Wake Up!

An important point of inspiration  for me is music.  I have yet to find better music to shift my mood or raise my vibration than that of Trina Brunk.  I highly encourage you to check out her albums and/or subscribe to her channel.  This morning, this song struck me in a new way.  It felt as though the angels were singing it to me, and my heart was open to hear it in a new way.

Here’s how it goes:

Life is calling your name.
Wake up!
Love is driving you sane.
Wake Up!
From your sorrow and slumber.
Wake Up!
Because life has our number.
Wake Up!

Right Now. Dive In              It'stime. Love is now.
Begin to wake up.               You are mine. Wake up.

To the dream in yor heart.
Wake up.
It's not too late to start.
Wake up!
I am calling to you.
Wake up!
You've got gifts coming through you.
So open the way, today.
Open your eyes, you are wise.
Play a part.
Open up your heart.

Thank you Trina.  I love you.

 

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

Now Available!

web-page-bimb

Being In My Body is now available at Amazon.com

You can also get it at CreateSpace

I am in the process of scheduling a book tour for the spring, and speaking/training events for 2017.  If you’d like to get on the calendar, please e-mail me at:

e-mail address

Here’s what readers are saying about Being In My Body

“Toni has gifted us with a readable and rich handbook on how to deal with trauma. She carefully weaves well-researched information with examples and healing techniques. Toni stays with you as you read and you can feel her compassion coming through.”

David Richo, PhD: Author of When the Past is Present (Shambhala)

“Being In My Body is a testimony both to Toni Rahman’s personal work and her professional and clinical skills.  This book is not only easy to read and understand, but interesting and informative.

“Toni does an excellent job of explaining the different kinds of trauma, which is an important contribution to field of traumatology.

“I found myself feeling comfortable in my own body as I read her book, which told me that she was in HER body as she was writing it.

“Most of all, I appreciate Toni’s open-hearted writing style, and her compassionate approach towards herself, her family, her clients and her readers.”

Janae B. Weinhold, PhD LPC, Co-author of Developmental Trauma: The Game Changer in the Mental Health Profession, Counterdependency: The Flight From Intimacy & Breaking Free of the Codependency Trap

“Toni presents a unique and well-thought-out perspective on healing from trauma and attachment disorders. As a couple therapist whose business it is to put the dyad first, I nonetheless respect the importance she gives to individual healing. Toni offers a comprehensive primer on some of the key concepts for healing that are derived from neuroscience, attachment theory, and somatization/embodiment. And she brilliantly puts them together in a way that creates more than the sum of the whole.”

Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT is a clinician and teacher; he developed A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy® (PACT), which integrates attachment theory, developmental neuroscience, and arousal regulation, and founded the PACT Institute.

Being In My Body offers a way for us to integrate with our bodies, not just to discover historic trauma, but also to obtain daily awareness of what is going on in our lives.  It seems so obvious, but we completely ignore our bodies instead of listening to them.”

“I feel like your book reached me in many different ways. So it was really a privilege to live with it over the last few weeks. I don’t think I’ll ever feel the same about or deal with my body in quite the same way (not that I disliked my body). It has opened new avenues for me to reconsider how I work with my body and perhaps bring out in the open locked memories and finally release them. Definitely serendipity for me at this time.”

– Stephanie Brooks, Business Manager, MSSD

“Being In My Body is a beautiful synthesis of powerful teachings, practices, and stories that have helped me tremendously in my still-unfolding journey towards greater self-understanding, self-acceptance, and embodiment. Toni Rahman has helped me understand the ways in which I experienced developmental trauma, how it has impacted me, and perhaps most importantly, what I can do about it in the present moment. This book has left me feeling empowered, supported, and deeply understood.  I have read many books that touch on these topics and themes, and what I found most unique about this book was Toni’s willingness to be vulnerable and open with her readers. As I read Being In My Body, I felt like I was being accompanied through difficult terrain by a gentle guide who was willing to share her own journey in the hopes that it would help others along on theirs. In my case, it certainly has, and I hope that many others will benefit as well.”

– Megan Farmer, Postgraduate Psychology Student, Calif.

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

Breaking Free

How to Break Free of the Drama Triangle & Victim Consciousness by Barry K. Weinhold, PhD & Janae B. Weinhold, PhD

 

Wow wow wow.  I have now read this book twice, and will share my gleanings here.  This little book is so important!  The thing is, this game is going on in our lives and the world around us, and we don’t even know it.  If you learn to recognize the game and all the different parts and rules, you can get off.  And this, the Weinholds say, is how we heal from developmental trauma.

That’s what I’ll be working on now.  See you around!

