Coming Undone

Falling apart precedes change.

In order for something new to emerge, something related to the old way first needs to end. This is true whether you’re seeking greater fitness, weight-loss, weight-gain, stopping smoking, a new love in your life, or an improved relationship with your partner, children, or family. Changes may occur as a breakdown of some sort: a relationship ending, a financial crisis, or you simply may wake up one morning and realize that the way you’ve been thinking is causing you to suffer and you’re ready for a new way. Yet change is uncomfortable, because even when something is unpleasant or not working, you may still find a sense of security in what’s familiar.

Becoming present in the very process of coming undone is life-affirming. You let go of identifying with how things were, or what others might think about you, and prioritize placing attention on your breath, the energy moving in your body, and the gifts and new discoveries that are emerging for you: right here, and right now.

You begin to perceive coming undone as a portal to your next phase of becoming. How exciting!

What the 3 movements of life’s flow teach us about change.

Life flows in cycles. A teaching about these cycles is contained in the sound of aum (or om).  There are three phases of life as symbolized by the sound of aum: “a” – create; “u” – sustain; and “m” – destroy or finish or let go.

Imagine that our world and all of life arises and blooms to fullness as the universe breathes in, and as the universe breathes out, life and our world falls inward and becomes concentrated in a single point of potentiality. Imagine the universal breath balances and and harmonizes every movement of life in a divine dance of nature’s unfolding. The ancient seers describe life this way. We find this teaching also in science, in the golden spiral, in our DNA, in the curl of an eyelash, the placement of the planets in our solar system related to our sun, and in the spiral of a daisy. We find this teaching in our own breathing.

I’ve experienced many changes in my life. The birth of two children signified a huge change for me: a birth into my own motherhood and inspiration to go all the way with love and leaving a legacy through my parenting, as well as a simultaneous completion of a career dancing professionally. Later a brief period of competing as a ballroom dancer rose, and then fell (or ended). Many days and nights have passed. Relationships began, lasted for some time, and ended. Some relationships have sustained. My career focus has ebbed and flowed, in some new directions, and some sustained directions. Sometimes, I – like most of us – resist the change that is emerging. I have found tht life is harder when I push through with the brakes on, trying to make a feeling I don’t like go away, for example. I have found that life is harder when I try to control or hold on to something that is naturally ending, like phases of my childrens’ childhoods. My children are 16 and 20 years old now, and these ages bring delights of their own. Their time of being 15 and 19 is now gone, forever. I have learned – mostly! – to savor my experiences.

A quote by Johnny Cash that I like is, “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”

You can learn to meet your own life changes with ease and grace. Meditation and times of stillness help to create an expanded perspective. “This, too, shall pass” reflects one of life’s truths. Sometimes you might be glad “this” is passing, and sometimes you might be sad. And, every situation comes with a learning embedded and the gift may emerge at the beginning, middle, or end of your experience. Opening to what is emerging now is a key part of dancing with change with ever-increasing peace. Some questions to wonder about are:

What is emerging in my life right now?
What would I like to create?

What is sustaining in my life right now?
What would I like to sustain?

Would is ending and completing in my life right now?
What would I like to end, or complete?

What can I learn?
What can I appreciate about myself, others, and life?
How can I dance with these cycles of change with ever-increasing openness, ease and joy?

When we open and allow ourselves to dance with life, we discover peace shining through the ‘clouds’ of our life’s experiences, like the sun peeks through clouds clearing after a spring rain. As we become more skillful at noticing when we are pushing, holding on or resisting life’s changes and choose to breathe and soften to ourselves with kindness, we become more and more centered in the gifts and learnings that emerge through all of life’s experiences. We open to the light of peace, love, and joy that is who we are. What a celebration!

Courage

Courage. The root of the word courage comes from the Latin word “cor,” which means heart. Living congruently — aligning our knowledge, will and action — is courageous. Courage is the willingness to act in the face of the unknown. The opposite of courage is self-doubt.

