Sunday, April 17, 2011

Connecting to the Souls of Our Parents

Transformational Breath Circle - Sunday, April 24, 2011, 6:30pm- 8pm, The Hub

Mother energy helps us feel our innate value and take care of ourselves. Father energy helps us feel supported by the universe and have faith that we can succeed. When we are disconnected from the energy of our Father and Mother, we can feel unsupported and unloved in this world.

Sometimes when we feel betrayed by our human Mother and Father, we cut ourselves off from the blessings and gifts that come from the representative energies. Because we were hurt, we reject the Mother and in doing so, we reject self-love and self-nurturing.

When we reject the Father, we reject all that he represents: strength, financial success, faith in ourselves. Sometimes we can even unconsciously punish ourselves by not succeeding or not being happy so we can hold on to blaming our parents for their mistakes.

But we need these powerful energy forms to support us in our lives. Self-love is our birthright. And every person has the right and ability to feel successful.

In this circle, we will uncover the Mother/Father material in our subconscious, we will release the pain or frustration that we could not express as children, then we will take responsibility for our feelings and set them free. We will clear our subconscious of anger and resentment. We will let go of blaming our parents. We will forgive ourselves for judging them.

And this will allow us to open to the healing energies of the Mother and Father.

Once we are open to receiving, we will connect to the SOULS of our parents. The SOUL, unlike the FLAWED personality, is all love. We will let ourselves be infused by that love and support that we need so much to know our incredible true value.

And if that is still too painful, we will connect to the energy form itself: Mother Earth and Father Sun. The important thing is to allow the connection to the energy and receive. We will be saturated in love and empowered by our renewed faith in ourselves. Aho! Amen! So it is.

The Hub
2001 South Barrington, Ste. 150
Los Angeles, CA 90025

Exchange: $35

Bring: Yoga, Mat, Blanket, Willingness to transform

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Feeling Our Feelings

Anger. Unworthiness. Disappointment. Sorrow. Rejection. These can be unpleasant emotions to process. So what do we do? We deny we feel them. We buck up. We repress. We stay too busy to feel our feelings. And then those feelings turn into: Anxiety. Back Pain. Rage. Procrastination. Addictions. Migraines. Exhaustion. And, on top of those -- the double whammy: guilt and shame.

We need to listen to ourselves. We need to give ourselves time to feel our feelings. We need to be honest about where we are and what we are going through. There is no shame in being angry. There is nothing wrong with crying. Humans have feelings that need to be expressed!

Our feelings are our road maps to our dark, hidden false beliefs. Those are the beliefs we created as children to protect our tender, little hearts when they got hurt. If we don’t follow the map we can’t clear the roadblocks created from the beliefs. If we don’t clear the roadblocks, they get bigger and bigger and create more and more pain until we are forced to look at them. Most of the time we don’t even have a conscious awareness of what the original belief was.

Until we are clear of the negative feelings and beliefs it is impossible to feel the exuberant joy possible for us.

In this circle we will get honest with ourselves. What is no longer working? What am not admitting to myself? What is the world mirroring back to me that I am denying? Then, through the breathwork, we will clear that which we have repressed, uncover the original trauma/event and rewrite the underlying, false belief.

Let’s get real, get over it and get on with the good stuff. Haven’t we all suffered enough already?

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Discover the Magical You and Create your Dream Life

Let’s step into the magical realm of POSSIBILITIES where we can co-create our highest good and cut the ties of repeated patterns that no longer serve us. Combining kundalini yoga, quantum mechanics and breathwork, we will bravely go to new realms of joy and happiness, imagining our dream life and crossing the threshold to be there now!

The Hub
2001 S. Barrington Avenue, Ste 150
LA, CA 90025

Time: 6:30pm- 8pm

Exchange: $35

How to prepare: wear loose fitting clothes like jogging/yoga pants or pajamas, eat lightly, bring water and a pen and paper.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

WHY YOU SHOULDN'T SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE HEAD

It’s messy, for one. For another, if you miss or flinch then you’re sucking cider through a straw for the rest of your life.

Third, and most importantly, and the reason you shouldn’t kill yourself at all is that:

People change.
Life circumstances change.
Feelings change.

What’s more is…you can change them.

I know what you’re thinking, “I am trapped. Everyday is misery. Everybody hates me. Not one person would care if I were dead.”

