Here are three simple steps to create space for Joy to come into your energetic, personal field and Balance your Life.
One remove fight from your vocabulary.
Two focus on your strengths rather than your limitations.
Three Be Grateful…even when you are in dire circumstances.
Whether you experience Joy or not is completely up to you…
What happens to you is outside of your control HOW you respond to what happens to you is COMPLETELY within your control.
Joy is a matter of attention and intention.
Practice these three steps every day and you will create space for JOY.
Your environment may not change immediately but as you change…and because all of life is a system, once you change your joyous effect on your environment will positively affect everyone and everything within it.
This works in both directions, choosing joy creates more pleasing (and less negative experiences) and choosing negativity begets more negative experiences.
If you want to Change the world, or just change your world…BE the change…. change your perspective, change your language…be in your relationships what you want to experience in relationship.
Change how you see, look for connection, understanding, and moments of perfection. Have that attention and intention drive how you see and you will experience more space for Joy.
Three steps: remove fight from your vocabulary, focus on your strengths, and be grateful practiced daily create space for Joy.
I am deeply grateful for your continued interest and fantastic work on the planet. in love and light, bg
For Father’s Day I wanted to honor everything Yang.
Yang energy is the energy that pushes a seedling through earth toward the sun.
Yang energy is masculine, it is accomplishment and action in the world; new ideas and inventions, creations that are big and bold and light. Yang energy is the energy that pushes you toward your goal. It can be aggressive and assertive and full of power, moving you forever upward.
Your father archetype (the yang in your parental group) instills the energy to leave your home and go on an adventure; to build your outer personality and life. Fathers show the way, even when they do not mean to do it, even in their absence, it is to your father that you look to see how to work, create, build, and innovate.
In the American culture, some of the Yang energy has been over emphasized in ‘bigness’, big buildings, big cars, big homes, and the over-accumulation of things and over emphasis on competition. While the over-emphasis has perhaps skewed the course of the culture, the Yangness is indeed a necessary component of balanced growth. Without the push of yang energy, the seedling would not make it to the new world through the feminine energy of earth.
Yin energy needs Yang energy for balance. Night becomes day. The inner weaving of Yin energy develops into the outer Yang innovation and creation.
Celebration of the sun, day, light, is a lovely way to celebrate Father’s Day. You can build a fort in the mountains, on the beach, in your backyard or at the park. You can take a hike in the sun.
You can design and create a new building with Legos, or with left over parts in the garage or experiment drawer.
Yang energy has the active quality of doing, making, and creating. Go out and create, conquer, and experience the power of the sun and your physicality. Bring out your father archetype, or yang energy, and see what innovation you can develop.
Happy Father’s Day; Embrace your powerful Yang energy.in love and light, bg
“Be like a tree” when under stress. Allow your roots to dig deeply into the earth and ground you. Allow your branches, and trunk to sway with the pressure of the wind. Know that your center is strong and holds you stable as you flexibly respond to the assault and pressure of the storm. In this way you will find peace and resilience, inner knowing, strength, security, and flexibility so that you are not torn asunder and bereft.
“Be like water ” when in danger or working with tender beings. Gently yet with perseverance flow, guide, assist, and lightly wash away that which does not serve yourself or others. In this way you will find peace and resilience, inner guidance, clarity, strength, security, flexibility, and truth so that propaganda and ill-will cannot affect you.
In all things patience, action, attitude and intention matter. Feel the joy in every moment and your heart will sing, Namaste, in love and light, bg
Following these steps to increase awareness and allowing creates space to respond effectively and change your behavior.
An easy way to begin is the Stop, Look, and Listen method.
Stop multitasking or whatever action in which you are involved that may split your attention or where you feel you are being pulled along a track in an habitual thinking/behaving way; Look, or pay attention by bringing your attention to the situation at hand, pay attention to the actions of others and yourself and how relevant these are to the whole of the situation; Listen to your inner voice and the style, tone, timber of your and the other’s voice. Stop look and listen is focus, see, and hear in the present moment, the now. This is a simple unambiguous phrase that brings you into mindfulness.
It is a simple way to interrupt habit-reactive firing of behavior. This method slows down your reactive-linking behavior. Through present moment refocusing of your attention you can gather information and then develop a response that meets the present moment situation.
This recovery process can be applied to any habit that has gone awry. What’s really great about this set of actions and behaviors is how they help in every instance when a habit has simply overtaken your life as the driver of your behavior rather than the mechanism of your comfort or alleviation of difficulty.
Here’s how to decipher if you are dealing with a habit reaction pattern.
