Category: Inspirations

A Santa of Peace and Kindness

I met Santa the other Saturday. It was an unexpected and most extraordinary meeting. This Santa was a she and appeared slim as though she takes care of herself. She wore makeup and colourful glass beads around her neck. Her hair was styled and silver. She had winter walking boots and pulled a little cart behind her.

I had just finished work and after a quick trip to the bank Carlie and I were ready for a little walk in the snow – a reward for waiting patiently and quietly. We came out of the credit union and crossed the street to sniff the snow when I noticed Santa crossing the street toward us. She greeted us cheerily and then said, “I don’t like to see litter everywhere, so I need to go pick that up.”

I followed her gaze and saw the garbage in the corner of the church property. I told her, “wow, how kind of you to do that. Thank you.” I watched her pick up the garbage, using her little cart for support. Carlie and I continued around the block, casually sniffing every new spot.

We were coming around the last corner and heading towards my car and I saw “Santa” again. She was again bending over, picking up other people’s garbage. No one was paying any attention to what she was doing probably because it looked like the behaviour of a homeless person, weeding through garbage to scavenge something of value for themselves. But, here as Santa, with makeup and a glass bead necklace, she was picking up our garbage. This was her gift to the community. She was picking up the plastic, the paper, the bow and tie, the knickknacks that others decided not to be responsible for in the end. Her cart was full, with ‘stuff’ people throw away because they have too much ‘stuff’.

My heart skipped a beat – what an incredible sight. She wasn’t asking to be noticed. She loved her community. She loved the ‘home’ where she lived, our Mother Earth. As Carlie and I were walking right past her, I wondered what I could offer to acknowledge this elderly, unassuming, beautiful spirit. I had no money in my pocket, only a mid-size glass marble of Mother Earth I carry around with me in my coat pocket. Carlie and I stopped, and I said “and here we are again, meeting each other. I’m not sure if this will be of value to you, but I would like to offer you this Earth marble.” (It was quite beautiful with the oceans and all the continents on it).

She took the marble, looked at it and with her eyes shining bright, she exclaimed, “why yes, I would value it very much. Thank you.” Carlie and I continued, but as I moved to keep walking, I noticed her spin the marble in her hand, look at it again and then put it in her pocket. She resumed picking up other people’s garbage.

In these two brief encounters I felt gifted and blessed. Watching her take something we hold rather dear in our culture, Santa Claus, and turn him into a ‘her’ and into a servant leader, modeling to the generations of those who are younger than her, how to care for our home, our Mother Earth, if we would only pause to see.

In her way of being, she embodied the fruits of the spirit, the essentials of any active and genuine spirituality:

  • She had learned to loved self and others, regardless of what they had done or not done. Her engaging smile and eyes expressed more than words may ever communicate.
  • Her body rhythms were smooth, gentle and methodical. She carried no air of resentment, as one who practises forgiveness.
  • She freely practised kindness, indeed, random acts of kindness.
  • She recognized the sacred, especially the sacred essence of our home, our community, our Earth.
  • She was gracious and grateful for the attention and gift offered her, but she would have offered this service to her community regardless. There was no display of craving attention for her deed. She was Santa serving the good.
  • She had the wisdom that doing good helps us feel good, deeply satisfied, even if it is picking up garbage and even when others may not see the good we do.
  • And finally, she served her community with joy, even in picking up their garbage. She dedicated her Saturday to a purpose larger than her own satisfaction alone. What vision of a beautiful planet must she have that she is so committed to even on a winter’s afternoon?

Whatever your cultural or religious holiday might be this season, I invite you to consider engaging in something which offers your community a gift of kindness, love, joy, peace, vision, wisdom and generosity. Take a familiar symbol of the season and turn it on its head. Instead of the cultural norms of power and fantasies of spiritual magic, disguised as excess consumption in these symbols, turn them upside down.

If you were Santa this year, what kind of Santa would you be? What gift would you bring? Does this ‘gift’ heal or harm? Who really will be responsible for the gift you give? The Earth? Our water? You? Or the Receiver?

This past 6 weeks, I have met people like this who have inspired me in a new way. From water walkers, to a servant Santa, to those surrendering to a living/loving Higher Power because it’s the only way they can find freedom from their addictions. What new inspirations and aspirations to serve from your heart do you want to share in 2018? Let’s re-commit to making this life, this world a better place for us and those beings to come. Let peace begin with us.

May you and your families be well and happy. May you be peace-filled and sufficiency. May you be safe, healthy and live joyously, with just enough bravery to turn ‘normal’ upside down. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays and Joy to the World.  Namaste,

Shirley Lynn

FOUR STANDARDS & PRACTICES OF SELF RESPECT

Think about someone whom you respect with everything in your heart, almost whom you radically respect. Reflect upon their actions, their values, the way they care for others and themselves, the choices they make and the way they communicate with others. What stands out for you about the way in which they embody self-respect that ‘demands’ you respect them?

A key destroyer to self-respect is a lack of personal boundaries and practices of self-compassion. Personal boundaries and practices of self-compassion communicate, among other things, how we wish to be treated, who we are in relationship to the world around us and the responsibility we take for the joy and well-being of our lives – a reflection of our own self dignity. Over the past 20 years of working with people, I have heard hundreds of stories of deep wounds and hurt that people carry in which their core sense of dignity and respect have been compromised, violated or disregarded.

