A third solar eclipse is about to happen on Friday July 1st; the third one to happen, which is very rare.  A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between earth and the sun, totally or partially obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth.  So what does this mean for us exactly and why should you even care?  Think about the fact that the power of the moon can change the waves of a tide.  Now in some organisms, up to 90% of their body weight comes from water. Up to 60% of the human body is water, the brain is composed of 70% water, and the lungs are nearly 90% water. Lean muscle tissue contains about 75% water by weight, as is the brain; body fat contains 10% water and bone has 22% water.  Needless to say we are mostly made of water so the moon will ultimately have a very powerful affect on us as well.

Plus the fact that this Friday is also a New Moon, which means new energy and a good time to start new endeavors.  When an eclipse is taking place dramatic things can happen and emotions can be heightened.  So if you are having an emotional week or Friday things just blow up in your face, there are larger factors at play here.  Astrology fascinates me as it reminds me to: 1. come back to self acceptance of who I am because I was born with a blueprint and it is just a matter of getting to know me instead of trying to change me and 2. it brings the awareness that most things in life can not be explained with a simple answer....there are many factors working at the same time all the time.

So often I find myself wanting answers and understanding why I do the things I do or why my digestive tract suddenly starts acting up when I mentally feel nothing has changed.  Yet, things are changing all the time: our relationships, jobs, for women where they are in their cycle, our energy can wax and wane depending upon the thoughts going through our head.  And then there are the bigger things that we consciously don't stay awake to: the sun, the moon, where the stars are, the cycles of the earth, the season, the weather, the energy being emitted from our wireless router, our computer, the telephone wires, our cell phones.  All these things affect us.  Ever sat in front of the computer for a really long time and just got more and more tired.  It is not just because you are working so hard, or blinking less as you stare at the screen, but the energy that is being emitted from your computer can be toxic to your body.

So what is the message here?  We can't walk around in fear all day thinking about all the things that could be affecting us (trust me I've spent a day or two like that and I did not get a lot accomplished that day needless to say).  It is a matter of coming back to earth, coming back to the ground.  It is about lying on your floor and staring at the ceiling and walking barefoot in the park to connect back with the earth's natural energy, which is ultimately soothing and healing.  When life or emotions get stirred up how can you nourish yourself to come back to the stillness that resides within you?  How can you ride the wave of your own emotions and watch yourself from the outside like a curious observer?

It is not an easy thing to do, but the more you can completely empty yourself and get out of the thoughts of who you think you are or should be and accept what is, you can root your energy and presence back into the present moment.

P.S- this Friday...stay close to earth and it will help you connect back to your smiling heart.

I once saw on a poster: "Remember you are unique, just like everybody else."  I laughed out loud, but secretly I could feel the hurt pride of my ego.  For me, there has always been a wish and a hope that I was unique and I had special gifts to bring to this planet.  The conundrum of this thought is that on another level I consistently wish for communion, a feeling of togetherness, and that I am not a lone island.  This has had me explore the difference between the messages from the mind and the messages from the body.  The mind, I often feel, is where our ego lies.  It tells us what we want to hear or what we want to believe or what we desire.  It is our mind that often tells us I really want chocolate cake or sugar or ice cream or chips; it tells us we deserve these things, especially on hard and stressful days.  On a body level, our bodies remind us that we are never alone.  We are connected to ourselves every moment, even when we are not consciously aware.  We are connected to really everyone and everything.  When we exhale the trees/ the earth inhales and when the earth exhales we breath it in.  It is our body that tells us what will nourish us on a more profound and deeper level.  It will tell us whether we need vegetables, protein, what kind, how it wants it cooked or not cooked and it will be very specific about its desires and all we have to do is slow down and listen.

Beyond food though, our bodies will tell us when food is not the form of nourishment that we need.  When we get out of the ego and the mind, we tap into deep desires of perhaps needing a hug, a touch, connection, understanding, a deeper understanding of ourselves.  How is your body being fed by your relationships? your spirituality? your physical exercise? And I am not going to say something like it is all a matter of finding balance; I stopped believing in balance a long time ago as I am someone who lives (as my mother likes to say) on the outliers.  I feel it is a matter of slowing down, coming back to the breath, and viewing life with child's eyes of curiosity, especially in the moments when we feel "out of balance."  How can we sit with the feeling, the sensation of being out of balance (whatever that means or feels like to you) and get out of the ego of the mind that we shouldn't be there.

