reality. I would find my self rescued from my tension-filled curled up body and suddenly be ease-fully stretched between Earth and Sky. I experienced myself as an energy-body, bones in a relaxed stretch and muscles surrendered to accommodate this stretch.

This altered-reality felt safe, connected and relevant. So, when I realized chasing those feeling in my reality was futile, I set out to find them through my body’s ease-filled stretch between Earth and Sky.

Embodying, what I now call, Neutral Alignment became my life’s mission.

Alignment asks our bones to be neutral—central—in our muscles’ intricate cocoon. Neutral by definition is resistant-free and the absence of resistance is sensation-free. Because of this we experience Neutral Alignment as nothingness.

But in this nothingness there is an energetic exchange that makes us whole.

Our bones, when aligned with gravity, become an energy antenna that channel’s gravity’s force through its structure, conserving and strengthening our energy’s flow. This channel of force is Source energy that recharges our resources––our mind and body––and it connects us to all that is.

This energy exchange is the REAL World Wide Web!

This energy exchange introduced me to a spiritual life without setting out on a spiritual quest.

Strength training has been the most influential game-changer in establishing Neutral Alignment. Even more than ballet class! I witness how my physical relationship with an outside resistance mirrors what I emotionally resist in my life story. This emotional resistance being the root of my body’s tension and misalignment.

For example:
• When I catch myself trying to dominate resistance in the gym, I realize I’m trying to trump uncomfortable feelings with physical aggression, in the hopes of restoring my self-worth or rightness. I may be able to dominate a dumbbell, but I’ve lost myself in the process!

So instead:
• I connect to resistance like a handshake. Rather than focusing my attention on dominating the challenge, my primary concern is to align my bones ease-fully between Earth and Sky. This connects me to me first! Then, to maintain my alignment through a challenge, I connect with the outside resistance with equal degrees of muscular contraction and muscular release. The places I struggle to release muscularly make me aware of the places I’m reactive, so I can break the pattern. Strength training challenges become tension releasing opportunities.

Weakness is not the opposite of strength, tension is.

Strength is a willingness to feel into the tension that obscures your body’s posture, and to trust the inherent wisdom urging you to surrender it. Strength training is using as much conviction to connect with resistance, as you have strove to dominate resistance.

To dominate—to value only our end goal—is to miss out on what could be learned from our vulnerability. This curiosity about vulnerability is the undercurrent of our strength and unravels the tension causing our pain.

Neutral Alignment introduces me to the resilience and wonder of my strength. It unmasks underlying beliefs so I can consider them and create positive change.

This is why we feel better when we workout. It’s not just about endorphins and oxygenation of red blood cells. It’s about shifting the tension template of our life story into greater alignment with our present lives.

Your workouts can teach you to be competitive and tough; or they can give meaning to your life.

 

Learn more about alignment and strength in The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind

 

Pain is Wisdom’s Cry

Find love, freedom & compassion through pain.

Let’s face it, pain S-U-C-K-S! It robs us of our vitality.

But I trust my body’s wisdom. And pain is it’s only way of letting me know I’m out of alignment. It’s my body asking me to listen to its message. And I’ve learned it will continue to escalate until I face it’s insistence.

Trauma, overexertion and tension are the culprits of my pain. While trauma requires therapy and overexertion requires rest, tension requires that I listen.

What you may not consider when listening to your tension is, it’s often rooted in another time and is multidimensional in its nature. It simmers unnoticed until something triggers it into expressing; and when it does, your mind and body unite in its tantrum.

On the day I gathered my courage and composure to utter for the first time about dad’s nighttime visits in my bedroom, mom’s reply was, “It’s not MY fault, I didn’t know!” My body had been holding onto this sexual abuse story in silence for 25 years!

The anger, fear, confusion and sadness that plagued my body as tension, was trying to find a pathway out by voicing my longstanding secret. But the pathway out was blocked, so now every cell became engorged with rage! I felt like I was being annihilated by electrical shock waves. My body shook as my mind ranted! “It’s still all about you and your needs––I don’t really matter?!” From my view at the time, I wasn’t worth protecting, I wasn’t lovable, not then and not now.

Sometimes it’s just too painful to listen to our feelings, so our mind steps in to reason with the pain—blame it away. But we can’t think (or blame) our way out of tension, we have to feel our way out. And here’s the clincher, allowing the body to feel goes far beyond its physical tweaks, it’s crying out our emotional wounds.

Here’s how the mind and body relate:

  • The body’s soft tissues (muscles, sinews, organs) archive every emotion you experience, while the mind remembers the details around the emotion. Your body feels; your mind thinks.
  • When a disappointment or trauma happens your body’s soft tissues tense up and your mind creates a belief to help you make sense out of the happening or survive its immediate danger.
  • This belief, though useful at the time, was made under duress and its usefulness is likely short-lived. But there you are unknowingly operating under a misaligned belief well after the incident. At least until you’re triggered back into it, like a time warp!
  • The physical tension and emotional distress that lives in the body reactivates. Its painful grip is either out of per portion with real time events or creeps in as a low grade persistent whine. Meanwhile the mind spouts its misaligned belief with so much certainty that you miss its lie.
  • Anger, worry, sorrow, fear plague your body causing dis-ease. Pain in the form of poor posture, emotional distress and sickness follow, until the mind’s belief and body’s tension change the story—together creating a new experience.

It took another 15-years to address my nighttime story again out load. Mom went into denial, forgetting what I had shared, and I set out to unravel my body’s tension and mind’s unlovable belief using posture and movement, and changing my relationship with resistance inside and out.

I found ease through mind-body alignment.

I listened to the layers of trauma when challenged, experienced as tension’s pain. I then decreased the challenge intensity to where the pain wasn’t triggered. This gave my tension space to expand, express and exhale. As the tension disentangled itself, my strength was renewed and redefined.

Strength is now an alignment between my inherent innocence––mental curiosity—and my wisdom––emotional/physical truth––keeping me genuinely interested in each moment of connection and discernment. It is a posture of wonder.

Once we recognize our body carry’s our emotional baggage, our pain becomes our teacher. What we feel, physically and emotionally, becomes meaningful to our future and we are inspired to listen.

Our body’s posture is our first defender against chronic tension; and, it’s crucial to being proactive in our search for happiness and well-being.

As we deliberately improve our posture we learn to distinguish between our strength and our tension. And we unravel our tension and unlock the misaligned beliefs that hold us hostage to the pain of our past.

 

Click for a FREE Video to Surrender Tension in 8-Minutes!