Between worlds… and learning what it means to me

Posted in New Age, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

A month or so ago I had a partial epiphany moment — one of those AHA’s where it feels like a giant leap and then you wonder if you really understand what it means.  During a Steve Nobel meditation in which he talked about our current transition into 5D and how everything moves faster and easier there, I suddenly realized I’ve operated from that level occasionally for a long time, but a lot of teachings and beliefs around me have kept me doubting my experiences.

Many spiritual teachers –including some friends of mine– have deep beliefs about the need to “do something”.  Doing, for them, is never about prayers or visualizing or holding a space; instead it is about action and plans and, in many cases, some sure-fire series of steps you must take.  According to them you can’t manifest anything without completing such a program.

Now in my experience, every great manifestation story I have to tell involves no planning, not taking steps, and doing nothing but visualizing and/or creating affirmations concerning my goal.  Sometimes no more than a passing thought holding a strong desire.

One of my best stories goes back to my first years out of law school, when I’d moved back to Chicago (where my school wasn’t known well and I didn’t have legal connections) and wound up working a series of temp law gigs and volunteering for a legal nonprofit.  Another temp job was about to end and I started affirming that the perfect permanent job for me would show up.  Within a couple of weeks a place with which I’d interviewed a year before found me at my latest job (not where I’d been working when interviewed), set up another interview and hired me.

All the wisdom about getting such a job said I needed to send a new resume and then follow up with a phone call and possibly also put out feelers through mutual acquaintances.  I did NONE of those things (although I was in process of updating the resume).  I actually got a job as a lawyer with the Governor’s Office by saying an affirmation and assuming it would come true (and probably being at least a little impressive the first time I interviewed 🙂 ).

The most amazingly impossible tale involves my left leg, twisted from knee to ankle since birth.  While composing a “treasure map” (similar to the current vision board idea), I saw a photo of an athlete with strong straight legs and, wondering if that could happen, added it to the map.  I said an affirmation about straight, healthy legs and forgot about it.

Some months later at a workshop on channeling, a fellow who’d come to learn how to use his newly-awakened healing abilities “saw” the pattern underneath and started doing hands-on healing on my leg every day. At the end of the week my leg suddenly jerked and snapped and the tibia moved into place.

No plan, in a world that still would say the straightened leg was impossible to do without a plan and the plan would have to include surgery.  But there wasn’t a plan or a doctor or surgery and voila straight leg.

In spite of these and other successes, I lacked confidence and felt pressured by the “make a plan” people, so I worried I was doing it wrong.  All those programs where you have to sit down and make a list and create a scheme, etc. make my stomach tighten and my eyes roll back in my head, but the “must do” crowd had me convinced this was a flaw in me.

Trying to do it “right”, I’ve tried the plotting and planning method.  It really isn’t how I operate so it’s always uncomfortable and pretty much always leads to… nothing… and going nowhere…  With my understanding about energy and how it works growing exponentially in recent years I was ripe to hear a message about 5D, where you have a thought and it comes to be.

Ding!  Flashes of my past successes (it’s a pretty long list) danced through my head and I knew I’d long been able to operate from that place.  I just didn’t trust my own abilities and instincts enough to believe.  A short step brought me to memories from 18 or so years ago when I studied for a few years with a Hopi elder.

After a talk on “borderland people” one day, she pulled me aside and asked if I knew I was a borderland person.  Having recognized myself in most of her description, I nodded enthusiastically, happy to explain some mysterious aspects of myself with this concept.  Borderland people, you see, stand with a foot in both worlds:  one foot in this world, one foot in the spirit or dream world.

Although “the 5D” and “spirit” worlds are often discussed in separate places and as if the concepts are not the same, I’m seeing them as the same idea described with different words.  And understanding that I jumped ahead into operating from a more 5D place a long time ago.  Now I’m wondering if those authoritative people with the plans might understand less than I do instead of more?  [I do think the plans often work for those who believe in plans; not because of the  plan but because of the belief in it.]

I’ve known since I was fairly young that I often march to a different drummer but until now that has been both a badge of honor and a source of great struggle and doubt.  On this spiritual path I’ve grown ever more out of step with the mainstream.  I’m seeing there are many teachers on this path who are still so influenced by 3D thinking, their teaching is out of step for me; no more thinking the problem is with me.