When children are abused, neglected and repeatedly traumatized by the lives of shame and abuse from their parents, guardians and trusted elders, teachers and coaches, learning the standards and practices of self-respect and self-compassion is negligible and non-existent. If these same children grow up and don’t get the healing they require, they are likely to spread this shame of disrespect, self-hate and abuse to others, only now it begins to multiply. Other times, there are those who have become so accustomed to low self-worth and harsh self judgement, they simply fall into patterns of weak boundaries that end up sabotaging the very goals they are working so hard to accomplish. Developing self-respect is a key healing balm to transmute our shame and low self-worth.

Spiritually, self-respect is necessary to experience our inner potential and to fulfill our purpose or deep meaning in life. To contribute to the betterment of our world and to restore wholeness to our planet, we need to begin to grow our self-respect.

The following four key standards of self-respect and practices of self-compassion help to authenticate our life and strengthen our spirituality:

1. Value and Honour our Core Needs

Although we know we need to value and honour our needs, our dreams and our goals if we are to respect ourselves, actually ‘doing’ the work of valuing and honouring our needs is a choice we often justify away. To deeply value oneself, a healthy body and nutrition, one’s mental well-being and one’s spiritual nourishing would be as fundamental to us as putting gas in the car to make sure we get from point A to B without ‘pushing’ ourselves to the destination on empty. And yet, how often does the gas in the car get first priority over our deeper core needs?

Valuing and honouring ourselves means that we need to treat our whole selves, our inner core with dignity, a key standard of respect and practice of self-compassion. On a scale of 1-10, where do you put yourself? Where would you like to be and what do you need to transform to respect yourself as you would like?

2. Be Honest and Live your Principles

Many of us deeply value honesty, and trust those who are truthful. What often strikes me however, is what it means to be honest and truthful with oneself. If we are only aware of our ego beliefs of life, then we cannot be fully honest, for we will be ‘without heart’ in our understanding. We will be untruthful, no matter how hard we attempt to behave honestly because our ego is not necessarily concerned with fulfilling heart and soul needs and lessons. For me, being honest and truthful means being connected, aware and growing in the whole presence and light of my soul, my inner deepest heart/mind.

The challenge to be truthful is not just about what we say. Being honest requires that our words, our actions, our intentions, our energy and our spiritual being flow with integration and coherence (words, deeds, intentions all match!). This process is a daily commitment to oneself and to the principles we live by regardless of what life presents us.

Seeking to become more soulfully honest naturally and eloquently raises our standard of self-respect. What new question can you pose to yourself that would forward your truth from within your inner being?

3. Trust your Inner Wisdom

We all have deep knowledge and gut instincts about what is good and beneficial for us. Unfortunately, we have been trained to ignore these signals, body cues and insights and instead, to give credibility and authority to our thinking minds and society’s status quo. Of course, I believe reason and insight or intuition both can harmoniously work together for our greater good. However, they are to be in balance and work as a dialectic tension with one another. When we frame our lives and our thinking in binary, dualistic fashion, we neglect our own inner wisdom guiding us into our best self and toward our best life. Such living lends itself to feeling and being sustained by a sense of self-respect.

Moreover, our bodies are powerful communicators about what is beneficial and what is destructive for us. And yet, because we have weak standards and practices of self-valuing and honouring and dismissive patterns of our needs, we miss the key signals that point us to our truth, to our wisdom and the way forward in our lives. Without trusting the heart of our inner wisdom, our standard of respect will rarely mature and support us in the difficult moments of our evolving lives and relationships.

What is the insight you have been disregarding and rationalizing away, that if you listened would provide the opening and path forward you are seeking?

4. Act with Courage to Change

Here we encounter the stumbling blocks of most stumbling blocks—the courage to DO the change. To claim our courage is to seek our unknown potential. Respect truly builds and grounds within us when we take action toward our potential, and that means we must be aligned with and open to Spirit. Potential is a Higher Power when we choose potential that promotes our joy, peace and goodwill to all sentient beings.

The Chinese character ‘chaos’ is depicted as a new plant breaking the ground and is translated “where dreams begin.” In other words, the beginning is often difficult and requires us to change our habits and mindsets and perhaps even release old relationships and seek new ones. Such changes can create such intense fear in us that we cannot see the success or goodness of the positive results and we turn back to where we came. Other times we become frozen with fear for stepping too far out of the comfort zone of others we are seeking to please and appease.

The courage to change brings into focus the other 3 standards and practices of self-respect and self-compassion. As a coherent set of standards and practices of self-respect, we access the power to benefit from the very essence of our joy and the path we walk to manifest it. Deep self-respect demands our courage to act. What metaphor of SELF-RESPECT can your Inner Wisdom create that is so powerful, strong and wise, you literally change a weak and destructive pattern in your life and relationships?

 

If self-respect is a power of self-kindness and empowerment you would like to improve, consider participating in my upcoming two-day workshop The Self Kindness Response: Boundaries for Health & Joyful Living on September 29-30th, 2017. I would love to partner with you and co-create a powerful transformation of your present relationships and your inner state of love and peace.

