Our Fleshly Home

Our Fleshly Home

How do you feel about your body, your physical manifestation? Do like living in your body? Do you appreciate your body? Or are you critical about your body, and unkind to it?

What a big set of questions that is for us.

I sure didn’t like mine. For decades. My list of complaints about my body was long, from it’s appearance to how it felt. I felt betrayed. I felt abused. I didn’t trust it to do what I wanted. I felt a lot of icky stuff. And I did a lot of nasty stuff to my body, too. I obsessed about how my body felt, what was wrong with it, and how much I hated it. Oy.

I remember sitting down in front of a mirror to do an exercise I found in a self-help book. I was to look at my face and stay three things I liked about it. That seemed impossible. What a complex set of emotional responses and feelings I had to that assignment. It took me several tries, but eventually I was able to do it.

Chronic pain, chronic sick, chronic misery. I had the Chronic big time. I blamed and hated my body for it. I am sad to say that I hurt my body intentionally a lot during those years. It never occurred to me that it was trying to communicate.

When I was a kid, just learning to think about stuff deeply, I remember hearing a lot about the impossibility of the mind/body connection. It was too strange! How could they be connected? How could our mind impact our physical well being?

Instantly and deeply, as we are proving scientifically. Researchers are showing us that prenatal programming helps us cope with our own, personal family. Mind-generated stresses  and their related physical conditions like tension headaches and tummy upsets are mind-body concepts we are all pretty familiar with, and accept.

It’s not a long step then to the new research that shows us that each thought, one kind of energy, triggers a physical response, another kind of energy. Series of thoughts produce series of physical responses and we call these emotions, or symptoms, depending on what’s going on in our minds.

Curiously, our language uses these symptoms as idioms. We actually say it. For example, if we are feeling overwhelmed, we may be using the phrase, “Carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders,” and have a lot of tension and discomfort in our trapezius muscles in our upper back, shoulders and neck.

Following this line of thought, what kind of messages might your body be trying to send if you’ve had “the rug pulled out from under you,” or “Can’t see the big picture,” or “put my nose out of joint.”

When we start seeing our body as our ally rather than our nemesis, we start to learn more about ourselves, about what drives us, what scares us, what we might want to consider working on. When we consider our symptoms as messages from our unconscious mind sent to us by way of our bodies, we open a whole world of self-knowledge, and free ourselves to love ourselves.

How have I changed from hating my fleshly home to loving my body?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 02092015

Break Me Off a Piece of That Gratitude

Break Me Off a Piece of That Gratitude

Some time back I started a little practice first thing in the morning, namely, writing out appreciations from the previous day. Taking a few minutes to look for the good in the day before has proved to be an interesting and valuable exercise. On the one hand, I have had some very interesting days, shall we say, and yet, on the other hand, I have always found things that I appreciate, shimmering pools of gratitude, no matter how challenging the day has been.

I’ve been curious to notice that the days when I am really sluggish about finding jewels in the previous day have little to do with the quality of the day. Rather, it has to do with waking up feeling pissy, or glum, or some other thought-driven mood.

Because I have made the commitment to write out that daily list, which I publish on facebook, I make myself go looking. Often, just that little effort will pull me out from the doldrums.

When it doesn’t, I look for the thoughts. Sometimes I can find them pretty easily, but sometimes those pesky thoughts are unconscious. Then I have to put on my Sherlock hat and grab a lamp and go looking deep inside.

One of the things I’ve learned is that a bad dream can put me in a bad mood. Even one I don’t remember. Oy. Talk about thoughts becoming things. Cheery music, moving around, like a walk, or dancing a bit, even just flapping my arms around, can help bust that up. Especially when I add in a liberal dollop of Creative Questions.

Why would I choose to lighten up? How could I feel glad? How do I feel when I feel sunny?

When I take time to appreciate the blessings and bounty in my life, when I notice my gratitude, and let myself feel it, I feel good. I feel satisfied and usually I feel more connected to you. My life seems nicer, I feel replete.

I lived with a little cat who was so busy begging for attention that she never noticed when she got it, poor little punkin. I could have her all cuddled up in my arms, and she would still be pawing at my face.

Feeling grateful helps us slow down enough to notice what is going on with us, so we can notice that we are getting what we are asking for, and change what we are asking for if it’s not what we actually want. You might wanna read that again. It’s tricky.

When we slow down a bit, we have room to remember to relax. When we relax we move in closer to our natural lives; easy, satisfying, joyful, creative. Feeling grateful is almost automatic, and the more we find to be grateful for, the more opportunities we have to be grateful.

As we get more proficient in our gratitude practice, we may notice that we find things of value in our challenges. We may notice that a situation is actually a pattern we’ve been playing out for ages. We may realize that in that situation we believe something bad or wrong about ourselves, and can change it. Now that’s something to be grateful for. Or we may notice that we are stronger or smarter than we thought we were. Sometimes, we may find that we’ve been spending time or energy on something that doesn’t even need to be done, or that there is something we haven’t done that would make a nice difference for us.

How have I changed from flying through my life to taking a daily gratitude break?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 01122014

Megabattle to the Death: Me vs Life -- Cancelled

Megabattle to the Death: Me vs Life -- Cancelled

Here is a simple truth. In fact, since it is true for everyone, it’s actually a Universal Truth with a capital T.. Life is easier, better, and more fun when we stop fighting it.

At the very bottom of it all, it’s all just energy. It’s not good and bad energy, just energy. We are just energy. Subatomic particles zazzing around in space, and somehow we are one of a gazillion results of that zazzing.

Reality is so loosey goosey.

Thoughts create things.

You have a lot more control over what you think than you think you do.

What?

This gets really clear when we are meditating. Thoughts flow through our conscious mind like clouds, lahdee lahdee lah. Every so often, one of those clouds is sticky, and we start to think on that thought. And we follow it down it’s particular path, with more energy, and judge it as good or bad based on our beliefs.

Thoughts become things.

Life is better when we allow it to unfold.

In my qigong practice, I let things flow. Sometimes I have a thought about the flow, sometimes I don’t. When “I” get out of the way, I have a wonderful time. Allowing my qi flow to flow, allowing my thoughts to flow. Allowing my life to flow.

I used to assume that life was somehow out to get me, to make my life hard. It was.

Now I assume that life is out to benefit me, to make my life better. It is.

To paraphrase Henry Ford, If you think life’s great or you think life sucks, you’re right.

When I trust that life is benevolent, and that it is affording me opportunities to grow and evolve, everything that happens in my awareness is an opportunity for my growth. If I ignore the lesson, it will come back bigger and more noticeably until it has to grab me by the neck and throw me to the ground. (I wonder why that seems to be the image I get re life giving me lessons I refuse to learn.)

When I allow my life to unfold, to flow, life gets easier, it gets kind of fascinating. So many of us take stuff personally in a negative way. When we flow with our life, we can take everything personally in a really positive way. What is the gift? Where is the lesson? Why do I choose to see the opportunity?

I want to be a grown up, with my demons faced, to the best of my ability, living in line with my gifts and talents, responsible for me and to you.

I want to live my natural life of happiness and joy and satisfaction and peace most of the time.

I want to create space all around me that is peaceful and safe so that have a place to come that feels great, and encourages your grown up self to emerge.

That’s nice.

How have I changed from fearing and hating my life to trusting my life?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10042013