I don’t mean to sound arrogant or superior.  I make no claim to have achieved enlightenment or to have reached some perfected state of Higher Consciousness or even that I spend a significant portion of my time in “5D”.  But something shifted with these realizations and I understand more of who I am, how I operate and what it means to be a borderland person.  Instead of anticipating the arrival of 5D with trepidation for the unknown, I am instead excited about moving into a time when I feel more comfortable because the world has shifted into a mode in which I fit.

I’m still exploring how I feel in this new paradigm for me and what all the stuff about 5D means…. you know, since we haven’t completed the transition and can only speculate about a dimension we’ve not actively experienced.  But I feel myself shifting into a new space as I accept operating on a different plane and with a different set of beliefs about how the world works…

Transition? Limbo?

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

Lately, besides the usual sluggishness from muscles, headaches, unwinding, etc. I feel like I’m swirling through some kind of transition.  Lots of articles inform me that many of us are experiencing symptoms from ringing ears to sleeplessness to sleeping too much to colds…  Since much of that is part of my norm, I can’t always tell 🙂

Whether it’s another phase of the long healing process or part of some larger transition of energies in the universe, I have been feeling pretty out of it and kind of floating in limbo.  Most days if I try to work on a post I just feel like I don’t really know what to say and that some elusive truth will soon be revealed but now is not the time.

Every now and then in the midst of the floating and coping with symptoms, an epiphany has arisen and in the past few days I’ve hit two of those moments.  The first has to do with me holding a vision of the future.  I’ve been doing it for a long time but, given the long, long-term health issues, there has been a problem for me in seeing myself in the vision as a healthy, energetic person.  It’s been so long, I literally have trouble remembering what it feels like.

But the other day I brought the vision to mind and suddenly, like a cool breeze blew through and changed everything, I saw myself in that future life, healthy.  And finally it seemed real that I could step into a future in which I live my vision and live it as a person of vitality and good health.

Then I started doing some genealogy research again and, after unsuccessfully working on a puzzle regarding my Lightfoot ancestors from Virginia, I started thinking about some of my amazing finds in this effort to fill in my family tree.

For some time I’ve been receiving advice from different directions about calling on my ancestors for help.  As I’ve unearthed a lot of issues I inherited from my ancestors, I’ve been reluctant to do that.  Doing Steve Nobel’s meditation on releasing ancestral issues periodically has really helped.

As I sat there running over the Lightfoots and many other previously-unknown names I’ve uncovered, I suddenly felt this softness come over me and a certainty that they could and would help and I called upon all my ancestors to help me finish untangling these long-held family threads.  Then felt them fill the room with their loving energy.

I don’t know where all this leads but as I sit here with muscles tugging, ears ringing and energy buzzing through me, I feel the winds of change …  again…

Across the Universe. All You Need is Love

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As always Louise put it beautifully

Louise Gallagher's avatarDare Boldly

I read the news today. Oh Boy.

This morning, after reading the news about a Neo-Nazis group in the US, a holocaust denial article published on a Calgary muslim website and a story about fentanyl deaths in British Columia, I felt angry. Confused. Upset.

Really? What are we thinking? How can one Neo-Nazi group be responsible for 5 murders in the US in the last 8 months? How can young men be joining Neo-Nazi groups, waving Swatsika’s and raising arms, killing their girlfriend’s parents because they convinced her to break up with him because of his neo-nazi leanings? How is it that 4 of 5 fentanyl deaths in BC are men, mostly young, mostly alone at home?

We can do better.

And I use the ‘we’ on purpose.

It is not ‘them’ doing this to themselves, or to ‘us’. It is all of us. We are all on this earth…

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A little vision update

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal, Uncategorized by

It’s been a long time since I mentioned much about the impact of the changes in my muscles on my eyesight.  Long ago I wrote a post about the late vision therapist Dr. Harry Sirota’s theories about emotions creating tight muscles that cause near-sightedness (and so much more).  At that time I was chronicling some improvements in my eyesight as the muscles unwound.

