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breathing Tag

The Source of All Peace

I hope this post finds you well! I started writing this post in October, in advance of the US Presidential Election, and will finish it after, to send out the first Friday of the month of November. I am, along with everyone else I know, apprehensive about the results. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen, who’s going win, and what direction our nation will take. In the midst of so much disinformation and online ads, it’s become hard to know who to trust or believe. My own extended family is divided on candidates with seemingly completely separate sets of facts, based on which media each consumes. And thanks to the film The Social Dilemma, I’ve learned about the social media algorithm that often results...

Staying with the Breath

Today, amidst Coronavirus and the memories of 9/11, I'm thinking about the breath and about how important it is to breathe. Last summer I ended up in the hospital with spreading limb numbness that was eventually diagnosed as a mild form of Guillain-Barré. Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare autoimmune response that at its most intense can result in total, but usually temporary, paralysis and require use of a ventilator. It was a terrifying but important time. I learned how precious our health can be. I also learned how vital breathing is. I watched my oxygen sats on the monitor and breathed deeply. Sometimes they dropped and it felt scary. When I was able to stay calm and centered, I could breathe in fully and my numbers would...

Pausing throughout the Day

In our harried lifestyles, it can be hard to take a moment and connect with your Self. I know I run, go, move around, get stressed, and lose touch with my heart and purpose on this planet frequently. It’s so easy to lose touch with who I am and why I’m here when there are schools, jobs, commutes, and dinner on the table. Thankfully, there is one amazing tool that always brings me back to myself – breathing. Breathing can be done at anytime, anywhere. The breath connects our spirits with our bodies and calms our minds. It’s so simple yet so profound.  The main trick is to notice when you are getting stressed and remember to breathe! I have friends who have apps on their Apple...

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Staying Present

My childhood trauma, my angry parents, and our dissociated society in general taught me as a young child that life was easier if I could protect myself. For me, that meant learning how to emotionally, mentally, and spiritually detach myself from the people and places around me. I began dissociating, removing myself and my consciousness from the world around me. Of course, no one except the very smart healers could see that I was living away from my body and acting out my daily life as if my body were a puppet. I felt very far away from it all. It made me feel safe and helped me get through my daily life. When I began to truly heal, I needed to learn how to...

Staying Grounded Amidst Change

When change in your life and on the planet is afoot, it’s helpful to try to stay grounded whenever you are able to. I’ll admit, I have had a hard time of it sometimes. When life is really changing fast, it’s difficult to get my footing and remain centered. I get swept up in the current and become easily ungrounded.  Paying attention to my breath is the most important technique I've found to stay grounded. I’ve heard about the importance of breathing for years. I even help kids practice their breathing every day in my work as a speech and language pathologist. Does that mean I remember to breathe? Of course not! But, some days are better than others. It takes practice to remember to breathe, however, once...

Staying Grounded

It’s taken a lot of work to help me learn how to stay grounded. When I was first traumatized, I survived by disassociating, or basically leaving my body. I didn’t know I was doing this until I began to do more in-depth healing work with bodywork and Reiki. Even therapy, which had many benefits, didn’t really help me too much to learn how to live in my body. In addition to being traumatized, I had some spiritual inclinations. Honestly I believe that these two things can go hand in hand. As one healer I worked with put it, “when the physical world doesn’t take care of you, the spiritual world does.” Or as the Bible says, “When you are weak, God is strong.” Both my trauma...