Trust me. I’ve been there. I cried for years on end. I put a gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger. Didn’t work. Gun didn’t go boom. My pain didn’t evaporate in a lightning flash blackout.

Thank God.

Because now I know I am not trapped. I do not cry myself to sleep every night. And all those nasty thoughts? “No one cares. Everyone hates me.” They weren’t true! I was just so depressed I couldn’t see past them. But I see clearly now. Life is completely different now. I have a loving, supportive family. I have joy throughout the day. I have a million reasons to live.

I know those dark thoughts and feelings can be convincing. You REALLY FEEL it’s the end of the world. But it’s not. No matter what your situation is, LIFE CAN GET BETTER. Even if you are declaring bankruptcy. Even if you haven’t worked in three years. Even if your wife left you for your best friend. Even if you committed a crime, LIFE CAN GET BETTER. Even if the voices in your head are saying horrible things to you, even if you are sleeping with your mother and thinking about killing your father, even if you are gay and your parents are conservative republican Mormons, even if you get beat up everyday by a man you would never even think of leaving, LIFE CAN GET BETTER. There is a get out of jail free card. There is a way out of your pain and misery and IT ISN’T THROUGH ENDING YOUR LIFE!

Our egos have constructs of “what is okay” and “what is too shameful, too painful, too humiliating” to live with.

These constructs are NOT real!

Don’t believe them.

You don’t have to be a straight A student to have value. You don’t have to get the guy or gal of your dreams for your life to be worth living. Don’t buy into our culture’s values that if you are not the best, you have no reason to be. I did and it made me miserable.

At one point I wanted to kill myself because I didn’t get cast as Anita in “West Side Story” in High School. I literally felt like my life was over. There was no point in going on or trying. But guess what? That was a LIE my brain was telling me. If a guy broke up with me, guess what? I wanted to die. My mind said, “You are alone in this world. You will always be alone. Get me out of this anguish.” I cried and cried. I cried doing homework in college. I cried working out with videos. I cried in the bathroom at parties.

GUESS WHAT NOBODY TOLD ME???

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE MISERABLE.

YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Now your mind may be saying, “Maybe she can change, but my depression is hereditary.” Well, I’ll tell you, my mom is still depressed, my sibling is on anti-depressants and I am gloriously (95 % of the time) pain free. "Depression is hereditary" is just an excuse to not heal yourself.

So, how did I do it?

I took the LONG, LONG, LONG route. Not alcoholism or drugs (though there was a decade and a half of workaholism), but anti-depressants and therapists. Therapy is a good first step, but anti-depressants repress emotions, as do drinking and smoking pot. In order to heal we need to EXPRESS emotions not REPRESS them. (However, if the choice is between anti-depressants and suicide bridge, take anti-depressants!)

What no one told me (and maybe I wouldn’t have believed them then) is:

1. Depression comes from negative energy stored in the body.
2. Emotional suffering comes from misunderstandings about yourself and others.
3. Your life circumstances mirror your inner beliefs.

CHANGE YOUR BELIEFS AND YOU CHANGE YOUR FEELINGS AND YOUR LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES.

Even if you have nothing but this blog, if this is your only resource… you can still heal yourself.

Your ego argues, “I tried affirmations and they don’t work.”

Of course, they don’t work! You are piling flowers on crap. You need to clear the crap before you can plant the flowers.

Trying one thing and it not working is NO REASON to think you will always feel horrible. It’s no reason to kill yourself! It’s no reason to give up!

We are so kept in the dark as a society about how to heal ourselves. For the most part, were not even taught how to love ourselves.

Why are we taught our f*&!ing ABCs and not taught to love ourselves! We are taught where to put a period, but not our value as human beings!

Are you kidding me???!!!

So, what’s the magic remedy?

How are you going to heal without money, without help, without God? (Because if you are that depressed you are definitely separated from God and probably an atheist like I was.)

Here’s how:

You need to get rid of the negative energy in your body and mind by processing it.

You can do this several different ways:

1. Write out what is upsetting you (and burn it.)

2. Exercise. When you exercise you release the negative energy trapped in your body. Kundalini yoga is the science of clearing negative energy. Even full body shaking for 15 minutes a day can clear so much.