Eventually I realized the improvement was entirely in my right eye, which came as no surprise as the tight stuff is far worse on the left side and my left eye has been so cemented in tight and intertwined muscles I’ve had a notion it’s going to be the last piece to unwind.  The muscles on the left side have been holding a lot of stuff on the right side in tightness, etc. so I eventually hit a plateau where the right eye quit improving and nothing seemed to happen to my left eye.  Which is why I haven’t written about my vision in a while…

In the last couple of months a lot of the unwinding has been deep behind my eyes and suddenly today I realized my right eye has improved some more and … ta da ta da… the left eye is better too!!!  Not done… both sides have more to do, but I love these moments when the improvement is tangible.

Exploring mindfulness

Posted in Meditation, Personal, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

 

Lately I’ve been noticing that “mindfulness” seems to be everywhere these days –including mainstream news.  As the term is bandied about I’m often surprised by where I’m seeing it or who is talking about it, but as I look at much of what is being said, I question how well many people really understand mindfulness.

In many places I see people speaking of it as if it’s only about controlling your mind as an act of will. To me mindfulness is so much more, I feel a little sad every time I see someone settle for such a narrow idea — or for the particularly American tendency to want to control everything, including the mind.

After sitting with a vipassana group for a year I began seeing how many forms of practice there are in which you can quiet your mind into a single focus and achieve more mindfulness:  yoga practiced with breath, or yoga nidra when followed with focus, or chanting when concentrating on the words of the chant,or pranayama while noting only the breath, etc.  To me the point is using practice to learn how it feels to be in the moment in a state of “empty mind” and peacefulness.

When you keep practicing, your mind starts learning to stay more quiet all the time, the state of calm begins to expand throughout your life, and your whole perspective shifts.  It’s so much more than just wrestling my thoughts into submission in a given moment.

When I complete a practice I’m in a space or a zone that has its own feeling tone.  I feel it in my heart.  I feel the calm throughout my body.  I feel in tune with something larger than myself.  Tapped into the Universe.

To me, mindfulness is more about surrender than controlling or willing anything.  In emptying my mind and flowing with the chant or pose or breath or silence, I let go of managing and fall into what Wayne Dyer called “the gap”.  Over time I also learned surrender involves letting the practices take me wherever they lead.

Plans have gone awry and life has unfolded in ways that would never have crossed my mind if I’d kept trying to follow a blueprint designed long ago.  Sometimes it’s uncomfortable.  Sometimes it’s scary.  I wouldn’t change any of it.  I like the person I’m becoming.  The change from being mercurial to finding equanimity, from neurotic to peaceful, from anxious to calm…

The quiet mind achieved in mindfulness practices doesn’t involve controlling thoughts.  It’s a space encompassing the moment and peace and higher consciousness.  With practice the space begins to fill life more and more with presence in the moment.  From that place of presence, you can choose to hold onto a thought or let it go.

But you don’t learn true mindfulness if you just try to force your mind regularly to moments when you pick different thoughts.  You’re missing so much if you don’t let yourself be taken to the place where mindfulness is a way of being present, calm, connected and new.

New Year Challenge: the positive view

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Louise Hay Affirmation

In surprising ways the unfortunate outcome of the 2016 U.S. election wound up leading me to a transformational year in 2017.  One change arose from the outpouring of vitriol that started appearing on social media.  The constant dire warnings, fake news reports and generally combative tone that filled my Facebook wall led me to turn in the other direction.  I began looking for positive news every day and after a while it changed me.

When people write or speak about the terrible problems of the world today, I now just think, “you’re not looking in the right places if you think that represents the majority of the world.”  Seriously.  The media has chosen to emphasize things that frighten people and it suits the powers that be because the fear helps them collect funds for military, police, etc. and to distract people from the real causes of problems by giving them “others” to point the finger at.

We pay a price for the focus offered by our leaders and the media.  It shapes our world view and keeps us from seeing or acknowledging the multitudes of good people and good events that happen all around us.  Julia Bacha discussed this brilliantly in this short piece:

I started hunting around and found The Good News Network, the Positive News Network, the Huffington Post’s good news section, and SunnySkyz.com, to name a few, where I can find stories of heroism, altruism, innovation, environmental turn-arounds, etc. on a daily basis.  I also found groups working for peace and compassion, people promoting compassionate discourse, etc.

