healing

Emotional Being

“We can’t will ourselves to not feel anything. Life doesn’t work like that.” ~ Supergirl

A big and essential component in the work that I do is to create a space in which my clients can feel safe to identify and be with their emotions. When we can label our feelings, we enable ourselves to heal. The process of identifying moves us into ownership versus the feelings owning us. This then enables the body to release where that emotion has been stored. Because our bodies are amazing storage lockers, this “storage process” can block our vitality and create dis-ease. In order to unblock we have to unlock our feelings and a key is identifying what they are. 

Emotional Capacity is when one is able to manage their emotions, be empathetic, and understand the feelings of others. When one lacks emotional capacity they are ruled by their feelings, lack empathy and have trouble understanding other people’s emotions. Emotional literacy is the foundation of our emotional capacity.

Emotional literacy can be defined as the ability to identify and label our feelings, the feelings of others, and to cope with and express our emotions in appropriate and healthy ways. Brene’ Brown breaks down the components of emotional literacy in her recent book, “Dare To Lead.” Brene’ B is one of my superheroes. For me, Brene’ is right up there with Wonder Woman. She is a modern day wonder woman. 

In reading “Section Four: Shame and Empathy” I realized I come from an emotionally illiterate family. In my family, you didn’t talk about your feelings. The main focus in my family was what you did and how well you did it; it was performance driven, result based. There was not the capacity for one to express their feelings. Many emotions were struck down, or swept aside, because they made mi familia uncomfortable. Behavior was rewarded or rebuked, but the root never, if ever, examined. The space to learn emotional literacy lacked. 

Both my parents stemmed from families who were unpracticed in emotional literacy. We all are products of our previous generations, so when we choose to be different from our family systems, we “go against the grain” of what we have been taught. You become an emotional pioneer in unknown territory. This is why conscious healing of our emotional body is so vital and also why it can be so damn hard. But, the pursuit of one’s truth is never a solo cruise; you eventually find your people.

My ability to have constructive conversations that involve sharing how I feel and why has been a long road, but it has not been a lone one. It has taken a village for me to learn what I know and practice today: between my therapists, relationships, soul sisters, authors of all the books I’ve absorbed, teachers of all the practices I have embraced….we can’t grow alone and we don’t have to. We all need our village and we can cultivate it along the way. Where we believe, or see our family as lacking (in my case: talking about our emotions), we can find and develop new in new collectives.

In continuing to develop my emotional literacy and thus broaden my emotional capacity, I find that it’s always helpful to start with “the basics”; identify what I am feeling first - without shame or self criticism. Once I identify it, I can then own it and create space in which to process it. Otherwise, it can become the hairy scary monster lurking in the corner of the maze; you’ll never escape it.

Step 1: Name it; own it.

Step 2: Accept yourself as you are with the way you feel.

Step 3: Give yourself time and space to process.

Step 4: Reflect versus react and make a conscious choice moving forward.

We are geared to jump into action, to solve the problem and leave our emotions for last, if at all. Our society says that only the weak ones know their feelings. The truth is: the ones who know, can be present to and process their feelings are the healthy individuals who have a handle on life because they are not in a spin cycle of reacting: they’re responding. 


Develop your emotional literacy. Reach out, ask questions, listen, reflect, learn and increase your emotional vocabulary. Cultivate the space you need in order to grow. That means recognizing and being honest with yourself about the people you can have these conscious conversations with and the ones you can’t. Then, every time you identify an emotion, be kind to yourself, patient and self-loving. This is the “dirty work” of drudging so you can clear so let your tears flow if need be. It is up to each of us to break the cycle and cultivate anew.

In a healing session with me, I’ll let you know that you’re in a no shaming space, then invite you to lay down your armor and prop up your feet. As we identify your emotions and tap into where they are stored, I will breathe and share in this sacred space with you, but not pity you. It takes a courageous heart to live an authentic life. When you are brave enough to embrace all of yourself, you become a personal hero to many.

If you are interested in learning more about my Intuitive Healing Sessions, click here.

