After a massage session today, my client commented that she had never had a therapist help her become aware of the tension in her body or how to use her breathing to relax. 

My response was, "really?"

Maybe a session with me is not your typical massage therapy session.  I start out by gently running my hand up your arm to get you comfortable with my touch.  From there we chat a little bit while I begin the massage.  Sometimes we chat a lot if that's what you need.

Usually at some point during the session - it might be right away; it might be later - I suggest a breathing pattern that will take you into deeper relaxation.  If I can still feel your mind racing, I will have you silently recite a mantra while you breathe.

Body Awareness

Almost every client with whom I work cannot tell the difference between relaxation and tension.  I begin teaching you what it feels like to have a relaxed arm, shoulder, leg . . .  In today's session, my client had no idea her arm was tense and her shoulder was up by her ear!  She was used to it! 

Probably the most useful thing I teach during a session is to have an awareness of the tension in your jaw and TMJ area.  It is the first place in your body where mental stress will appear.  If you jawline is tense, your thoughts are tense.  Tension then runs down into your neck, across your shoulders and down into the middle of your back. 

The homework after a massage therapy session with me is usually the same:  1) make big arm movements frequently to get oxygen rich blood pumping through your shoulder girdle to relieve and prevent tension; and 2) B-R-E-A-T-H-E.

I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.
Mahatma Gandhi

We are never lost.  We are always just where we belong by right of consciousness.

Can you trust your internal GPS?  Do you have the courage to return to the highlighted route?  What if you can't find your way?  Do you stop and ask for help or do you just drive faster, cursing the gods for getting you lost?







Photo by Kevygee on Flickr.com.

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Originally published July 2009.

In the book,  Relationships & the Law of Attraction, by Abraham-Hicks publications, it said, “ We attract relationships that cause us pain because we need to affirm our core beliefs about ourselves and we attract the relationships we need to help us grow.”  But what does it mean when we experience pain in a seemingly healthy, loving relationship?  It is within that relationship where we are safe and unconditionally loved that we often experience the most pain as we try to re-enact an old pattern, heal a deeper wound, and begin to mature emotionally.  That relationship becomes the greenhouse that allows our soul to bloom.

It’s safe to be alone and work on ourselves.  We can totally focus on our own personal development and self-growth.  We might feel intermittent loneliness but any deep underlying insecurities may not arise.  Any defenses and old patterns of behavior go into remission because we aren’t triggered by another person.  

 If we do grow, chances are that we will become very attractive.  There’s nothing more attractive than a woman who exudes self-confidence, well-being, and a beauty that can only come from within.  If we’ve progressed very far, we’ll attract a safer, more loving relationship than the last one.  

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.  ~Marcel Proust

Photo courtesy of Olga from Flickr.com

The truth of what is going on inside of us at the core vibrational level always manifests in the physical world.  If we are holding onto grief, we may develop a respiratory infection in our lungs.  If we're refusing to be open-minded, we may develop a stiff neck.  If we have cluttered minds and spiritual closets, we may alo have cluttered homes, offices, or cars.  Our spiritual truth will show up somewhere in our lives.
 

This year my truth showed up in my flower garden.  The photo to the right is how the flower bed is supposed to look.  The truth is that this year, I did not pay attention to it.  Pink primrose took over early in the season nearly choking out the rest of the flowers.  Weeds and crabgrass threatened to take over.  There is no mulch to hold in the moisture.  There's been no fertilizer to feed the tender young plants.  I wasn't paying attention.

It's been much the same with my own energy.  I wasn't paying attention to the weeds of negative thought that were popping up.  I was distracted by pretty things, easy things.  Although I am practiced at a daily routine of self-care, there were certain parts of myself that I failed to nurture, and I was totally distracted by injuring my knee playing soccer.

See the similarities?  Now in July, I have started watering my flowerbed.  The pink primrose have been yanked out by the handfuls.  Each day I go out into the flowerbed to work for a few minutes to stay ahead of the weeds.  It's beginning to turn around.  It's beginning to look like the picture.

Every time I weed the flowerbed I say to myself, "I'm weeding the garden of my mind.  I'm weeding the garden of my heart."

Where is your core energy showing up in your life?  How has it appeared to remind you to pay attention?

* * *

Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.  ~Leonardo da Vinci

* * *

First published July 2009.

This morning I applied Miracle Gro, Shake ‘n Feed to my flowering bushes.  The container for the fertilizer was straightforward - a large green plastic bottle with a spout.  After I removed the cap, I went out to the flower bed, opened the spout, and turned the bottle upside down.  Nothing happened.  Being a slow learner, I flipped the spout back and forth a couple of times and tried to shake the bottle again before I realized, “there must be an inner seal.”

As I was shaking fertilizer around the base of the hydrangea bushes (that I nearly killed from not paying attention), I started thinking about how the directions of the fertilizer were directions for personal development and spiritual growth.

• Remove the inner seal.
• Work into soil.
• Water.
• Reapply in three months.

