I love to write.  I have committed myself to writing in this blog, to sharing myself, and yet I completely forget about the fact that people are actually reading this.  That every time I write something I am perhaps making an impact in someone's life or that what I am writing someone completely disagrees with, which I suppose would still be making some kind of impact.  But this whole seen but not seen phenomenon is something I have dealt with a lot in my life.

When I was younger, I loved being in the spotlight and nothing was really embarrassing to me.  Unfortunately, as we grow up, the stigma and stipulations and stereotypes set upon us by society get in the way of free self expression.  I remember the day quite clearly in middle school when I looked around and pondered, "when did everyone start wearing tight jeans?"  From there on out, I got the message in my head that there was one way to be and I could only be that.  Yet, every time I tried to fit in all I did was awkwardly stand out as I was trying way too hard to be something I was not.  This became tiring and so instead of standing out, instead of fitting in, I just wanted to fade into the background.

I have learned over time though that no matter what protective mechanisms we put in place, when we are not acting from an authentic place within ourselves then we will never truly be seen for who we really are.  I know quite well how to be a chameleon.  Yet this was hurtful to my soul and over time caused me more pain than happiness because I never felt truly seen or known because I hardly let anyone fully in to get to know the wonderful person that I am.

It is nerve wracking now to think how authentic I am being here and it has been my first hit of vulnerability of how much I am putting myself out there these days.  But I can't be anyone else but me and I have found the more I allow myself to act and speak from an authentic place the more I draw people and opportunities into my life that fit with me.  And this connects right back to my food and my digestive tract.  The more we feel in alignment with ourselves, the more we will want to take care of ourselves and choose foods that we know will settle well within our system.

While yes it is scary to always be honest with others and ourselves no matter what, ultimately this will extend all of our lives because we will not be repressing our own self expression and what we internally know is best for us.  The relationship you cultivate with yourself is the most powerful and important relationship you can have so I invite you to speak your voice; first perhaps just to yourself and when you feel strong enough to share your true self with others and notice the positive affects of living in your own limelight.

I am currently realizing how many expectations I set up at a very young age for how I thought life should go.  Thoughts about how my life would be, my career, my love life...and I am continuously surprised these days how nothing is what I thought it would be.  So often I have looked for explanations, guidance, a reference point externally instead of searching for answers internally.  I find this is also a product of society and how often we compare ourselves to one another and obsess over what we don't have instead of what we do.  Movies are created with dreamy love dramas and happy endings and thus sets us up to believe that this is how life truly is.  Yet when we grow up and realize that it is not the case we continue to strive for this "ultimate" picture of life...the perfect love, career, body, family, etc.  Why do we keep striving for something that is not attainable?

I don't know if there truly is an answer, but I like to ask the questions anyway.  The more I have tried to strive for some form of perfection, the more I have squeezed myself into a black and white box.  Let me tell you, it is really uncomfortable in there and very constricting.  Now as I come into deeper relationship with myself as an individual and what I desire and want in my life, I now am slowly breaking out of this box.  I thought that tearing my way out of this box would happen a lot faster than it has but I am seeing now that this is years of construction.  I slowly built up one wall, then the other, I put decorations up, and made my black and white box very comfortable to live in.  It has taken time to take down the art and see this box for what it truly was.  It was a protective mechanism to keep me safe from hurt, from pain yet as time has moved forward the box and all my expectations have caused me more pain than happiness.

I have seen how this has affected me most profoundly through my food.  As I truly believe our relationship with food is connected with everything else and as digestion has been a focus in my life, I have been able to explore my relationship with food and then extend that to the rest of my life.  I have seen how many times I pop into my head thinking about what I "should" eat based off of my physical appearance, my activity level that day, my emotions and yet when I choose to eat a food from a head space it is never quite as satisfying when I eat from body awareness.  When I let go of all the knowledge I have in my head around nutrition and listen very closely to what my body needs in that moment I find more inner peace and happiness because I am respecting myself as an individual with unique needs that change from day to day, moment to moment.

