How to Survive and Start to Thrive Again

Be Whole Be Happy - How to Survive and Start to Thrive

Surviving Today’s Trauma

This week many people have reached out to me asking HOW we do this. How do we navigate the continued violence, hate, rage, fascism and disconnection that isn’t going away? How do we keep an open heart in the midst of all of this?

It’s a work in progress called How to Survive and Start to Thrive (also working title). And it’s helped a lot of people to reel back, shift the acute perspective we keep being shoved into and remember that there ARE options for how we feel and act, even as hard as things are right now.

A teaching for anyone

In 2017, I created a teaching specifically about this and am going to start recording an online course soon so I can give it to you very practically. In the meantime, I’m happy to give it out to ANYONE. Below you’ll find three links.

The first is an explanation of the five kleshas or the obstacles to happiness according to the yoga and tantra traditions.

The second is the How to Survive and Start to Thrive course. You’ll find four columns: The obstacles to happiness; what we hear in the world; what we think when we hear that message; how else to hear that so we have more freedom to choose happiness.

The third document is a compendium which breaks down 4 or 5 actions to directly uncover our happiness according to the five kleshas.

Stay tuned for an online course coming in early 2019.

While I’m figuring out to how to bulk distribute the file (suggestions welcome), please message me if you’d like me to send it to you.

One thing you can do

One suggestion I have is to practice SILENCE every single day. That’s right. Every. Single. Day. Whether you can take 2 minutes or 20 minutes or 2 hours, turn off everything – including those coping mechanisms and distractions – and let yourself feel, breathe and move through. You’re not alone, and in fact, it can be a sweet relief in moments of silence to feel more connected to the consciousness we’re all swimming in.

I’m here. For you and with you.

Yours in solidarity and in figuring-this-all-out,
Grace

The links

Here you go! Try all three in order and reach out with questions or comments.

  1. the-kleshas-or-the-obstacles-to-happiness
  2. how-to-survive-and-start-to-thrive
  3. kleshas-compendium

Why Doctors Can’t Heal You

heal

Warning: This is an opinion filled writing – even a bit of a rant. I mean no offense to doctors, healers and those who devote their lives in service of others.

“My doctor has no idea what’s going on!”

Well, why should they?

When we go to an allopathic, western-oriented physician these days, we have a 5-10-minute consultation in which to upload as much information as we choose to disclose about a symptom presenting itself as bad or wrong. I’m curious in what reality this could be an effective method of healing someone. I’m not harping on western medicine at all; how could ANY healer, be they massage practitioner, naturopath, Chinese medicine specialist, life coach, energy healer or therapist possibly  get an accurate picture of your life and all the pieces that come together to enliven you?

How can we give anyone an accurate snapshot of our lives? Most of us don’t even know what’s going on within ourselves.

And that’s the rub: YOU don’t know what’s going on, so how could someone else heal you?

How do we give so much power to our health care providers, trusting that they understand us, can heal us and declare us cured when most of us don’t have a clue what’s going on inside ourselves?

Sure, doctors, counselors and other specialists know a lot about certain things. But, they hardly know anything about the entire make-up of life that has brought us to their door.  

I would like to argue that YOU can actually know more than anyone else about yourself. Your doctor knows about livers, kidney function, supplements, cardiac health, nutrition, etc, but they don’t know you nearly as well as you have the potential to know yourself.

Want to really empower your health?

Start paying attention.

Notice how you feel after you eat certain foods, drink certain drinks, or interact with certain people. Notice what happens to your blood pressure when you exercise or don’t exercise, wake up in the morning, watch TV, check Facebook, only get five hours of sleep night after night, interact with children, dwell on a conversation with your partner. Start becoming aware of your triggers, anxiety patterns, energy levels and mental cycles.

Most importantly, notice what you feel resistance to, what you don’t want to experience. Notice your discomfort and how that creates patterns that you enact daily.

It can be as simple as that.

Then, if or when you get sick, develop cancer, or start feeling depressed or overwhelmed, you can bring your own unique awareness of your body and patterns, and work together with a specialist who knows about the brain or the lymphatic system, to unlock a more integrated and functional system within your unique configuration of human.

Please, don’t rely on someone else to know you better than you know yourself. You don’t have to know everything about anatomy, physiology or neuro-biology. But you do need to know you.