My Winter Blueprint

To this day, there will be a year when I don’t get excited about Christmas. I will have little, to no desire, to prepare for it. It’ll feel like a burden. This was one of those years and it snuck up on me like a panther in the dark of night. On a “good” year, I will happily bring out all our oodles of organized ornaments and lights to set the stage of merriment with delight. But this year, my husband instigated the festive decorating and I merely went along with it. Even when the Christmas Trolley’s came by and the children squealed with glee at the sight of our four foot inflatable Baby Yoda, I felt…meh. 

I figured I was just tired. It was understandable being at the near end of a calendar year, in year two of Covid, actually having had Covid, and life itself; there were many valid reasons to feel drained. The drop in my energy made me fuzzy-minded and the fogginess felt dense. That was, until my body rebelled and practically punched me in the shoulder.

If not tended to our emotions will result in our body as a way to get our attention and communicate. The first SOS came when I strained a muscle in my right leg, then a tendon in my right elbow and lastly I injured my right shoulder. I recall the moment I sensed a twinge in my shoulder. I recognized it and then let it go. Later, I made one simple motion with my right hand and an intense pain shot down my arm that almost took me to my knees. 

Now I was listening. As I nursed my shoulder, I began to connect the signposts between my body and emotions. I looked at the backstories and began to see the outline of my winter blueprint.


THE BACKSTORY

I was about eleven years old when my grandmother came to live with us, shortly after my parents separated. At the time, my sister was away at college so I took on the brunt force of my mother’s anger and emotional responsibility of being a main companion to my grandmother. It was a lot for an eleven year old to process. I felt somewhat abandoned by my sister because she never called to connect with me, to ask how I was doing. I felt very alone.

My grandmother died several years later when I was seventeen. As a result of her passing, my mother slipped into a reactive depression and lacked any motivation to prepare the house for the holiday that season. So, I took it on. This was one of the first times our mother-daughter dynamics were reversed and I took on the parent-role. The version of my mother that was typically strong and stoic had become a shadow. 

I believe a family friend helped us obtain a Christmas tree and I decorated it. Looking back upon the amount of decorations we put up every year was rather ridiculous because it was so lavish. The trips to and from the garage where we stored our boxes of decorations, the sorting, dispensing, the arranging of them all….it was a process that took hours and sometimes two nights to complete.

My sister was newly married so I was left to shoulder this and my mother’s melancholy alone, again. I didn’t understand that she was in a depression, and I of course did not have the maturity or tools to help myself nor my mother through any of it. Raised in a household that did not “air out their dirty laundry” nor talk about their feelings within the family nucleus, I did not know I could ask for help or even how to. 

Food became a comfort source. I ate to cope, to stuff down my feelings. To this day, during the holiday season, overeating can surface for me. Granted the holidays bring about desserts, sauces, savory meats and treats for many and from many people, but I tend to develop cravings. The cravings are a means to stuffing down emotions. 


THIS PAST DECEMBER

One evening as I noticed the sensation of my full stomach after dinner, I recognized how good it felt. The realization dawned on me; this was not a healthy sign. 

So, I asked myself and my body, “What is going on? What am I eating for?” 

I sat quietly and listened.

The reply; “You are nurturing yourself.” 

“Why am I nurturing myself?”

The reply: “Because of the many emotions that were buried long ago. Sadness, hurt, anger, resentment, abandonment - they were not expressed and have been stored. Everything leading up to today - this holiday season, is a reminder of what you felt and those feelings make you perceive that what is today is in fact real because it is all based on what you once felt but never dealt with.”