It is difficult to slow down and listen when everything and everyone around us is constantly telling us to speed up.  Especially living in CO where people can't sit still, I find myself needing to spend time by myself a lot to remember that we tap into our strength when we allow ourselves to be soft.  To slow down, get out of our expectations, and live life truly in the present moment is an aid to accept any emotions arising and act and react from a more authentic place within ourselves.  How will you slow down today?

Have you ever spent an entire day lost in your head, only to arrive back home in your body after dinner, and wonder, "where the hell did that day go?"  I find my mind amazing.  It is smart, intelligent, amusing, and it plays tricks on me constantly.  I have had to learn that what my mind says, is often not the truth or fact and even writing this my head is arguing with me (which is quite amusing) saying, "nooooo I'm always right!"  It is an arduous and difficult task to differentiate between the mind and the body.  And for some of us (raises hand) it takes some time to first build up the courage to battle with our mind, and then more time to sit with the emotions in the body to figure out what the true message is here.

I often struggle with this like I did today.  My brain has been on triple warp speed asking every possible question it can ask and doubting just about every action I make.  Am I doing the "right" thing, am I making a mistake, am I eating the right things, drinking at the right time, involving myself with the right people, in the right jobs....blahblahblah goes my brain.  And finally I asked my brain this afternoon (as I have realized I often have to engage myself in conversation to stop the yaddayaddayadda of my mind) why is being "right" so important.  I had an ah-hah moment.  I was so lost in the questions in my head that it was difficult to see and hear the underlying rock blocking my way.  I have found that usually fear is underlying most mental rants.  In my case, engaging in "right" action means I am not failing and that my life has purpose (something I often fear-losing my purpose or not even living up to it at all here on earth).

The monkey mind is a protective mechanism, hiding us from our deep core wounds from childhood, from family, from relationships.  We all have them.  One of my favorite yoga teachers constantly talks about how we're are all broken and to embrace the shattered broken pieces because they are truly beautiful.  She asks each one of her students to share their broken pieces because she has been just as broken before as well.  It is a beautiful thing when we can finally get out of our heads and accept ourselves even with all our fears.  With tears rolling down my face in the arms of someone who truly cares about me this evening I realized that I can share my own broken pieces with others and be truly accepted and actually appreciated for sharing the fact that I do not have it all together.

It is quite a conundrum how often we accept others with their insecurities, fears, worries, tears, rants, etc. and yet we fear revealing our own.  This blocks us from self acceptance and has us heading into the fridge/cupboard/restaurant/grocery store to stuff down our fears.  Perhaps if we could breath into our fear and face it with total acceptance that we would not try and stuff our emotions down.  I have noticed in my own life the more I speak my truth and let myself be truly seen for who I am instead of who I feel I should be, the less I feel like being up in my head, off some place else, and reaching for food to comfort some emotion that I am not allowing myself to feel.  Let yourself be seen.  For even just one minute a day get out of your head, breath into your body, and speak your truth, even if it is just to yourself.

Fear colors a lot of things that I do these days.  The funny thing is I don't exactly fear failure, sadness, mistakes, or abandonment.  These things I know and I know them well.  What I fear is success, unbelievable happiness, love, light, and a feeling of wholeness.  Excuse me for my language, but what the hell would I do with all that?  So often when we have gone through so many hard times for so long and that we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel or the silver lining to the dark clouds that we will actually self sabotage.  I know I am not alone in the fear of actually getting all that we desire.  It is easier to live life with the glass half empty because then there is always something externally we can complain about when we feel down or off in our own life.  Actually believing and then receiving all that we desire and know we deserve is actually a much harder task to live with.  So many of us (myself obviously included) upper limit ourselves and purposefully take action to bring ourselves back to our comfort level of right below utter joy so that we actually feel more comfortable!

This can take the form of binging on food, sabotaging a relationship, picking a fight with anyone, spending too much money on superfluous things, and the list goes on and on.  In our society today there are so many ways to run away and upper limit ourselves.  I'm currently working on allowing myself the abundance I know I deserve and secretly want in my own life.  I have lived a long time narrowing in and stressing over what I didn't have and needed to get by (like money to pay my rent).  And yet as soon as I shifted my focus away from the negative (as even negative thoughts breed more negativity into ones life) and started viewing more of the positive already existing in my life that other things started to shift.  As soon as I started to truly believe that I had and was enough just the way I am that stress and tension left my body, I began to find ways to make money, a relationship entered into my life, and digestive ailments that sometimes flare up "suddenly" disappeared.