PS  My gleanings include those things that I, personally, am focus on knowing at a deeper level.  I encourage you to buy this great book and read it for yourself!

Becoming Embodied, One Ache at a Time

Bringing my spirit back into my body.

That is what I’m about.

Those places that let me hear from them

Are God’s voice, calling me back where I belong.

 

So yesterday I started to notice a real achiness in my lower left back–in my ribcage when I turned my body in a particular way.  Oh no.  Now what? was my initial response.  What’s wrong now?  Why me?  I quickly ruled out travel.  I’d actually made a very long journey, but it had been kind and it had been a couple days since I had arrived home safe and sound.  I went to bed hoping that it would be gone in the morning.

No such luck.  So I made tai chi and my date with my beloved on the roof a priority.  First thing, I was on the roof with my tea in hand.  No gorgeous sunrise, though.  Not even visible stars, with Hurricane Matthew roaring off in the east somewhere.  As I listened to Trina Brunk on my iPhone, I heard her words and they penetrated my soul, opened my heart.

Remembering that my task is to live what I ask others to do, I brought my awareness to my ribcage.  Tight.  Frightened.  Abandoned.

And I realized that as my spirit enters my body, it may need to do so little by little.  And that is what is happening here, though without realizing it, I had been resisting it out of fear.

And so I made an adjustment in my perspective.  Today my spirit is entering my ribcage.  Am I going to greet it with “You are too much!”  “Go away!” “You are such a pain!”  It is asking me for my caring, tenderness, touch.  Curiosity, listening.

Yes, I think I can do that.  What else might be in order?  I could check with a couple books to see what “ribcage” might suggest.  What it means in the universal language of dreams and nature.  What I already know is that this has to do with breathing deeply, turning to the left and flexibility in the face of expanding capacity.

I can rub myself gently and be aware of this tender place in my beloved, vulnerable body.  I can slow down.  I can pause and say, “I notice you, and I’m wondering what you need.  Are you okay?  You have been protecting me and supporting me for all this time, and I have not even acknowledged you.  I am so grateful for what you do for me.  I honor your presence in my body as part of my system.  I recognize that you have needs and I am interested in understanding what you have to say.  Your pain is not so great that I need to shut it out.  I am not afraid of you.  Thank you for communicating with me.  You matter to me.

Ahhhh, that feels better.  And I can add Mantak Chia to my meditation regimen, which will encourage me to breathe more consciously and bring awareness to my organs and inner energy flow.  I realize that I am needing a little more structure to provide boundaries to my days.  I also realize I am needing a durable but expandable container that allows for movement of the whole, while protecting the vital vulnerable parts inside.  Thank you, ribcage.  Welcome, spirit, into my body.  Thank you for your wisdom that I can know with just the right timing and in just the right way that I can understand and allow this amazing, transformative process.  I am willing.  I am grateful.  Aho.

Author Endorsement – Stan Tatkin

Just received my second author endorsement from Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT.  Dr. Tatkin is a clinician and teacher; he developed A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy® (PACT), which integrates attachment theory, developmental neuroscience, and arousal regulation, and founded the PACT Institute.

Being In My Body, by Toni Rahman

Toni presents a unique and well-thought-out perspective on healing from trauma and attachment disorders. As a couple therapist whose business it is to put the dyad first, I nonetheless respect the importance she gives to individual healing. Toni offers a comprehensive primer on some of the key concepts for healing that are derived from neuroscience, attachment theory, and somatization/embodiment. And she brilliantly puts them together in a way that creates more than the sum of the whole.” — Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT

Thank you Stan!

 

Ask and It Is Given – Book Review

Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires, by Esther and Jerry Hicks (The Teachings of Abraham). Carlsbad: Hay House, Inc. 2004.  Has 1,402 reviews and a 4.5 on a 5 point scale on Amazon.com

For many years I had been hearing about Abraham, and I had seen YouTube videos of Esther channeling Abraham, and until I read this book, that energy was just a bookmark; a place I knew I needed to return to.  This book is power itself; abundant, generous, practical, accessible and compelling.  This particular copy came into my possession because a German friend moved back home and was forced to part with many of her books, and I offered to “babysit” some of them for her.  This one was among those I chose to babysit.

Ask and It Is Given has been such a joy to read, and so aligned with my recent discovery of Joy and Pleasure in Just the Right Measure as a tool for dealing with trauma and connecting with oneself.  It is also strangely aligned with another book I just read by Alexander Lowen, the student of Wilhelm Reich, for both of whom pleasure and body-mind connection has been a lifelong passion.  I share gleanings from that book here.

For me, Ask and It Is Given helped clarify how the Universal Laws work.  For me, fine tuning had been in order for a while, and such fine tuning requires focus, time and attention.

