It’s amazing how this time thing happens.  I blink and it’s been months since I last updated.  I figure that’s a good sign.

Mostly my life consists of teaching, massaging, going to the MMA gym, and going to yoga classes.  It’s a good life.  Meanwhile I’ve been putting all the pieces together for this AMAZING UPCOMING CD that is due out within the next 1-2 months. I’m doing my best to get it in the right people’s hands before it’s released so everyone who should have it does have it and can promote it to pieces because did I mention that’s it’s AMAZING?

Once that’s done it’s onto the next big life project: grad school.  Life has been so good these last several months that I ask myself whether it’s actually important to take this next step, whether I can’t just be content teaching and massaging and going to the gym.  I think I probably could.  But I do have a drive, a passion, to truly help people, help them on more than just a surface level.  And the thought of pursuing a career in Health Psychology, as a whole-health counselor, that thrills me.  I know that the people who will be drawn to me will be those who are tired of feeling crappy, or even just not their best.  They will want someone to help them figure out a plan and stick to it, someone to help them ask the questions they can’t see because they’re in the middle of their own lives, unable to witness their own blind spots.  I am so grateful to have amazing friends and a support network that help me ask those hard questions, and allow me to grow.  I want to be able to help others do this, with some skill and diplomacy. So there we go.  Grad school ho.

But let me not forget to include that there’s this upcoming CD!  Stay tuned for info as it becomes available.  Namaste!

As I look from my current vantage point what I can see most clearly is that the parts of our lives we give focus to are what grow.  Currently my world consists mostly of doing homework, working out or doing yoga, teaching yoga, doing massage and watching Netflix to turn off my brain.  Not much room in there for spending time with my friends, being outdoors, cooking dinner, keeping the house attended to, making music. This isn’t a complaint mind you, it’s just how things are at the moment.  And I see the distance I feel from the things in my life that were so prevalent a short time ago, and the intense pull that I feel from the things I have currently deemed Important. It’s a seductive room, that room of Importance.  I usually have my eyes wide open when I walk in, but once I stay a while I start to forget that I chose to walk into that room and decorate it the way I did, eschewing certain things for others.  It starts to feel, increasingly, sneakily, like that room comprises pretty much most of the world, all that matters anyway.

So I’m glad that I’m just about to start The Presence Process again.  It should help me get a little clearer about the room. This time I’m doing it with other people, and we’re going to check in with one another periodically as it goes.  The independent rule breaker in me doesn’t want to have “meetings” or be held to a “schedule”. Funny how hard it can be to just simply say yes sometimes. But one good thing about it is that I really will have people holding me accountable, and me doing the same for them.  Teams can help us get through stuff. That’s why I love public yoga classes. Like it or not, we’re on a team together for that hour or hour and a half, holding each other up and relying on each other at the same time.

Either way, for me I am hoping that this time through the process I can come closer into contact with myself.  I am observing myself in a number of unfamiliar (and too familiar) scenarios, watching my behavior, thinking about it and trying to understand it later.  I know this means I am closer to being able to shift it in the moment, but I’m not quite there yet.  I still freeze up and revert to type, or let the saboteur run the show sometimes, though perhaps a little less extremely than I used to. I am really looking to understand what is real for me, and what of me is working really well, and what of me I need to kindly but discerningly work through to shift, and try to love it all. It’s so damned hard. And I find myself scared of what will come up next; what new emotional/ethical/philosophical/primal/soul-searching paradox is on my horizon? But the fear isn’t in charge. It just is there. Among all the other feelings.

Anyway. That’s where I’m at, in the dawn of the new year. Here is to walking the path as truly as we can.

So here it is, the last week. week 10.  It coincides with the taking of GRE’s and full-on immersion in two classes.  You know, plus life and stuff. But really the worst is over.