This truly demonstrates the power of our own minds and thoughts.  If we live our life in fear then all we are attracting is more fear, worry, and anxiety.  If we keep telling ourselves we don't have what we want in our life then we will continue to have just that because that is what we believe.  Yet just with a simple switch in the brain, one can feel different sensations manifesting in the body and then subsequently your life.  And I am not saying this is an easy task; I struggle with it every day to transform my fearful worries into thoughts of abundance, prosperity, oneness, and fulfillment with the present moment as is.  Yet I work on this every day because I have seen the profound shifts positive thinking makes in the rest of my life.  It propels me to want to make positive healthy actions for myself in my own life.

So lets all try an experiment: for one day every time you feel negativity in your body or fearful thoughts are arising in your brain take immediate action and think about what is going well in your life, what you do have, and how you might be possibly upper limiting yourself because a second earlier you were feeling profound joy that you just didn't know how to handle.

I don't always make the best choices for myself.  Some where I got the notion that there was a right and a wrong way to make a decision instead of a spectrum of grey.  As I have grown older so many questions have popped up.  I muse now around how so many things in life are both.  I want to be in school and I don't.  I want to be my own boss and I don't.  I want to be in a loving committed relationship.....and I don't.  I want to sit on my couch and do absolutely nothing but eat and watch movies all day and I don't.  Life is a series of yes and no's all happening at the same time.  Yet often when we are experiencing conflicting emotions we judge, push away, eat, exercise, have sex, all to avoid the inevitable contrast living within our body.

The interesting thing is that when we are experiencing the push and pull of life and feeling overwhelmed with our current situation, when we can come very close to ourselves the stress and anguish disappears.  When we actually allow ourselves to slowwwwww downnnnn, that is when we can touch out heart and open up to our experience.  It is alright to say yes and no at the same time.  It is when we try and alter or take control or push ourselves to make a decision before we are ready that anxiety arises.  That pressure in your body, the felt sensations of anxiety are merely a manifestation of the thoughts in your head trying to push away what is.  I experienced a profound moment today when I allowed myself to slow down with one hand on my heart and one hand on my belly and to breath into the darkness of confusion of life that I was able to release any anxiety I was feeling over needing to figure my life out right now (an impossible feat) and allow myself to just be in the space of yes and no.

We often do this with our food as well.  When we have supposedly gotten "off track" in our "diet" there is the tendency to say, "well the whole day is ruined might as well just go off the deep end and eat a whole pizza."  Life is not black or white.  We make the best decisions we can for ourselves every moment.  If in a moment of desperation you reached our for a bag of chips, a piece of cake, a box of cookies, it was one moment in your life that all you were doing was trying to take care of yourself the best way you knew how.  And the wonderful thing is, you get another moment right after that one to try again and make different choices.  We want the cookies, the cake, the pie....and we also don't.  We want happiness, smiles, sweetness in our life and when that is missing, yes we want the sweet foods to fill a void that is missing elsewhere.  Come out of the judgement of the choices you make and stick with curiosity of what you can learn from yourself in every moment.  Ask yourself with each situation that you feel torn why is it a yes and why is it a no.

Sit with how complex life truly is.  Life is so short and so long at the same time.  When I remind myself of this I remember, I can let go of tension in my body and ask myself what would be a better thought right now, which helps me to move away from the confusion in my head and come back to cultivating a feeling within my body that helps me to open to my human experience and sit in all that beautiful grey area.