Check in with your senses and intuition. If you feel that the experience is familiar or a pattern then you may be participating in a habit reaction scenario. If you feel that you have trouble trusting that things can/will go well for you, then your early history of having to survive is coloring your current day choices/actions.
If you have an immediate feeling of anger, like someone has crossed a boundary and your feeling is charged in that the level of emotion (intensity) doesn’t match the situation or boundary crossing, this is a sign that you have been triggered.
In this instance, proceed in your actions with thoughtfulness.
Query yourself on whether your intense feeling is consistent with your overall experience of the person or the environment toward which you are feeling the intense reaction.
Stop, look, and listen – think caution in proceeding.
Invoke mindfulness and centered, present moment attention to the situation.
Work against the pull of the groove into the habit reaction pattern.
This is how you can engage the a more balanced attitude. Focus is the key. If you are in danger, utilizing your reaction skills to get out of the situation is paramount. If you are not in danger but rather caught in a habit reaction pattern then focus your attention on what you want rather than what you fear as the best response.
Use mindfulness to re-view the circumstances in relation to your emotion. This is the stop, look, and listen component, it will help you identify whether this is danger or not. In example, if a stranger is doing something that feels dangerous allow your survivor reactions to move at lightning pace. If however, the situation is with a loving partner, or friend – you need to view your emotion within the context of the relationship in present-time and with clarity and genuineness.
Awareness, Breathe, Wait it out, and Reveal.
The most difficult element of confronting a habit reaction pattern that is driving your behavior is the stopping part.
If your car is out of control, you need to stop its forward movement – this requires first, a recognition that you have lost control of the car, and then second, an action to gain control.
This awareness is key. Once you are aware you can begin to take back control of your thinking and behaving/actions.
Stop look and listen focuses you on increasing your awareness. Breathe, wait it out, and reveal focuses you on how and what to change. It requires a shift in how, and on what, you focus. It requires a re-view of yourself through a centered, mindful attention to yourself, your skills and limitations, what brings you joy and centers you in your best self.
Shifting perspective actually creates the power that you feel you have lost. It is a relaxation of the struggle to survive or fight and a gentle movement into the mindful, balanced living of life. Consider the simple action of relaxing in a hold, this action alone telegraphs to the holder to lighten his grip and causes laxity so that you can wiggle out of the stranglehold.
Lightening your grip, your need for habit reactive linking behavior allows you to move through situations and your environment in a mindful and relaxed way, still nimble in your attention and responses to act if necessary to a dangerous situation but not reactive, held or tight in your nature. in love and light, beth
Hello and Welcome! Staying centered is remaining balanced. Balanced within your own sphere as well as balanced in your interactions and community. Centeredness and balance infer a collaborative and open response to internal sensations and external expectations.
When you are pulled in one direction or the other this can have the effect of destabilizing you internally as well as you within your environment. It can then skew your energy and focus onto a path that is not in your best interest.
The best way to stay centered is to maintain an internal awareness of your senses. Paying attention to how you feel in each of your internal centers will assist you in staying centered. You may use you internal sensory guidance system – your five plus one senses – to remain centered. The use of mindfulness and paradigm shifting are of great benefit in developing your relationship to your internal guidance system especially through paying attention and neutral observation of your sensory guidance system responses.
One way to develop this relationship to your centers is through the practice of Yoga. This is because you will have the opportunity to connect breath, with the integration of physical body positions and energetic spiritual centers.
In the Yogic tradition there are bandha that need to remain closed or locked as you do various positions to assist in building physical strength and maintain the pose for clarification. These bandha correspond with certain energy centers in your body called chakras. What is useful for the musculature is related to the emotional component of the center – one is at the root chakra and is referred to a kegel closure – the root chakra relates to survival and may connect to issues of fear. The next important bandha that is discussed is the belly button area – holding this bandha closed is described as pressing the belly button to the spine – this is related to the second chakra which deals with creativity of all types including sexuality and procreation. The third bandha that is discussed is described as holding the chin to the chest – this has a dual effect of closing off the throat chakra while opening further the chakra at the third-eye or the brow chakra which relates to inner vision and intuition. By closing off these centers while holding the Yoga positions the practitioner is strengthening the flow of energy within his centers so that the energy doesn’t dissipate. This results in strengthening the muscles and the physical core of the practitioner as well as the energetic flow of internal connection between these centers. This is how an intentional Yoga practice can assist in the strengthening of a practitioner’s sense of being, and remaining, centered.
