liveapathofheart.blog

Tag: attachment

  • Fuck that old man, his bottles piled high

    Corrals are empty

    Barn walls are falling down

    His hands are empty

    His mouth though, is full of magical bullshit still

    And that old dog of his is about to die

    But my heart still surrounds him

    And there is nothing I can do about that

    But watch

    Remembering him riding ahead, breaking branches, breaking trail

    Teaching me to be quiet in the mountains, giving me that gift

    Teaching me his magic

    I hold him now where I can

    And I’ll watch him ride off ahead of me into the sunset

    On a horse called alcoholism

  • Rebirthing 101 Part 1: Lean into Grief

    I have gone through a few large transitions involving varying deep levels of grief in the last 6 months.

    I have been watching my processing around it and wanted to share some about leaning towards our grief and transitioning into acceptance, what that can look like, or at least what it looks like for me from a standpoint of the tools I have been implementing around my own healing in this process.

    I want to start by saying that as with all things human there is a continuum, we have have greater or lesser levels of emotional pain, situations that cause grief, so it is not useful to compare our outward experiences, just take what works for you and leave the rest, we all can share in the inner feelings of pain, loss, loneliness, rage, darkness; as well as the light from our hearts that we can bring ourselves and each other in these hard situations; so let us meet there.

    When things fall apart my tendency is to insulate from the pain. If you think about it it’s a total natural way for our systems to handle things. When something punctures our skin, our natural barriers, thereby putting us on high alert for danger, our body sends blood cell warriors to the site of the puncture, and walls off or encapsulates the site in an effort to prevent system wide infection. 

    My initial tendency is to not experience the pain. To push away from it. Pretend it’s not happening. Use sex, shopping, social media addiction, running (I literally try to run away from it, god bless it!), work, and a new one in the last few years…. meditation, ceremony, spiritual practice. 

    But all these behaviors have in common a way that I am trying to change whatever feeling I am having rather than just being with the feeling and actually experiencing it so that it can naturally move through, transmute, and dissipate the emotions out of my body and field. 

    So what’s the answer?

    Lean towards it. Whatever it is. 

    Rage, sadness, even the excitement of love. 

    What I have found is that if I don’t lean towards the feelings , they lodge in my body and turn into stuck feelings. DEPRESSION. 

    I used to feel depression quite often as I was in the habit of never feeling my feelings, always pushing them away in an inability to experience any emotion. So they always settled into a stuckness I began to know well as depression. 

    I really had no idea this was not normal until very recently when I experienced on a body-feeling level the difference in letting emotions process through and also watching what happens when I don’t and the subsequent feelings of stuckness and depressed feelings that follow. 

    How do we lean towards our feelings?

    When we are having big feelings that feel overwhelming or constant, or cyclical/repetitive: 

    ~Focus in on the sensations in your body when you are having the emotions. 

    ~Where is the sensation located in your body, what’s the quality? 

    ~Are there colors, temperatures, visual representation or auditory accompaniment that go along with the emotions? 

    ~Focus and describe these to yourself or if working with a therapist describe them to them.

    Practice this until you can get familiar with this practice, don’t try to change the emotion! Just BE with it. Be with the sensations and whatever is coming up. Try sending some curiosity, some compassion and kindness. 

    Treat yourself and your emotions you would someone you cherish.

    ❤️☀️ Come to a wonderful backcountry glamping retreat

    July 22nd-25th 2021 in Taos Ski Valley!Rebirthing in Nature in is 4 days/3 nights

    Click the link in my bio! Sign up now!Spots are going quickly…..

    This retreat is all about working with your fear, befriending it and moving through it. We will be glamping in the forest above the base of Taos Ski Valley. Expand yourself through rock climbing on the Via-Ferratta, hike into the high mountains to our basecamp for 2 nights, and jump deeper into nature’s healing. Explore mindfulness practices, deep process, silence, and powerful ceremonies for women moving through major life transition and change.