Often times when we ask for what we want and we get it, we suddenly don't want it anymore.  For example, after a week of rushing around CO with my visiting mother and balancing everything else in my life I finally asked for space.  I needed me time, I needed time with me, myself, and I.  I have never craved to just be with me so intensely before, which I believe is a tribute to the positive relationship I have been cultivating with myself lately.  Well when I finally got the space I needed, after several hours, I suddenly didn't need it anymore.  I watched how the sensations in my body that seemed insatiable for space suddenly were met and I slowly filled myself back up with exactly what I needed and there hit a very specific point when I could feel I didn't need to be alone with me anymore.

There are so many times we don't give ourselves what we want or what our body is asking for because we don't believe we deserve it, we don't make time for it, we don't want to be seen as selfish, or we believe there are other more important things to do, and the list goes on and on.  The longer we wait to nourish ourselves with exactly what our body is asking for the more frustrated we can become and the more we try and take control over our experience of life the anguish will build.  When we are able to stop and realize this is our one and only life and that we get to decide what we want to do every moment that we begin to put ourselves and what we need first.

We only get this one life, this one body, this one mind.  Are you making actions and decisions that bring a smile to your face or do you constantly put your desires second and what you feel you "should" be doing first?  Even with food, when your body is asking specifically for something do you allow yourself to have it or do you deny yourself your bodily wants.  There is an interesting thing that happens when we actually give ourself the food we want and actually sit with it without any distractions we can realize a lot of things about that desired food.

I used to have intense cravings for dates.  Basically all sugar haha (and I don't even crave sugar).  For weeks I told myself not to eat them, that they had no nutritional value, that they feed bad bacteria in the stomach...blah...blah....blah....yaddayaddayadda went my brain.  Finally, I was like alright I am going to allow myself to eat some dates.  I sat with a handful of dates, without any distractions, and ate my dates.  The funny thing was as soon as I let myself eat these sugary treats I truly paid attention to what was being nourished within my body.  My mind was being soothed because I was finally giving myself what I thought I wanted, yet as I ate them I felt uncomfortable in my stomach, my teeth started to hurt, and it made my throat feel scratchy.  I now have these bodily/somatic markers of how I feel when I eat dates so whenever I crave them again I ask myself what kind of sweetness is missing in my life because my body doesn't actually enjoy eating dates.

When we allow ourselves to have what we want we can start to view life with the curiosity of a child and we can wonder what would happen if I _____.  Then when we approach situations, events, food with this wonder we can open up to our human experience and really get to know ourselves on a profound and deep level.

It is amazing how much can change in one week or even one day or even one second.  It has been an intense year for me going back to Graduate School to obtain my Masters Degree in Somatic Counseling Psychology with a focus in Body Psychotherapy.  The way I have described the program to others is basically it has you rip your heart out of your chest, makes you look at it and analyze it so you can do the same for others.  I've cried openly more this past year than I have my entire life.  Yet the tears were finally honest.  They were loud sobs escaping from my inner soul and past of anguish and disappoint from the time I was born finally set free to have a voice so that I can finally live in the present.

Life is in a constant flux.  Yet most of us carry around hurts and pain from the past that we either bury down deep and do not want to examine or are too scared to look at.  Well this past year I drudged up disappointments from the time I was born, and while it was scary in the moment and intense to live through, I feel more in alignment with myself now.  Sometimes we have to go to the deep dark depths of our soul and muck around in there to be able to re-surface and see the light.  A yoga teacher friend of mine once told me when I was going through a tumultuous time this past year that I was in the butterfly soup.

"The butterfly soup?"

"So when caterpillars go into their cocoon they completely turn into mush and dematerialize and then transform back into a butterfly."

So when we have fallen apart, lying on our floor, crying, a mess, thinking we're not able to pick ourselves back up, there is always something beautiful about to be re-born.  It is when we are able to let go of how we think things should be and find acceptance for the way things are that we can allow ourselves to cry and be sad and disappointed.  I have learned the greatest lessons from delving into the deep dark depths of my soul.  And now when I am in a period of lightness and calm, I find myself waking up the morning and at first a slight skip of my heart of anxiousness waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop and then remember that everything is perfect just the way it is.  And the more I come back to the present moment and remind myself that I can handle anything that comes my way and everything I have been through not only through this past year but through the past several years of my life I remember how strong I am.

