Yes........I CAN

Yogis,

This week we moved up into Manipura chakra, and the element of fire.  Our belly.  Our heat.  It is here that we create, change, transform, and move forward.  But to tap into the magnificent force of fire we first must let go of the past (earth) and be fully present in this moment without struggling against it (water). 

Let me walk you through two simple but powerful practices that help us to get there. 

1-      Become aware of the whole back of your body.  Now close your eyes and visualize every single thing that has happened in your life, up to this very moment, behind the body.  Your past……physically behind the body.  Send your next exhale out through the back body sending your past a little further away.  Detaching from the past. 
     ……it no longer exists
Now move your awareness into the center of your body – that line of energy that runs from the tailbone to the crown directly in front of the spine.  This is the present.  Trace that line with your breath and notice this moment.  Notice everything about this moment.  Feel it.  Being in  it fully and accepting this moment exactly as it is.   Aaahhhh………..

 

2-      Bring something to mind that recently was challenging or difficult.  Close your eyes and bring it all back.  See it clearly, feel it in your body, notice what your mind was thinking.  Allow the emotions that went with it. 

Take a long inhale, and as you slowly exhale watch the exhale begin pushing the vision down through the body from the crown of the head all the way down the torso and the legs and out through the soles of the feet.  Make sure your exhale sweeps every crumb of the vision out through the feet. 

And now take in a fresh inhale noticing how clean and clear it is.  Welcome to the present moment!

 

Now notice the front of the body……………..and the limitless blank space in front of you.   Your future.  Waiting for you to create within it.  Anything that you desire…………

 

The last two weeks we dove deep to discover what we truly wanted.  Our longings.   Now we visualize them and set them in motion by planting our intention.

It’s that time of year where many of us are going through health screenings for the upcoming health insurance season.  Receiving results that we often expect, or perhaps some new news.  It gets the discussions, and sometimes the worry, going.  One guy that I work with emailed me that he was surprised he was even capable of sending an email with the results he had gotten.

On my way to “hot” yoga on Friday I saw a billboard at a bus stop.  It was a women with her hands in prayer position at her heart, eyes closed.  And all it said was:  

Blood Pressure

You are going Down.

I love that!  It was a sign for Kaiser Permanente but should be a sign for the spiritual journey.   It is a perfect example of an intention.

Once we know what we want we have to “see” it clearly and then state it in the positive and plant it in the Universe.   Over and over and over.  With complete clarity and conviction.    Blood pressure, you are going down.

Notice it isn’t:

-          I wish my blood pressure was going down
or…

-          I am hoping to get my blood pressure down this time

Those are sending out the message to the Universe that it isn’t coming down right now.  And what you send out is what you attract back. 

Now on the other hand….You are going down…. Sends that exact message out.  Nothing wishy washy there.  You aren’t asking pretty please, but stating clearly what you want and that positive vibration is what the Universe will receive.  The Universe responds best to clarity and will echo your intention back to you.

Not – “I never have enough money” – which signals there is scarcity and lack, but – “Money flows in and out of my life in abundance with ease”.    No buts, no skepticism, no question.  If you were the Universe, which would you respond to?

I have a new job…… My digestion system is strong and trouble free……..I take time for myself daily………I am learning a new skill…….My shoulder is healed………

Whatever it is that you want.   SEE it, send it out, and watch it with an unwavering focus.   

……………..and then all we are asked to do is take baby steps toward it.   The Universe will support your every move. 

I am moving forward,

SARAH

letting go to the flow.......part 2

Feeling Yogis,

As we flowed through the second week of the water element, and did a little shaking of our hips, there were 2 currents that flowed through me.  The first went something like this.

Let go, let go, let go, let go……………………..

……and then let go some more.

I was very blessed to be able to spend time by water on several occasions this week.  Here my foot rests at the edge of the river where I sat and watched.  The river has continuous movement, but without struggle.  Around the rocks, through the crevices, onto the banks.  And with each breeze a leaf would float down to gently land on her surface and be carried away.  Here one moment and gone the next. Impermanent.  Allowing itself to follow nature’s rhythm.  Incredibly peaceful and so freeing. 

Why can’t I do that?  Why can’t I just let go and be with what is here?

 

This weekend I was by the ocean.  Friday night sitting in the sand soaking in the full moon beams, and this morning under a clear blue sky and brilliant sun,  I found a nook next to a jetty to be alone. To feel.

