The Feeling of Who You Are

The Feeling of Who You Are

 There is a space inside each of us that is who we are. It's actually who we are all the time. It is a space of warm love, compassion, generosity, and peace. From this place we are all infinitely creative, effective, clear-minded, and calm. No exceptions. We are all fundamentally ok. We don't have to get anywhere or do anything. We are not broken. There is nothing to learn to be a better version of ourselves and we don't have to let go of anything.

 This is the basis of why entrainments work so well. My light touches along the spine get your mind and your brain to self-observe in a way that allows you to shift from habitual thoughts or a habitual postural way of being into your fundamental nature.  Your body unwinds itself.

 This is also the basis of transformative coaching.  We point people to their own inner peace and wisdom, to their health, to what is already working. People can then have an experience of who they really are without any filters of thought. We then explore the possibility of living from this space and having a life that inspires you.

 I have found for myself the more time I consciously spend in the feeling of me, the more my body relaxes, then renews and repairs itself. Things from previous injuries that weren't supposed to be able to heal are healing. Huh. Cool stuff.

 We are made to be powerful.

 The upcoming Immersion Day 2023 is a retreat from our usual habits of self to explore who we are and what new possibilities for ourselves arise. To immerse in your peace within and what that space feels like uniquely for you. Do you want more energy? More rest? To completely trust in your self and your ability to follow your knowing. How to discern which nudgings to listen to and which ones are just a low mood speaking.

 Join with us to experience this space within from a few different perspectives. It's April 15th, 2023, 9:30 am to 4:30 pm. There will be a delicious organic lunch. All in the countryside in New Hamburg.

 Register with Nancy at frontdesk@gmail.com or 519-880-0003 by April 6.

 We are opening the Immersion Day up this year to people who are not already practice members, so if you have a friend or family member interested let us know.

 Love,

 Dr. Sara

The Principles Behind Life

The Principles Behind Life

When I work with people as a transformative coach, we look at and explore the impact in our lives of three universal principles: Mind, Thought, and Consciousness.

I'm finding that when a person is familiar with how they construct perceived or experienced reality for themselves, things like stress, tension, indecision, insecurity, anxiety, chronic pain, and suffering just don't exist. This is a BIG statement. Our society today is filled with messaging about how "stress" is the cause of 95% of disease (Mayo Clinic), and how everybody has "anxiety", and how young people have incurable depression, and how our veterans are being offered medical assistance in dying due to intractable PTSD. I'm not making light of any of these experiences as I know they make life a living hell. The experience of these feelings doesn't exist outside of a person's thinking. This is empowering as all get out. Here's why...

First described by Canadian mystic and philosopher, Sydney Banks, the three principles are an understanding of how humans construct their lived experience.

"The Universal Mind or impersonal mind is constant and unchangeable. The personal mind is in a perpetual state of change. All humans have the inner ability to synchronize their personal mind with their impersonal mind to bring harmony into their lives."

The founder of chiropractic, Daniel David Palmer, said that the purpose of chiropractic is to synchronize universal intelligence with the body's innate intelligence. Connecting the wisdom of all there is (Nature, Universal energy, God, the force out there that grows a tulip...) to the inborn intelligence in us (the energy that beats our hearts and breathes our lungs).

Mind can be described as our spark within, our inner light. It is the source behind all things in life: everything seen, felt, and experienced. Everyone has access to this innate wisdom. The spark inside that guides us naturally, sometimes called intuition or common sense.

"Thought is the creative agent we use to direct us through life. Thought is the master key that opens the world of reality to all living creatures. Thought is not reality; yet it is through Thought that our realities are created."

Thought is our creative power in the world to evaluate, imagine, and remember. Habitual thinking and planning, deciding what to have for lunch, and worrying are all examples of our use of Thought.  Unlike many teachings around thinking and our thoughts, the focus is not on positive or negative thinking, but rather on the fact that we, as human beings, were created with the free will to create our reality through our thinking.

"Consciousness is the gift of awareness. Consciousness allows the recognition of form, form being the expression of Thought. Mental health lies within the consciousness of all human beings, but it is shrouded and held prisoner by our own erroneous thoughts. This is why we must look past our contaminated thoughts to find the purity and wisdom that lies inside our own consciousness."

Consciousness is the awareness and experience of life around us, our personal life, personal thoughts and our access to our spark inside, our inner wisdom.

