Creative Life, Creating Lives

I see that my last post was almost a month ago, and posting once a month is really my ideal minimum. It is interesting to me how long it takes to actually write something on here, even though I think about things to write all the time. There is something about actually sitting down and taking the time to write, seeing my thoughts appear in front of me in text form, that is really scary. This is also the same reason why I believe writing to have incredible power. Natalie Goldberg tells us to dive into our first thoughts, especially if they are scary. Situations of creativity that induce fear because of their uncontrolled and unpredictable nature seem to be a theme for my life, and I mean that with sincere positivity. I believe these are our moments of healing and there's no denying that we need a lot of that. Even though I feel this truth with every essence of my being, I still struggle with the often unconscious fear of really facing myself.

It seems this is what is often in my way of sitting to write (or sitting to meditate) and is probably often also involved with resistance to bodywork. I am saying all this to break through the resistance and share some things I have been thinking.

I am hoping between now and the end of the year to do lots of cleaning and organizing (here's to accountability!). As someone who keeps busy, having an uncluttered space seems to be to only way I can keep it going. And by the looks of it, the business isn't slowing down. Since I have completed my Master's this month, I keep thinking that I now have all this free time. That I am on "winter break." I have come to realize this is an illusion. I am not on a break from anything.

We are at the end of an astrological period called mercury retrograde. I don't know exactly what it means, but it happens a few times a year for a few weeks and is not favorable for making big decisions or starting new projects, but it is great for finishing up old business. We've also just had a pretty powerful winter solstice. I don't know how often we have a full moon on winter solstice, but we did this year. I feel it is an interesting play of light and dark. Winter solstice is the longest night of the year and the full moon is the lightest night of the month. We also had a full lunar eclipse that night; it is almost as if earth momentarily lost the light during its darkest period this year. But the light came back that night, and the days have been longer since. I don't think I can fully comprehend what this all means on an energetic level, but I do think we are in for big changes and I am hopeful.

In light of all this (couldn't help it), I believe my shift is career path is something that is crucial to making the social changes we need to to survive. Generally, I tend to focus my activism on individuals. What I mean by that is I believe it is the changes that we make within ourselves and how that translates into our actions that make the global changes that we are seeking. I also believe our bodies to play a fundamental role in this process, which is why I have had a fascination with learning about bodies.

Lately I have been spending a lot of time learning about female bodies and particularly, pregnancy and birth. Through a series of events over the past two months, I have decided to pursue doula certification.

A doula is a trained labor companion that provides continuous support during the birth process. It is a word of Greek origin that meant a female caretaker. Today it has come to refer to a woman who is experienced in childbirth who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to the mother before, during, and after childbirth. Though I have never experienced childbirth first hand, the training is designed to make me more knowledgable about the process through books, workshops, and most importantly the experiences of attending births.

If someone would have told me six months ago that this is what I would be doing after I graduate, I wouldn't have easliy accepted it. But after a series of events beginning in November, there was almost no question for me. Though it was an easy decision, it will mean some changes in the way I run my business and my life. Being a doula means being on call. Birth does not run on schedule. Baby's come when they are ready, whether the calendar has reached their projected due date or surpassed it. And sometimes the process is long, draining, and scary, which is why the presence of a doula is so important.

The creative act is the same whether it is the creation of a new life or the creation of our lives, because either way it is scary and uncontrollable. I guess that's why I find it so compelling. I am able to recognize that one of my gifts for this life is as a space-holder. This is my role in the treatment room, as a host at open mic, and soon to be also in the birthplace. I constantly find myself in the role of an anchor. Someone who maintains ground while another allows themselves to let go in one way or another. But one thing is for sure, sometimes I need an anchor too.

Affirmative Actions

I have good news. Positive affirmations really work. For real. I have gone through various times in the past few months of writing affirmations in the morning and when I stick with it, the results appear before my eyes. Almost effortless.

I have done affirmations various ways for a while, though not consistently. A few months ago I returned to an affirmation journal I had started in 2007. At the beginning of June this year, there was mostly blank pages in this journal; now it is almost half-full.

When I am practicing affirmations, I fill one page in the journal with the positive statement I am working on. This statement is always written in the present tense ("I have 5 successful paying massage sessions every week"), as if you already have that which you are manifesting. This sentence gets written repeatedly until the page is filled and this is repeated everyday until the sentence becomes true in the present moment.