So often we focus on what is wrong, what we can change, how we can be better, strong, faster, skinnier, and rarely do we take the time to sit back and bask in the glow of who we are and everything we do possess.  When we start engaging our brain in thoughts that lift us up, this action begins to carry over into every other part of our life that we begin to cultivate appreciation for life just the way it is.  So I invite you to embrace the constant flux and ever lasting change of life and know that with each passing moment you can ride the wave of life and flow through any thing that comes your way.

The way we approach one thing in our life is the way we approach most everything in our life.  This is something I have come to understand more and more over the past year of my life.  Furthermore, when we make one change to a habit or pattern it trickles down to everything else.  For instance, I came home a few weeks ago from teaching yoga and it had been way too long since I had my last meal.  I hurriedly cooked some food and then in an attempt to slow myself down, went out on my porch in the sun to eat.  As I shoved each forkful of food in my mouth and did not thoroughly chew each bite, I suddenly looked up at the trees.  I heard the birds tweeting and I saw the leaves slowly rocking back and forth in the wind and I thought, "Well Stephanie, they're not in a rush....why are you?"

This has made me reflect on how often I rush through other situations in my life...through relationships, through books, through conversations, through my day.  Where am I trying to go?  And do I really think I'll get there faster by speeding everything else up in my life?  I have seen how often digestive issues are healed just by the simple act of slowing down, of loosening the body before eating and chewing and savoring every mouthful of food.  And when we begin to slow down and enjoy our meals, we can start to wonder what else we can fully experience if we just slowed down.  How different would your day to day errands be if you actually lived and experienced them instead of mindlessly going from one task to the next?  What if you slowed down while making love and let all your sensations and emotions build? What if you sat with pain, uncomfortable feelings, anger, sadness, immense joy and allowed your life to open up to you instead of trying to take control of it?

I have seen how slowing down during my meals and sitting with my food with no other distractions has helped me to slow down when I am driving, to slow down when I am in between tasks, even to slow down while in a discussion with someone else.  It has reminded me that every single event, situation, feeling is precious and is a reminder that I am alive.  Even when I am feeling overwhelmed, unsure, and out of control in my own life I have been able to sit with these emotions more and more and it has revealed that underneath these labeled feelings is a sense of calm.  There is this inner voice present for all of us always there as a reminder that we are strong, powerful, resourceful, and that even when life seems to be piling up that we have what it takes to get through.

So as an experiment, slow down...for one meal, for one shopping trip, for one date with your loved one.  Live in the moment, breath into your body, and fully experience what it is like to be you in your skin.

Letting go of control has probably been my greatest challenge in life.  My head, at times, can definitely rule my heart.  This often gets in the way of how I truly feel or what I want on an emotional level.  When new situations enter into my life I can accept them at first, and then immediately afterward my brain kicks in and the mental spinning initiates.  Do I really think I can rationalize, analyze, and understand life?  Yet I find so often that for many people the monkey mind can get in the way of the emotional body.  How often has something wonderful come in to your life and then immediately afterward you tried to self sabotage it or explain it away or made yourself believe you didn't deserve it?

I see this so often, not only within myself but in others.  Life can be colored by fear, and mainly fear of letting go of control.  Life is unexpected and yet at every turn we try and make expectations so we can try and foresee the future to feel some sense of groundedness in our life and existence.  I like to understand, to comprehend every tiny little thing in my life.  I've been like this since I was a kid (no wonder I've gotten into psychology now).  I want to understand on a collective whole why we do the things we do and why I act the way I do and how different people ultimately bring out different sides of me.

Letting go of control in our own lives is never easy and then we throw in relationships.  We're in relationship with ourselves, with others, with our family, with a significant other.  All these relationships constantly throw curve balls into whatever plans we make and any sense of control we try and set up in our lives.  And every tiny little thing around us is constantly being digested in your system.  We are digesting out atmosphere, our relationships, our emotions; everything going on externally and internally is being processed through our body.  So when we are in the act of eating, we are not just eating food, we are also consuming our life.  Pretty intense to think that with every mouthful of food you are chewing, swallowing, putrefying, and churning through your existence.