After months of looking for good news every day (along with a lot of chanting and meditating), I suddenly realized I could look at the mainstream news and just shrug because I no longer believed it represented a true picture of the world.  My whole outlook has been shifting and the more I seek and find amazing stories of kindness, heroism, ingenuity, etc., the more I believe the world is filled with more good than we let ourselves see.

So my challenge to you for 2018 is:  Look for the good.  Every day, find a story that uplifts or inspires you.  Check out the We Are the World blogfest, for which people post positive stories from around the world every month, as well as the above links to find great stuff.  Search for groups and/or organizations that are working for peace or to help people.

Then I invite you to write about how it has affected you personally to explore the positive side every day.  Sign up here for a month in which you would like to post and when your month arrives, put up your post, link to this post, tag it 2018PositivityChallenge and link to the next person on the list.

I’m starting it off with Feb. 20 to give the first person time enough to search for positive stories and see how it affects him or her.

Feb. 20, 2018

Mar. 20

April 20

May 20

June 20

July 20

August 20

September 20

October 20

December 20

January 20, 2019

Let me know in the comments if you want a particular date.

Over Christmas?

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For some years now my mother and I look at one another periodically through the holiday season and declare, “I have no Christmas spirit at all.”  I’m not sure why I lost my Christmas mojo other than too many years of less than no energy and a dwindling budget though I have a feeling the energy transition occurring now is part of it.  I can’t even decide if I care, if I’m numb or, more likely, if I’m just in a space where the hoorah of it all doesn’t matter to me any more.

I used to get excited.  I’d shop for a tree after Thanksgiving, decorate it and the house and enjoy every minute.  I also spent much of my adult life living away from my parents (both when together and later singly) and traveling at Christmas, so there was a big trip to add some excitement, which often meant also seeing other family members or old friends.

Since I am an only child and never married, there haven’t been children or grandchildren to enjoy the holidays.  When my mother first moved back here and I visited, there were lots of friends and family who gave parties at Christmas and we’d hop from one event to another.  Then, when I moved here, I added a few annual parties given by friends of mine.  Mom’s friends and many of the relatives have died or grown too old to throw parties and my groups have kind of given up, so no big festivities to attend.

Aside from watching too many Hallmark movies, I’ve developed a tradition of attending a candle lighting service at a local “center for spiritual living”, a non-denominational “church”, with a friend of mine.   It’s always very moving and filled with love but otherwise Christmas just seems like a slog of buying and trips to the post office.

I managed to create a nice breakfast casserole and then a nice dinner for the day so my mother and I had a couple of special meals.  But my father lives far away and I worry about him, always alone.  This time he had a Christmas dinner invitation so that was a cause for joy for me.

At this point I mostly feel relief that we’re past another one.  All the decorations and hype make me feel like I “should” be experiencing some some sort of gaiety or euphoria for the season but I just don’t care that much about it any more.  I can’t even quite decide if I want to try to find the “Christmas spirit” again or if I prefer to just let it go…

I’ve been reading some channeled posts telling me that letting go of Christmas as we’ve known it is part of the move forward into the new  world/age.  So I’m curious whether this feeling of being kind of removed from Christmas is something others are experiencing or whether I’m just turning into Scrooge 🙂 ?

Book News

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Three pieces of news on books to report:  new updates on two of mine and a free e-book on compassion.

I decided a few weeks ago that a revision and update was overdue for my little relationship booklet, Relating Heart to Heart.  It has some new material, including a little suggested reading list, and a new price point of $.99!

Exciting news from Barbara Franken at Me, My Magnificent Self, where she has completed a compilation of guest posts on compassion from this year.  The free e-book is called What is Compassion.  Click on the book photo below to go to the download page.

freeebook-Compassion

 

Finally, for anyone who knows a Wizard101 player, I did a massive edit, revision and update to my guide book to Wizard101 earlier this year.   It’s the most comprehensive guide to the game for players at levels 1-50 available and at only $2.99 on Kindle, it’s a bargain.  Click on photo to be taken to the Amazon page.