"No one, but no one, can ever explain intellectually what Universal Consciousness really is. Yet, as thinking human beings, we use this magnificent gift every day of our lives. It's a gift that enables us to experience the existence of creation."  Sydney Banks, The Enlightened Gardner.

All of us, as human beings, use these three fundamental principles to create our moment-to-moment experience of life. Misuse or misunderstanding of how they work creates problems. This innocent misuse shows up as dysfunction in the body, stiffness in the spine, physical symptoms, tiredness, exhaustion, stress, anxiety, mental health dysfunction, and many other manifestations.

Stay tuned for "Stress is Not a Thing"

Love, Dr. Sara

Body Signals

Body Signals

We, as interesting, fascinating, dynamic, smart human beings, quite often ignore signals coming from our bodies. In the ignoring of information and timing of needed behaviours we can run into problems. I started noticing the category of "body signals" about 6 months ago and found, to my surprise, that there are a lot of signals from our bodies and I was ignoring or putting off many of them.

I started being curious with noticing more and then taking the obvious action straight away without thinking about it.
 
People have been increasingly telling me how they are fatigued and tired. I would tell them to rest. Generally, this recommendation is met with a range of negativity from "that's ridiculous, I'll rest when I'm dead" to "well, I wish I could rest, and here are all the reasons I can't". Rest is also different from sleep.
 
I started to pay attention to "Do I rest enough during the day?" or am I going from task to task at top possible speed like a mad woman? 
 
The answer was some of both.
 
The first step, though, was to recognize my body's signal for "Hey! You need a rest". Human beings aren't designed to go, go, go until we drop. It's part of why many people feel overwhelmed much of the time.
 
Overwhelm is the mental equivalent of peeing your pants.
 
When you are little and learning to notice your body's signal for going pee or the signal for "I have to poop", there's a natural process of having accidents. We see the consequences of not listening to the signal for pee. And we learn to pay attention to those signals.
 
In exactly the same way, we have a signal for rest.
 
In my experiment to become more sensitive to my need for rest or taking a break during the day, I started to notice the feeling earlier and earlier. There was no longer a need for overwhelm (a loud alarm) and I was more productive in less time. Also, I started sleeping better at night when the rest-o-meter was kept in good balance during the day.
 
As I do, I got curious.
 
I noticed that there are a lot of body signals. Some I was listening to and some not. I found that the day flowed more and more smoothly the quicker I took action on these signals.
 
I was ignoring the signal to go pee! Like a little kid, I wanted to do just one more task or "oh in a minute". As if going to the bathroom takes a long time!
 
I was good with the thirst signal for the most part. Sipping water all day. When I paid attention, I realized that every time I felt a bit thirsty, I reached for the water bottle. I rarely ever got very thirsty or dehydrated.
 
I am a champion at ignoring hunger. And then I get grumpy or have a hard time focusing. You're hungry silly! Eating a bit fixes that up.
 
Another big one is the feeling of stress or tension in the body. It's actually the signal for "you're overthinking".  I'm coming to the understanding that stress doesn't actually exist. It's only a body signal, like having to pee, that tells us to correct our current action. Wind ourselves down.
 
I asked my daughter if she could think of any others. Here are her additions to the list:

• Feeling the need to move one's body

• Feeling the need to be around people and friends 

• Cuteness aggression (this is an 11-year-old girl thing) 

 
See what you notice for yourself: What body signals are you good at paying attention to and which are you ignoring? Then if you are up for an experiment, see what happens if you stop ignoring your body signals. Or just notice them more.
 
More later on how stress is not a thing. And much more on rest and sleep.

Does Anything Need to be Done?

Does Anything Need to Be Done?
 
After writing about pain and its meanings last week, I noticed myself having a lot of conversations about pain in the office this week. Ha! Of course.
 
I began to see deeper into pain as part of our healing response or part of our body's innate health and repair systems. I also saw that "pain" can be broadened in this context to include uncomfortable feelings or emotions we don't like.  Also, tiredness or fatigue fits into this category.
 
Hmmm. "Tell me more Dr. Sara," you say. Lol.
 
With many healing approaches including Spinal Entrainments and also including resting in our true nature, the body starts to wake up as it lets go of tension and tightness.
 
