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Breath

I wanted to write more about breath and its power today, a topic I started writing about last week. While I am not a breathwork expert, I have used the breath to help me heal in many ways over the years. Breath ties your mind and your body together and allows your heart to shine through. Simply taking deep, long breaths for several moments of stillness can reorient your mind and help you feel more grounded and present.  There are many teachings and some research out there about different ways to breathe and their effects. There are ways to breathe that energize you, relax you, and many other types in between. Today I wanted to write to you about the 4-7-8 breath taught by Dr. Weil,...

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Living a Sacred Life in the Modern World

What does it mean to live a sacred life in our modern society? I think about this a fair amount. How is it possible to connect to the sacred each day, going to work, raising a child, and existing in a capitalistic society with massive inequality? It can feel difficult to create a sacred space in the middle of strip malls. I’ve been cultivating several practices that help me feel connected to God and allow me to live a sacred life even in the middle of this world. Here they are in no particular order: Living in the moment: living in each moment fully, releasing thoughts about the past and the future, is a very sacred space to exist in and truly helps love and light...

Love Yourself by Loving Others

I wrote last week about loving yourself, but today I want to write about how showing love to others is a way to show love to ourselves. When you see past someone’s pain and mistakes into their light within, you are also seeing your own inner light. When you love others by giving them blessings and joy, you also give blessings and joy to yourself. “What you do to another, you to do yourself. What you fail to do for another, you fail to do to yourself” (Conversations with God). Or, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12).  Loving another person is akin to loving yourself, because we are all one. How can we show love to others? Well, it helps...

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Trusting Divine Timing

A concept that’s come up again and again in my life has been trusting in God’s timing. There have been so many times when I’ve wanted something so badly and had to wait for what seemed like no reason, because the circumstances just weren’t right yet. I’ve had to prepare, give it my best, and then be patient. And then, when the time was right, though I couldn’t have pinpointed why, that thing I was waiting for came to fruition. The metaphor of a garden is probably overused, but only because it’s so relevant to healing and to God. Fruit can’t ripen before its time. It requires good soil, sun, and water, but it still needs time to grow and become. That process can’t be rushed....

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Raising Your Vibration

To live in a high vibration means to be connected to your true heart- to love, joy, and peace. When I think of raising my vibration I think of times when I’ve felt very happy and free. It didn’t have much to do with my external surroundings. It mostly had to do with how much I was connecting my heart to the heart of God, and how much I was letting go of behaviors and thought patterns that distanced me from that peace. The truth of you, your soul and essence, already lives at a high vibration. How can you connect to your original God self? Different things work for different people. It always helps me to pray and meditate. It helps me to get an...

Your Support System

Who is in your support system? Who are the people you can call on in need or in joy? It’s important to know who these people are, and to connect with them as often as needed. In the beginning, I had no idea such a thing mattered or was important. I did not always know how to have friends, or to let people in enough to realize they cared about me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I had friends, but I didn’t let it sink in all the way that these people cared about me, because I had put up so many protections around my heart.  The first time I learned about the concept of a support system I was in an inpatient treatment program for...

Making Sense of an Experience of the Divine

Before I had my experience, my life was pretty ok. I had done a lot of healing and while things weren’t perfect, I wasn’t really doing anything “wrong” in my life. I was in graduate school. I studied. I had friends. And then I had this beautiful and heart-opening experience of God that really changed my perspective, my heart and my life. It took me a long time to make sense of that experience. I struggled with it. I ignored it. I pretended it hadn’t happened. I got angry at God.  It wasn’t easy to make sense of an experience that is not talked or taught about in my culture. Not only was it not talked about, in my household I had been conditioned to believe...

Healing the Heart

What does it mean to listen to one’s heart? I write about listening to my heart often because it’s a huge part of how I healed. It can be very hard to listen to your heart in this world. Since we were children, many people taught us not to listen to our hearts. Adults around us - teachers, parents, babysitters -  nudged or pushed us to conform to this world and stop following our natural inclinations. How can we learn to listen to our hearts again when we’ve been so conditioned to ignore them?  An important first step is getting quiet and still for more than just a few moments. It helps to sit still for a while, if you can. Eventually, you will begin to feel...

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Learning to Love

In the years after my trauma, I did not know how to love myself or other people. I surrounded my heart with protective steel walls. No one could hurt me if I couldn’t feel anything. It felt safe, but it led to me hurting other people, and to me feeling sad and emotionally numb. I was still myself, but I wasn’t connected to the world or people around me. To look at pictures of me from that time, I still seem like myself, and I’m sure if you asked my friends from that time if I seemed cold, numb or depressed, they may not have noticed. But I noticed. It was a learned way of being that I’ve thankfully mostly unlearned. How did I learn to...

Forgiving Others

Over the weekend an old acquaintance I hadn’t seen in years directed some very hurt feelings towards me. It truly took me aback and made me feel confused and bad about myself. I don’t know what she was upset about, but I do believe it had more to do with her than me. It’s been hard not to relive those moments in my head and feel distressed. I’ve found this to be a good time to practice forgiveness. In these kinds of situations, it’s really easy to hold onto the pain and to judge the person sending out negativity. It was my first, knee-jerk response. Withdrawing and protecting myself is how I got by in life when people were harsh towards me as a child and...