I love how this book approaches the time we’ve spent, so far, immersed in lives that have felt to us like struggle, scarcity and chaos, or just don’t feel like they express who we really are.   None of this time has been wasted, they say.


Go forth and attract life experience to help you decide what you want.  And once you have decided, give thought to only that.  Most of your time will be spent collecting data that will help you decide what it is you want, but your real work is to decide what you want and then focus upon it, for it is through focusing upon what you want that you will attract it.  That is the process of creating.

In order for you to know that you want something, you have to pretty well have chewed on details or events that have helped you know what you do not want. (pg 162)


I get goosebumps when I read this next passage.  It affirms what John Upledger teaches through the CranioSacral approach.  And it speaks to the repressed emotions that we all hold tightly hidden from ourselves, and how we cannot see how they shape our lives until we bring them to conscious awareness.  It has only been in the process of writing Being In My Body that have I realized the connection between my body’s information about my infant rage and terror, and my teenage resentment and disdain and how they were generating elements of my reality that I desired (for my growth and learning), but no longer need or desire.  For this I am simply awestricken.  I am calmed and comforted and my faith in something bigger on which I can always rely is affirmed.


Every cell in your body has a direct relationship with Creative Life Force, and each cell is independently responding.  When you feel joy, all the circuits are open, so the Life Force can be fully received.  When you feel guilt, blame, fear, or anger, the circuits are hindered and Life Force cannot flow as effectively.  Physical experience is about monitoring those circuits and keeping them as open as possible.  Your cells know what to do: they are summoning the Energy. (pg 286)


Where I am personally still challenged is in the area of physical pain, stiffness and staying connected to my body’s signals.  Abraham offers very clear information that I am trying to apply, but am still chewing and digesting:


Anytime you have physical discomfort of any kind, whether you call it emotional or physical pain within your body, it always, always means the same thing.  “I have a desire that is summoning Energy, but I have a belief that is not allowing, so I’ve created resistance in my body.  The solution, every single time, to the releasing of discomfort or pain is the relaxation and the reaching for the feeling of relief. (pg 287)


Esther and Jerry are real people, and they have dedicated their lives to sharing the wisdom of Abraham.  I find this phenomenon fascinating from the embodiment realm because Esther channels Abraham, a group of non-embodied beings who are working to advance the evolution of humankind.  When she does this channeling, she allows the wisdom of Abraham to come into her awareness, and she finds the words that can adequately convey their ideas to us through words.

Here is an example of this book’s practical approach.  It uses realistic examples that help to clarify how we get stuck in our creative processes and end up creating things we don’t want.  You may feel stuck in a job that you hate.  You know it’s time to leave, but you can’t seem to motivate yourself to leave.  You are scared and doubt yourself.  “I want another job” is what you believe you are thinking, Abraham explains.  But we create what we focus on.  You can shift up the energy by identifying the other thoughts that you are putting a lot of energy into.  Here are some possibilities:

  • I’m angry because my employer doesn’t see my value.
  • I feel bored.
  • I feel unhappy with my current salary.
  • I’m frustrated that I can’t make them understand.
  • I’m overwhelmed with too much to do.

If you can take advantage of this unique opportunity to recognize these feelings and thoughts and understand how they relate to your earlier life, while simultaneously developing specs for your new, desired job (using what you don’t like about this job as a launching pad), your desired new job will find you before you know it!  The job you are about to leave behind is a rich source of information and knowledge about yourself.  Use it and shift your reality!

What follows are a couple lists of things I gleaned from Ask and It Is Given that I plan to review until they take up permanent residence in my body/mind:

Affirmation:

  • I, Toni Rahman, see and draw to me, through divine love, those Beings who seek enlightenment through my process. The sharing will elevate us both now.

Universal Laws (How it works):