When an area of the body has been functioning in a defense mode for a while (longer than a day) and it starts to let go, your brain registers this change and can more accurately assess what is going on in that body area. You get real-time feedback. This is the deeper power of opening up.
 
You can more accurately "see" reality as it is.
 
Your own body can then decide "Does anything more need to be done?".  Often the answer is "Not right now" - just continue the process of letting go and releasing tension. Let the brain and body synchronize to unwind. This process may create uncomfortable sensations because your brain will be registering all the tightness that is still there and figuring out how to heal it.
 
Your own deeper wisdom is the most important voice to listen to. I can give information or what I know from working with lots of people for lots of years. However, your quiet voice of knowing knows.
 
Hint: This voice is always neutral and usually quiet. If you are feeling scared, angry, or anxious, don't listen.
 
As people's bodies start to open up and get back to their natural fluidity with entrainments, with sitting in a space of "no thought", it can start to hurt here and there. Or some people feel exhausted. This is like a detox. It takes energy. Sometimes a cellular replacement process needs to complete.
 
When people have been low on sleep and they start to get better sleep again, they invariably feel tired when they wake up. This is how you know you've switched from being chronically unrested to getting back to being rested. When you have replenished your "rested" tank or reserve again, you'll wake up feeling rested and refreshed. It takes longer than you want it to.
 
These are all examples of how the body goes through the process of opening up, letting go, and beginning to heal.
 
In a space of relaxation, you can neutrally ask yourself, "Does anything more need to be done?" and see what comes up and how that feels.

Pain Doesn't Mean Worse

Pain Doesn't Mean Worse

I've noticed over the years and much more lately that people usually think pain means "worse".

 And better means less pain.

 I started to look at pain with curiosity: what is happening when we have pain? What does pain mean, in general? What meanings do people put on a painful sensation? How does that affect the experience in your body?

 Before reading all the way down, do the following experiment for yourself.

 Either with a current pain or a remembered pain, what does pain mean to you?

 If your neck or back or elbow starts hurting without an obvious cause, e.g., you didn't stub your toe, what does that generally mean to you?

 Wait to see all the answers that come up. Some may surprise you.

 Is there a time component to pain for you? Ignore it or must handle immediately?

 Does it mean anything about you as a person?

 What about intensity or quality? If more intense and sharper, does that change how you think about it?

 In all my years of wondering and researching about pain, there are two main causes or reasons for pain:

 1) Our healing response in the body uses the inflammation biochemistry pathways to lay down new cells and get rid of old damaged cells.

 This causes pain. It's adaptive to modify your use of a body part while it's healing. Pain and swelling slow you down and give your body the opportunity to repair.

 An easy example of this is a torn tendon or broken bone. The actual injury or torn tissue in the body never hurts. Sometimes this is counterintuitive. The pain comes when the body begins the repair process. With a broken bone, this process begins pretty quickly with swelling to immobilize the injury so then the bones can knit back together. The inflammation rises and it hurts - a lot. In this case, pain means your body is healing itself. Same with a torn tendon. And it's the same with any pain that I could think of. Musculoskeletal pain, cancer pain, arthritis, everywhere your body is working to lay down new cells and heal.

 2) Pain is immensely useful for getting your attention.

 When your body is getting tired and worn out from too much thinking, it will become painful. We aren't designed to use thinking in the ways that we do or to use it for very long at one time.

 This is a really clever and smart design of the body. Your attention comes off of your thinking and onto the body sensation. The thinking no longer exists and your body can relax and return to its natural default state.

 Peacefulness.

 Commonly, people just don't allow long enough to focus on the sensation of their body before the next whirlwind of thoughts. Many of these thoughts might be the answers to the above questions about pain. Returning one's focus to the actual sensation allows your body to rest. The pain can then dissipate. You may then experience some of the first type of pain if your body needs to heal on a tissue and cellular level. This will feel much less though, without any thinking about it.

 A quote from the Sufi poet Rumi comes to mind as I write this:

 "Leave thinking to the one who gave intelligence.
In Silence, there is eloquence. Stop weaving,
and watch how the pattern improves."
– Rumi

Unstoppable

Unstoppable

I was looking recently at why some things I wanted to do were easy and just happened and others were not moving forward at all or felt hard.

 When I began to delve deeper into this, I noticed that not all of the things I was calling "easy and just happened" were quick or necessarily something I already knew how to do. There was no way to tell from the outside that I considered something easy. Some of these items would be called hard by others or taking a long time and so must be hard.

