Confessions of Self Censorship and Spray Tan...

Enough already! I can't take another second of this self imposed strangulation!

I've been mulling over the possibilities, start a new blog? Throw myself head first into a bag of something fried and salty? I have grossed mySelf out with this Self censoring. In the shackles of supposed professionalism, I have edited out my unique quirky authenticity. For that I am sorry.

From this day forward. while blogging or otherwise...

I will be honestly irreverent!

I am giving mySelf full permission to be the goofball mystic of my soul's choosing!

I will no longer edit my snarky humor, or creative mumblings....

AAAHHH that feels better.

This permission, reminds me of the day I finally came to terms with being a white girl.

Some of my earliest memories are of deep Caucasian denial.

1) In the horse field with a friend rubbing our limbs down with dark earth and admiring our amazing tans!

2) In preschool using marker (the cinnamon scented kind) to color my skin. I was interrupted by the call to snack before I turned into the bronze Goddess I was creating- I did however lose marker privileges for the remainder of the week.

3) In the bath staring at my oh so mundane pale skin, practicing my illusive super powers, while chanting my first mantra "I am tan, I am tan, I am tan, I am tan, I am tan ( No you are NOT-doh!)

4) Imagining I was the Coppertone girl with her little puppy (remember her?)

The list is longer, and more detailed as I began imagining I was all sorts of exotic beauties. Every race except mine! Remember the first fake tanning lotions? Q2? Nothing says junior high like orange streaky skin!

Or the slippery summers spent slathered in baby oil...brown for a season.

Just a few years ago I fell prey to my siren fantasy again (no really)- this time in the form of a spray tan. Someone tell me why these places are still in business? Never have I scrubbed my elbows, feet, ankles, and wrists sooo long and hard. SCARY! Then as it wore off I just looked dirty, not a glowing woman of color? no not even a tan whitey!

And so, after over 3 decades of racial self struggle. I buckled. I just gave in to what was, what is.

AAAHHhhhhhh that feels better! Accepting me, just as I am.

Let's remind each other: it's perfectly ok to be me...to be you... just as we are!

Joy quest

"Don't ask what the world needs.

Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
– Howard Thurman

I learned something this morning about Gandhi. He was inspired by Tolstoy. It was after reading Tolstoy's ideas on passive resistance that he envisioned a Way.

That thread of inspired love is woven through out our history. Over the centuries, how many average human beings awoke to it? Outgrowing "average", swelling with the confidence of peace to invoke the masses and alter the world as we know it.

Blasting away the age old lie of "That's just the way it is"!

"Reasonable people adapt to the world, unreasonable people adapt the world to themselves. Therefore all progress is left up to the unreasonable people!"

-George Bernard Shaw

Conscious Eating Playshop

Yesterday I was joined by 7 precious women who came together courageously and opened up their hearts and voices to share, learn, and heal their relationships with food and their bodies.

This Playshop was particularly personal and even a little scary for me. I stepped out of the shame of my herstory of eating disorders, and embraced the gift of that wound. I experienced a deeper healing in telling my old food story, and passing on what I have learned through out my slow decade of healing and new consciousness around food, and my body!

I was especially touched and inspired by one of the women, who is living quite a unique life. This fabulous lively woman is blind and deaf , she is also a single mother of two! Wow! What a blessing to meet her and see the power of intention, attitude, and curiosity!

I look forward to September's Playshop "Creating More Time". Sept 25 th 1-4 pm.

If your first thought was, "I can't do that, I'm just too busy", then make the time for this Playshop, I created it just for you! We will look at the time and energy leaks in our lives. Learn a brilliant system for weekly scheduling that allows us to accomplish goals that reflect what is most important to us.

Let's question the story of "Getting it all done", and explore how to enjoy time with family and friends, and still have time for ourSelves! And yes we can still fulfill the mundane tasks with mindfulness, and proper priority placement. It is possible, come learn how!

Register now www.Mayawholehealth.com

Remembering our loveliness

I think of a story Wayne Dyer tells about a tribe in Africa. When a person of that tribe screws up, everything stops. Everyone who knows that person comes to surround them. One by one they go before the person and tell them the happy memories, the great qualities they have, and recount each time they remember this person acting in kindness. The idea is that if we can remember who we truly are, if we can reconnect to our essential Self we will only act from that place. If someone messes up, it is only that they have temporarily forgot who they are. It is the job of the family and whole community to remind that person of their greatness. In this tribe these episodes of "crime" happen only about every 5 years. There are a couple thousand people in this tribe...