For more details about this amazing learning and growth opportunity, visit The Self Kindness Response: Boundaries for Health & Joyful Living. You may also call or email me for additional clarification or guidance. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Namaste,

Shirley Lynn

Wisdom’s Way to Healing: Bending Towards Life

Stories of true healing inspire me. Koans and wisdom parables and sayings which expand my spirit and calm my mind, call my body to breathe, relax and expand into its wholeness and balance all inspire me.

I have learned that my healing occurs when I become flexible and resilient enough to bend towards life and accept life, as it is, rather than push for life to bend towards my desires or will. Stress, pain and illness then can become ‘reframed’ in my mind. I thought I would pass along a few thoughts on healing and bending towards life (for most of us that requires a whole shift of consciousness, a change of perspective) which have, and continue to, resonate with and help me …


Danea Horn – “I thought ‘healed’ meant that life became the way you wanted it to be. I could not have been further from the truth. I had missed the most basic of Buddhist principles: life is suffering.

“Becoming spiritual does not mean that we are no longer human. It doesn’t take away the pain, illness, and stress; it only reframes it. Suffering tells us that we are inherently human. Coping with human challenges does not mean that we are less-than or that we are damaged; it only means that we are experiencing things all human beings experience.

“The trick is not to bend life’s will to our personal desires. It is the other way around. We must find the flexibility to bend to Life. That is what I had been missing.”

Socrates – “The secret of change is to focus all of our energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

Buddha – “Our sorrow and wounds are healed when we touch them with compassion.”

Katherine Schafler – “You can change without healing, but you can’t heal without changing.”

Irene Tamaras – “In our logical, conscious mind we are ready, but deep within us, on a subconscious level that we cannot understand because it takes time and maturity for us to understand this, we are NOT ready to heal. Why? Because of what I have come now to understand about healing — that healing is not black or white, that healing is mystical and mysterious and not guaranteed, that healing is hard work that requires great discipline, sacrifice, surrender, courage, and change, that healing is about a deep transformation within us of something far greater than the physical symptoms that we are experiencing and wanting to heal, and that healing is a journey of our growth from living in an ego state to becoming spiritually awake as we reach the deepest part of ourselves in truth as we journey to our soul.”

Judith Orloff MD – “Because I’m a physician, people often ask me, ‘What’s the most important factor in recovering from illness?’ To their surprise, my answer is always “surrender.” Surrender basically means letting go of your need to be in control. It’s about opening up your mind to possibilities you might not have considered, letting your intuition guide you, and being in the flow of life. When we stop pushing and trying to determine the outcome, healing energy becomes available to us. So surrender your fear. Surrender yourself with healing people. Surrender to peacefulness.”

“Surrender is a very active process and on an energetic or subtle level it invites Divinity to resolve a situation. This is why the universe and one’s life is radically altered as one surrenders on something. Once something is completely surrendered the highest form of wisdom and power is now handling it, which means that its outcome has altered also.” http://www.healthandhealingclinic.net/the-role-of-surrender-in-health-and-healing


In my third podcast and conversation with Colin Hillstrom about healing, we share stories and understandings we have gained from our paths of healing and consciousness. I invite you to listen to our conversation.

Then we invite you to try the action at the end of our conversation. As one of my colleagues finishes all our conference calls, “Go out and be a blessing this week.” Alternatively, accept one difficult situation about your health as it is. It brings immediate relief. Immediate energy for allowing healing to begin within.

In closing, I remind of us a powerful healing prayer by Reinhold Neibuhr – “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.”

Blessed be.

Namaste,

Shirley Lynn

The Divine Art of Healing: Using your Energy Wisely

In my second podcast conversation with Colin Hillstrom, we begin with the question ‘why bother with healing?’ Why do we need to become conscious to heal? What really is the benefit of doing the work of telling the truth, of becoming aware and awake when healing from disease and illness? These questions challenge us to do more than the bare minimum to return our energy to a state of doing what we have always done. Sooner or later, a crisis will call into question the health and life we take for granted.

For the past two weeks, a police cruiser with its lights flashing has been parked on our street every day to direct traffic onto the detour route around the road closure further up the street. It has been fascinating to observe the varied reactions to this inconvenience. After all, in our journeys from points A to B, we just want to get where we are going with the least amount of disruption and re-calculating.

One afternoon I decided to take a snack up to the officer on duty, and I joked with him about how busy he was making sure that people do what they are being asked to do. His comments surprised me – they are driving past four road closed signs because looking for an alternative pathway is too much work. People are driving on people’s lawns to get where they want to go rather than take the detours. They are even driving around him onto the shoulder and when he chases them down, they give him excuses like they didn’t see him.

I stood there and witnessed him telling a driver who didn’t know how to follow the detour signs and so returned to ask again if she could drive around the barricades to get where she wanted to go. He was kind, but clear in his response: “For the 2nd time, no.” On a several occasions, when they felt they could get away with it, I witnessed several drivers disregarding the officer and the multiple road closure signs and proceeding around the barricade, with little concern for the safety of the workers or the property of those who live within the construction zone.

I understand firsthand the inconvenience of this detour onto a gravel road that can be very dusty, or muddy when it rains, and very rough because of all the traffic. It means I must drive slower and allow more time – this and other inconveniences come with this kind of construction. For me to disregard the flashing lights and road signs just to get what one wants right now, faster, seems an act of disrespect my spirit cannot consider.