When I started it took me no more than 5 days to switch from writing that I have 5 sessions per week to 10 sessions per week. The month before I started writing the affirmations, I had 4 sessions per week at the most. The first week of writing the affirmation of having 5 sessions every week I had 7 sessions. I had done no extra advertising and went from having 4 to 7 sessions a week. The affirmations and the intention behind them brought me those sessions. I figured, this is easy, lets go for my long-term goal of seeing 10 people every week. Though never making it to 10 sessions for the week, I fluctuated between 7 and 8 sessions that month. My affirmations lapsed when I left for a week at the end of June and then came back straight into a very intense summer semester.

I didn't return to the affirmations until months later. In August, I had gone down to 5 sessions a week, if that. I know that a big part of that was that I couldn't work that much with such a heavy load of schoolwork. I had just enough work to sustain me and knew I would return back to manifesting more once there was the room for it.

In September, I started back again with affirming 5 sessions a week and by the second week in September I was meeting my quota. Then I decided to try something different. I increased the number to 6 sessions per week. It took a while for the energy to work but I jumped from 5 sessions a week to 8 sessions a week. I was still only increasing the number I was writing by 1, but I was having to catch up with the number of sessions on my schedule. This is all still with no extra advertising. I was really amazed.

In October, I decided to apply this new practice to another challenge I was facing. My affirmation switched to "I am passing my comprehensive exams with ease and enjoyment." This was my last semester of graduate school and I had put off taking my comprehensive exams which basically required me to write three term papers in one week. Even though I felt fairly confident that I will pass (as of now I am still waiting to hear my grade), writing this sentence every morning leading up to and during the exam week I felt more secure and relaxed about the task.

At the end of the week of writing my exam, I was having a casual conversation with a friend of mine who is also in her last semester of a graduate program at UF. She mentioned something about a graduation application. I paused. Apparently the application deadline at UF had passed weeks ago. When I found this information on the USF website I saw that the deadline was also back in September. What a denouement. Here I was at the end of my exam and now I wasn't even sure I could graduate this semester. If I couldn't, I would have to take another class next semester though I would be finished with all my course work; I have to be enrolled to graduate.

On Monday, I contacted the people at the college that I needed to and by mid-week my case was in review by the dean. This revelation of my questionable fate this semester was reflected in my affirmations. In November, my sentence became, "I am graduating with an MA in Religious Studies..." I wrote this one for about a week before I heard back from the graduate office that I had been approved.

The thing with affirmations is that we do not have the capacity to link the outcomes with the act of writing these sentences definitively. But I am surely convinced enough to keep at it. I will admit that I don't write everyday, but let's say 5-6 days out of the week. I do feel the writing everyday builds an energetic momentum. The physical act of writing solidifies the intention. Almost literally. The Universe takes the vision and creates it right in front of you in real form.

Affirmations don't need to be written, or repeated, though repetition surely creates more power. Sometimes I will write affirmations on sticky notes and place them places I will see often. One can also say affirmations out loud, preferably in the mirror.

I recently came across a great demonstration of verbal affirmations. May the cuteness convince you to take a look in a mirror and state your love for life.

Reiki Revolution

A few weekends ago I attended a workshop to become a Level 1 Reiki practitioner. This is something that I had been planning to do since massage school back in 2003 but had yet to pursue this modality. Since this class was the first Reiki class offered by the Institute of Structural Energetic Therapy and I had planned to sign up. My fellow SET therapist and dear friend, Marce, contacted me to say she was attending and this was the motivation I needed to get in my deposit. It turned into a weekend of reconnection and restoration; I hadn't seen Marce since we graduated from the SET Training program in 2008 and our time together combined with the class to create a rejuvenating day.

Reiki is a Japanese form of energy healing. It is used for stress reduction and relaxation and can be incorporated into any bodywork approach, though it is usually performed by a simple "laying on of hands." The practitioner allows the life energy to flow from their hands to the patient's body; this flow can be sensed by heat, cold, pulsing, and vibration. Though we all have access to this energy, we can increase our ability to tap into and direct the energy through "attunements" administered by an upper level Reiki practitioner. It is like we all are radios capable of playing the beautiful melody of life energy (ki, chi, qi), but when we are not tuned to the station all we might be able to play is static. The attunements tune our frequencies to the right vibration. During this training I received my first "attunement," and both facilitated and received a treatment with a partner in the class. We ended the day with group healings (multiple practitioners performing Reiki on a single person) which was nothing short of bliss.