Here is what came.  I lie back and flow until an emotion rises that I just don’t like.   Then I climb out onto shore to resist the current.   To resist the present moment.  But resisting the present moment is like putting out  your arms to hold back a large wave.  It is a tremendous expenditure of energy with a 100% guarantee that you will get no return on your investment.   The present moment just is.  You cannot change it.  When we learn to accept this moment completely, exactly as it is – then and only then can we jump back in and be in the flow. 

This isn’t an easy concept to grasp, much less to do.  You may say – “but that is settling”, or “by accepting it I am saying it is right or ok”.   But it isn’t that at all.  Accepting this moment in no way means that you don’t want differently for the future.  But in order to create new, we must release the past (earth) and be fully with what is right now (water).   Then from this point of complete freedom we can plant the seed of intention of what we desire (fire). 

Which brings me to the second current……

What is it that I long for?  What do I want? 

It seems so easy, but oh I find it so hard.   And the answer will never come from the mind.  Those mind wants are fleeting and when filled will satisfy for only so long.  What I want comes from a much deeper place.  I can feel it, and know that I have touched it in the past, but still haven’t found the words.  Maybe there are no words.

I listened to two talks this week that both kept coming back to the same message - that it is in our vulnerability that we find our power.   The willingness to move forward without knowing.   This struck a chord within.   A sense that if I  can become more vulnerable (which does not come naturally to me and is awfully scary), more transparent, and have the courage to allow all waves of emotion without numbing them,  that perhaps then I can let go……and in that process unleash those deepest soul’s desires.  Feel even more.

Because when all is said and done, and we look deeply into the water,  yes we can see the bottom  but at the very same time our own reflection as well. 

Become comfortable in the discomfort of your emotional nakedness.  ~Panache Desai

                What makes you vulnerable, makes you beautiful.  ~Brene Brown

Feeling vulnerable as I hit the send button,

SARAH

letting go to the flow........

Dear Damp Yogis,

Rain.  Rain.  Rain.    ………and then some more rain. 

And just when it would appear that it was letting up and the skies were brightening ever so slightly…..more rain. 

Steady heavy rain all week.

 

You couldn’t help but feel it.

I have been in a funk most of the week.  Part of it is probably due to the gray skies that come hand in hand with rainy days.  But I know that was just the trigger that brought it to the surface.   The steady, relentless stream of water caused me to feel something I would just assume bury.  That my funk is also tied to the time of year. 

I struggle every year during this transition to fall.  The evenings dark before I can even finish dinner, my garden slowly fading back, the chill that settles into my bones when I sit too long at my pc, and ……sigh….having to put my feet back into shoes to go outside.   It all makes me feel sad and a little hollow. 

I know for many of you it is quite the opposite.  People around me are thrilled for the nip in the air, the fall colors and Sunday football.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy many of the changes that fall brings, and I wouldn’t ever want to live somewhere that didn’t experience the wonder of earth’s magical ability to change seasons.  But when I look toward fall as a whole it appears to me as a long dark tunnel.  And I struggle. 

When I find myself in this state of mind I can only describe it as a longing.  The sense of “is this it?”.  A wanting for more.  A wanting for things to be different.   And the interesting thing when you observe your emotions is that they begin to entangle themselves into every aspect of your life.  Suddenly your job is not right, your activities feel stale and even your body suddenly appears more imperfect than usual when you glance in the mirror. 

This week we are working with Svadisthana, our sacral chakra, the element of water.  How fitting. 

The energy of water is receptive.  When we toss something into water, it is accepted fully.  Water opens herself up completely to wrap her arms around all that is placed within her.   Water does not struggle against, but changes form and flows easily around any and all obstacles. 

Water is the goddess.  Sensual, alive and open.  The tides and the current, and the radiance of the moon.  She is that part of us that is wild, instinctive and completely comfortable in our skin, without regard for what is happening on the outside.

Water makes us feel.

So my work right now is to let go.  To lie back in the current of the Universe and allow it – without this need to struggle.  To be able to separate what I feel vs who I am.   Recognizing that this funk is simply fluctuations in my mind, and that it, like everything outside of me is impermanent.  That soon I will be comfortable in the new season….and again in my own skin.  But for now to just let it be exactly as it is.  To LET it rain, soak in my tub and allow myself to feel what it is like to be low.  To wrap my arms around it.

Not easy.  But a lesson from the Goddess.

