letters from a healing jouney

letters from a healing jouney

Friday, December 11, 2009

the in between

hours after work and still hours until the party. no reason to start getting dressed, yet no reason to start on another project, knowing that Staying Out Late is a big expenditure of energy. it's like the space between breathing in and breathing out. when we're full and ready to move on in a moment. content, and also excited.

Monday, December 7, 2009

my other car is a bike

I get frustrated when I drive a car around Los Angeles. I feel simultaneously blessed to have such a useful resource to move me and my belongings around. I want access to the car in this freeway culture. I want to log a much higher percentage of my miles by bike.

I am wasting time thinking up scenarios where I don't have to drive so often anymore. They usually involve moving closer to my job or finding a job closer to home. Either possibility is frightening, and foolish since I know I will do neither in the immediate future. I still turn my wheels, spending energy dreaming up a reality that doesn't exist. (My house magically moves itself out west! My job miraculously moves 5 miles inland after 15 years in the same location!)

Then I dream about carpools with bike racks and other more plausible plans, but those, too, are hard for me in a city where I don't know a huge amount of people like I did in my old Home. Resource sharing takes community building takes time. I am not a patient lady. I want what I want now! Change! I would probably be the perfect revolutionary: constantly sloughing off the present in hopes for a more functional future. I know though that there are certain things I am not willing to risk, certain comforts I don't want to put through the process of change. I want to hold on to certain things: my husband! a home! a laptop! Take away everything else and leave me these. ...and maybe our cat and some cute clothes and good books and my old diaries and photographs... Once I really look deep I wonder how much I will gamble to really have it all.

And all the time I dream away, maintaining status quo at home. Dreaming of short, easy commutes by bicycle as I drive my minivan into the sunrise.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

pick up books and read them

"pick up books and read them"

That is the message I am getting: read! Find out exactly what you want to learn, get the book, and read it.

I have spent the last three or four years in a long, luxurious break from books, getting most of my information about the world from living in it: from I move around, engage in conversations, observe and work in the garden, take hands-on bodywork classes, sit in meditation, etcetera. It has been a wonderful break for my academic mind, and even as I was in it I knew that the time for study would come again.

My excuse for a long time was that it was wasteful to spend money on specific books I wanted to read when there were so many books around me: I could go to the library, borrow them from a friend, or even pick them up from the sidewalk in front of people's homes. Now the desire to get exactly what I'm looking for in knowledge and information presented as well as writing style has led me to exactly what I want to read. Inspiration!

just finished Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
reading Wild at Heart by John Eldredge
next: Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

adrenalized

go go go go!

I am going through three major life changes right now: a move, a marriage, and a new job. Any of the three of these would typically be enough to throw me off or knock me out for a good long while. How am I able to handle all this? How is each major push of force and adrenaline not followed by the requisite crash? Among other things, there are instinct, desire, delayed gratification, and humility.

I think I'm learning how to ride the wave of adrenaline. Everything is in such a state of transition around me that it I can learn to expect to work abnormally hard and I can remember to rest and regroup before absolutely necessary because it is obvious to me that I will have to work abnormally hard again in the near future. I can feel my instincts taking over a little bit: demanding more sleep in the morning, craving specific foods, demanding a silent meditation time. I listen and respond and I am rewarded. I feel alive and effective in the world!

Another driving factor is motivation. Every one of these new things is something that I want and that I can feel are for my own benefit and therefore for the benefit of the world (one good thing brings out another, I find).  Having the drive to move all my worldly possessions, or do interpersonal work with my partner, or make lists and email and text and meet up to prepare for a celebration feels easy because these tasks are an obvious part of the good that is happening in my life.

I listen to my instincts, I want the change that the work is bringing about, and I know that there is an end in sight. My partner and I have scheduled a long break where we have nothing to do except for rest and replenish ourselves, and take time out to sink in our love for each other. Knowing that after the push there will be a relaxation time makes the daily effort feel like something fun and special, not an endless drone.

The last and most important reason I have been able to keep working so hard is that I have help all around me. Knowing that there is so much change and transition happening in my life all at once, I have by grace learned how to accept help from others. When someone offers me help I normally like to say, "oh no, I got it" and move on. Recently I say "yes!" It is sometimes followed by "...and I'm not sure what yet," since I am a relatively new Help Acceptor, usually though, I can share the work. Ask my friends, I am accepting generosity every day! It is a fun and exciting practice. I am becoming available to accept the help that is offered to all of us at all times by strangers or the folks we know and love. It's always somewhere. We can find it.

I can learn to accept more help and become a part of a culture of increasing interreliance! I can schedule times of rest after the heavy pushes in life. I can move when I know what it is I really want. I can listen to what my body is asking me to do and ride the wave.