There was a time in my life when I was full of self-doubt, and when I believed that I wasn’t of value to the people around me. I made up a story that people would be better off without me, and I considered ending my life. One night many years ago, I sat in my bathroom, late one night, with the door closed. My young children were asleep in their rooms, and my husband was elsewhere. Pills were spread out over the bathroom counter. I felt despondent. In that moment, I found the courage to open my mind and heart to the possibility of seeing beyond my suffering, and beyond the fixed perspective that my life had no worth. My willingness opened the way for grace, and a vision appeared before my eyes. I saw many points of light, which each corresponded to a memory. Strands of light appeared to connect the points of light, and I began to understand how the events in my life were connected. Eventually the points of memory and strands of meaning wove together like a great hammock of light, supporting me. I experienced an understanding beyond words of how I had arrived at that moment in time. My life made sense. My body was flooded with relief, hope, and joy, and the knowing that I could move forward and I would be ok. From that day, I took heart and took one step at a time into my life. And here I am!

Years later, I saw this image painted by Alex Grey, which reminds me of my vision:

You can develop courage by turning toward love and allowing love in, including self-love. Loving opens up space for discovery and seeing from an expanded perspective. With love, what once seemed like failures and mistakes becomes wisdom through lessons learned. In this way failures and mistakes are nourishing compost for courage. When you love yourself regardless, when you harvest the wisdom from life’s experiences, when you align your actions with your heart of hearts, you look at your life and say: I did that. I stepped in. I moved in the direction of love. As you step into your courage, you learn to let go of trying to control life. You let go of trying to control your image, and what others think of you. You even let go of how you are used to thinking of yourself! You allow yourself to be a work in progress, continually discovering and moving toward what lights you up.

The practical implication of courage is personal development and fulfillment. At the end of life, people often regret not what they did do, but what they deeply wanted to do and didn’t due to fear or doubt. Courageous action is strengthening and self-fulfilling.

In the Yoga tradition, the image of Shiva Nataraj teaches us about courage. Shiva dances to destroy what is no longer of service, making space for what is newly emerging. Shiva symbolizes the powers of knowledge (gyana), intention (iccha) and action (kriya). Aligning our inner knowing with our hearts with our actions is empowering. We can embody this empowering posture by physically aligning these centers in the body with a beautiful posture of head, over heart, over core, over pelvis.

Change is continuous; we can’t stop change. Courage “encourages” us to focus on process at least as much as desired result. We learn to dance with changes, and open to the gift of being a human being, here and now. We courageously dance with life, releasing any darkness in our minds, and turn toward the bright light of our hearts inspiring creative actions. Through our practice of courage, we come to know ourselves as powerful, vibrant, full of life, joyful and free.

My journey to crow pose

Crow pose was always a challenge for me. Even though I can do a few other hand balance poses, like handstand at the wall, I get scared of falling on my face when I practice crow pose.

I’ve explored various ways to get into crow pose over the years, with help from expert teachers. With my vigorous practice lately, I was pretty sure I was physically strong enough to do the pose. But that gnarly fear! And how about my wrists? I wondered if they were flexible enough.

Then one recent morning a creative idea popped in. What if I positioned myself a bit away from the wall, so that when I came forward into the pose the crown of my head barely touched the wall to prevent me from falling forward, which was my big fear. I tried it, and it worked! Shortly after that, I did the pose on my mat, no wall. The next day I went to my mat, and I was scared again. So wash, rinse, repeat. I went to the wall, practiced with support to get the pose in my body, and then came out to my mat and did the pose, supported from the inside — supported by my body. Easy peasy.

I wonder what’s next, and how I can support myself to expand my practice on the mat and in life!

Are you wanting support in your practice, on or off your mat? Check out my transformational yoga and coaching offerings.

Cultivating a Perspective of Appreciation

A few definitions of appreciation are:  to have a full understanding of the situation; to be sensitively aware of; and the recognition or enjoyment of the good qualities of someone or something.

I’ve been fascinated by perspective since childhood.  A fond memory is laying on the grass in my backyard, watching an ant crawl across the grass, and imagining the ant’s perspective of the blades of grass, the ground, the sky. The ant’s perspective seemed quite different than my own!  Which perspective was true – the one I imagined from the ant’s perspective, or the one from my own eyes and body?  It seemed to me then, and still today, a paradox.

Some of our most powerful perspectives reside in our unconscious and fundamentally, and often invisibly, shape our experience and understanding.  I’ve come across plenty of information about how our perspectives are shaped, and while I find that study interesting, I am even more interested in how we can choose the perspective that supports meaning and joy in our lives.  One of these perspectives is appreciation.