When we tap back into the body and stick with description of just what is then we begin to get out of the need to be unique and different than everyone else and there comes a realization that we are all one.  When you help someone else, you are also helping yourself. When you reach out into the world the world will reach back to you.  It is all a matter of our own perspective.  We can view ourselves as being an "over extender" or we can view every action we make as an offering back to ourselves.  I have been told too many times this past year of my life that I don't focus on myself enough.  I'm not even truly sure what this means exactly because, for me, when I am helping someone else out or being present and holding space for another individual I am learning so much about myself and life in the process that I feel being in relationship with others allows me to come into a deeper relationship with myself.

How have you discovered the different and often contrasting messages from the body and the mind?  And what have you done in those moments when you are not sure which one to trust?

One of the many definitions of Acceptance is the belief in something.  Acceptance is a word I have used more in the past week of my life than I have perhaps my entire life.  It really is quite a novel idea: total self acceptance.  I myself have only begun to understand what this word means in the past couple of years of my life.  A belief not only in something but a belief in myself.  A belief that I am perfect just the way that I am; that every moment, no matter what I am doing is alright.  If I feel fearful, scared, angry, hurt, rejected, frustrated, if I am acting out, emotionally eating, crying and squirming on my floor because I don't want to feel what is arising in my body...it is all a part of my human experience, reminding me I'm alive.  Everything that happens we can approach with total self acceptance and that there is nothing "wrong" with what we are doing or feeling, there is nothing to be fixed.  As my yoga teacher said this morning during class, you are not something to be fixed.

Yet even as I write these words, I have to acknowledge the fact that this is not easy to do.  It is an every day practice of coming back again and again every time the stories and dramas pop up in our heads.  I know for myself I can get caught up in the habitual pattern of self critical talk and hours later I remember my feet on the floor, I come back to my breath and ask myself, "woah, where did ya go there, Stephanie?  Welcome back."  I've spent entire days in a brain fog of "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" and I feel the hardest part about experiencing those days now is about coming back to that self acceptance that no matter how much yoga, meditation, and healthy food I consume, I am still human and that we all go through the ups and downs on the Ferris wheel of life.

The one piece I have learned is to take away the judgment.  When we judge or try and control our experience that is when tension arises and we cut off our breath trying to stop whatever emotion is arising as if it would kill us if we felt it.  When or where and how did we learn that we need to keep our "composure" out in public as we grow older.  Think of a child: they run around, fall down, and skin their knee.  They immediately start crying and then pick themselves up a minute later and keep playing.  They allow the hurt to be felt and then the feeling dissipates and they move on.  When did we lose this capability to allow ourselves to feel every moment no matter what emotion is presenting itself?  When did we learn that emotions weren't meant to be felt?

It comes back to acceptance.  From a young age, I received messages from all around that I was not good enough just the way I am.  Social media, seventeen magazine, members of the opposite sex giving me horrible advice on how to "get a guy."  It all added up to: you are not good enough as is, now change to be accepted.  Acceptance, I feel, is ultimately tied up with love.  When we feel accepted and appreciated by our external atmosphere we feel immense amount of love for ourselves on the inside.  So now as adults, how do we work on breaking these old messages and coming into deeper relationship with ourselves, finding that acceptance from ourselves internally instead of finding approval externally.

Personally, I have an image of my baby Stephanie self that sits around my belly, my root chakra, and whenever I revert back to old thoughts, patterns, habits, I hold my belly and remind myself I got me.  I promise to take care of my baby self and I find acceptance that whatever is arising in the current moment is a way for me to heal what has happened to me in the past.  I have learned through astrology that situations present themselves over and over again to teach us a lesson and until we are ready to receive that information, situations will keep presenting themselves to give us another chance to learn and to grow.

Every day, every moment is a moment to come back to self acceptance.  I know that they say life is short, but life is also very very long.  So with every breath we can say alright I can try again.  Soften.  Let yourself be vulnerable.  I say in my own yoga classes that it is within our vulnerability lies our strength.  Allow yourself to slow down and accept yourself exactly the way that you are.