I share this story because it’s what I also hear in the stories that I hear from my clients. People will bypass the body’s ‘flashing red light’ repeatedly just to get what they want, now. They don’t believe the red light applies to them needing to become conscious of their body and emotional-spiritual well-being. Their body is supposed to support them regardless of their choices, regardless of their habits. They don’t need to change. Sensory pleasure or momentary ego gratification is the sole motivating factor while their spirit and the flow of truth and love is denied and infringed upon.

Moreover, not only is the body compromised in this situation, but so too are their important relationships, often which also become disrespected and disregarded in some way. Here, just like the lawns and property which are being destroyed, or construction workers that are almost being hit by these drivers, and school property and sidewalks being used as roadways, we often don’t recognize that only using our energy for our ego’s cravings and entitlements are costing the relationships we might otherwise value when the shoe worn becomes our own. Sometimes healing takes a longer route and we do best by honouring the natural rules of healing.

Healing includes more than clearing physical symptoms. It calls for a change in consciousness towards higher aspirations, connections and love to something greater than ourselves. It calls us to open up to new possibilities and potentiality of who we can be in the world, whether it be family, community, ourselves and with our bodies. Healing calls us to use our energy rightly. It asks us to reframe our stress, pain and illness.

The power of healing is found in the acceptance and resilience and love to yield to life, to its detours and even temporary road blocks. Our capacity to heal is found in our willingness and conscious dedication to yield towards what gives us life, love and vitality. Such healing calls us to ask what is the right use of our energy to restore vitality and reconnect us with love and life as it seeks to flow through us.

Which leads me to ask you: What behaviour, habits or spiritual practice leads you toward your higher power and helps make the right use of your energy? Why does healing really matter to you?

Take some time to listen to my podcast series about healing with Colin Hillstrom as we explore using your energy wisely. If you missed the first one, I invite you to start there – this series is really an ongoing conversation between us. I hope you enjoy and I look forward to hearing your comments. Be blessed.

Namaste,
Shirley Lynn

The Divine Art of Healing

All suffering and illness comes from a perceived sense of separation (an unloved state).

Dr. Leonard Laskow (MD)

Healing is how we recover, repair, restore and retain health and wholeness in mind, body, spirit, community and environment. Healing may or may not result in cure.

The Samueli Institute

First we have to heal our spirit. Secondly we have to keep our body healthy. If our spirit is healthy and conformed to the truth, the body will get healthy naturally.

Usui Sensei (Founder of Reiki Ryoho)

 

The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated.      Plato

The American Medical Association (AMA) states 80 percent of all health problems are stress related, and even the conservative Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated that 85 percent of all diseases appear to have an emotional element.    Dr. Mercola

The most Divine art is healing. It must occupy itself with the soul as well as the body. Pythagorus

 

Tao of Healing

Going beyond the ordinary

Shedding the orthodox

In radiant Emptiness

The Self-nature reveals.  I Ching

To heal a nation, we must first heal the individuals, the families and the communities. We listened to three women yesterday. What they had to say tells me that spiritual rebirth is happening; spiritual rebirth is absolutely essential. The imperative for us now, as Native people, is to heal our communities, and heal our nations, because we are the final teachers in this sacred land. We have to teach how to live in harmony with each other and with the whole creation. People will have to put down their greed and arrogance before they can hear what we are saying. I am not sure how many will do that. So we are in the process of healing ourselves, healing our communities, and healing our nations.

The closing words of Elder Art Solomon at a conference at University of Sudbury in 1992

Illness is a physical manifestation of spiritual decay. Healing, ritual and community – these three elements are vitally linked….

The Healing Wisdom of Africa by Malidoma Patrice Somé (Dagara People)

The journey of healing is one filled with mystery. Over centuries, from different times and parts of the world, we hear the same message written in many ways – the body and mind are one; soul and body are one. Even Mother Earth and Self are one. Our health and the health of our community is one.

Here in the west, we have been so trained to separate our spirit from our body, our self from our community, and we forget to consult our inner or ancestral wisdom and our spiritual state when seeking to heal our physical bodies. It’s not that medical, alternative or body therapies shouldn’t be used to treat illnesses manifesting in the body. Indeed, the spirit, mind, energy, and body are one!

The missed opportunity is often, however, to include one’s inner wisdom, one’s spiritual guidance system to offer insight, answers and inner knowing to the path of wholeness and spiritual healing that our medical models often fail to include as essential to the healing the soul of a person and their community and more. Often what receives little attention in the healing path is the spiritual decay and the need for spiritual awakening that offers the power of the mind/body connection to heal itself.

As you ponder this wisdom shared above from over cultures, centuries and even current research, I invite you to listen to my latest series of podcasts on healing. My friend and colleague Colin Hillstrom, a Transformation coach, and I held a series of “fireside chat” discussions about healing. Our conversation covers our experiences with healing, what we understand healing to be, and how healing connects us to spiritual awakening. Listen to the first in the series.

Blessed be the way of your healing!

Namaste,

Shirley Lynn

A Moment of Love

Whoever does not love, does not know God, because God is love. – I John 4:8

The wind is breezy, moving and swaying the long grass in the field. As I lay a track for Carlie, I decide which portions of the track will follow ‘downwind’ and which part will have a ‘cross wind’. I choose terrain of various grass lengths because scent is held, pooled and travelled depending upon terrain and vegetation and I want to lay track that is both challenging and yet achievable, encouraging her to be confident in her skill to “follow the trail”.