 

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The Blessed Project 2017

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Susie at Susie Lindau’s Wild Ride has invited us all to create a post about our blessings and link to her post by Dec. 19.  Since I’ve been practicing gratitude and noting blessings, seems like a perfect project.

 

Another view from my spot

The last couple of years I began making a concerted effort to spend more time on our sun porch.  I love lots of light and our tree-surrounded house tends to be on the dark side except for the sun porch which not only has lots of windows and skylights but is blessedly the only area not shadowed by a big tree.

This year I managed to be really faithful about setting up for an hour or three of computer and/or reading and/or writing time out there most days and the light and airiness have really been a blessing!  Lifts my spirits and keeps the positive mojo working.

Ever since last year’s (U.S.) election, I’ve been focused on living from a place of lovingkindness and compassion.  I’ve been blessed to have learned many great tools for such a journey over many years and from some great teachers.  A number of teachers made videos and books available for free this year and I purchased some books that have helped as well.

As a long-time fan of Sharon Salzberg’s Lovingkindness:  The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, I was pleased to add Real Love.  Louise Hay offered me a book on mirror work and I meditated with Deepak and Oprah too.  Blessings all.

Coffee Love

When the coffee revolution began in the 70’s, some of my college friends pulled me into the world of fine coffees. Honed over the years as I lived in the land of the original (and far better) Starbucks and was privileged to spend time hanging out in cafes in Europe, my taste is pretty picky and I LOVE a great cup of coffee.  I’m able to order really good coffee from La Coppa (founder originally worked for Peet’s and then founded San Francisco’s Spinelli’s –which I loved when I lived there) and my daily pot of espresso is one of my most treasured moments every day.

After seeing Paul Hawken on Charlie Rose (not a blessing, btw, to have lost the pleasure of watching his show…), I got his wonderful book, Drawdown, which outlines the path to ending the climate crisis and, most important, argues that the seeds have already been sown.  I found it so uplifting and encouraging, I recommend everyone to read it.  Truly a blessing.

For some years I’ve talked about heading to Henry’s Clay’s estate, Ashland, to take a walk once in a while.  This year I finally made it something like 4 times (hey, better than the 0-1 times previously 🙂 ).  Childhood memories link me to the place and my love of history finds satisfaction in walking the lovely grounds of this historic place.  Blessed that it’s so close to me and each walk was its own blessing.

L Perfume

One of last year’s Christmas presents was this little perfume with a prominent scent of tobacco.  I wrote a longer post about it,  but the short version is:  it reminds me of driving around Lexington in my childhood at certain times when tobacco dried in lots of barns and the sweet scent filled the air.

Blessed healing journey

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

Sunset2 Dec 3 2017

A couple of friends recently commented on my ability to tune into patterns opening in my body.  It’s always nice to hear, but initially I didn’t give it much thought.  Last night, however, I was reflecting on this long healing process in light of their thoughts and noticed how I’ve mostly considered it and written about it as torture.  Now, I often look for the up side and I’ve written posts indicating some positive thoughts, but over all I must admit the general misery and discomfort of unwinding muscles and sleepless nights for the most part fill my focus.

Suddenly I could see more blessing in it.  Not only that the process has forced me to pay more attention to my body than I ever would have given it.  Not only that I have been able to mark progress on many fronts even while many people don’t quite believe healing in this form is happening.  But also a blessing because I seem to be on a very unusual path in this whole unwinding/healing muscle thing and I’m seeing that I’m in the privileged position of being a path finder.

When I first began complaining of fatigue and issues with my muscles, western medicine was swearing up one side and down the other that neither chronic fatigue nor fibromyalgia existed so their diagnosis was that I should see a shrink.  Period.  Alternative practitioners began providing answers and naming the two major issues they found [fyi: when western medicine acknowledged fibromyalgia they also defined it so my symptoms didn’t seem to fit although alternative therapists have often felt my muscles and said I have it…].