P.S.: (I'm still working on it but hey writing this is a good reminder for me too)

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world" ~Ghandi

Over the past year of my life I have had this quote hanging on my wall.  I would stay up late at night pondering what is the change I wish to see and what is my purpose.  I have listened to many people, teachers, and friends give their opinion on finding purpose and if it even exists at all.  Ultimately, one answer I did come upon was that the change I wish to see is more honest and blunt communication.  From a young age, I always spoke my mind (it is actually a running joke in my family that no one could tell me a secret as a child as I would probably open my mouth and let the surprise slip; unfortunately for them even lying to me backfired as I still, in my cute 5 year old style, slipped and spoke the lie).  These days I have learned the power of words and choose my words wisely; including my tone of voice and timing of when I will speak what needs to be said.

The moments that fill me with light though are when people are real with me; when they drop the facade and walls of protection and speak their mind without any worry of being judged.  Authentic communication with another human being is what I search to experience every day of my life.  Furthermore, the more I have come into relationship with myself and have become comfortable with my outspoken nature the less I have held back my own voice.  I have seen how repressing my essential nature has been stuck in my own body and I refuse to let my body hold that tension any longer.

For those who don't know anything about me I suppose I should give a little background.  About 5 years ago, after a very difficult period in my undergraduate days, I began to experience some intense digestive issues.  As Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis runs in my family, I went through a colonoscopy and an endoscopy to make sure it was nothing worse (really fun stuff getting tubes shoved up and down you for those who haven't experienced this yet).  Fortunately, I did not have Irritable Bowel Disease, yet the doctor I was seeing did not delve deeper and just said I probably had Irritable Bowel Syndrome and to start to track my trigger foods and sent me on my way.  I accepted this diagnosis for about a year of my life until I a light bulb went off that IBS is BS; it is an explanation doctors can give to put the mind of the patient at ease yet does not explain at all what is actually going on in the body.  This shot me with determination to heal and sent me on a digestive journey.

After spending a year and a half being a Food Coordinator at a Drop-in center for at risk and homeless youth for a year and a half in Burlington, VT and becoming a Certified Yoga Instructor, my plan was to move to Boulder, CO to return to Graduate School at Naropa University for Somatic Counseling Psychology with a focus in Body Psychotherapy (p.s. I am queen of run on sentences).  I wanted to learn more about the mind body connection as I had delved into Ayurveda and Yoga during my AmeriCorp time and came into a deeper relationship with my digestive tract.  Just FYI, I have always been a person with a plan and I follow that plan through no matter what or how I am feeling.  On my way to CO, for the first time in my life after driving for almost 6 hours to Rochester NY and crying for hours on the phone with my mother I finally had to listen to my feelings and knew it was not time for me to go back to Graduate School yet....there was a piece missing.

It is amazing how within 48 hours you can change your entire life plans.  I turned my car around, deferred school, and moved back to CT (where I grew up and promised myself I would never return).  It took a long time to figure out what my next steps would be as I laid in a puddle of confusion in the room I grew up in on the comfort of my purple carpet.  Eventually, I got my Aries spirit back and worked almost 7 days a week behind the counter of a yoga studio and discovered the Institute of Integrative Nutrition where I became a Certified Health Coach and started my own business helping those with digestive and body image issues (as I have found that these two things are very tied together).  During this time I delved deeper into my astrological studies and began to see the buddings of my own creation of what I was going to put into the world.

I did finally make it out to CO to go to Naropa this past year.  Over my first year of Graduate School my half broken heart that I was always trying to fill up, stitch back together, and pretend wasn't there literally broke open.  I came face to face with my heart, my harsh critical inner voice, my perfectionism, my ever lasting running mind.  It has been a roller coaster this past year of slowing myself down and re-learning what true self nourishment means.  There is a difference between nourishing (as my therapist likes to call it) the "heart basket" and the "stomach basket."  I have truly come to understand that so many times when I reached for food to fill some vacant hole that gripped at my body, that a lot of the time what I needed was a hug, or a walk, or connection- that honest open authentic communication where you walk away feeling truly understood and realize that you are not a lone island.

I've learned so much on this journey to heal my digestive tract that I want to share what I know, what I've learned, and what I continue to discover.  So welcome to being a part of my journey toward finding further understanding of true nourishment and what it means to cultivate a relationship with myself because that is the most profound and influential relationship I have realized one can foster.  Yes, connection with others is imperative, but at the end of the day there is still you and you will always be there for you.

As the mission of these writings is to connect and find more honest communication with others, I not only invite you, I implore that you leave a message.  Reach out, make a connection for it is within our vulnerability that our strength lies.  Looking forward to connecting with you.