You can cultivate appreciation by noticing the ever-changing nature of your experiences.  Breath in; breath out.  Feelings come; feelings go.  Seasons change.  The mantra: this too shall pass.  You can cultivate appreciation by tuning into your breathing, like relaxing inward toward the very center of yourself, and a sense of being that is unchanging.  You can cultivate appreciation by becoming interested in discovery, and opening to the childlike wonder of what is newly arising inside you and around you.  You can cultivate appreciation by opening to beauty through your senses– the simple beauty of the sunlight streaming in through a window, even when the temperature is icy cold (as it is where I am right now); the beauty of spices in a dish simmering on the stove; and the beauty of the sounds or silence around you.  You can cultivate appreciation by opening to the beauty of engaging — the beauty of a kind gesture you offer or receive; the beauty of learning something new; the beauty of your creative expression; the beauty of being of service.

Appreciation helps us relax.  Appreciation helps us savor, and opens up our joy threshhold.  Appreciation draws us closer to one another, and to the gift of being alive.

Awakening to a Deeper You

Life gives us opportunities to awaken, to know ourselves better, to open our hearts to ourselves and to people and life around us. It’s not always easy to say, “Yes, I’m awake and open to this moment;” to choose to meet life with heart open, willing to love and learn and grow. And I don’t believe it’s bad or wrong when people are not open and willing. The fact is, we all shut our hearts down at times, sometimes without even knowing we’ve closed.

As Pema Chodron says, “In simple terms, we must gain the capacity to slowly, over time, become one with our own energy instead of splitting off. We must learn to use the tools we have available to transform this moment of splitting in two. Splitting in two is the moment when peace turns into war, and it is a very common experience.”

Living with heart open is not the same as being a doormat. It’s possible to have an open heart, a sense of compassion, and still say no in the moment, or a larger to no to ongoing interactions with someone.

A question to ask yourself is, “I wonder how can I meet the life flowing through me with reverence and joy in this situation?”

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Would you like support in going deeper with your meditation practice?  Check out these free resources:

* Create healing change and awaken essence in your heart and mind with Mantra Meditation.

* Practice Cave of the Heart Meditation, guided by me on Youtube.

Dance Journey

“The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes”
— Mary Oliver, Dreamworks

Our spirits come alive through our bodies and through our movements. What joy! The Dance Journey Process, which I coalesced over a period of years, builds on the theme of spirit shining through body, and reclaiming inner wisdom and power to create positivity through movement play.

The practices involve body awareness and movement, deepening loving presence with your experience as it occurs, and moving into friendly, light-hearted expression to shift difficulties and access your creative potential.

The next Dance Journey event is Friday, June 13, 2014 at Big Bend Yoga Center in Webster Groves.
The next Dancing Your Life Journey Playshop is Sunday, August 24, 2014 at Casa Bagus in St. Louis.
Registration for both events here.

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The Dance Journey Process consists of three stages of practice:

* Dance Journey Events, 2nd Friday evening of each month
* Daylong Dancing Your Life Journey Playshops, occasionally throughout the year
* Multi-Day Dance Journey Retreats, once per year

These stages may be complimented and supported through coaching, which I offer via skype. Each stage is designed to support a specific area of learning.

The first stage, Friday evening Dance Journey, has two main objectives:
Gradually share the core curriculum, based on the 4 Pillars of Integrity as created by Drs. Katie and Gay Hendricks, in digestible, small bites.

Utilizing Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey monomyth as a structure for a movement playlist, to introduce and invite a deepening understanding of the mind’s perceiving what happens in life through the filter of stories, and that some of the stories we consciously and unconsciously believe cause limitation and suffering.

The second stage, a series of Daylong Dancing Your Life Journey Playshops, is designed to create conscious companionship in practicing the tools in the core curriculum to support an ever-deepening ability to shift challenges and create an embodied experience of flow and expansion.

The third stage, Dance Journey Retreat, is to support participants in clarity about their core limiting belief(s) and to directly contact life energy animating limiting stories to create consciously in life and relationships, and to live in a state of continuous discovery, love, and creativity.

Healthy Responsibility for Caretakers & People in Healing Professions

You want to help. You want to be supportive of others. You want to be loving. And you want to care for yourself, too. And, sometimes you get tired. You feel taken advantage of, or resentful.

This post is for people who have these experiences and want to create something different. The first key to create a shift is to take responsibility for what you are experiencing.

My experience is that many people I say that to immediately think that taking responsibility equals taking blame. I invite you to look at responsibility in a new way. Think of responsibility as your ability to respond now — response-ability — to any situation in a way that is good for you and good for others, and that is creative vs. reactive. Taking responsibility in this way frees you up to learn from whatever happened and make wise choices to move toward creating the results you really want.