I couldn’t even coax Bunny Rabbit out in the rain last night,

SARAH

..........the silence of our inner being

Dear Yogis,

Where did your feet take you this week?  And were you really there…..

Life emerges out of the silence of our inner being.   And so began the reading I used by Reggie Ray this week, in an article titled “Busyness is laziness”. The simple message being that the busier we become, the more we can shut down our brain.  Being on a treadmill, making sure there are no empty spaces where we may have to actually touch that silence within.  That busyness is habitual, and the easy way out.  Here is a link to the full article if you would like to read it.  

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2008/09/dr-reggie-ray-busy-ness-is-laziness/

I would like to walk through a couple of practices that we used this week to help us slow down and begin to tap into that inner silence.  The present moment.  The stillness of the earth energy.

-         Notice the whole back of your body.  From the back of your head down to the tailbone.  Now visualize that absolutely everything that has happened up to this very moment is behind the body. Everything.  See it there.   Feel it there.  That is the past.  It no longer exists.
So on your next exhale send it a little further away from you.  Again and again……….
Now notice the center of your body – that line of energy that runs from the crown to the tailbone an inch or two in front of the spine.  Trace it with your breath.
This is where you find the present moment. This is where you begin to sense the silence of your inner being.
Simply notice it………………often

 

-        Sometimes when we are on that treadmill of life it seems that the past determines the future.  Things replay themselves over and over and over.  Like the old days when one of your albums had a skip in it, and the same line would play over and over and over.  The needle stuck in the groove until you purposefully moved it. 
Life is no different. 
Bring to mind something that you were doing right before reading this.  Something in your day that has stuck with you (good or bad).  Anything.  Bring it fully into your mind and your body.  Seeing it and feeling it.
Now  close your eyes while you are still seeing and feeling it, and with a long slow exhale, watch your exhale gradually pushing it further and further down the body until finally the breath pushes it out of the body and back into the earth. 
And notice how the inhale that flows in up that center line of the body is now so clean and clear and empty.   A new groove on the record.
This is where our true source of creation is.    From here we can create anything we want and project it on to  that clean, limitless, white canvas that is in front of the body. 

And finally –

-        Tonight when you lie down in bed and settle in, work toward becoming stiller and stiller.  Breathe there.  Take your time.  No rush. 
Begin to notice what it “feels” like to be completely still.
It has a very unique sensation.  Feel it.
And the longer you can remain relaxed and perfectly still, and the more aware you become of your stillness, the more you will begin to notice what is happening inside of the body.
The stiller you are, the more aliveness you will sense inside.   It becomes boundless ……because it is.  The energy of YOU.

But for all of this, we must do the necessary work to find stillness in our day.  To spend time alone.  To drop down to the earth and soak up her mothering, boundless, nurturing, slow vibrating energy.

And now it’s time to move up this center line to Svadisthana, our water chakra…………………

Now that we have become rooted to earth, have left our past “behind” us,  and have connected to that inner silence of our being where we see that we can create anything that we want…………………………………….  Now we have to be sure we know what that is!!!

These next two weeks as we work with the element of water, we will tap into the well of desire.  Digging deep to uncover what is it that we truly want.  What will fulfill us and give our life a sense of purpose.  We found the stillness and now introduce some movement, lying back and riding the current of the Universe. 

No struggle.  Finding our flow………………….

MMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm………………………………………

I wrote this while sitting in my medicine wheel garden with bunny at my side.   What could be better than that?

I am right here,

SARAH

Physically grounded...........

Grounded Yogis,

In one of my posts I noted that Bunny Rabbit keeps me grounded. 

At the time I meant it from an emotional/mental perspective.  When Bunny arrives, all else fades away and I become perfectly present.  I notice everything.  I am aware of his every move, as well as mine....knowing that his ever watchful eye will pick up on any hurrying on my part.  Slowing down to gain trust.  Making him feel "safe". 

But this week I have also noticed that Bunny Rabbit keeps me grounded  in a physical sense.  As Bunny hops toward the garden, excited for dinner, my immediate instinct is to drop down to the earth.  Sitting squarely on the ground, head bowed, or even lying fully prone in the grass to have my face in line with his.  Better for genuine conversations!

Earth......where we feel safe, grounded, relaxed, still and aware.  Being fully present so as not to miss even one incredible moment!

Slow down and join us for a recent dinner -

What brings you down to earth?  Notice.....and do a whole lot more of it!

Ooommmmmm.........
SARAH