According to my first serious therapeutic massage specialist every muscle in my body was wound up like a steel cord, all the muscles in every muscle group were glued together and the groups were also glued to my bones.  Eventually, after many of the larger and surface muscles were in much better shape and most unstuck from the bones, another practitioner saw and helped me realize the underlying intertwining and complex patterns remaining in the smaller and connective muscles.

I’ve been at it for three decades. Some practitioners have been dismissive of what has gone before because they felt it should have all been resolved quickly – and then they failed to resolve it.  I had to accept a long time ago that my muscles were in trouble at a level that was way beyond most practitioners and too complicated to resolve speedily.

It has taken many types of body work, inventing my own exercise program (combining the Psychophysical Method with yoga), emotional release work, past life work, ancestral healing work and more to reach a point where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel pretty brightly.  The process has taken me deep within, led to multiple transformative experiences, taught me a huge amount about how we hold onto the past – not only our own but our past life and ancestral pasts as well – and changed the trajectory of my life dramatically and overall I would say for the better.

After a few decades of being told by one practitioner after another  they’ve never seen this, that, or the other thing as bad as my… psoas, neck, hip, whatever, I know most people don’t have physical issues of the same magnitude.  I also know from learning to move and to observe how others move, that millions of people walk around with tight muscle patterns interfering with their movement, their ability to process emotions, their capacity to feel energy, etc.  And I feel as though talking about my journey and process might help some of those people to open some channels and pathways for their own lives to receive more healing.  In fact, I hear every now and then from someone who says it has helped them take better care; what a great feeling.

As I survey this history, I feel this glow of blessing.  For once, instead of viewing it only as a burden I have unfairly had to bear, I can see the Universe entrusted me with an unusual but important journey and what a gift it is that I have been able to explore all these nuances and share my experience.  Which is not to say I won’t be back whining about my uncomfortable muscles or being kept up all night 😊  But more than ever I also feel gratitude for being sent on this journey of healing.

We Are the World Blogfest Nov 2017

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We are the world logo

I love this story, which seems perfect for a We Are the World entry.  A group called Thirdage that started primarily to offer assistance to seniors noticed an influx of immigrants and their isolation and set up a program for seniors to teach language classes for the immigrants.  Simple and brilliant.  Check out the story at The Positive News site.

This month’s blogfest is co-hosted by:

Sylvia Stein, Susan Scott, Inderpreet Uppal, Shilpa Garg, Andrea Michaels and Damyanti Biswas.

The long haul

Posted in Healing Journey, muscles, Personal, Uncategorized, Wellness by

Screaming it out

I was hunting around today for a post I apparently never wrote, trolling through the first couple of years of blogging.  Looking back always seems to be a big reminder of how incredibly long the muscle problems and the crazy unwinding face/head muscles thing has been going on.  I feel a bit ridiculous because I see myself always expressing the hope that the healing is just about complete.   And incredulous I could have spent this many years, so much money, so many hours of my time on healing my muscles — and it still isn’t over.  So, spoiler alert, I’m whiny…

I’ve mainly only “talked” about the unwinding head portion here.  To those who’ve followed for years even that story probably seems long …  and the unwinding actually started about 7 years before the blog.  The head piece was just the final puzzle to solve in a much longer quest for healthy muscles that started in the mid-80s.  The tightness and pain, etc. that led to the quest had been present for years before I started realizing I had to do something.  By the time someone noticed the muscles in my face and head were blocking the final stage of healing the muscles in my body, most of the major muscles in my body were actually in pretty good shape; you know, except the ones being held in twisted patterns by my head.

For the last several years I have felt more debilitated by all this than at any point before — even when far less healthy I was better able to function.  Something about this head thing — and maybe the weariness of how very many years it has taken — has just been too much.

Today I postponed yet another outing I’d looked forward to because I was awake all night with my face being yanked.  [See here for a little video displaying what you can see of the process from the outside.]  Because I haven’t been able to contribute (compounded by stockmarket issues and bad management), my mother and I are facing some very tough decisions about our future.  I don’t get how I landed here…  And it just feels like too much.