3. Meditate. This is so amazing. All you have to do is sit down and breathe. What could be easier? You can even lie down and breathe. The point is to put the attention onto yourself: to listen to yourself for once. “What do you need?” “What are you feeling?” By focusing on your inhalation and exhalation you are giving yourself the longed for attention you need and deserve. This attention naturally turns to affection. You give yourself the attention and love so many of us long for in our lives. If you want more structure in your meditation, Google David Elliott’s Breathwork or Vipassana meditation. (There are even free retreat centers that teach you to meditate.)

4. GET HELP. I know, for years I didn’t tell anyone I was suicidal because I didn’t want to bring them down and I falsely believed that no one cared. People care. Strangers care. If your parents don’t care, maybe a teacher will. If your teacher doesn’t care, maybe a friend’s parent will. Reach out. There is no shame in feeling like a worthless piece of crap. No one taught us to love ourselves so how can we know any different? Later in life, I called the suicide hotline. They are great. They answer the phone. They get you through the crisis. And you are in crisis if you are thinking about killing yourself. You aren’t thinking straight. Imagine you are in a negative energy induced fog: DO NOT HANDLE HEAVY MACHINERY OR GUNS OR ROPES OR PRETTY LITTLE PILLS.

5. Try ALTERNATIVE METHODS of healing. My God! People would rather be dead than sit with their legs crossed and their eyes closed for half an hour? Alternative methods—Breathwork, acupuncture, chiropractic, aromatherapy, constellational healing, massage, reiki, ecstatic dancing, any kind of dancing, tantra classes, theta healing, REMT, hypnosis, rebirth therapy, energy medicine, Biodecoding, light therapy. The list goes on forever. You are NOT ALLOWED to kill yourself until you’ve tried everything. I don’t care if you believe in it or not, it will still work! If you are going to end it all anyway, what have you got to lose? You might have some fun in the meantime.

6. Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for judging yourself as worthless. Forgive yourself for whatever you think you did that qualifies you as worthless. Forgive yourself for hating your parents. Forgive yourself for hating your life. Forgive yourself for having so much hatred inside of you. It’s not your fault. But you do need to take responsibility for it in order to process it and let it go.

7. Scream and pound a pillow. If you do nothing else, do this. Even if you are so repressed that you think “I am not angry. I don’t know what she is talking about.” Come on, you’d rather be dead than hit a pillow? Then you’re not trying!! Self-hatred and hatred of others are false beliefs. They come from negative energy stuck in your body. You can get them out if you EXPRESS THEM!!!

If you think only horrible people feel angry, only irrational people scream, only weak people cry, then you are TRAPPING YOURSELF IN SUPPRESSED EMOTIONS! You’d rather be dead than a horrible person? You’d rather be dead than weak? You’d rather be miserable than act different from other people? Please! We are human, we are all different, weak, and horrible at some time in our lives.

CUT YOURSELF SOME SLACK instead of CUTTING YOURSELF SOME ROPE.

You can learn to love yourself. You can learn to think you are wonderful and amazing. You can get free of chronic emotional pain. You just need to take action.

Take the actions that I recommended above. You can do many of them from the privacy of your own home. BUT REMEMBER... When you release the negative energy, don't buy into it. As it releases, horrible thoughts may come into your head, terrible feelings may come into your body, these are past feelings that haven't been expressed. They need to be let out. Don't believe them, just FEEL them so THEY CAN BE RELEASED.

DON’T LET AN ILLUSION OF being trapped in misery END your precious life.

You can get free.

You can be happy.

Write, scream, breathe, meditate, get help, do yoga, call the suicide hotline, forgive yourself, do whatever you have to do, but don’t stay where you are in pain. Don’t believe that voice in your head saying death is the only way out…THAT IS A LIE.

The truth is:

You will feel so much better once you release the layers of pain.
You will feel joy in the core of your being.
You will know what it is like to give and receive love.
You will love yourself and what made you who you are today.

I’ve been there. I got through it. And now I give thanks for each new day of life.

Please pass on this article to anyone who…
Dresses in all black.
Responds to “Good morning” with “F-you!”
Uses the word “Bullshit” more than three times a day.
Stays in their room all day.
Has a drug or alcohol addiction (the slow suicide methods).
Who popped into your mind while you were reading this.

You never know, you could save a life. Or at least show that you care.