The sun is bright and it is a wonderful Friday afternoon, heading into summer’s first long weekend. When I return to the house, Carlie is sitting at the door, patiently waiting for me. She knows ‘the game’ that is about to take place. I putter around the house waiting for Nature to do ‘Her thing’ with the track, moving the scent here and there with the wind. Nature loves joining in on our tracking adventures, sometimes as an aid, sometimes as a trickster.

Finally, it’s time. I put on her tracking harness, clip on the long line and put a few treats in my pocket. Carlie starts tracking before she even gets to the track. (She is always seeking the advantage.) Her tail is up and wagging, her eyes are bright and she is panting with anticipation and joy. We get to the start area and I tell her ‘search’. Down goes her nose and into another world she enters. She finds the trail, pulls forward and begins. I walk behind her. She maneuvers the corners, the wind, and the different terrain with delight in the game and in her skill. Challenges arise and become solved. We find the first two items. The gravel poses a difficulty and I have to direct her to follow scent on gravel, across bricks and then wahoo, the tug toy is hidden under a plant in the garden, the final ‘lost item’. We play tug. She tugs and growls and pulls and shakes the tug. What joy! A truly glorious moment.

The moment grabs my heart. My heart opens with love for Carlie. I feel an expansiveness in my chest and I know we are connected. I feel a complete harmony with her joy, and as we return to the house, we celebrate one another and the best we bring to each other. I feel the laughter of the sun and the humour in the wind who created just enough challenge to stretch our minds about what is possible. In this moment of love, of expansiveness and harmony, I feel Goddess ~ I feel Love, or in the words of Pema Chodron, Compassionate Abiding, connected with the Mystery, one with all Essence.

It was that simple. An openness to loving another. A pure joy. Unitive harmony. A surrender which takes me deep into my Self and beyond my ego. And for a moment, reality changes. For a moment, I transform. For a moment, I plant my feet in the land of blessing, and I am home in love. I accept I am accepted in Goddess Love. I recall Tillich’s words: “Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted! If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.” – from Paul Tillich’s sermon You Are Accepted.

In Reiki Ryoho practice, we say Reiki is Love, Pure Awareness, the Essence of Everything. Goddess is Love. Love is pure acceptance. The core of our meditations is to surrender whole heartedly into this Universal Love and Harmony, into this Abiding Compassion, into Goddess who is within us and is the Essence of Everything. And gently, we are changed and change. Love changes everything. Accepting Pure Acceptance transforms us.

Create a moment and return to Love yet again. And if you have wandered far or fallen down, and are estranged from that Holy Love, I share this invitation of our Peace Circle:

Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come. – Rumi

Know Love. Be loved. Love. It is the alchemy of life.

Namaste,

Shirley Lynn

 

About our next Peace Circle:

Loving Mother Earth, Loving Self

Saturday, June 24th, 2017

12:00 – 4:00 pm in Waterloo, ON

Weather permitting, this Circle will be outdoors

Cost: $60 (+HST)

Co-Facilitators Shirley Lynn Martin & Karen McCarthy have put together an inspiring Peace Circle during which participants will have the opportunity to reflect on and draw wisdom from Thich Nhat Hanh’s article “Falling Back in Love with Mother Earth”.

During our time together in Circle, we will:

  • learn ‘to do’ self love by ‘loving Mother Earth’
  • expand, enhance and deepen our meaning of self love as we learn to expand/deepen our meaning of loving Mother Earth
  • create deeper connection and integrated awareness of the path to loving ourselves, to loving Mother Earth

Come join us and spend the afternoon in a community who chooses to love ourselves, Mother Earth, and each other. Experience the healing power in the Circle ceremony and stories that collectively transform our being and our relationships. Register today!

The Hidden Blessing of Spring

The Joy of Spring

Spring is here and so we often find ourselves also getting more spring in our step too! As I write this blog today, I find myself sensing the joy in my heart expand and fill with the blue sky, bright sun, fresh air and green grass. The dogs and I are again playing in the creek behind the house. Of course, they are giggling as they smell the fresh scents, run in and out of the creek and check to see who is coming out of winter’s hibernation! On our way back to the house, Rayna and Carlie drag their feet just like little kids who doesn’t want to go home from the playground. I promise them they can hang outside on the front porch and I will give them a treat for coming back without complaining. I can certainly appreciate their joy of simply taking in the sun and fresh spring air and I join them in savouring the beauty of the day.

For most people, saying good-bye to winter is done with relative ease and cheer. We anticipate the longer and warmer days of spring when purple crocuses and white snowdrops emerge, followed by daffodils and tulips and so many other spring blooms all reawakening and brightening the backdrop of mud and last year’s leftover debris. For most people, the end of winter’s grief rarely registers as anything but a great sigh of relief.

The Paradox

And yet, Spring brings us a new kind of paradox where new life is mixed with new energy. With this new life, we often open with relative ease to ‘let go’ of a ‘bad mood’. We are empowered to ‘lighten our mind’ toward growth and renewal.  In Chinese medicine, spring is the season of the liver and the ideal time to detox the liver system, helping it to ‘let go’. Just like we prune shrubs and bushes to promote healthy and richer growth, our bodies need support to be purified to promote health and vital energy.