Thanks for listening.  I’m sure I’ll meditate and do yoga and restore balance yet again…

 

The Sense-sational Challenge: sensing the physical

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal, Uncategorized, Wellness by

Linda over at litebeing chronicles issued a challenge for this month, to write about our senses and the joy they bring.  I actually put up a post a few days ago on scent and realized too late I could have saved it for this.  In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about the senses and segueing into thinking about my healing journey and how it has helped me to “sense” into my body more minutely than ever before.

And I started thinking about how numb most Americans are to their bodies and how interesting it is that it takes a kind of “sensing” to be aware of your body and what it needs and yet we don’t have a “sense” for that added to the usual list of five, nor a word for it.  It has me thinking we SHOULD figure out a name to call it and then promote using it.

In fact, in the long slog of healing my muscles, one of the blessings has been the growing great awareness of my physical being.  As I hung around thinking about the senses during a week when I’d thrown off my wrist, arm and shoulder by overdoing it with holding a mouse and scrolling on my phone, realized how important it is to be able to tune in to our bodies.  Long ago I’d have been in pain for days without realizing what caused it or doing anything about it.

I quickly realized what I was doing that had thrown the muscles and ligaments in my wrist so far out of whack, then started doing my triggers of release work to ease out the pattern in the muscles and started wearing a wrist brace when I’m dong a bunch of research on the laptop or phone.  But the sense of my body is so much more than just registering what’s wrong.

As my healing as progressed, I can feel a tingle in my body when I eat something good for it.  I’m hyper aware of how much all the sleep deprivation of recent years has impacted my ability to function and how much it helps to sleep when I can.  Years of practicing the triggers of release and yoga have loosened my spine and hips so when I walk I’m aware of an undulating, flowing movement when I’m relaxed.  If I walk more stiffly, without that flow, I’ll soon have pain in my lower back.

Awareness has brought such a heightened sense of my physical being and the importance of taking care of it.  I’m having trouble finding the words to describe how much difference it has made to keep growing my awareness of my body and how it feels and what helps it, etc.  Sensing into my body, noting anything that seems sore or out of balance, etc. has become a regular part of my life.

Healing my body has been so tied to healing my emotional issues and to opening my connection to my divine being, I wish I could convey to people how much it would change their lives to know their bodies, to “feel” their bodies and to keep them in good health.

So I think we should figure out a word for the “sense” of our own bodies.  Something conveying an ability to tune in and “know” what’s going on just as clearly as we “see”, “hear”, “feel”, “smell” or “taste” and identify  aspects of our world and our lives by using them.

Next challenge post will be here.

Scent and memory

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A few years ago a new Soft Surroundings catalog introduced a new scent, “L”.  I love sampling scents and I’ve really liked some of theirs, so I rubbed the back of my hand and inhaled.  The main scent I caught seemed so odd, I grabbed the catalog to read the list of included scents.  Nope, I called it.  Tobacco.

I loved the whole scent, so I bought a “rollerball”.  At first when I wore it and caught whiffs of the tobacco, I’d remember back to my dad’s pipe-smoking days and how much I liked the scent of tobacco when he opened a pouch and got ready to fill his pipe.  Not the smell of smoke after he lit it, the scent of the tobacco.

Recently I realized, though, there’s a deeper memory associated with the perfume.  Lexington used to have lots of tobacco barns where they dried tobacco.  When you drove past certain parts of town, the sweet smell of drying leaves wafted through the air.  During my summer visits, we’d pass through areas where the aroma filled the air and I loved every breath.

If you’ve never been in tobacco country and the only smell you associate is the smell of cigarette or cigar smoke, you probably can’t imagine the lovely, sweet smell of drying tobacco.  For many reasons, it isn’t a scent I ever catch in the breeze here now.

Lexington has changed from a small, sweet, mostly-Southern city to a mid-size metropolis in which the charm and gentle nature it once held are largely lost.  Sometimes in the historic center, where my aunt and grandmother lived for many years, or in a ride out country roads where much remains the same, I catch the feeling I loved when I spent my childhood summers here.

I try to live in the now, but I have my moments of nostalgia or longing for lost places of childhood.  Mostly it’s gone, that Lexington I adored.  And I miss the sweet tobacco scent on the wind.  But some days, when I dot some “L” on my wrists, the tobacco barns are still there, the leaves drying sweetly.