Moving to Easy Street

Moving to Easy Street

Here’s a little “try this” for you. Clench your fists tight, so you feel it up your arms. Hold it, hold it... Now let the clench go.

Easy.

I don’t know about you, but I have a bunch of places where I still seem to run into the clench. Places, situations, circumstances where I seem to make it harder again and again. I still respond to the idea of certain people with a clench. There are even places in my personality that make me clench. When I notice I am doing that, I let go as best I can, and relax. I start asking Creative Questions on the topic.

Wellness appointments can be clench-y for many of us, especially if it involves treatments. I used to have a lot of challenging feelings about them. Now I start asking good Creative Questions several days ahead: Why is my appointment comfortable, easy, and fun? What makes my appointment a good experience? How do I allow and accept my procedure? Why do I release my tooth? Okay, that last one is really specific, but it meant that my extractions were easy, and healed fast with no discomfort. Amazing.

Easy.

I like to be on time for stuff, and I hate rushing, and so one of the Creative Questions I use a lot is, “Why is my timing perfect?” I don’t always arrive on time, as I prefer, but it seems like when I am tardy, it works out.

I have also composed some Creative Questions songs that I sing a lot. I think singing Creative Questions is amazing. They get into different part of our minds, activate different things. Singing them is a powerful act. Try it!

Why is it just so easy? Why can I trust? How do things go my way? (Did you sing those Creative Questions?)

Integrating easy wants practice. I love practicing easy on small things. If I am having clenchies about something coming up, I will ask my regular CQ with would or could in the question. I will imagine different ways the upcoming event could work out fantastic for me. Fantastic. It often does. Then, to continue integrating the experience, I will make sure I take time to appreciate that the experience was good. This is why we should always celebrate even our small successes, our tiny achievements. Practicing feeling good is necessary to get to our core. We often blow past this step. Please stop doing that and feel appreciation for things working out, for being so smart as to imagine the good rather than anticipating awful.

If I am doing a little house task, or work task and getting frustrated, I will stop, take a few deep calming breaths and ask my easy questions. Usually when I get back to the task, I find that the jar opens, the gunge come up, I can reach the item, I find the thing, I suddenly figure out a better way to do it.

The other thing I like to practice is relaxing all the way through. If I am in stressful times, practicing relaxing all the way really helps. I use meditation, qi gong, Unlimited Breath to help me get to soft. Regular practice means that when something big comes up I have resources. I like resources.

How have I changed from believing in hard to trusting in easy?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07232014

Supporting Wellness

Supporting Wellness

Why am I healthy? Isn’t that a nice question. How do you think about your health? Do you have health or do you have sickness? That, my dear, is a very powerful distinction.

The concept of walking on the sunny side of the street has been showing up for me a lot lately. I like that song, and have since I was a kid. The sunny side is often just a step or two away, but so often we think we can’t get there because we have X.

I am not my behavior. I am not my body’s behavior, either. I am a divine and infinite being. I impose limits on that all the time with my thoughts, and many of those are unconscious. So what do I do about that?

Am I having a lot of emotions about physical discomfort? Fear, anger, sadness, disgust, contempt; each of these, when we are feeling them about our bodies for any length of time, will bring a flood of hormones that cause our bodies to have stress reactions on top of whatever discomfort we are experiencing.

Experiencing our feelings as they arise, and then letting them move through, keeps us clear. When we ignore those feelings, they will build and build, and actually turn into physical symptoms.

I watch my language, for one. Am I using wellness language or illness language? There are some interesting subtleties in our language around wellness. The same way that Creative Questions have results built in, words have experience built in. When I have a problem, I start from a disadvantage. When I say my sickness or my disease, I own it and that means it is mine to take care of on some level, like a sofa, or a puppy. It’s one of the reasons we talk about taking out the trash rather than our trash.

How am I well? Where do I feel good? Why would I choose health?

One of the curiosities of our minds is that we can’t do everything at once. When I am fully engaged in a task, for example, I will often forget that I have a hurt. Where did it go? Why did it cease to trouble me? This gets easier when I have not laid claim to the situation, to stop attending to it, that is.

How do I enhance my wellness? What makes me strong? Why am I so resilient?

Choosing our health care providers is another biggie. Does my provider want to treat my illness? Look at that phrase. It’s the same one we use when we are going out for ice cream or a massage. If anything, I want to treat my health!

Providers in many modalities will have a wellness or a sickness propensity. It is up to me to notice whether this provider understands that I enjoy more wellness through positivity. Treat my wellness, and mitigate the discomfort. Lavish my health, help me banish the imbalance in my body.

When I choose to own my wellness, I step over to the sunny sun. I can have more fun, I can enjoy more, I am less dictated to by the current imbalance in by physical being.