Friday, November 5, 2010

God is in the Particles

That’s why some people have a bad association with the word "God" and other people have a beautiful, heart opening association. It’s simple linguistics! We use a word to represent an object. Or in God’s case, an energy field.

When Christians think of the word “Allah”, they don’t summon to mind a blessed being who is all loving, but they think of a belief system that misguides terrorists to kill Americans. For a Muslim, the word "God” makes them think of a group of heathens. Thus, what connotes something beautiful and positive to one, connotes a negative energy field for the other. And vice versa.

What is so interesting is that every person has a different “God” because every person has their own associations and experiences with the thing the word God refers to. If we are lucky we have a pure definition where “God” is “love.” And hopefully, we have a pure experience of what “love” is to complete the definition.

But honestly, many of us have mixed definitions based on subconscious misunderstandings that have accrued throughout our lifetime. Some associate “God” with punishment. Some associate “God” with asceticism. Both beliefs wouldn’t inspire me to want to believe in God! Or ask that God for help. When I was younger I thought God was sexist: He sent his son to save humanity, not his daughter. Luckily, I let go of that interpretation which allowed me to embrace "God."

So basically all religious wars can come to an end. Right now. Because of this blog. We can see that our referent is the same even if our terminology is different. “God” is a universal force of “positive energy.” Literally, particles of positive energy. We're all praying to and calling in the universal force of positive energy and trying to let go of and release negative energy. Use the force, Luke.

These energy fields of good and evil exist in us and around us all the time and affect our decisions and our moods. Good and evil. Right and wrong. They exist within us and all we can do is try to increase the good and mitigate and apologize for the evil.

(Admittedly, the enlightened go beyond "good and evil" and see God's hand in everything so duality disappears. But that's another blog.)

If we don’t bring awareness to these positive and negative energies within us, they reside there and make unconscious (usually bad) decisions for us. We don’t know why we “feel like giving up” on ourselves or why we suddenly sabotage our relationships.

When we start to bring awareness to the energy inside of us, our decisions become more conscious. The more we clear negative energies from ourselves and around us, the more positive energy we can call in.

This is all to say, it doesn’t matter if you pray to “God” or “Allah” -- just pray to “that which is good.” Pray to positive energy. Call in what makes you feel good and let go of that which is toxic or makes you feel bad.

Try it right now. Uncross your legs. Take a few deep breaths into your pelvis and call in a certain energy. Maybe something less politically charged than "God." Try the energy field we call, “peace.” Repeatedly call in the energy form of “peace” into your body. You can say “I am peace.” Or “I call in peace.” Close your eyes, take a few breaths. Give peace a chance. As I do this, I feel my muscles relax, I feel serenity wash over me and a warm feeling of contentment permeate my body.

Let “God” be “good” to you. Release your judgments of him and call in that which can support you and help you. We can all use help! Call in the positive energy fields like the Greeks called in wisdom through Athena and love through Aphrodite. Call in the good stuff: trust, faith, joy, happiness, contentment, levity, laughter.

God is in the particles. Which means - God is in you.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Oversensitivity

Recently, I made a student cry in writing class. No, not on purpose.

We were breaking her story and the rest of class, intrigued with her premise, began to pour out questions to this overwhelmed student whose only response was “I don’t know. You’re asking the wrong person.” It happened so quickly, it didn’t occur to me to stop the barrage. Seeing that we were getting nowhere, I called a break and in the bathroom discovered how attacked this student felt. My perception of the event was completely different from hers. I saw excited students ready, willing and able to help, but needing some guidelines. She saw students laughing at her, bullying her and mocking her. She dabbed at her eyes to keep herself from an eruption of tears.

This got me thinking…

How many times have I been brought to tears because of a perceived insult? How many times have I misinterpreted well-intended comments? A LOT!!

I think my upbringing was riddled with mistaken interpretations. And I’ve been consciously undoing them ever since.

Here’s what happens…

We have pain in life. We want to stop the pain. We assign a cause to the pain so we can distance ourselves from the cause. We create more pain by blaming the cause and by creating a limiting belief around what caused the pain. This quadruples the pain because now we have a mistaken belief system that perpetuates the problem.

An example… I have pain as a child. It’s natural. Part of life. Add to that… my Dad isn’t home. I conclude I have pain because my Dad isn’t home. Now here come the limiting beliefs…my Dad abandoned me and he abandoned me because I wasn’t worthy of love.