 When I looked at what I was calling hard, I noticed that these things were not inherently hard or even taking a long time. Some of them were things I had done previously and had done relatively easily previously. Huh. Why weren't they moving along now? Why did I think they were hard?

 Just that. I thought it.

 Some things I had a lot of habitual thinking or just plain thinking about and some things I didn't.

 And it has nothing to do with the actual thing I wanted to get done. The content may have seemed relevant. In none of the cases it was. I was literally just making up that something was easy and something else was hard.

 The items that got done the smoothest and most "magically" were the things that I didn't have any thinking around at all. I didn't categorize them in any way and just unthinkingly got them done.

 Once I noticed that I was generating all that thinking and all that judgement and all that content, even though some of it looked important, I was able to come at the tasks and projects that weren't moving along with fresh new beingness. Those projects started moving along again. And stopped again.

 And unstopped again.

 Becoming unstoppable is a process of noticing that we are stopping ourselves with thinking about something.

 In the quiet of who we are at our core we can listen for the next action.

 And from the stillness of being, do it.

I Wonder

I Wonder

I wonder who people would show up as if they stopped listening to that loud negative internal voice.

I wonder who my friend would be if she started soaking in the space of aliveness that is within her.

I wonder what the world would look like if more and more people woke up to their true nature.

I wonder who I am. I wonder what that space of beauty inside feels like for me. I wonder what my life would look like.
 
I wonder...
 
Save The Date! 
We are delighted to announce April 15, 2023 as our next Immersion Retreat Day in New Hamburg. It's a Day to come together and soak in the aliveness of the space within. Also to eat delicious lunch and have some fun!

Being In The Doing

Being in The Doing

I often have the experience of being deeply connected to the feeling of myself when I'm by myself or when I'm not doing anything. Perhaps I'm sitting on my couch reading or actually meditating or just being. Others tell me they have similar experiences. When they are still, they feel like themselves and their bodies fully relax.

In doing something, we often think that we need another mode of being to get the task done. To be quick and efficient. To think properly. Otherwise, the task will be done sloppily and willy-nilly.

I have found in my own life and experience of getting things done that this is untrue. We are most creative, most efficient, most on point when we are still within and rooted in the feeling of ourselves. 

I came across the phrase "dynamic stillness" recently and I noticed there are a lot of books devoted to this topic and that most of the readily available definitions didn't quite cut it for me.

A definition that seemed representative is here:  "Dynamic stillness is to be at one with yourself, simply enjoying the moment, actively observing enjoying where you are, and giving thanks. It is purposely looking around, but keeping still and quiet."

I found myself wanting to take the idea and the feeling further into action.

Find stillness and the feeling of being yourself while being still and quiet, for example, while sitting on your couch, and then get up and do something keeping the inner feeling of stillness and the feeling of yourself as primary.

Initially, this might look like getting up and doing the dishes or something repetitive that doesn't require much "thought". Over time I have found that you can extend this beautiful feeling into doing things that at first glance look like they would require a lot of "figuring it out" or "putting your thinking cap on". With no disrespect to Mme Nevins, my grade 5 teacher, I have found that there is no activity or task or future planning or project outlining or list writing that requires "putting a thinking cap on".

Humans are designed to function in "real-time responsiveness" in the moment. It occurs to us to get something done. That something may be the dishes or the 5-year forecast for the department or the five million dollar budget allocation.  The feeling of something occurring to you to get done is usually quite quiet for most people and we often argue with it for various reasons or just plain out of habit before we settle down and just get the taxes done. Most, if not all, of the mental activity we do around a specific task is in the category of overthinking.

Overthinking is all the thinking we do after we hear the in-the-moment idea or voice that might say "Now would be a good time to do that departmental budgeting". Overthinking or most of our thinking creates tension in our body. Pay attention to your body next time you are running around with something in your brain. Most of us become aware of circular thinking relatively quickly. Next time you notice yourself running around in circles in your head, come down out of your head and notice your body.

Put your hands on your neck and shoulders, notice your jaw. Likely your body is holding on tightly for dear life. Focus on the sensation in your body, for a minute or two or maybe longer, and the tension will begin to melt and change as your attention comes off the thinking that created the feeling.