Marce and I both noted an incredible increase in sensitivity in our hands; it was like everything we touched was hot but the heat wasn't coming from the object, it was the sensation of the space between our hands and the object. We gave Reiki to my dogs who all seemed to enjoy it. My black lab had been bullied by our recent chihuahua-pompillion addition who would bark at her ferociously, while she cowered in silence. Marce and I gave Gracie, the black lab, so Reiki on her throat and she's been much more vocal ever since.

The next morning, Marce told me that she had a revelation. She was thinking about how amazing this technique was, in it's ease of administration and accessibility to all, that she wondered why more people are not "attuned." We started to fantasize about eventually doing mass attunements. One of the neat things about Reiki is that it can do no harm. In some cases it may not change a condition, but when it does it is only for the better. We started to imagine a world where everyone is attuned and able to conduct life energy more efficiently than we already do. We both felt like it shifted our relationships with our bodies, the space around us and our consciousness. It is these shifts that the world needs. A reiki revolution.

Will to Wellness

I don't fix people, but some clients might think so. What they don't know is that it is their bodies will to wellness that made them feel better. I am just a representative of this self-sustaining quality that they already have within them.

One of my top goals in my sessions is to restore the faith in the client that they can do what is good for themselves, by themselves. Many of the people who come to me are in pain, often to the point of being limited performing their day-to-day activities or hobbies. This usually means that any wellness or workout agenda they may have previously adhered to is cut short or out completely. Though I don't recommend a heavy workout after a body work session, I do suggest my clients to move around some, be it walking, stretching, swimming, dancing. Anything that gets us moving allows our bodies to speak to us at a time when we are most likely to listen. It is this that really helps people get better.

Though this topic comes up frequently for me, I started to think about it while working on a client this weekend. This client has decided to see me once a month. In an ideal world, I would recommend someone with a condition like her's to see me once a week until range of motion is restored and pain diminished. But many clients don't have the time or resources for such a commitment. This client has shown me that a willingness to get better overrides any ideal treatment schedule.

She started to see me four months ago after a workout related injury that has restricted her range of motion in her shoulder, making it difficult to even put on her bra. At her second session, I was ecstatic to hear what a lasting difference our initial session four weeks prior had made in her condition. The restrictions were still there but there were improvements, which has been the report the two sessions since.

This weekend when she walked in she told me two things: "I am so ready for you," and "My life is coming back." Taken together, these statements embody what I mean by a will to wellness. When this woman lays on my table she is turning her body over to me, trusting me to do the best that I know how to for her. She may not completely understand the technique or theory behind the work (SET) but for her this does not matter. She has felt her body change since the first time she came in and she has the faith that she will get better.

The faith is the crucial part. In saying that her life is coming back, she was expressing the joy in being able to return back to gardening, which she hasn't been able to do since the injury. Even though she was extra sore from having recently dug up a new bed, she was happy to have returned back to her yard. She sees her life coming back to her and that is what's bringing it back. My work is helping in this process but it not the force behind the process. She is.

Making the appointment for a first session is a step towards enacting on our will to wellness. By showing up for a session we are saying that we know we can get better and are willing to give ourselves what we need to do so.

As I say to may clients, "I want you to get better in between sessions not because of the work we do, but because you are able to return back to what you do for yourself - this is what makes you better."

Responsive, Bodily

Lately I have been thinking about how being in a body is a big responsibility. What is intriguing for me is that this didn’t come up regularly in my consciousness until I was sick several times during the first part of this year. Though this isn't necessarily a new idea for me, it is not something I am always considering as I move through my day.

Humans have the tendency to get so caught up in our social world, whether that means focusing on a career, friendships, family, or hobbies, and we forget about paying attention to the physical world that we live in all the time: our bodies. The truth is we can’t experience anything else without it.

And when I really think about it, this body-suit requires a lot of maintenance to function at an optimal level. Eating healthy, exercise, and rest can take up a good portion of our day, not to mention all the time it takes just to figure out exactly what our body needs. But most of us don’t have as much time to devote adequate attention to these tasks. The flip side is that without this attention eventually something breaks down or becomes inefficient.