Letting go of control can help us return to the larger perspective of life.  We really have no control over what happens in our life and no control over our digestive tract.  When we begin to relax into reality our whole system can come out of fight or flight mode and our parasympathetic system can kick in as we settle, relax, and our entire system (especially our digestive tract) can begin to run smoothly again.  Meditation has definitely been something that has helped me to achieve this state of being.  Truly coming into the present moment is about getting out of the thoughts in your head and coming back to description of now.  Noticing your posture, your sit bones on whatever your sitting on, the sounds around you, the smells.

As we draw ourselves back down into our bodies, we can begin to see the larger perspective and picture of life.  We can find the humor in our dramatic movies that we play screen by screen in our head.  I find that when I finally reach that point, it is hard to feel anxious about the thoughts in my head because I can begin to see them not as reality, but a dramatic movie that I should pull up some popcorn and watch and then tell me friends about this awful or hilariously funny movie I just saw haha....Once we can find the humor in our own life, it can became our aid to deal with the difficulties of letting go of control in life.  As I have reclaimed my own humor in my life, I have seen the affects of being able to laugh at my humanness.  What helps you to let go and how have you used or can use humor to be your side kick?

Breath in.  Pause.  Breath out. Pause.  Breath in.  Pause.  Breath out.  Pause.  It is within these pauses that I come back to myself.  It is within these moments of stillness, of clarity that I see through the clutter of my mind and I am able to come back to what is real.  During the pauses within my yoga practice is when I remember that I am not alone.  That no one is truly alone.  We are always in relationship with ourselves and we always have the capacity and capability to walk outside of our door and introduce ourselves to a complete stranger or walk bare foot outside and connect back to mother earth and our relationship to the external world.  When I am flowing in between poses within yoga and I take a pause to hold myself, to stay still, to be present; that is when not only the pose unfolds before me, but my life unfolds before me reminding me to let go of control.

It is when we allow ourselves to pause, to be quiet for a moment that we come back to ourselves and what is most important.  The more we can empty ourselves out and forget about who we are, who we think we should be, and drop any definitions of ourselves that we can become open to being receptive to life just as it is.  I have experienced when I stop searching for that thing I think will "make me whole" or "make me happy" that is when I realize that my wholeness and happiness are already right there residing within me.  A friend of mine told me a story this afternoon that Wayne Dyer once told about two cats: (it went something like this but I added the exact video of Dyer telling the story if you want to listen to it)

There was an old wise cat and a small kitten in an alleyway. The old cat saw the kitten chasing its tail and asked, “Why are you chasing your tail?”

To it the kitten replied, “I’ve been attending cat philosophy school and I have learned that the most important thing for a cat is happiness, and that happiness is my tail. Therefore, I am chasing it: and when I catch it, I shall have happiness forever.”

Laughing, the wise old cat replied, “As I’ve gone through life, I too have realized that the most important thing for a cat is happiness, and indeed that it is located in my tail.  The difference I’ve found though is that whenever I chase after it, it keeps running away from me, but when I go about my business and live my life, it just seems to follow after me wherever I go.”

The answers to all of our questions, I truly believe, we already know.  It is just a matter of asking the questions to our wise selves and finding a moment of stillness to listen.  Nourishment comes in all different forms.  Sometimes it is unclear what needs to be nourished: our mind, our body, our soul.  And since food was our very first form of love in this world, ultimately the first thought we have when we need some kind of nourishment is food.  Yet, I have learned from my yoga practice, from taking that pause, that when I ask myself what I really want, a lot of the time it isn't food.  I need touch, understanding, connection, communication.  I don't have a sweet tooth but I need sweet smells, sweet hugs, sweet glances from loved ones.  Then it is a matter of cultivating acceptance; of listening to what we do need, and that perhaps what we desire isn't readily available at that moment.

And then we come back to the pause and the fact that life moves on, things change, and what we need will change too.  So I invite you, right here, right now.  Breath in.  Pause.  Breath out.  Pause.  Come into the pause with me and truly experience your emotions with all their sensations, colors, and textures, for they remind us that we are alive.