I am writing in the aftermath of the GRE’s, feeling shaky and unsure and very unconfident in myself.  I didn’t realize how much stock I was putting in how I did on this test, how much of my self-worth I see in the score, and how I rely on my history as a good test taker, which when out of practice for 15 years or so can throw a gal into a bit of a self-esteem tailspin.

So the statement for the week is well-timed.

As usual, the reading is much more than one would imagine from the statement.  This week’s reading centers around being versus doing.  It notes how in most people’s lives, we place value on what we do, what we accomplish, rather than the quality and experience of our lives.  Brown asserts that because we did not receive unconditional love as younglings, we looked outside ourselves and asked what we could DO to receive it.  As a result our lives became about what we could DO to get approval, love, a feeling of value and worth.  And he writes that the feeling we seek can come from nowhere but inside.

So the statement I Appreciate Myself invests us with love, invests us with value. And from the perspective of one of the other definitions of “appreciate”, we can increase our own value by investing love and positive attention on ourselves.  I increase my value through my positive self-care and assertion. So I look at myself and appreciate my unique set of traits and thoughts and qualities that create me as a distinct individual in this world.

Brown also posits that much of the pain we experience in this world comes from the separation that we visualize between ourselves and other beings.  He says that most of the thoughts and actions that we do in search of the love we seek actually increase the gap between us and other people, for example comparing ourselves to others in order to be “better” or demonizing their actions or apparent intentions.  If one instead chooses to see the Other as a person who is also attempting to find and secure love and feeling of belonging in the world, we close the gap.  We become the love we seek.  And that love fills us and soothes the cracks and wounds that motivate us to act in ways that are less self- serving.

So this week so far I’ve been trying more than usual to look into the eyes of the people on the other end of things: the cashier at Whole Foods or the person next to me at the stoplight or the lady across from me in yoga.  I am not by any means succeeding 100% of the time.  But I’m noticing a feeling of calm and connection with regard to other people that is small but dawning.

In connecting with others intentionally, I am closing the gap.  And I am Appreciating Myself.

Week 9.

Things are turning up here on my home front, pressure-wise.  These last two weeks of The Presence Process are also two weeks in which I am taking GRE’s, starting 2 classes, being in a wedding, starting a volunteer gig, spending time with some folks in town from far away, and still managing my life.  So I am doing my best to keep my figurative shit together, and so far I have to say that it’s going okay.  I have to give some of the credit for this to the work of these last eight weeks.

This week’s statement is supported by reading that centers around the underlying drama that blows up relationships.  It asks that you go through your relationships and notice what the common thread is in them that put them to bed as it were.  It asks that you notice what the dynamic was in which you played a part, and then connect that to what you learned as a child observing relationships around you.

This has been rich territory for me so far, noticing that my “I can’t be myself in relationships because then I get lambasted and rejected and then I wear myself ragged trying to be the person that my other wants me to be” story line is one that I can spot from my childhood.  So that’s helpful.  I noticed also that I was intolerant and withdrew my affection when my other would display characteristics or tendencies that I didn’t like.  This got me to the place of seeing my fear, a fear that by tolerating and accepting those behaviors I would assume them as well and become someone that I am terrified to become.

The next step is to define what love is by considering it to be the opposite of the definition you had instilled in you as a child, so for example, “Love is changing who you are for the other person” becomes “Love is being authentically yourself in relationships and deeply accepting and treasuring others for who they are.”  So I considered what might happen if next time I see those behaviors I find my compassion and extend the olive branch of understanding rather than withdrawing.  It’s scary but kind of exciting.

My friend this week said to me, “Whatever you do in your next relationship, just make it different than what you’ve done before.” I can work with this.

So then how does this connect to spontaneous joy?  Essentially Brown concludes that our pain and suffering is entirely under our domain, and that once we realize that our approach is all we need to tinker with, we can then choose joy in any moment.

