“Coming To Stillness: How pausing and listening to the body gives clues for our well being”.

The Universe is sending us every single thing that we need to thrive in the highest level of abundance.  It wants all of us to achieve our dharma.  Do you believe that?  

There is a young man in my life (my beautiful step son) who is filled with onxt and dread of the highest order and has impassioned oratorios on the painful eventualities of the current climate (no pun intended).  He feels everything very deeply and suffers trmendously about the gamut of climate change, politics, and the world.  And he is an atheist.

I on the other hand, tend to trust that things are working out for us, that the “Universe” has our backs.  (That is my euphamism for God is present and available to speak to, listen to, and connect with.  I even take it further to say that if we let go and surrender, and ask God to lead, we stop relying on ourselves and allow for something very deep and beautiful to guide our lives.

I have been called out for such nieve thoughts.  And that is OK with me.  Faith and trust are very personal; I can as uselessly try to convince my step son of a world led by Diety, as he can convince me that it is all just hopeless dread.

The middle ground is to come home to ourselves, to our inner truth and knowing such as it exists and unfolds day by day and year by year.  

My real desire is soul alignment and balance.  Ease and flow.  Trust and hope.  And that is the nature of this newsletter today.  Where to begin in all that?  

When I was a young dancer/choreographer in New York City, I would have to rent studio space for $20 an hour to create my dances.  I still remember some days literally lying on the floor falling into gravity, having almost no energy, and feeling really dumb for spending all that money to just lie there.  So I would slowly get up, put on the music AGAIN, and attempt to wind myself up to move.  Usually I was successful and the beginnings of a new dance would start to take hold.  (After that it was always easier because I could start with something instead of nothing).

But the lesson was clear.  Inertia is a bummer.  Inertia is STILL a bummer.  It leads to heaviness physically and emotionally.  Einstein’s second Law of Therdynamics, a ball at rest tends to stay at rest.

Well, this is what happens in life too.  Our bodies get slower and heavier, our homes get more cluttered with less incentive to make decisions about lightening our load, our thoughts and stories and limiting beliefs get morre laden and habitualted…and we lose our “lightness of being”.  

And this is why in the last three months I have been talking about letting go, doing less, finding peace by clearing our clutter physically and emotionally.  (I have also brought some of the principles of the Alexander Technique into the mix, to register how the body and awareness of consciousness in action can be a powerful tool for bringing us into full emodiment) and be a tool for change.

Today I want to get back to the topic of Embodiment more specifically, by finding ways to integrate our outer world with our inner world; through mindful listening, movement, and expanding our consciousness into our day…while meditating, walking moving, or dancing!

We are meant for freedom, ease, and success in all ways, but a lifetime of habit leaves us second guessing ourselves, in pain, and feeling anxiety that may not even have a locus.

So how to begin to manage that?  How do we change?  Do we even want to change?  Imagine what your life would look like if you woke up every morning ready to spring out of bed and fulfill your dharma?  How good it would feel!

The amount of change you need to make is the distance between that vision and where you are now.  It could be a baby step or a chasm.

For example, some of us struggle with weight loss.  Some with our energy level.  Others suffer from free form anxiety, which I spent a lot of time talking about in August, in my training on clearing mental clutter…I spoke about anxiety living primarily in the mind and in the fear of the “fututre”.  

(Regret, on the other hand, tends to dwell in the past).  

And somewhere between lives the root causes of your suffering, which always goes back to fear.  Fear that you aren’t good enough, are not worthy of love, are not accomplished enough, etc.  It lives in the hell realm of comparison and envy, procrastination and inaction that cripples our potential. It leaves you feeling less-than.

So what is the opposite of that?  Openness.  Movement through.  Practice.  Exploration.

All of these qualities that lead us to a new and better relationship with the circumstances of our lives.  And the easiest part?  It is just a matter of slowing down and listening.  Gentle beginnings, stirrings, whispers.

Some call the messages you receive here your “gut feeling” or in New Age parlance, your Intuition.  It is what your natural, innate intelligence can reveal. What to do less of, what to focus more of your awareness, intelligence, love and attention on, opening the possibility of a brand new direction to move toward that you didn’t until now even realize you wanted.

In other words, the way toward change is to be open to something speaking to you.  Whispers at first.  A random thought in your mind, or a dream you suddenly remember from the night before…a vision or symbol that comes to your mind.  Arush of energy that inspires. 

What I have found is that as we embody these little glimmers of consciousness, the feelings of being disconnected from your Source gives way to beginning a new discovery of a stillness that shines light.  

“Peace to my mind.  Let all my thoughts be still.”