As I sat there with my full belly, tender elbow and throbbing shoulder, I finally understood that these feelings were never given proper expression. Through the lens of energy healing and Eastern Medicine I began to view my injuries with compassionate insight. The right side of the body relates to; giving out, letting go, masculine energy, logic. (Whereas the left side relates to; receptivity, taking in, feminine energy, intuition.) Legs: carry us forward in life. Elbows: changing directions and accepting new experiences. Shoulders: our ability to carry out experiences in life joyfully, we make life a burden by our perception. “You Can Heal Your Life”, Louise L. Hay

Once I understood what was represented in the various injuries, I delved into the emotional elements through the language of meridians. The Large Intestine Meridian runs across the upper half of the shoulder blade, travels along the top of the arm and finishes at the tip of the index finger. It partners with the Lung Meridian (that runs from the lung, along the full length of the inside of the arm and finishes at the thumb) to help balance grief and courage. The untapped emotions had “flared” in the right side of my body, fighting against logic to exist; to be felt. For it was logical rationalization that had been used to lull the feelings and overeating that had been a coping mechanism. It all began to make sense: I needed to grieve. 

This illumination raised the question: what was different this year that brought all this to the surface?


SUMMERTIME SICKNESS

Back in July, about three days after my husband and I returned from Costa Rica, we tested positive for Covid. Prior to getting Covid, the plan was to have my dad stay with us for a week. My dad has been living with my sister for several years and I assume the intention was to give him a change of scenery and my sister some space. Of course the plan went out the window as soon as we tested positive. Covid was no joke; the body aches, fever and head pressure were intense. For a full twenty four hours, everything hurt, even my skin. My husband recovered much quicker than I as I ended up with Covid Sore Throat. All in all, I was sick for about two weeks and had repercussions to my nervous system for months following. 

In the text exchanges with my sister, she had asked when I tested positive, but I do not recall that she ever checked in thereafter to see how we were doing. It seemed she merely wanted to know “officially” when I tested positive. It was hard not to notice her silence when family and friends lovingly checked in on us. My sister’s lack of effort to communicate felt like her previous absences and as a result it deeply hurt my feelings. I constructed her lack of contact that me getting sick was an inconvenience for her.

Because the scenario felt similar to my past experiences wherein she seemed to “disappear” during some of the most difficult phases in my life, my mind began to draw up stories. When a current setting is similar in feeling, the emotional body reacts to them as truth. The subconscious narrative my mind ran in the background was that I was emotionally abandoned again. So when Christmas came around, the familiar emotional landscape resulted in me experiencing a deep sense of grief and the overeating began, until my body threw out enough signals to get my attention.

My sister and I are ten years apart. That is an entire decade of difference in pop culture, political history, and even our parents. My sister and I are innately very different people; like night and day in personality and communication styles. My sister has never tried to intentionally hurt me. But, the Ego is quite creative and crafty in cultivating comparisons in order to validate and vilify. The void of connection from my sister brought up past wounds and my Ego had plenty to dredge up and layer this recent experience upon.

So, there it is; my Winter Blueprint. 


MY HEALING BLUEPRINT

The understanding of all this illuminated how my mind is programmed to respond and how my emotions are conditioned to react. Once I was aware, I immediately felt energetically lighter because I understood the story. It is essential to allow oneself to process every feeling. Otherwise, our emotions will undergo a process that will force us to recognize them. Resistance to our feelings can restrict us from healing, learning and evolving. When we close off our heart, we close the door to our full potential to heal and overcome.


Once I was able to see the stories and understood my emotions that resulted from my experiences, I knew what needed to be released. My physical gateway is through the practice of yoga; it can help me move the emotional energy out of my body to prevent it from suffering from dis-ease. Next, came the energy healing. I was fortunate to facilitate an Intuitive Healing session days after these life-changing realizations and it greatly helped heal my subtle (energy) body. Lastly, I was able to hare this with soul sisters. Women greatly heal through vocalizing. A key component of anyone’s healing is to be able to share their experience; to feel seen and heard.


THE HEALING TRUTH

Remember when you were a kid and you were either super excited about something or had a lot of stored energy from being bored? It felt like you might burst at the seams! Except, as adults, lack of recognition and respective processing can create an internal combustion that leads to an ill-being. We must first see and recognize what we feel. Once the emotion(s) are identified, they then need time and space to process. The energy of emotions needs to be moved out of the body. 

Recognize, understand, accept, move it through and out.