Yesterday I was on my way to meet with one of my out-of-town friends and starting the litany of all the have-to’s in my head while I was driving.  Then I remembered the statement.  And I looked around me, saw the immense beauty of the Catalina mountains, felt the delicious kiss of Tucson October air on my skin, listened to the music that suddenly became not just background noise but the soundtrack to my incredible moment and let the joy flow through me.  It was magical.

I realized that even in this very dense time I don’t have to have the nose-to-the-grindstone chiseled jaw of steel to make it through.  I can remain joyful and grateful even as I am busy, and laugh as more obstacles come my way. And then no matter what happens, even if I don’t get the outcome I want immediately, I can know that the process was a joyful one, and will continue to be.

One of the things I find interesting about this process is that the Presence Activating statements do not necessarily imply what the reading supporting them will be about.  It’s refreshing.

In this week’s case, the reading centers primarily around forgiveness.  Brown speaks to the idea that while we hold judgments in our minds and hearts toward other people we remain imprisoned in the emotional holding patterns of un-forgiveness.  So even if we feel justified in holding others responsible for our pain, it only hurts us by keeping us in it.  Realizing and reinforcing in our minds and hearts the idea that we really are all doing our best, that we are all working with wounds and blind spots formed by our experiences in this world, is key to being able to forgive and free ourselves.

Every one of us at some point was a small child doing our best to make sense of the world.  The only things we had to work with were the examples around us and what little skills we may have already developed.

I remember as a child noticing when it became appropriate in social settings to act like things didn’t matter.  I remember feeling pain inside when other children or adults told me to calm down or made fun of me for caring about things too much.  I remember being really sad that this was how things were going to have to be from now on, that caring was no longer something that was ok to do, that loving something too much or being too excited about something was just no longer an option within the social realm.  That to me was the loss of my Disney dream moment.

I look back at that child now and I want to tell her that loving things and being sad about things and being angry sometimes is absolutely ok.  She can have all those feelings and not have to push them away or act like they’re not there. I understand that many of us are taught that feelings are shameful, immature, un-ladylike, childish, foolish, all the things we are told about our feelings.  Or at least about expressing them.  This includes our parents.  Our parents were those children too, doing the best they could to form themselves into people in the world.  They looked to the examples around them to determine how to be.  Perhaps their examples had wounds and blind spots as well.  Can we hold our parents responsible for recreating some of the same things that happened in their consciousness before they were old enough to understand what was happening?  And by the time they were old enough, the patterns and beliefs were already so entrenched that they FELT LIKE TRUTH.

Can we blame the people in our lives now for enacting their versions of these childhood plays that became part of the their consciousness before they could make any sense of things?  Who is there in their lives to help them? Quite possibly no one. And there’s no reason it has to be you. But what you can do is try to be as kind and understanding with them as you can be to your own inner child, the one who did the best (s)he could. It can free us from the tyranny of judgment, the prison of un-forgiveness.  And it helps us realize that we really ARE responsible for our own peace of mind.  Not our parents, our boss, the government, the weather, no one outside ourselves has that kind of power over us once we can see this.

Can I get an AMEN?

This week’s Presence Activating Statement is accompanied by a couple of additional practices, primarily that of getting into the water.  Water sessions of 20 minutes are encouraged before the 15 minutes of connected breathing to stimulate the process of emotional reconnection and growth.

This is taking place at a time for me when things are heating up busy-wise, both because it’s October in Tucson and everything gets popping here in October, and also because I am in the process of applying to grad school, which involves time-sucking hoop-jumping tasks like taking GRE’s, taking a few prerequisite courses, tracking down recommendations, doing some volunteer work, writing essays and also continuing my life.  I haven’t been this kind of busy in a long time, but I feel calm and focused, eyes on the prize.

I think this is primarily the case at the moment because I just finished a 5-day workshop with Christina Sell, which is always a wonderful thing to do.  Christina has this way of encapsulating the practice into words that are so eloquent and accurate that I feel brightened by just being in her field.  The 5 days included a fair amount of yoga asana, which is a wonderful vehicle to explore the ways in which I can stretch and push my body to its limits, but with safety and awareness.  Thus the phrase I Feel Safe in This Body was continually supported throughout the 5 days as I learned more about the practice and more about my body in the practice, my self in the practice.