Any focused attention with breath to your inner sensory guidance system will produce an increase in your awareness about what and how you are feeling, and responding, in any given situation and can provide guidance about what action is in your best interest which includes a choice to not act from an intentional place.
Centering your self is simply paying attention to, observation of, gathering information from, your internal sensory guidance system (your five senses plus one, intuition) and responding from a place of compassion, love, and neutrality to that internally connected information.
Remember that centered sensory guidance information is in general a calm, and charge-free instinct and results in a sense that something is the best response – rather than a loud, pushing-through-to -the-fore, anxiety-filled, reactive response.
Simple focused breathing for 30 seconds to 3 minutes can increase your capacity for mindfulness and can re-center you.
Longer focused, breathing meditation for 15 – 30 minutes can increase your centering-practice even further and allow you a space to reconnect to your inner self and inner center, this has a lovely additional effect of reducing your blood pressure and reducing your sense of anxiety by bringing your fully into the present moment.
A focused intentional Yoga practice can also encourage you to develop a deeper centering practice. For more information check out this article on Yogi Times, connecting spirit mind and body through Yoga.
Any activity that is present moment focused with love and breath will increase your capacity for centering, praying meditation, walking, running, singing, and dancing all have the components for increasing or deepening your integrated spirit, mind, and body connection.
Staying centered increases self-knowledge, self-love, strength, and right-action. In love and light, Beth
Hello and Welcome I read this quote on Facebookfrom Marianne Williamson – she retells an old story from the bible in a way to encourage spiritual empowerment and healing; integrating spiritual healing and a description of mindful living:
The giant was a terrifying enemy; even the best warriors of Israel trembled at the thought of fighting him. David was merely a young shepherd and a musician, yet he was the one to defeat the giant. How did he do it? He had three smooth stones in his slingshot, and he hit the giant between his eyes. THE GIANT HAS NO DEFENSE WHEN HE IS HIT IN HIS THIRD EYE. He cannot defend himself against these three things: truth, virtue and love. So that’s the message for us: to speak the truth; to work on our own virtue; and to act with love. At this point in history, all three take courage… Marianne Williamson (my italics)
The elements – truth, virtue and love are so powerful – their essence creates a space for you to be impenetrable – solid and strengthened to see your way through the propaganda that is all around you.
From a metaphoric perspective the idea that truth, virtue and love are the powerful forces that work through the third eye is in essence a concept of standing in the light of spirit. I had a powerful discussion recently about standing in one’s heart center. It is a difficult thing and yet happens effortlessly when you open yourself and create space in relationship to truth, virtue, and love.
I receive my best lessons about truth when I am challenged to not speak the truth, not act from the center of my true self (virtue) and when I am not acting out of love for all the parties involved – for me the forgotten love is usually not acting lovingly toward myself – or simply when I am acting out of fear.
I once noticed that evil is live spelled backwards and it dawned on me that not living was evil and living was the opposite of evil. Fear seems to open the door to evil through the concept of not living in your true or full light. Love seems to fill you with faith and trust so that you can go toward your truth and virtue not avoid them from fear.
When I was a student living in Italy. These lessons came to me experientially in my awareness of the difference between my truth and that of my beloved boyfriend with whom I had traveled to Italy, as well as my perceptual awareness of national and political ‘truth” seen from my new lens of outsider in a foreign country. I learned that there were different kinds of truth and that truth had a time-stamp or perspective to it that shifted its relativity. I was already drawn to existential writers by this time in my life, but here I was introduced to the amazing writings of Carlo Levi in his book Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945). This book dealt with many issues of figure and ground when defining truth. It has helped me all these many years to assist others in relationship to discern the difference between what is true from a perspective point of view and what is truth from a universal spiritual point of view.
The first step in finding your way through the propaganda that surrounds you in the media, your cultural and political affiliations and your world is to discover your truth, your personal virtue and what love looks and feels like to you. Love from the compassionate, accepting, non-attached mindful perspective that connects us all as one.
This can be an effortless transformation. Simply notice, accept and feel gratitude for what is working in your life. Open to being rather than doing. Rise above the perspective of right and wrong and into the concept of living and not-living this will assist you seeing, feeling and knowing the truth. This will assist you in developing your virtue.
Though simple acts of lovingkindness and mindfulness you are strengthened. Smile more, laugh more, accept more, feel the pain of others more, love yourself more, forgive more – all these actions increase your capacity for truth, virtue and love.
The first step is through the use and active mindset of compassion.
The best way to get there is through a daily practice of meditation, yoga, and/or prayer.
InstinctiveHealthParenting4U 