  • I will always feel the power and value of my own personal perspective for the ‘Non-Physical Energy’ that creates worlds will flow through my decisions, my intentions and my every thought, for the creation of that which I set into motion from my perspective.
  • I am here to experience outrageous joy.
  • Your feelings of increased tension, anger, frustration, and so on, have been your indicators that you have been adding to your resistance. You have been holding yourself in a vibrational holding pattern that does not match the vibration of your desire.
  • Everything you have ever desired, whether spoken or unspoken, has been transmitted by you vibrationally…now you are going to feel your way into allowing yourself to receive it, one feeling at a time.
  • You just have to feel it in your being: I desire this. I adore this.  I appreciate this, and so on.  That desire is the beginning of all attraction.
  • To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation – with no feeling of impatience, doubt, or unworthiness hindering the receiving of it – that is the science of Deliberate Creation at its best.
  • Feeling good equals allowing the connection; feeling bad equals not allowing the connection…to your source.
  • When you stop thought, your vibration automatically rises. And in every moment that you are in your state of non-resistance, the Law of Attraction will be responding to you in a positive way.
  • Your role is to utilize Energy. That is why you exist.
  • The standard of success in life is not the money or the stuff – the standard of success is absolutely the amount of joy you feel.
  • Your action has nothing to do with your abundance! Your abundance is a response to your vibration…release the word earn from your vocabulary and your understanding altogether, and we would like you to replace it with the word allow…decide what you would like to experience and then allow it in order to receive it.
  • All the resources you will ever want or need are at your fingertips. All you have to do is identify what you want to do with it and then practice the feeling-place of what it will be like when that happens.
  • You have a manager who works continually on your behalf called The Law of Attraction, and you have only to ask in order for this Universal Manager to jump to your request. 1) Make requests with an expectation of receiving. Identify the object of your desire. 2) Allow the Universe to yield it to you.  Setting goals is like delegating to the Universal Manager.
  • Treating the body really is about treating the mind. It is all psychosomatic – every bit of it.  No exceptions.  It takes the determination that you are going to put your thoughts upon something that feels good…any malady in your physical body was a lot longer in coming than it takes to release it.
  • Physical pain is just an extension of emotion. Good feeling: You are connected to your Energy Stream.  Bad feeling: You are not allowing your Energy Stream.
  • Illness or pain is just an extension of negative emotion, and when you are no longer feeling any resistance to it, it is a non-issue.
  • You can live comfortably, joyfully, resiliently, and healthfully as long as you have desire that summons life through you.
  • Look around less. Imagine more. Until your imagery is the most familiar vibration that you have.
  • Once you practice the thought that makes you consistently feel more secure – the money must follow.

Spiritual Reassurance:

  • Since we know who you are, we will easily help you remember who you are.
  • Since we are where you came from, we will easily remind you of where you came from. …easily guide you to help yourself to that which you desire.
  • Do you understand how much orchestration of circumstances and events on your behalf is available to you? Do you understand how adored you are?  Do you understand how the creation of this planet, the creation of this universe, fits together for the perfection of your experience?
  • We want to assist you in consciously allowing your connection, more of the time, to Source. …enthusiasm, passion, and triumph.  That is your destiny.
  • We want you to relax and not be so hard on yourself when you find yourself in a place of negative emotion. Negative emotion is a good thing in that it is letting you know that some tweaking is required in order for you to be in harmony with who you are.
  • You are an Energy-flowing Being – a focuser, a perceiver. You are a creator, and there is nothing worse in all of the Universe than to come forth into the environment of great contrast, where desire is easily born, and not allow Energy to flow to your desire.  That is a true squandering of life.  Be the Spiritual You, and create like a physical fiend.
  • You cannot get poor enough to help the impoverished people thrive. It is only in your thriving that you have anything to offer anyone.  If you want to be of help to others, be as tapped in, tuned in, and turned on as you can possibly be.

Here is a super interesting tool I plan to experiment with: The Emotional Guidance Scale.  Ask and It Is Given explains how this scale moves from low vibration emotions to higher ones, and that by generating thoughts that help you move incrementally up the scale, you can align yourself with flow and decrease your resistance to having exactly what your heart desires.  The goal is not to reach the top, but to notice the relief as you move from lower vibrational feelings to higher ones, one baby step at a time, if necessary.  Staying attuned to yourself is necessary here, as you are the one watching and discerning whether or not you feel a little better (whether you have experienced some relief).  I love it because it points out that jealousy, hatred and revenge, etc., are actually of higher vibration than are powerlessness, depression and despair.  This scale offers a map, of sorts, to help you identify where you are and find your way to higher emotional vibrations.  It helps you identify not just negative thoughts, but thoughts that give you feelings of relief.  “If you will make the improved feeling or emotion be your real destination,” they say, “then anything and everything that you want will quickly follow.”

Here is the scale.

  • Joy/Knowledge/Empowerment/Freedom/Love/Appreciation
  • Passion
  • Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
  • Positive Expectation/Belief
  • Optimism
  • Hopefulness
  • Contentment
  • Boredom
  • Pessimism
  • Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
  • “Overwhelment”
  • Disappointment
  • Doubt
  • Worry
  • Blame
  • Discouragement
  • Anger
  • Revenge
  • Hatred/Rage
  • Jealousy
  • Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
  • Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness

Included in this volume are accessible explanations and practical exercises that beg to be tested and applied.  If there is anything at all you want to change about your life, or if you have questions about why you struggle to get what you want, I encourage you to get your copy and begin these exercises immediately.  There is really no reason to wait.