Including the water sessions has worked out in a number of ways because I needed the soaking (I was sore!) and I love taking baths anyway.  Memories have surfaced of a retreat I attended around rebirthing which pushed all of my cult buttons as well as other random memories from long ago as well as recently.  The intention of the water is to provide a womb-like environment in which the process of remembering and integrating can be readily accessed.

I can feel the volume of pressure getting higher in my life at the moment and, much as the book said it would, putting pressure on my commitment to follow through with this process.  Interestingly enough, the 10 weeks of the process conclude just after I take the GRE’s and just before my first application is due.  Gotta love timing.

I am grateful for the continued opportunities that this process offers to stay in the moment.  Spending too much time dwelling on the mountain of tasks ahead is not only unhelpful from the vantage point of not being able to do anything about it, but also in that it adds undue stress to my moment NOW.  So I continue to breathe, to welcome the peaks and valleys of my emotions, and stay in this Process, all the way through.

I notice that each of these statements sounds a little jargon-y.  This week is about integrating the previous 4 weeks of statements into one protocol that serves to handle intense emotional experiences as they arise.  Brown discusses in the reading (which is a bit voluminous this week compared to the previous three) that what prevents us from experiencing pure joy is the judgment that we place on the experiences that we are having.  So attempting to view different emotional states as equal allows the flow of joy to proceed unimpeded in our lives.

Interesting thought, that by not seeing sadness or pain as bad, joy can be present.

The protocol goes something like this:

Dismiss the messenger (notice that something is coming up, acknowledge it and know that the emotional experience is intense because it is unrelated to the object, person, and even the time in which it is taking form)

Get the message (figure out what childhood thing it is echoing)

Feel it (let yourself feel it fully and identify the feeling in as simple terms as possible: sad, angry, afraid)

Compassion (give your inner child time and space and love as the feeling flows through you until it moves on)

I thought I had done this the other morning as I began this week.  I did my breathing, had some stuff come up and got a little teary and then moved on.  Then I heard my dog chewing on something and cracked open an eye to see him decimating a pen I had taken from him several times the night before.  This added to the four pairs of underwear he had destroyed the night previous as well, and it tipped me over the edge.  I got angry and stampy and then ended up sitting in the middle of my bed in a meltdown for the next 15 minutes or so, during which time I did my very best to just identify the feelings, have compassion for myself and just give the wave its time to crest and wane.  I felt alone, and defeated, and pitiful.  And I boo-hooed my way through it.  And on the other side of it I just picked up and moved forward.  I didn’t hold on to it, just left it behind and went through the rest of my day.

Later when I looked back at it I couldn’t help but laugh at myself for having such a big feeling over such a small thing.  And I not only realized this then, but I actually saw in the moment of it all happening that I was having child flashbacks, feelings of being overwhelmed and sad that my things were destroyed or taken away, and that they couldn’t be replaced.  Feelings of not enough and being alone, set adrift in the world all by myself, came up as well.  Good stuff.  Good stuff.

I’ve made it to week 6.  This means I am past the halfway point.  I feel okay.  Not that it’s a question of that, but I’m still in the game.

This week’s reading is about reaching a hand out to the inner child and extending love and kindness and a listening heart to be there for whatever the child has to say when things feel sad, or angry, or fearful.  I have had a number of conversations with my inner child already and it’s been surprisingly okay so far.  What I mean by this is that there has actually been a conversation, and it’s been one that felt honest and real.  I won’t say that I necessarily feel like everything is better at the end of it, but again The Presence Process is not about feeling better as much as it is feeling consciously.