In TCM, the metaphysics of frustration, bitterness, and the nuances of anger are often associated with the liver system and its (un)happy chi flow. What an interesting opportunity – the gift of spring to help us more easily release our anger! Spring invites us to ask ourselves: What anger can I let go to lighten my heart? or perhaps What anger can I let go of to increase the joy in my life?

The Disease of Anger

In his book When the Body Says No, Gabor Maté writes that holding onto anger creates a significant cost in hidden stress to the body. Some people know they are angry, but fear their anger. Others are not aware they feel anger because it’s ‘not okay’ to be angry, so they repress it deep into the body. Others believe that if they are angry, it makes them unlovable.

We are aware that unregulated expression of anger is problematic and hurtful to others. We also know that repression of anger causes disease in the body. Maté quotes a Woody Allen character: “ I never get angry. I grow a tumour instead.” So we often are faced with a significant inner conflict – if I get angry, I will rage on others and hurt them which I don’t want to do … or I might not be loved. But if I don’t express it, I will hurt my own body, my own being, even to the point of causing disease. Even our spiritual practice tells me ‘do not anger’! What a seeming doubly double bind we are in! The very thought of this double bind creates anxiety and fear in us because we fear the genuine expression of anger.

Getting Beyond the Double Bind

Allen Kalpin, a physician and psychotherapist writes that healthy anger is an empowerment and a relaxation. Anger does not require hostile acting out. Maté summarizes: People discharge their anger outwardly because they fear fully experiencing it internally. Both the unbridled expression of anger and its automatic suppression arise from an anxiety we first feel in early childhood. It is inherently anxiety-producing for a small child to be angry with those he is dependent on, Dr. Kalpin points out. The real experience of anger “is a physiologic experience without acting out“. The experience is one of a surge of power going through the system, along with a mobilization to attack. There is, simultaneously, a complete disappearance of all anxiety.

“When healthy anger is starting to be experienced, you don’t see anything dramatic. What you do see is a decrease of all muscle tension. The mouth is opening wider, because the jaws are more relaxed, the voice is lower in pitch because the vocal cords are more relaxed. The shoulders drop, and you see all signs of muscle tension disappearing.”[1]

Moving beyond the double bind means we give ourselves permission to feel the surge of aggressive energy that arises with anger, calmly and without anxiety. We also choose to feel our anger without acting it out. Notice the spiritual ethic of so many wisdom traditions, Do not anger. It tells us to not act it out ( a behaviour, not a feeling … it’s the verb form). But for health and well-being, for the joy to flow vital in our hearts, we need to calmly experience the surge of aggression and speak to the injustice. We need to know we are loved and safe within ourselves even with our anger. And as we do, we ‘let it go’ and lighten our minds and hearts.

Compassion: Returning to Joy through Fierceness: The hidden blessing

In my work with psychologist and leadership coach Rev. Rob Voyle, we refer to the Three Faces of Compassion. He describes one of the faces of compassion as fierceness. Fierceness is often a needed expression of compassion in the face of injustice. Voyle states that this “compassion face of fierceness is a single-minded determination to bring about a just future”.

Listen to Martin Luther King Jr speak to the injustices Black America was suffering as a result of systemic racism (and still is). His voice is strong, yet his body is relatively relaxed. He does not mince words in his condemnation of injustices of racism. King has a single-minded focus in challenging and speaking to and expressing his anger about what is grossly unjust in America. His entire spine is filled with the power of “NO”, I will not accept this racism as my destiny. “I have a dream” he so powerfully and eloquently orates to his listeners. His compassion for his people, for his country, for all life was fierce. His joy had immense historical vision. It changed history. As did his healthy anger expressed through fierce compassion.

I am always amazed at the mystery of Universal flows liberating our hearts to increase our joy. The fullness that awakens with Spring and sun and fresh air, flowers budding and birds singing all brighten us. The letting go of the hidden anger, the all-consuming rage causing pain and disease enlightens our bodies and our minds. These two flows join together with a third flow, Love and Compassion of the Universe, creating a trinity of healing and blessing of a new and emerging joy.

With Spring now in full swing, I encourage you to prune the mental habits and filters that keep anger stuck in your heart and body. Follow the seasonal flow and take the time to cleanse. Enhance the flows of joy in your heart and life. Invite the  sunshine back into your heart. If you need help bringing Spring back into your Heart, please contact me at shirley@shirleylynnmartin.com to get started with soul coaching and whole life therapy. Together we will bring new flow to your body, mind and soul.

Namaste,

Shirley Lynn

[1]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/anger-management/article1113421/

Spring Equinox Peace Circle: Forgiving our Past, Rebirthing our Capacity to Love

Why Peace?

“Who will work for peace on our planet? In our relationships? Within ourselves?” These are questions we are currently asking ourselves. With all the negativity that is flooding our airwaves, people are once again saying peace matters, even marching and calling for peace in ways we haven’t seen in decades. We desire love for all humanity and a restored earth.

To make this ‘call’ our collective reality, we must do the work to make peace our experience. We must make peace with our past. We must make peace with the lives we have been giving, rather than wishing for a greener life across the fence. We must be peace. Peace is our path to wholeness, to healing, to the very best of our collective existence.

Change the conversation? Change the chairs!