Back to dynamic stillness. Our bodies, our minds, our spirits are designed to creatively interact with our world without hardly any thinking. To move from one task to another in our day without thinking too much about it. Carry your inner feeling of yourself from one part of your day to another. Flow around your inner core of still.

Your nervous system and your creative spirit will thank you. You will feel energized and refreshed throughout your day.

Natural Resilience

I wanted to call this one "What if There is no Such Thing as Failure?". I still want to call it that but there is so much more to Resilience than the absence of failure.

 When I went to look up the definition of resilience this morning, I found an organization "first tee" that delivers resiliency programs to kids while teaching them golf.

 The opening part of their website starts with Resilience Begins with Failure. Their coaches often begin a program with the following question:

“Who has made a fabulous mistake we can all learn from?” 

In a discussion about past "failures" participants come to see that failure or mistakes don't actually exist. We decide in our thinking that a particular outcome wasn't what we wanted and then label it a failure or a mistake. All failure is, is not achieving a desired outcome yet or on that attempt. E.g., I failed to jump over the one-meter-high jump bar. When the idea of failure starts to look ridiculous and why would we make up that something is a "failure" then you are well on your way to your natural resilience.

Resilience as defined by Wikipedia:

Psychological resilience is the ability to cope mentally or emotionally with a crisis or to return to pre-crisis status quickly.

Other definitions supplied by the internet:

The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

Our natural state is to flow in an ever-present state of now. There is never any other time than now. Given that, I find it curious that definitions of resilience - like the one above - include the word toughness. Toughness implies difficulty. Difficulty or toughness is another one of those label words that doesn't really exist. Something is only tough or difficult if you decide that it is. Curiously.

Dr. Giles P Croft puts it wordily succinctly: Resilience is the visible manifestation of our psychological immune system. Our built-in mood rebalancing.

He sees resilience as the same as "if I look at a bright light, my pupils will constrict and then dilate again when the light is gone."

It's innate. Built in. We are born with it.

 Humans are designed from the inside out for resilience. When babies learn to walk for example, they don't consider every fall or stumble a difficult setback or a failure to overcome. They grin and pick themselves up and go at it again. And again, and again until pretty soon they are cruising all over the house like champion walkers. And runners. And climbers. 

The only reason we move away from our default of resilience is when we add in thinking about what just happened and label it in a negative way.

Back to the babies - "Oh well, what can I expect, that was my 3rd time failing at walking. I guess it's just not in the cards for me. It's just like that time I didn't roll over 2 months ago. It's a pattern of failure. I'll just stay down here."

Hopefully, that sounded funny to you because it's ridiculous.

I was going to write that we are like the materials definition of resilience. We have the ability to spring back into shape. Except that's not true either.

We never actually get "out of shape" or broken in any way. At our core, we are an ever-peaceful space of wholeness from which we can flow into the ever-changing, ever-variable life experience of now.

With grace, love,and built-in resilience.

When I work with people on the table there's a point where your spine, your body becomes fluid and then everything is up for grabs, all possibilities exist. This happens when you become present to life, present to yourself, your core nature. I see my role as a coach and a guide. You are the one becoming present to yourself.

When I work with people in transformative coaching, there's a point in the conversation where you realize the truth of who you are, who all humans are, and how we are designed so perfectly. At this point, your ideas of who you are and what reality is becomes fluid, everything is up for grabs, all possibilities exist. In a Real-lized felt sense. I see my role as guide along the way to who you really are. You are the one becoming present to yourself.

The Sun And The Clouds

I recently came across a metaphor that points to who we are as humans or the truth of our core nature by Dr. George Pransky.

"At our core, the very essence of human beings is goodness, love, and joy. That core is ever-present, like the sun. But, also like the sun, our core can be obscured temporarily or even eclipsed.

 As the sun is eclipsed by clouds, our goodness can be eclipsed by our thinking. Goodness, wellbeing, and love are always there even when we can't experience it or see it."

I love this metaphor because it points to the truth that our default is always love and understanding. We always beam out the warmth of the sun and can bask in that warmth ourselves. We shine for ourselves first.  Nourishing our being, renewing, and replenishing without having to do anything or remember to do anything special - just notice.

And yes, like a sunny day outside, the clouds of our thinking obscure that warmth and nourishment temporarily from time to time.

The sun of you always shines even in the night.

I hope everyone has a Happy Holiday full of joy, resting, and shining.

Love,

Sara Joy