One thing I have noticed over the course of the last several weeks is that my attitude and approach toward children in general has shifted.  Anyone who knows me reasonably well knows that children have not historically been a source of warmth or joy or happiness for me.  Mostly I have found them to be annoying and difficult, taking away time and attention from things I would rather be doing, like hanging out with my friends or doing something I enjoy rather than what they enjoy.  In peering a little more closely at this I can see that this annoyance comes from a resentment that I have about not being allowed to do or say or have things that I wanted, probably back from when I was quite young.  Children aren’t annoying by nature.  They are just children, little unfiltered ego machines (and I don’t mean that in a cruel way) that ask for and grab for what they want because it is totally natural to do that.

It’s the should-ing and the acculturation that gets us to the point where we subvert and push down our wants and needs, in the name of a quieter and more civilized society. But in talking to my inner child and listening to her sadness and her fear and her anger I find that I feel empathy toward her rather than resentment.  I understand why she would feel sad that when she reaches out to a friend and isn’t met.  I understand why she feels scared when she’s left alone.  I understand why she feels angry when she isn’t allowed to have what she wants.

So how about that then?

There is a part of me that is pretty freaked out by the idea that I’m only *almost* halfway through this thing.  It’s been a lot of work and dedication so far and it’s bringing me right into the same room as the squirmy unpleasant things that I regularly do a lot to avoid.

On the other hand, during a long drive home last night, as I was sitting with some uncomfortable feelings, I heard a voice inside my head telling me that I couldn’t expect things to get any better if I did things the same way I have been doing them in the past.  So I pulled a couple of new tools out of the sack and tried them on for size.  One of them was vocal toning, using the power of sound vibration inside myself to shift my energy.  It worked pretty darn well I have to say.

Funny that it would take me this long to try it, given that singing is something I love so much.

Each time I say this week’s statement I hear “I Passionately Embrace My Innocence” and it makes me feel weird and pervy. Then this morning when I was meditating on this statement it turned into I Passionately Embrace My Emptiness, which changed it profoundly and led me down a different rabbit hole.  What would happen if I passionately embraced my emptiness, fawned and preened over it as I would a lover?

Thanks to this process I am trying new things, even the “solution” of not trying to solve the problem.

And we continue on.

Week 4 begins.

So far this process has been a bit gentler than I expected, but I won’t say that means it’s without its ups and downs.

The coming of autumn has bitten me pretty hard my entire life.  Even writing that sentence I see it as a story, one that I can choose to give power or not.  But as I look back historically I can feel that feeling of poignant tender sharp sadness that comes every year around September.  When I lived in Maine it meant the slide into months (upon months) of bitter cold, the kind of weather that slowly chipped away at my will, the will to even get out of bed, more or less go through my day.  Here in Arizona it’s supposed to be a time of celebration, cheering for the abatement of the relentless heat.

And yet I am sad.  Something about the angle of the light, it gets me right in my heart.

This week I taught a number of my yoga classes on the theme of  “Just because something feels unpleasant doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything wrong.”  Amazingly enough when I turned to the next pages of The Presence Process last night to guide me into Week 4, those words were presented almost verbatim as part of my material to go over and refer to for this coming week.

I feel positive about this, like something in me is organically unfolding into this process, like the process itself is organic. Unfamiliar perhaps, at least in a very somatic way – it feels uncomfortable in my body and my emotional self and my mind to just sit with discomfort and peer into it and explore its edges and facets and pitches and timbres and colors.

But today in my yoga practice – what a gift to be a student! – my lovely and strong teacher Stephani reminded us that perseverance through difficult things yields rewards.  And I was once again taken aback by the parallels between life and practice.  Warrior 2 is a hard pose.  It’s even harder when it’s held for a long time, with continual devotion to strong alignment.  Thighs burn, breath becomes labored, and the voice inside starts getting a little shrieky, saying “I can’t DO this anymore!!”  And then I rededicate myself to my breath, to my alignment, periodically even choosing a mantra to make it through (I am a fan of the Gayatri).