How do we make peace? One way is to initiate new conversations and a new way to be in conversation. Peter Block writes: “Change the conversation, change your thinking, change your life. Maybe… listening creates the speaking. Maybe citizens create leaders, maybe employees create bosses, maybe students create teachers and children create parents. Maybe the purpose of problem solving is to build relationships.”

This is all to say that we have the power to make monumental changes and that one of the ways is by hearing from one another. We also need to change our environment to be better supported to change the conversation. One powerful and ancient First Nations method that changes the conversation, transforms and heals the conversation, is through Circle. We can create circles for healing, for visioning, for building community, for conflict transformation, for remembering our inner wisdom’s way to peace.

The vital Equinox conversation: Forgiving our Past to Re-birth our Capacity to Love

So now that we have a well-tested method on how to change the environment and the principles of circle to change the conversation, what conversation is vital this equinox? What do we do with all the hatred, the negativity and the resentment that is creeping into our spaces and newsfeeds and into our inner sense of hope? Forgiving our past, forgiving our hurts is truly a key and vital change point. Love cannot exist without forgiving. Forgiving what hurt us is only possible with love. Spring brings us renewed hope and in this place of hope, we can access the faith and power to forgive through love.

As Rob Voyle, change agent and Episcopalian priest writes: “Without forgiveness, people remain trapped in their past, obsessing over what has been done to them. This obsession leads the person to use their injury as a way to re-injure themselves and stay in a state of victimization. While they are looking back to the past, it is impossible to look forward and to experience hope. If we are resentful of things from our past, when we do glimpse the future, we are likely to see a repetition of these painful experiences continuing into the future. Rather than welcome the future we are likely to spend considerable effort in taking self-protective measures.”

Bringing in and participating with the equinox is a call to awaken, to re-birth our vitality. The ultimate vitality is love and forgiveness. A specific task of forgiveness is to release our resentments about what happened in the past. Rob Voyle states that “resentment is a current demand that someone or something in the past should have been different. While the event that created our resentment may be in the past, the resentment is in the present and is manifested as a demand about the past.”

Spring is a special time to release the demands feeding our resentment and instead choose to nurture our capacity to love. Really. It’s time to open to the warmth of the sun and to the flow of our vitality. It’s time to live in love, a new kind of love that truly forgives and creates a genuinely new and better future. We cannot use forgiveness to change the past, but doing so will certainly enlarge and enrich our future. And that is where we will live, in our future.

Where can you have this vital conversation?

Join me in the next Peace Circle on Wednesday, March 22nd from 7-9:30 pm and be re-vitalized by the ceremony of forgiving our resentments together. For details about this event, please visit Spring Peace Circle. Limited seating so don’t wait to register.

If you have never experienced Peace Circle, I invite you to listen to our podcast series and be invited into peace circle with Karen, Tonya and myself.

Peace Circle Podcast series

Join Shirley Lynn Martin, Karen McCarthy and Tonya Noble as we again invite you into Peace Circle with us, to cross the threshold into sacred space and time. In our third and final podcast in this series, we explore the ‘Magic of Peace Circle’ we have each personally experienced. What comes to light is that circle transformation is a process that already begins in our preparation, as well as in the actual encounter and continues even days following the Peace Circle. There is a subtle dawning of synchronous joy, peace and awareness of who we truly are that becomes real in our coming together. The magic is real!

Namaste,
Shirley Lynn

Listening to our Bodies: A Path to Relating Peacefully

Listen Up!

Recently Jennifer Bodenham,  a team development coach, and I sat down to create a 3-part podcast series about Boundaries. Throughout these podcasts, we explore why we need boundaries, what they are and even share a concrete exercise that will help you can get started towards living a life that is more kind and joyful.

The wonder and value of self-kindness, health and maintaining connection with others, even when it starts to get difficult are mutually possible. The second podcast In Conversation with Jen about Boundaries for Healthy & Joyful Living – Part Two is now available. And in case you missed the first one, In Conversation with Jen about Boundaries for Healthy & Joyful Living, listen to it first to catch the flow of our conversation. The final podcast will be available next week.

I hope you enjoy this series and feel free to share them with others.


Listening to our Bodies: A Path to Relating Peacefully

Recently I was involved in a conversation in which we found ourselves sharing what we had learned about listening more closely to the cues our bodies were telling us. We each had a story of a physical injury that occurred because we didn’t listen to our bodies when it essentially said ‘enough.’ …Sigh…

It compelled me to reflect back to a workshop with Dr. Gabor Maté, author of When the Body Says No,  where he identified key characteristics of the stress-prone personality including:

  1. Difficulty saying No;
  2. Automatic and compulsive regard for the needs of others without considering one’s own;
  3. Rigid and compulsive identification with duty, role, and responsibility rather than with the true self;
  4. Habitual suppression or repression of healthy anger and assertion.

As I read this list, a couple of things stand out for me. This list is about lies we tell ourselves and about compulsive behaviours to please others or to live within the status quo we assume others expect of us.  –And we wondered why we got sick or injured when we ignored our bodies’ cues?

What struck me even more as I began to examine my own life is how we find it acceptable to lie with casual regularity. We lie to others when we say yes to them, but we really want to say no. We lie to ourselves saying we aren’t worthy enough and so we push onward when our bodies need to relax. We lie about our real needs and who we really are, compulsively rushing to the needs (and perhaps drama) of others (or our own). We lie about feeling angry at the boundaries that have been trespassed and then stay silent and perhaps punishing our partner or child or friend because of all the feelings we have lied about inside.