This is what I was thinking about a few months ago while I was lying on the couch just trying to get comfortable in my body again while some respiratory bug worked its way through my system. I never think about how great it is to breathe until even that simple act is painful and evokes a deep cough every time I inhale.

I thought again about my body responsibility this week when I was getting ready to leave the house. Lately, I have been focusing more on being mindful, being fully present in whatever I am doing. This is an ongoing practice but it can make any menial task go smoothly and even become more fun. As I started to brush my teeth and become mindful in just brushing my teeth, I couldn’t help but acknowledge the importance of such a task. Though I may repeat this same practice several times every day, each time is equally significant. So the responsibility of being in a body appeared again in my mind, and I realized again that this is really the only responsibility we have in this world.

The theme for me the past few weeks has been to let go of the responsibilities I have taken on over the past few years that I can no longer give myself to 100%. It has been difficult to say no to some of these activities, because I genuinely care about the projects and the people involved. But spreading myself too thin is what does not allow me to take care of the needs of my body, and thus I get sick and that becomes the only things I can do. When we are sick, we can't do much else but whatever it takes to get better.

So I started to think about the word responsibility. I have heard it put this way several times, that the word really means “the ability to respond.” For example, I have the responsibility to take care of my dog. This means I need to be available to respond to his needs as soon as possible. If it’s time for breakfast, he needs to be fed. If he is dirty, then it is time for a bath. If he gets ill, I have to take out the time from my day to get him what he needs. Having this responsibility of the dog, means I need room in my life to be able to respond to his needs.

So when my life is too full to allow me the ability to respond to my body’s needs, then something has got to go. For me this has meant creating time to walk the dog, do yoga, make my own healthy food, and keep the house clean (because I have noticed that when my living space isn’t comfortable to be in, neither is my body).

Our bodies’ needs will vary from person to person and even during the same person’s lifetime. But part of this journey is learning what those needs are and whether or not we have it in us to meet those needs. I believe that those who listen to and meet their needs are the ones on this planet who are truly happy. And I will say that lately, I have been more happy.

Write Now!

It has been too long. Having kept (or attempted to keep) a journal for as long as I have, I will admit that I have written this opening line many times. It used to be that if it had been long enough between entries, I would give up on that journal all together and start a new one. There is something clean about continuity. But this is about life and even the most disciplined life is still messy.

As someone who is building a career with writing, it is worth reflecting on this process of not writing and why this happens. What has kept me from writing? The first observation I can make when I pose this question to myself is all of the “not enoughs” that emerge: there is not enough to write about, there is not enough time, not the right topic for this format, etc. So now that I can identify these walls, I can determine how to scale them. The truth is that I am responsible for making time and being inspired by my daily life to know that the only shortage occurs when I reach a wall and I walk away.

Whenever I have taught a writing workshop, I have always begun at the same place. Natalie Goldberg talks about this idea of “First Thoughts” in her book Writing Down the Bones. She gives 6 guidelines for a writing practice. These need not to apply only to aspiring writers; I believe these guidelines are useful for anyone who desires to be in touch with their inner selves. You may write about a certain topic or just submit to the utter randomness that will escape your pen. In fact, that’s really the point. When we write without a sense of attachment or judgement, we are surprised or even startled when we get to the end. Try it.

1. Keep your hand moving. (Don’t pause to reread the line you have just written.)
2. Don’t cross out. (Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.)
3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care above staying within the margins and lines of the page.)
4. Lose control.
5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
6. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it.)

The idea is to just get the thoughts out before we even have a chance to stop it. This is the basis for a writing practice. I will say that when I am actively engaging in a first thoughts exercise, even just a few times a week, I am writing more in general. I think of this exercise as draining our brains of unwanted clutter. This may not be the intention with the last guideline, “Go for the jugular,” but I like to think of it as so. the jugular brings used deoxygenated blood (old ideas) from the brain to the heart. Our arms, and hands by association, are extensions of the heart so when we write it is as if we are bringing those ideas out into the world via our pen. And just like when any blood is released from our body it is red, those ideas, once in the light, always seem brighter than when they did just collecting dust in our head.

So, it is Spring. I think this mind of mine needs some good cleaning.