Meditation is working it's magic. There is space around myself and the lesson I am in. A space that liquifies or gels time and judgment into a clay of sorts. Without the push of time or divisions of judgement I sense possibility. Pain is rich with possibility. As the wave crests and swallows possibility I can cry. I can feel my way through it emerging into possibility again, this is the rhythm.

How to Break Through Suffering:
A Reorganizational Healing Perspective

Last time we described how we create suffering by: making the experience all-pervasive and seem permanent, taking it personally, feeling helpless and option-less, avoiding the experience, giving it a name (conceptualizing it) and making it seem real, and feeling separate.

We also presented "Why would anyone WANT to learn how to fully suffer?" and the transformative power of being fully with the experience (instead of the stories or concepts that perpetuate suffering) even for an instant.

Now, how do we break down the system of suffering? What steps must we take to move through and experience the real energy underneath? As all suffering is in the avoidance of suffering, the following list of options helps us to be fully with what is, dissolving our concept of suffering:

1. Find a way to make the experience merely scary without needing to put a story or label on it.Example: "I'm frightened of the pain I feel in my back" is different, and more real, than "I might have cancer, I may never walk again, it's my karma, God is punishing me, etc"
2. Fully experience and define the painful experience as it is. Define its borders and depth in your body, the quality of the sensation, the color, the sound, the flavor, the rhythm in it, everything that can be SENSED. No story about it, no meaning, no name/diagnosis - just the sensations.
3. Find a way to make the experience or concept even slightly impermanent. Notice the times when your focus is on other things and you don't experience suffering. Find what other experience you put in the front of your mind that makes suffering irrelevant (something pleasurable, peaceful, exciting, etc).
4. Remember that others have or have had the same type of experience. Suffering is a mindtrip that says you're utterly alone, and at its worst will warp your self-esteem to gain significance - "king of the garbage pile". You are so much bigger than this! Others can and do understand.
   
5. Find something else that can be changed in life. It may be that the pain or story will never change, but the charge can come off so you can go on in your life. Forget fighting it - that keeps it alive. If it never changed, how would you live life? What is the wisdom in this experience?
6. Ask the suffering to intensify and expand from its location until it fills every part of you. The fear is that if we feel it, we will die, yet that fear is a kind of living death. Reclaim the power to dive in and fully experience it in every cell, and then ask it, "Is this the best you've got?" When you do this, you cannot be helpless.

All it takes is to look at one part of the story we use to avoid suffering and realize that it's not true, and we lose our servitude to suffering.

This practical advice on living is brought to you from, Center of The Universe Network Care, office of Dr. Matthew howe. 2622 NW Market St Suite C Seattle Wa

check them out at centeroftheuniverse.com!

Hey out there to all the Power Mamas! Those of us raising our babes, raising our businesses, and raising ourSelves in the process.

I am just reminded that while I'm out there inspiring light in others, coaching my peeps back to them Selves, there is one privilege before me that is greater than ANY event, client, presentation, contract or contact.

It's the life I am cradling and shaping, the life I brought into the world, my baby who is a boy turning man. A teenager ready to take on the world, so cool, curious, and creative! no matter how he distances himSelf from me, it's fleeting. He's right there telling me about the latest band, the coolest video game, (Yes, even raised a Waldorf kid, for those of you with younger children, those of you still having your idealism in tact..allow me to shatter it for you!) It's all about Facebook, and heavy metal, or punk rock these days (came with the summer mohawk)

The details aren't important, what I'm getting at is the freedom in throwing out the idealism, in releasing my agenda for him.

When I show up present, authentic, open, (like I would for you or a client) I become curious and entertained by who he is becoming. It's all about the questions, deep listening, checking in with my neutrality. Continually tossing out the judgments, the assuming. When the alarms go off, asking more questions. Over and over again I find the gold inside him. I find an open minded young man exploring ideas, styles, questioning authority (mine included) The rules remain in place, he is held strong. He knows how to think, not what to think! He pulls out values along with his logic. Often I find myself learning new facts that open my mind. Suspending my lecturing, and know it all attitude, the connection we have is secured. I don't believe we have to lose our teenagers. I do believe it is up to us to stay open and curious about there process. Maybe that is just more idealism, for now I'll keep trying it, it seems to be working.

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday, it read: The most important thing you can spend on you kids is TIME!

This is the most important position I will EVER hold in life! Showing up for our children is mandatory! Not just in that drive you around, wash your laundry, "did you do your homework" sort of way, but in that REAL heartfelt way. Don't check that message, let the e-mail be...climb into your child's reality, instead of trying to drag them into yours!

Here are some must have tools....

Earnest Listening

Conscious communication

Intentional touch

Energy awareness

Maybe I should start teaching these allies to more than just the Beauty Industry????