How have I changed from supporting sickness to enjoy the health I have?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 06352014

Cure For a Relax Relapse

Cure For a Relax Relapse

For you on the email list, I get my daily inspiration by pulling a card from the Creative Questions deck of cards. I pulled the” Why is it so easy?” card this morning for the second time in three days. I love it when a random draw focuses me on a particular topic.

Why is it so easy? Why can I relax? What makes it effortless?

I am playing a little mind game this week. I printed out a map whose orientation is South Pole on top. It means that where I live, in Minnesota, is now at the bottom of the US, not the top. It makes me feel a little weird to think of North as down, and South as up.

Arbitrary notions that we cleave to like they are true as breath.

We have a lot of arbitrary notions when it comes to ourselves, each other, and life in general. We behave as though they are true. They aren’t. When I think my arbitrary thoughts are true, and they are at odds with your arbitrary thoughts, we gots trouble.

One of our most treasured arbitrary notions is around stress. We believe in it with all our taxed, exhausted, sorrowful hearts.

Our reactions to stressful situations is a learned behavior. Really and truly. That is wonderful news because it means we can unlearn it and replace those reactions with new responses. Why is it so easy?

When I first encountered this idea I thought it was a cruel joke. But I started to practice with little stressors, and, Lo. I find that I stay calmer way higher on the Stressful Situation scale. Really and truly. Sometimes it surprises me, and I have to double check the calm.

Why can I relax?

I have said it before, and I will say it again. There is no situation in the world that stressing over can’t make worse.

There isn’t one thing that everyone stresses out over, except maybe birth. I don’t know about that one. Babies are so challenging to interview. Point is, stress is arbitrary and personal, and therefore we can change it.

First, you have to believe. Decide that there is a stress loophole, and you can use it. Decide that you can learn to stay calm and present and flow. Decide that you are worth learning to live easy.

Second, you have to notice how and when you stress out. Or stress in. Me, I check in with my shoulders a lot. It’s where we carry our burdens, you know, the weight of the world on our shoulders. I imagine all by stuff packed into baskets on my shoulders, and I imagine taking them off, and setting them down.

I will shrug, roll them around, do a little stretching, imagining the sense of burden falling away. I’ve used meditation, hypnosis, talk therapy, yoga, swimming, to transform stress into happy action. I like to think of it as transforming stress rather than as relieving stress. Relief always seems so temporary.

I will ask, “Why could I relax? What makes my life so easy? Why do things go my way? What makes it all so much fun?” I attend to my point of view, and shift it back to the higher vibration.

How can I feel more relaxed in this very moment?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 08152013

Law of Attraction monthly forum

February 1st was bitterly cold, and dark at 7:00 pm, but that didn't keep this group of inspired women away. Rosie Bodin led the way as we ventured into the Law of Attraction. Each of us had stories of how it has worked for us, and how it hasn't. It seemed like for every story of how we had attracted unpleasant things, someone in the group had been in a similar situation and had been able to change it. And was able to articulate how that had happened. Seeing the Law working right in our class was something to behold. I am very much looking forward to our March forum when the focus will be on prosperity.

I am so grateful to Rosie for her wonderful presentation, for her gentle yet firm hand in keeping us on topic, for all her in-depth research on a very broad topic, for her humor, for her vulnerability and openness, and for her courage to do the public speaking thing on a very important topic.

I am very grateful to our participants for their willingness to show up on such a chilly night, to share their very personal stories, to bring their wisdom and experience to such a powerful topic, to support each other to move through the places where we got stuck. What an amazing group!

I am grateful to the University Baptist Church for creating a space that is so supportive of this kind of work -- warm, friendly, good vibes!

If you would like to post something you are grateful for today, please use the comments option.

Beginning with Gratitude

This is my first post on blogger, though most likely not my last. I'm starting a new business in the healing arts and, wow, have the last few weeks been exciting. I found my office space in Dinkytown, so fun. I'm building a web site, writing like a mad woman, and looking forward to a couple days of really down downtime, like hours in the tub with a suspense novel.

I have noticed somethings through this process that I want to put out here in the world. The first is that I have received so much wonderful support that I am in awe. I never would have thought that so many people want to help me get this business going. I am deeply touched and immensely grateful. I have had offers of help ranging from paperwork to furnishings. I have made connections that are professional and promotional. I have met very kind, loving people who want to make a difference in the world, people who understand that the universe wants us to be joyful and playful. I mean, holy moly, this is incredible.

The next thing is support for the idea that we manifest our reality. In the last few months I have had the experience over and over of stating a clean intention, getting out of the way, and getting results 10 times better than what I'd hoped for. This is powerful, transformative stuff, and it's so easy.

The third thing I've noticed is that this huge transition is being pretty easy. Easy. Gentle. Fun. Not hard, not challenging, not difficult. I have been using Creative Questions like crazy and wowie kazow do they make the difference. If you want to know more about Creative Questions let me know.