Lies create stress and conflict, both internal and external. Conflict disrupts our peace and our health. When we lie to ourselves and disregard the messages our bodies send us, we inflict a hidden emotional stress on ourselves and our bodies.

Just as good relationships with others keep us healthy and can heal us, good relationships with our bodies keep us healthy and can heal us. Good relationships require healthy boundaries that support our sense of true self and protect us against what drains our essential vitality. Healthy boundaries are like a good immune system—protects against what takes life and sustains our essence so we can participate in our purpose and what is truly life-giving.

We are hard-wired to need closeness, to need connection and belonging with others. We are equally hard-wired to need to express ourselves, to know who we are and then to be seen and respected. In other words, we are hard-wired to be authentic. When these two needs are in conflict or when they are incongruent over time, we are at war with ourselves. This war leads to illness. As Dr. Maté writes, “illness is not random”.

If you are like me, listening to your body is a daily task I have to remind myself to do. What is it my body needs to eat? What kind of exercise does my body need today? What decision do I need to make in my work that is congruent with my life purpose so I can stay healthy? What anger must I be honest about and what must I speak up about in my intimate relationships to increase my own sense of inner peace?

If you struggle with finding the joy of the body you have and so you ignore it even more. If you find yourself suppressing your own needs to look after other’s needs making you depressed, injured or always living in chaos, consider my upcoming two-day workshop on February 24-25th, 2017 – Self Kindness Response: Healthy Boundaries for Joyful Living!

The following comment by a workshop participant last fall really speaks to the substance and richness of this workshop. Please consider it for yourself too!

Just taking the boundaries workshop was an act of kindness towards myself. I learned to tune into my body to get a sense of what is a healthy boundary for me. Instead of going into my head, I feel how my body feels about something. There’s no arguing with the body! Even if there is another way to assess a situation and respond, it doesn’t matter because my body is telling me MY truth, MY healthy boundary in that situation, and that’s all that counts. I love the sense of certainty this has given me because I know my body is trustworthy. I have gained a stronger sense of myself and a feeling of being on solid ground. It was also helpful to work with a partner afterwards to keep working on what we’d learned at the workshop. Such a beautiful workshop space, too!  T.H.

Peace & Namaste,
Shirley Lynn

Wisdom’s Way to Peace: The Wonder of Self Kindness

HAPPY NEW YEAR! In this next year, my overarching theme at Feathers, Rainbows & Roses will be peaceful relating with all our relations. Peaceful relating, as a practice and an attitude, is choosing to communicate and engage – with ourselves and others – with love, with respect for the dignity of another, and to do so justly. My desire is to help you develop and enhance your skills and inner capacity to enjoy and practise peaceful relating with all your relations.

We live always in the wonder of relationship, regardless of the quality of those relationships. I believe that collectively, we are awakening to the truth that we need one another in socially and intimate ways for our well-being. We need love and inter-connection. We are social beings who thrive when we are loved and when we love. We are awakening to the reality that most of our deepest hurts and pain result in the wounds of human relating, in the absence of connection, of acceptance and of belonging.

Recently I was teaching a class where I was introducing a new routine to dog training students. I was excited about a section of the routine, knowing it required handling skills beyond what we have done before. I hadn’t worked out all the kinks and wasn’t sure how this section of the routine would yet flow. So, after the first run-through of the routine, I asked the class for input and suggestions about it. Without warning, one member took the opportunity to sabotage the class, resulting in confusion, frustration and resentment for most of those present. Suddenly, I was caught in a situation where I hadn’t planned on being.

In reflecting on this situation afterward, I thought about what peaceful relating looks like when boundaries, whether personal or group, are being trespassed. What could I have done differently to give an opportunity for people to voice their thoughts without my own boundaries being intruded upon? [Thankfully, I was able to debrief later with another trainer and come up with responses and strategies to manage the situation better should this behaviour occur again.]

I also contemplated on various elements of my upcoming workshop and their relevance in helping me to handle myself with grace, patience and professionalism. I was able to stay grounded, centered and responsive in a difficult and unexpected situation. Practise what you preach, they say!

Creating boundaries which promote kindness and health for ourselves while maintaining connection is an ever-evolving skill. Learn more about how to do this in my upcoming workshop – The Self Kindness Response: Boundaries for Healthy & Joyful Living on February 24-25th, 2017. Join me for two full days of developing and practising better skills at saying YES and NO to sustain our health and well-being (kindness toward ourselves). We will set ourselves up to be prepared for, rather than overwhelmed by, the daily stresses and demands of our lives.

In the coming weeks, I will be releasing a series of podcasts, this time with Jennifer Bodenham, a team development coach, in which we explore why we need boundaries, what they are and one specific exercise to help you learn how you can get started towards living a life that is more kind and joyful. The wonder and value of self-kindness, health and maintaining connection with others, even when it starts to get difficult are mutually possible with a little education and lots of commitment towards peaceful relating with all our relations (that means ourselves too). I invite you to listen in. Consider this a sampling of what you will gain from attending The Self Kindness Response: Boundaries for Healthy & Joyful Living on February 24-25th, 2017.

Namaste,

Shirley Lynn