Then we often go further than that. If Dad abandoned me, chances are that all men will abandon me. Now, I have this limiting belief that I apply to all men that wasn’t even true in the first place and the men in my life will need to abandon me in order to fulfill my belief system.

(Luckily, I cleared this belief system. Thanks USM. Thanks David Elliott.)

The origin of the original pain is negative energy that I believe is a consequence of creating a world of matter. Separation from spirit. In psychology terms, we see this as separation from the mother. In the womb and once we are born we naturally pick up negative energy from our environment. Once we have that negative energy, we draw negative response to it. It is a cycle.

The “I am unworthy of love” belief system creates more dark energy as I continue to believe it and fulfill it. Adding fuel to the fire! And soon my system (body, mind, spirit) is overwhelmed with negative energy and becomes very, very sensitive to whether a man who floats my boat feels the same way or calls on a certain day or holds the door open. I actually broke up with a guy I was living with because he got another woman pie at the Fourth of July party. (It was a large piece of pie, if you know what I mean.)

This is where oversensitivity comes from: a system that is in need of cleaning.

It could be on a physical level - not eating the right foods.
On a mental level - entertaining toxic thoughts.
On an emotional level - pain overload.
On a spiritual level -feeling abandoned by God.

This will cause us to take people’s actions or inactions personally. If someone doesn’t acknowledge us when we smile at them, suddenly we have a thought: that person is selfish or narcissistic. Actually, we have no idea what that person is. The truth is we need to cleanse our own system of such perceptions.

Then we can feel our true value. Once we are aligned with our true value, people can do whatever they want to us, say what they want, even leave us and we can greet it with acceptance and joy. We can know what they do is about them, not about us. We can see through their actions to their pain and illusion.

We can trust our inner gold as solid, unshakable, immovable and divine. We can let perceived insults flow off of us like rain off an umbrella. They don’t touch us.

But we can only do this if we have cleared our pain and our limiting beliefs.

Otherwise, people are drawn to our negative (victim) energy and we cause them to act out our limiting beliefs. How many times have you said to yourself, “I knew he/she would leave.” or “I knew it was too good to be true?” Statements like these are evidence of a toxic belief system.

You will see your belief system play out over and over in your life until you clear it. Pain exists to point you toward the truth. Clear the pain and you can experience bliss. Our path is to remerge with spirit and to do so we must transmute the dark energy back to the light. As Bruce Lipton calls it, “Spontaneous Evolution.” It is the path we are all on. You can make it as hard or easy as you like.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Free Your Shadow Breath Circle

The Hub, 8pm, July 30th

We use massive amounts of energy denying, pushing away and burying our shadow. This leaves us as fatigued victims of half-lived lives rather than empowered co-creators of our destiny.

When ignored, our shadow lashes out causing headaches, backaches, addictions, cravings, and behaviors that shock and disappoint us. Sometimes our shadow just throws a heavy blanket on our emotions leaving us numb, immobile and confused. We don’t know who we are or what we want.

When we deny our shadow, we force others to act it out for us. And they do this literally. Our bosses yell at us. Our spouses act insensitive. Some "jerk" cuts you off on the freeway. But our image remains pure as the driven snow. We are golden.

Yet when we take responsibility for our projections, we can clear them and find serenity inside and out.

As Caroline Myss reminds us, “Your shadow aspects are primarily rooted in fear patterns that have more control over your behavior than does your conscious mind.” –Sacred Contracts

In this breath circle we will
-let others witness our shadow sides
-accept ourselves and others exactly as we are
-release the fear pattern under the shadow aspect
-take responsibility for our projections
-free our repressed energy
-discover the benefits of embracing our shadow
-bring light to the unloved parts of ourselves
-celebrate our wholeness

So bring your inner asshole, your outer bitch, your lazy, good-for-nothing selves, your skeptic, your procrastinator, your sexy vamp, your aggressive brut, your poor huddled masses and we will love them all and set them free. Plus, it’s me, so it will be fun.

The Hub
2001 S. Barrington Avenue, Ste 150
LA, CA 90025
July 30th
8pm-9:30pm
Exchange: $35

What to bring: water, blanket, yoga mat, shadow.