Category: Balance

Learning to Mother and Father Myself

On the roof this morning I was reconnecting with myself after a day of feeling overwhelmed and ungrounded much of the day, yesterday. First thing I did this morning was write a list of things that I feel like all have to be done RIGHT NOW (which helped – they don’t). And while I was doing my stretches on the roof, with a tiny peek of the now-just-waning full moon to the west (we’ve been in full cloud cover for the past week), and the splendid sunrise to the east, I had a series of “downloads” from my guides and muses – you might call them inspiration (I keep my iPhone up there so I can listen to Trina Brunk, doesn’t matter how many times).  I e-mailed those “downloads” to myself so I wouldn’t lose them (technology can be so amazing when we use it consciously).

I cherish these nuggets of inspiration, and know that they will sit patiently in my Hotmail inbox until I can get to them. One of the downloads I got came from the realization (again) that I am fully supported, that I have all the time I need, and that when I feel overwhelmed, I can stop and parent myself. Feeling overwhelmed is actually a message from my younger self that I need some care and attention. I sometimes need to be reminded that I am held in loving arms. What occurred to me is that I could easily go back and re-read letters I had written to myself after a “playshop retreat” created by my sisters (Tami and Trina).

I’ll share the letters with you here. They are from my Inner Masculine and Inner Feminine.

From My Inner Masculine:

June 2013: My Dearest Toni,

I am so sorry I have not been fully here for you during the first part of your life. It has truly been my loss and I would like to reconnect now. I understand, now, how much I adore and appreciate you. I give you permission, now, to be all you came here to be, to be a woman in all senses of the word – to experience the joy of physical pleasure. Toni, you are the master of your experience and it is yours to explore pleasure and find what gives you joy and fulfillment. Go ahead. Take those steps. I will be here to support you if you’re not sure at first. I am here. I will continue to be here, whatever direction you decide to go. You will not disappoint me. I promise you this. Trust yourself. Your instincts are good. Your judgment, your discernment can be trusted. I am so proud of you, and excited about this work you are about to do.

I love you. You deserve deep satisfaction, contentment, and the fulfilment of your heart’s desires. You are good. You are pure. You are kind. You are enough.

Go forward. Be yourself.

Your Inner Masculine.

From My Inner Feminine:

June 2013

My Beloved Toni,

I adore you. You are a child of God. I give you permission to be all you came here to be. Take your time. Take all the time you need. I am strong enough to nurture you, while you explore who you are and what you will do next and next and next. How precious you are to me. I can’t wait to see what you next discover about yourself, your strengths, your yet unexplored gifts and qualities and potentials. I give you permission and my blessing to indulge in pleasure, to explore the world, inner and outer, to be great, to be vulnerable, to be playful, to be a beginner – to be exactly who you are now. I am holding this space and time for you while you do this very important work. Go ahead. Let yourself feel your emotions. It is safe to be in your body now. Listen to what it tells you. I will offer you guidance and direction through your sensory experience and I encourage you to enter the full expression of your deepest self, from this moment onward. You are enough. You are so precious to me. I love you so.

I will be here for you always.

Your Inner Feminine

Earthing (Grounding)

Remembering who my Mother is.  My human mother is not my source.  All things we need to nourish our physical bodies come from the earth, and they are abundant and available to us.  Remembering that my Father is unconditional love, support, guidance and abundance, available to me from the heavens, just because I am.

Going for meditation on the roof had so many rewards for me today.  I saw two morning stars before sunrise (Mercury and Mars), and before returning to my workday, I downloaded a to-do list from my angels.  You can read the grounding meditation I did today before doing my regular stretches and tai chi here: contacting-planet-earth.  While doing the exercise, I realized that I have been challenged on so many occasions when it came to breath work, and direction of breath, and timing of breath.  This has repeatedly come up when I’m trying to get coaching, or expanding my body awareness.  I always get mixed up and am breathing out when I should be breathing in and vice versa.  This morning it occurred to me why.

I have been working on releasing an old intergenerational pattern I inherited from my maternal line: the direction of energy flows in reverse, from the child to the parent, instead of the other way around.  This switcharoo is a huge boundary violation as it is a violation of one of the most basic laws of nature.  I identified it and felt a lot of feelings about it when I was a young adult.  Sadly, I am now learning that it did not stop with me, as I had intended.

What came to me today in this grounding meditation was so interesting.  Through it, I am learning to work with my breath to correct this deeply ingrained and habitual reversal.  As I do so, I will watch what else changes in my life.

As with any habit, that is practically as old as I am, it takes time and dedication and persistence to overcome it.  I intend to overcome this in myself at a physical, spiritual and psychological level, and in so doing at least reduce its damaging impact on me, my children and grandchildren.

My old pattern: When I breathe in, I have this sense that I am breathing up, that my energy goes up.  In a healthy, perfectly functioning body, however, according to ancient energy theories, there is a subtle energy that moves from the top of the head down the spine to the tailbone on the inhale.  In correcting my reversal, I can easily think of all the love and support and guidance and abundance I consciously know about, from “father sky.”  I can allow it in, feeling so abundantly supported and loved, just because I am.

The trick is in reversing what I’ve been doing for so many years, which is to start the breath from my solar plexus and allow it to move up through my chest and my throat.  Next, the exhale: The subtle energy returns from the base of the spine to the top of the head.  Up and out come all things I no longer need.  And I can release them with my breath in a puff.  Any time you get the urge to complain, take a deep breath and then release this complaining energy up through your spine to the top of your head (instead of dumping it on someone you care about in attempts to connect with them).  This is another way of “giving it to God,” who is quite capable of and happy to take care of it for you.

The other thing that connected for me during my mediation is that I have habitually walked very heavily on my heels.  In a recent bodywork session I heard, “You are afraid of the future.”  I responded very confidently that this wasn’t so, but my therapist said, “That’s not what your heels say.”

In this meditation, we are instructed to balance the weight of our bodies evenly between the heels, the balls and the toes of the feet.  And in doing this, I became aware of how different it feels to be more balanced front to back.  Here is what Deb Shapiro, in her book, Your Body Speaks Your Mind, says about this:

“Digging your heels in implies that you are holding on tight to reality, your stubbornness indicating a fear of change.  Your feet indicate how you feel about where you are going.”

Contact me via e-mail if you’d like me to send you the recorded version of this meditation.  It is less than three minutes long.  Again, here it is in a Word document: contacting-planet-earth