    Rebirthing in Nature in Taos – July 22-25, 2021

    This retreat will help you break through your fear and onto releasing grief and pain–rebirthing you onto your path to the Transformed New You.

    Experience the IFS Toolbox and self-compassion practices you can take home too. Co-facilitated by Donna Roe Daniell, MSW, LCSW, RYT of Women in Transformation and Jennifer Johnson, RN

    ❤️ 🙏🏼 #liveapathofheart #rebirthinginnature #heartofthewilderness #womenintransformation #trailrunning #mountainsaremyhappyplace #loveyourself #recovery #patagonia #healingadventures #healing #getoutsideandblowthestinkoffya #nm #taosnewmexico #tsv #taosskivalley #altrarunning #nmtrue #skitaos #liveyourbestlife #spiritualpractice #earthconscious #earthing #letgo #healingafterdivorce #midlifewomen #letgooffear #play

  • Wonderment

    I was musing on my run today about how in wonderment I was having to stop every so often and marvel at the glory of the outdoors.
    It reminded me about gratitude practice. Allowing myself to feel, see, experience and be present with how beautiful the world around us is, is a powerful mindfulness and gratitude practice tool.
    That for which we have gratitude for INCREASES in our lives…
    There is always something amazing about our world and allowing ourselves to LOOK UP and OUT of ourselves, to get out of whatever mind fuck we find ourselves in, is a way to both practice mindfulness, to practice getting out of our heads and into our hearts, and to see that the more we notice beauty the more there is beauty around us.
    Try it.
    And also try more gratitude practice.
    If and when you are stuck in your mind or are in a dark place. Think of something that you can be grateful for. If you can’t think of anything in the moment, then fake it until you make it. Such as “I am grateful for my breath”, “I am grateful for the earth under my feet, that I am not just careening through space, that I have this huge supportive force under me”.
    As you do this you may get micro bits of space that you can breathe into and grow.
    Practice allowing yourself to be grateful for daily wins, for time spent that feels free, for financial spaciousness wherever possible and watch as those things grow as you focus more on the positive and less in lack.
    Come learn more about yourself and see that the only limits are the ones you make in your mind. Come play and have Ceramony with us under a mountainous full moon in beautiful Taos Ski Valley in July 2021.
    Shed your skin, shed your limits by going more within and finding the limitless possibility that is YOU.


    Sign up now for our Rebirthing in Nature Glamping Retreat in Taos Ski Valley and save $250 by registering now during our early sign up period before April 1st.
    See the link in my Bio and DM me with questions!!

    Come find out. Come to the wild with me!
    https://women-in-transformation.com/product/rebirthing-in-nature-in-taos-july-22-25-2021/

  • Ashes to dust

    Heart

    Still

    Hopeful

    Even

    As

    I

    Grind

    The

    Ashes

    Under

    My

    Boot

  • Fly

    And I guess, she thought,

    I am very grateful.

    For She never knew

    She could love that much,

    and in that way.

    So that as she turned her eyes

    once more toward the horizon

    she realized she’d never look elsewhere

    than her own sweet heart again.

  • Passing

    In the evening

    When friends have gone

    The light is perfect and

    The sun is slung low on the horizon reminding you of another day slipping full of you into the night.

    When will you pick up the phone and tell her you love her, that you miss her or him?

    Because another day is going

    Life is passing

    And love is abundant but rarely makes you laugh so.

    And you’re still breathing

    So what do you have to loose?

  • The Teacher

    Man, woman, child

    Has shown me

    Through trial

    The necessity of

    My one HEART.

    And the need to

    Wrench my eyes away

    From looking out

    To the looking in.

    Inside the holding

    Of my heart space is

    Where God meets me,

    Fills me.

    Where I finally find

    The teacher

    Was light all along.

  • Sweet Ache

    “When the sweet ache of being alive,

    Lodged between who you are

    And who you will be,

    Is awakened,

    Befriend this moment.

    It will guide you.

    Its sweetness is what holds you.