This is a fun time.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

transformation

Right now I am looking a new life square in the face: new job, new city, new marital status, new mode of transportation, new name!

How will it feel? Will the new motions I do every day (hold the phone a different way, sit in a new chair, interact with a new living environment) lead to different strengths, weaknesses, and flexibility? Will my body language and facial expressions change as I participate in a new culture? Will my muscles learn new patterns of holding and letting go? 

I am ready for a change. It would have happened whether I moved or stayed in the same city, I can tell. How exciting, though, to be able to do it all at once! No expectations of friends and communities to accidentally or subconsciously live into. A pretty blank slate.

New!

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

range of e/motion

When we stretch our bodies, sometimes we believe there is a certain limit to how far we can go in any given direction.  Then sometimes, we work with a great teacher or we experiment on our living room floors or just sitting there and we realize that there is room for more openness, even in us! 

Often what happens in those situations, when we find space and motion in our bodies that we didn't know we had, we have an emotional breakthrough too.  Different schools of study have found that we hold on to emotional memory in different parts of our body.  We don't stretch it out if we don't want to go there.  When we stretch it out we find ourselves experiencing more.

I can imagine my body free from all the blocks I pretend I have: capable to move in any direction, fast, strong.  If I can do that, I realize there is a possibility to imagine my emotional self that way: capable of moving through different stages and ways of feeling and work with them and use these different emotions with skill and care.  Skillful the same way a talented athlete hones their strength toward precision.

If I can imagine it, then it's a possibility for me.  More range, more options of how I feel and react.  More types of strength to meet more types of situations.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

just sit there

Tomorrow I'm going to the desert, and there I am going to sit for a total of ten hours a day for ten days.  A hundred hours, sitting on the floor.

My body will probably hurt.  I have no idea what else will happen.

While I'm there I will also not be talking, reading, or writing.  I will have no verbal outlet for the train of thought in my mind, so I imagine I will learn to quiet it, and focus on things other than words, like how I feel and where I am right now.

Maybe.  I'm not even trying to guess.  It might be the opposite of what I expect, as is always a possibility.

Monday, January 5, 2009

changing and staying the same

For so long I identified as A Free Little Bird, a swallow/"golandrina", and I would fly wherever I wanted and listen to my instincts and learn from life all the time.  Now it feels like all of a sudden I have this big ol' house and these amazing housemates and my little plum tree and I just don't want to go ANYWHERE.  Thank you, Universe, for that.  I get to sit and press my roots as deep down as I can, and draw up the life and nutrients that come from Sinking In.  I have made new relationships and sunk more deeply into older ones.  I feel like my little world could nourish me forever right where I am and I would continue to grow and be challenged and all of that forever.

Except for the fact that the time for change is coming.  The call to action actually came a couple of months ago, but I listened to the call of Unfinished Business and I have decided to start my metamorphosis while staying in place, then moving away once the sun thaws me out a bit.

Adventure!

Why do we go?  Why do we ever stay?  How do we know when is the time for each?

Sometimes I know how to Listen: listen to my own body and emotions, listen to the plants and people around me.  More often though, I simply worry: worry that things are not quite right, that there must be something more Awesome out there.  Worrying, I will tell you, totally gets in the way of Listening.  This time though, Life stood up and smacked me across the head and said, "Get a move on, girl, you're ready for something new now!" and I was like, "Daaaaang, World, alright already!" and that, basically, is why I'm moving.  That whole conversation took about three months.  Like I said, I'm working on listening.

Again I ask: why do we go seek adventure?  Isn't everything we need to know right here in front of us?  In our own mothers and fathers, in the food we grew up eating and the air we have always breathed?  I would say yes, it is.  For me, changing my context simply means that I can suddenly See and appreciate all those little things that I always took for granted at Home.  The subtle different reminds me how special is the Mundane.  I guess it's just time for a reminder, to awaken my sense of Wonder at Everything.

At the same time, in a way, this coming adventure will be a journey towards Home, and not away.  Even though I will move away from the people and places I most identify with as a part of me and as my community, I will be moving far closer to the land I walked and rode a bike (and mostly drove in cars) on in my childhood.  Closer to the culture of Image Awareness and Fitting In I so easily dismissed as a younger woman, and now am looking forward to engaging with and Looking at square in the face.

What will happen to my Path as a healer and a lover of Health and healing and human bodies?  I have lots of guesses, and lots of plans, and lots of acknowledgement that my life is not my own and I don't need to hold on to it so tightly if I don't want to.  I will keep learning, I will keep growing, I will keep touching other people and stay open to the movement of the Creator in my own little life and in Life all around me, and all of us will see together what happens to each of us, okay?  

Life is exciting!