So it is with spiritual growth and personal development.  All those superficial measures we make in saying affirmations, doing visualizations, and going to workshops will not nurture us until we remove the inner seal to our hearts and souls.   What is our inner seal?  It is the layers of feelings, thoughts, and actions of our defenses that seal us inside ourselves.  It forms a protective barrier within us and around us to protect the core beliefs we have about ourselves and the world around us.  To truly grow and bloom, first we must be willing to remove that inner seal.

Life experiences give us ample opportunity to open our inner seal.  Each painful experience or relationship that feels like it is breaking our hearts is really an invitation to open our hearts, examine ourselves, and to let go of the core beliefs that block our growth.  The key to the outcome of this process is our free will, our perception.  With each experience, we have the choice to either leave our hearts open or to add another layer of defenses to our inner seal.

Even if we do choose to remove the inner seal that blocks us from personal growth, we cannot take actions that are only skin deep.  When we do not diligently tend to the new seeds of thought planted by doing affirmations, reading self-help books, and attending workshops, there will be no lasting benefit.  All the positive energy we receive in those brief encounters is only temporary.  The directions for the fertilizer say, “work into soil, water, and reapply in three months.”  So too must new thoughts, feelings, actions be worked into the soil of our minds and hearts.  We must water them with daily attention and reapply them through persistent practice for sustainable growth.

For me, there is connectedness in all things.  I see spiritual growth and personal development in gardening.  What thoughts and feelings does this bring up for you?  Are you aware of the inner seal  that blocks you from having better relationships and living life on purpose? 

* *

There’s more room in a broken heart.  Carly Simon, Coming Around Again

People v. the State of Illusion is a docu-drama created by former attorney, Austin Vickers, who is now an executive leadership training expert.

The movie is set in a prison and asks the question, "Can people really change?" The drama centers around a person's perception of life and how it effects the events and relationships around him.

Some of my favorite people are also in the movie, Dr. Joe Dispenza and Dr. Candace Pert, who were both in my favorite movie, What the Bleep Do We Know, as well as Thomas Moore, author of the book, Care of the Soul.  The only reason I went to see the movie is because Dr. Joe Dispenza was doing a Q&A after the show. 

What I like about the movie is that it presents some well know concepts in the form of a story to which some people may be attracted.  It is saying the same message that What the Bleep said just with different words; simpler words - we are the creator of our reality.  Our perception shapes our attitudes and our attitudes effect our relationships, our jobs, our successes, our failure . . .

It's not a movie that I was attracted to seeing and my intuition was right.  I didn't like it.  Even though it has the same message that I try to drive home to my clients, it was too dark and cheesy for my taste.  Keep in mind that I'm the person who doesn't watch or listen to anything aggressive or violent.  At dinner after the movie, a friend was commenting that she felt physical anxiety during the film.  "Of course you did," I thought. "It was the energy of the movie."  Another friend loved it and saw it twice. 

So I'm not a good critic or judge of whether People v. the State of Illusion is good or not.  I recommended that some clients watch, What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole, a movie that I love and still watch.  Half of those people didn't like it, most of them didn't understand it and half of them did - all for different reasons.

See!  It's all a matter of perception . . .

Warning - Don't read this book if all you want to do is stay the same.  Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza reads like an owner's manual for your mind and how to change your life. In the first part of the book, Dr. Joe explains the science of how we become addicted to who we are.  He discusses how the environment, our bodies and time condition us into the personalities that we are and that those personalities create our personal reality.   He backs this up by teaching us how three parts of our brain, the neocortex, limbic brain and cerebellum all contribute to memories, knowledge and emotions.

Most importantly, Dr. Joe provides a step-by-step guide to break the bonds of being ourselves.

Dr. Joe like many other great thought leaders of today and yesterday insist that to transcend the mind and body that keep you stuck in career, in your relationships, in your life that you must spend some time tapping into a larger consciousness.  This is done through meditation.   A series of steps are outlined to allow the reader to begin to tap into the subconscious including induction, a progressive technique used in hypnotherapy that leads a person into a deeper state of relaxation.  By following these steps, the reader is able to release negative thinking, doing and being as well a create new ways of being, thinking and doing. 

It's interesting to note that many of the steps in the book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, are similar to the steps of other recovery programs.  Dr. Joe even uses the term 'surrender':

You can't both surrender and try to control the outcome.  Surrender requires that you give up what you think you know from your limited mind, especially your belief about how this problem in your life should be taken care of.  To truly surrender is to let go of the ego's control; trust in an outcome that you haven't thought of yet; and allow this all-knowing, loving intelligence to take over and provide the best solution for you. 

Dr. Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.

I need to write just a few words about diet soda.  Your massage therapist can tell when you drink a lot of it because your body feels like a hard, overblown balloon. 

I don't know what the reason for this is but an over load of salty junk food and an over load of diet soda make your muscles feel hard, not in shape, totally buff hard, but unhealthy hard.

There are other reasons not to drink diet soda - like it may cause cancer, it may cause weight gain, it may cause symptoms similar to MS . . .