I believe healing happens in stages and when we are ready. Only when we are willing to be with our emotions can we validate them for ourselves and create the space to heal. We cannot heal by ignoring ourselves nor blaming others. In our various stages of healing, recognition and acceptance will enable each layer of the onion to be revealed and released. This is how we can make our way forward, to an internal space where we feel liberated from the tether of our wounds.

Stepping up to the plate means holding oneself accountable for how they can attend to their wounds and further attune to their emotional well-being. Our emotional well-being is the foundation of our physical health. When I do energy work with people, I can see their energetic blue-print; areas of the body are revealed as emotional storage containers and it's that containment that can contaminate the entire being. Energy work can help to release energetic stagnation. While understanding our lessons is invaluable, we cannot reason our way into healing: it must be felt within all our layers.


INTUITIVE HEALING

Through the process of my personal healing journey, along with spiritual guidance and insightful feedback, I have cultivated Intuitive Healing sessions. It is a blend of restorative yoga, channeling and hands on healing to provide and attend to the various layers of healing for the physical, energetic, emotional and spiritual. All of it is guided by the recipient's energy so each session is unique to the needs of the individual. Healing is in the abstract because it addresses the unseen; our emotions, energy and spirit. That’s what makes it powerful and profound. 

If you’d like to learn more Intuitive Healing sessions, click here: 

Ultimately, be kind to yourself along your process of healing. Allow yourself to feel and be loved. For it is the energy of love that is most powerful and has the potential to heal all.

Ohhh, no Toe...Leggo My Ego!

A week ago, while on a beach walk, in an attempt to gracefully leap away from a soft rolling wave, I smacked the second toe of my left foot on a rock. My toe bled immediately and the pain was significant. I continued walking because my car was a lengthy distance away, so I had to continue moving either way. Grateful for the company of my beautiful friend, as I ambled along, I pondered aloud some introspections that arose due to the injury. All the while, the cold water alleviated the ache. Every so often I’d glance down at my toe to see the waves gently wash the blood away. Mother Earth softly soothed my feet.

When I returned home, as I made my way to the bathroom, blood dripped and pooled onto my flip flop. It was quite a dramatic sight. Upon examination, I saw the jagged laceration ran parallel to the cuticle. Though I had not broken the bone or injured any other toes, it was incredibly humbling. After I thoroughly washed and bandaged my toe, I contacted my clients to cancel my private sessions. That is when my Ego started tripping. 

For the rest of the day, my Ego wailed like a coyote off in the hills. “This is sooooo stupid! This is, like, the smallest part of the body! C’mon!” Fear of loosing my livelihood flared like fireworks popping off in the dark night of the soul. Guilt, a sense of failure and many questions ricochetted through my mind. “Does this mean something? Was this an unconscious act of self-sabotage? What exactly is my fear?…” all boomeranged in my noggin. I tried to catch when my Ego blared so as to shift my awareness down into my heart; it was a constant teeter-totter.

I awoke in the middle of the night well aware of my toe. After tossing and turning a bit, I calmed my mind with a few deep breaths, and a rested a hand on my heart. Then, I finally asked the question, “Did this happen for a reason?”

Spirit: “Yes.”

Me: “So…there is a purpose in this?”

Spirit: “Absolutely. For now, rest and the answer will be revealed in the morning.”

Hearing that encouraged me to surrender my fear and as much of my Ego, as I could, to Spirit. It was like luring a feral cat, cleverly shrouding it in a warm blanket, then slowly and gently handing it to animal control. Except, it was about releasing control. Letting go, as much as I could, allowed me to fall into a restful sleep. I felt held in love, by something greater than myself.

The next morning, after a very mindful stretching practice I sat in meditation. This is what Spirit said.

You are too comfortable, too identified in your physical offerings. This injury is an invitation for you to move even deeper into the energy (of channeling and healing). Though the practice of yoga has been an incredible gate way for you, from the physical into the metaphysical, you still strongly identify with the body in such a way that it is limiting your access of the energy. The limiting belief that your physical offerings are the way to create financial prosperity is untrue. We invite you to move away from the comfort of these limiting beliefs and embrace the truth of your whole self. You are meant to be a gateway to help many heal. If you keep leaning on the physical identification of yourself as a healer, you will always limit your true, full potential and ability to do the work you genuinely feel called to do. It’s time to let go of the familiar and embrace your full potential. The shift has already begun and the pieces will fall into place. We will shape the how for you.