    Its ache is what moves you on.” –Mark Nepo

    I talk a lot with my clients about how most addictions are simply humans looking for an outside answer to an inside problem.

    I’ve had this hole that I’ve always tried to fill with substances, shopping, dating men, adrenaline sports, the glorification of being busy, desire… the list goes on. Anything I can I try to use to fill that void.

    The universe is not having that behavior from me any more and has systematically removed vice by vice from my grip. Until just recently when I am facing what feels like true aloneness, unable to fill this void with food, sex, or dating.

    Still got the sports thank God, but I better be careful and stay in balance with it otherwise I foresee an injury and removal of that outlet too.

    I did ask for this. Since I can remember every wish I wished was simply to be happy. Man has that wish come true! My life is amazing, but with amazing there must sometimes be suffering. (I think the difference now is that I am aware this too shall pass and there is now an underlying ok-ness even in the face of darkness that rarely leaves me now).

    Creator is making me sit in my shit and stew at the moment; it’s a little terrifying. But I’m learning. The practice of transmutation of suffering to light is happening.

    This hole, this woundedness as I’ve come to call it, seems to be the original deep gash dealt when I was a baby (or maybe came into this lifetime with) and that was reinforced as I grew up. It is made up of abandonment, unworthiness, the vision I get when I breathe into the area of my body where I feel the pain well up, in my solar plexus, is that of a baby or small child reaching up to be picked up, screaming for love and not receiving it and that of a little girl being bullied and told she was ugly.

    I am thankful that the therapy modalities I have been studying for the last decade have acquainted me with these parts of myself, over the years I have worked on acknowledging them when I feel suffering related to attachment or abandonment. Recently though I have been fortunate to get really close to these parts and start to begin holding this little girl part of myself when she reaches up for love and holding.

    I have gotten from the inside out on a body and energetic/ emotional level that attachment to outside answers to inside woundeness causes suffering. And it seems giving this little part what no other can give her is the only sane answer, since when ever I let her look to another human for love it causes attachment to outcomes and expectation, and inevitable let down as no one can always live up to those expectations and then: suffering.

    I have gotten some good practice with this lately. I’ve been dating someone who does not live near me and after each interaction I can spend time alone holding myself, providing containment and self love, I can let go of the attachment anew every time I see this person or even after we have conversations.

    To my surprise this does not diminish my caring, in fact when I can adequately take care of myself I feel so free and good that I naturally want to be available to him, to be sweet and good to him.

    I can really see the insanity with which I have been operating in my life thus far previous to having this set of tools to at least TRY to give myself what I so desperately needed without having to demand it from the other. Which is what I always asked partners to do in the past.

    Make me feel you love me, make me feel worthy, make me feel less abandoned.

    It never works, because the original woundedness is still there. Never to be filled by this outside answer.

    (And just FYI, NO ONE is saying I do this perfectly, but the more I love myself the more I realize that I don’t HAVE to fucking do everything perfectly and I am still lovable even if I fuck it up, right?! Right)

    And then when a partner does give love or acceptance, it’s like a bonus. And I can really recive it now. That’s a by product I didn’t realize would happen. Instead of grasping the love and looking for what’s next, I’m able to bathe in it.

    Mark Nepo talks about each of us coming into these existences with a gift and an emptiness. That, part of the aim of living is to find where these two meet.

    I am practicing now falling into the void, into the emptiness. It is scary, terrifying. Logically my brain says to my limbic system that it WILL be ok. There is no actual mortal danger, but my small baby parts equate that void, that emptiness to annihilation or death.

    SO, that is where my gifts come in. My LOVE, my COMPASSION, my CONNECTEDNESS to the DIVINE. By loving these small parts and having compassion through my connection to the divine I am made whole and therefore loveable, truly lovable I hope, to others. And from that place may I be able to truly love others in turn.

    “When we dig a hole or a hole is dug in us, we become preoccupied with all that is unearthed, even try to put all that dirt back, but the empty depth is waiting for us to shine a light in it” –Mark Nepo