Key questions to wonder about are:

* How can I continually replenish my energy through my connection to my essence and my purpose?
* What are the ways I habitually drain myself?
* How can I let go of those old habits and service of empowering myself and inviting the people around me to feel empowered too, if they are willing?

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Want some help integrating responsibility?  Check out ‘Shifting Stuckness,’ a guided video by Rhonda to learn and integrate this skill into your life. 

De-stress. Relax. Rest. Replenish.

Webster’s dictionary describes relaxation as the state of being free from tension and anxiety. A state of relaxation is no small thing in today’s world, where the stresses and strains of daily living are high. And Yogic relaxation goes even deeper, and includes not just relaxation of the muscles; not just relaxation of the heart; but also brings about a state of deep and conscious rest, and increases mastery of the autonomic nervous system functioning. Most of us are bringing the past with us each day.

In one of Jack Johnson’s songs, Staple It Together, he sings: “He became a prisoner of his own past … He shot the future in the foot with every step he took From the places that he’s been cause he forgot to look.” We carry tension and pain from our past and it becomes our present, and even our future. One of the goals of systematic relaxation practice in the Himalayan tradition is to unhook these connections to the past which cause us to suffer, and which reside in the unconscious mind.

Although our nervous systems are quick to gear up to ‘fight or flight’ response whenever we feel threatened, the movement of our nervous system back to a relaxed, parapsympathetic response happens more slowly. In today’s world, people are stressed much of the time. An ongoing stressful state depletes our body, nervous system, and digestive systems. People don’t function well in emergency mode on an ongoing basis. Relaxation practice restores the body, nervous system, and mind. Practicing relaxation we calm and center our awareness, remove fatigue and the effects of exertion, and relax our muscles and organs. And this relief from stress is just the beginning. By practicing relaxation, we quiet our nervous system and free up energy. We feel refreshed. We can move into deeper states of awareness to free us from our mental and psychological defenses, access the unconscious, and to allow the creative and deeper aspects of our being to awaken. Practicing relaxation regularly and consistently over time helps us access a relaxed state in daily life. As we become familiar with systematic relaxation we learn to shift our state when we are in a difficult situation – remembering to come home to smooth breathing, to draw our attention inward and open to a creative solution to whatever we are facing.

Would you like to try a guided relaxation, free of charge?   Click here and enjoy!

Getting Stuck Sucks, and that’s a F.A.C.T.

We all get stuck. When we’re in it, it’s hard to imagine not being stuck, as whatever we’re stuck in may swell up to seem bigger than the whole of our lives, and may hijack attention.

The good news is there is a predictable flow-through to get unstuck. Knowing what it is and where in the process you are stuck is a big, helpful step.

And, on the other side of stuck is living creatively and powerfully. When I’m living in discovery, I am open to discovering and harvesting the fresh learning available to me right now. I am not living in the past, replaying old scenarios in my head. I am not criticizing myself for making mistakes. I am not stuck in the same old patterns. And, I am not worrying about something going wrong, or rehearsing for the future in my head. Whatever is emerging in my body, mind, and life now is fuel for me to discover and learn something new, and to choose what’s next vs. replay the same, old habitual patterns. Each moment, the possibility exists for me (or you!) to choose to see *this* situation as an invitation to live in discovery.

Here’s the skeleton, simple get-unstuck process.

1. Face. Face that you are stuck. Face what’s actually happening that you are experiencing or resisting. Keep breathing and facing until you breath feels clear and you experience the relief and increased energy that comes from facing whatever’s in your, well, face.

2. Accept. Accept that how it is is how it is right now. It may not be how it was yesterday. It may not be how it will be in 5 minutes. Or next year. And right now, how it is is how it is. Breathe til you feel in harmony with how it is, including any feelings and sensations you notice in your body about how it is.

3. Choose. Given how it is, what do you most want right now? Breathe and wonder what you really want, free of second-guessing or criticism of yourself, others, or the situation. If you drift into any of those things, go back to step 2.

4. Take Action. What is a simple, doable step that will move you toward what you really want. By when will you take that action? Take that action, and then give yourself a hug and some appreciation.

Repeat as needed!

Big thanks to Kathlyn Hendricks and the Hendricks Institute for creating the F.A.C.T. process.