As I compose this particular entry, it has been just a few days over a week since my toe injury. It’s amazing to think that my toe was and is an invitation to go deeper and expand my trust further. Every time I look at the little guy, I marvel at how tiny it all is relative to the powerful purpose it has served. Our body is a universe unto itself and we each, as people are a part of Life’s Universe.

During a recent yoga practice, I had a surreal moment. I was in a revolved forward fold and felt my distinct physical presence on the floor and an energetic, magnetic grounding of my energy. I was fully aware of myself on the Earth. At the same time, I heard Spirit say:

Remember the body is an avatar and everything about it is temporary. Even your thoughts and emotions are continually transitory. Supporting your presence through conscious connection to yourself in this physical representation is necessary, but it is even more essential to remember the deepest, most innate Self of who you fully and truly are. Cosmic consciousness, connection, compassion. Go there, be there, love there.

It sounds counterintuitive and feels ironic: we are temporary and every experience and emotion is also temporary, but yet we feel so much.

The human experience is beautiful, profound and certainly presents its challenges. Heart ache, heart break, domination, devastation, destruction, despair and yet we can also experience hope, joy, bliss, compassion, understanding, love, learning, growth, and evolution. We must treat our physical body with respect for it is our connection to and in the world, but we must also remember the whole truth of our Being is more than body and mind; it is heart, soul and spirit. When we are disconnected from our Inner Truth, the physical world will work in conjunction with the metaphysical and do its best to guide one back to their inner sense of alignment. 

While it may be a big stretch for some to understand or even accept that a toe injury could have great significance, I believe it was a small wake up call. And, I certainly don’t want or need a bigger one! I trust in the abstract, in the unseen of life. The unseen is where all the power really is: one’s intuition, intention, inner voice, inner Knowing. I believe that we are all being invited to move into that space of living. To be clear, I am not declaring that my experience is a mandate for everyone else - no, I am simply inviting everyone to see the signs and signals as they appear for them. Beyond adhering to the signs, please remember to practice self love and self compassion, for they are the first steps inward and the big ones we all need to move forward. 

It's Ok to Cry

Really.

Crying has been demeaned by many as a sign of weakness and inferiority. However, it is powerful. It is a powerful release that unfortunately many feel uncomfortable doing or don’t know what to do with. 

Crying during a yoga class is natural and therapeutic. During the course of a physical practice, tension can be released from the body. As a result, emotions that have been locked away are freed and the release can be so overwhelming that one simply needs to cry.

I understand many people are conditioned to suppress their tears, especially in a room full of people. The conditioned response is to worry what others will think of you and how you might make them feel uncomfortable. People tend to place their emotional needs last. Allowing yourself to cry is a choice. You can opt to place your feelings first and let go. We don’t need permission - we hold the authority of ourselves. 

I have had many practices where emotions have surfaced and the tears flowed. It felt so freeing and empowering. From a standing forward fold where the tears fell upon my feet to being in child’s pose and my tears drenched my mat, each experience was awe-inspiring. In those moments, I felt my tears, my emotions and was so aware. 

One’s yoga practice is sacred. Not realized by many but showing up to practice is a ritual. You make your choice to go to class, show up, go in, roll out your mat and step or sit upon it. The moment you step or sit upon your mat is you stepping into a space of awareness and allowance. Yoga - no matter the style of practice - can encourage and guide people into being present in their body. That connection is self-loving and nurturing. Healing. 

The space I create in my yoga classes and workshops are intended to feel safe. It is important to me that the people I work with know and understand that it is ok to laugh and cry. In setting up for my Soul Rejuvenation workshops, I always set out a few tissue boxes and make a point to let everyone know it is ok to have an emotional release. During a traditional yoga class, I will subtly place a box of tissues near someone if I notice their tears. 

Being able to be is one of the greatest things we can do for ourselves.