Why do I choose any different paths through other difficult things?  This sadness, these moments of want and fear that I’ve been noticing these last few weeks, I can remind myself that these moments are the same.  They are uncomfortable.  All I need to do is breathe, focus on my alignment (aligning myself with the statements, with the remembrance that working through difficult things with awareness and attention yields rewards) and remember this week’s statement:

I restore my inner balance with compassionate attention.

I attend to my feelings – I feel them.  I put a figurative hand on my back and say “I know, sweetie; I know it’s hard.  You are doing just fine and I love you. Keep it up.  Don’t give up.  It’s going to be okay.”  I breathe.

And the great thing from the reading this week is that it then says to just notice what happens.  It doesn’t say “And then you will feel better and everything will be rosy and happy.”  Actually it says that it might not feel better, but to not make feeling better your goal.  Just make being attentive and aware your goal.

Pain is not necessarily a bad thing.  Rid oneself of the judgments about pain and the resistance to it lessens and the doors fly open to receive the boundless wisdom that pain has to offer: insight and compassion and awareness.

I am in, for better or for worse, I am in.

Week 3.

Last week  I was actually somewhat surprised by how easily this process was going.  I felt grounded and generally happy, didn’t get thrown off by pretty much anything.  I was on the lookout for people or situations that would set me off in one way or another, make me angry, make me sad or defensive or scared.  I noticed very little if any of these.  The one or two things that happened I looked back at and tried to understand a bit better, and I’m still willing to work on them.

This week started off with exercises in learning how to “get the message” rather than react to the messenger.

I’m already in it.  What I am noticing is this ground-level basic anxiety, this undercurrent of fear.  Michael Brown asks us first to identify the feeling, then trace it back to the last time we felt it, and then keep going until we can find the first time we remember feeling it.  He says this may be somewhat difficult because likely the first time we felt the triggering deep-set feelings, we likely didn’t have words or thoughts that we could use to make sense of it, so we have to use our feeling body to get there.

What this allows us to do is notice that it is the FEELING we are after and its origins rather than the current shape that the feeling is taking our lives.  For example, I am feeling this fear. I remember the last time I felt this was when I had a suspicion that I was being left, that someone I cared for was backing away. I was afraid of being left alone.  This is a feeling I have had many times in my life.  It is cold and scary and sad.  And the thing is, I think most of us have had this feeling in our lives, and likely for each of us it is one of the major players in terms of deep feelings that originate from a time we were in the single digits of life – who hasn’t had that alone-in-the-grocery-store moment?  Or several?

But the thing is, without having healed that feeling, without having allowed it to have its moment and become integrated into ourselves as adults, it keeps playing out again and again, like a stuck record.

So for now I’m sitting in it.  And I’m doing my best to see it for what it is.

I can notice that whatever experience I am having, I don’t have to react to it from that place I was when I was a kid, afraid and panicking and reaching out and grasping for comfort that isn’t there, because ultimately the comfort doesn’t come from outside me.

Sometimes people aren’t there when we need them.  Sometimes people leave.  Sometimes people die when you are not ready. This is not inherently a bad thing.  It just is.  It’s just how life goes sometimes.  What we do with it is where the crux lies, where the really juicy stuff is.

I can respond consciously to this fear.  I can notice, oh look, I have this fear.  I am going to breathe now.  When can I remember this from before?  Oh yes, there it is.  I can see that.  I can see the path it’s wound through my life, popping up here and there and though it seems like it’s about this one particular situation at the moment, the only thing special about right now is that I HAVE MY EYES OPEN and I am willing to respond to this situation consciously.  Rather than going into the same old story of I’m not good enough, why does this always happen to me, blah blah boring blah.

Brown says that as we get more clued in to this process, we will be increasingly able to change our response in the moment, and more fully integrate these feelings so they don’t run the show.

I feel like I’m taking steps in that direction.