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Today I made you a little video a pep talk!!!
Because it feels like we could all use one right now. I have officially deemed September as, “Self Care September”! It is such a challenging month under normal circumstances and there is nothing “normal” about this September. Everyone is under even more pressure, tension, stress and friction! As a mom September, December and May have always delivered an extra scoop of crazy. September brings the transition of schedules, new schools and new teachers and moving from summer freedom into structure. December, of course, delivers the holiday slam and May is back to transitions. So going into this last quarter of the year please do a daily dose of self care. I can’t say this enough. It doesn’t have to be some big tadoooo. It could simply be closing your eyes and deeply breathing five long, deep breaths. Seriously this can feel like a vacation hahaha. Some moments to yourself will make all the difference. For your own stress levels and the result will ripple out to those around you. Move through your day with a greater awareness of when you need to take a break and then take It. As I said before it could be five breaths or:
We have the Circle of Hope meditation on Wednesday. Kundalini Yoga Club Private coaching: if you need support reach out for a free chat to see if coaching could help you move through these challenging times. Coaching isn’t just me being a cheerleader for you, although I am thrilled watching my clients break through and crush their limiting beliefs. I use tools and strategies to guide you through when you are feeling stuck, stagnant, uninspired and trapped by your same ole same ole thinking! Sending love and ease to everyone!!!! Let’s flip this September and make it the most ease filled, relaxed month of the year!!!! It’s up to us. We can do it.
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Let’s clear our stress so we can then take action with clarity and ease. Sounds good right?!!!!
The plan is to join together for the next 18 Wednesdays in 2020. WHAT? Is that even possible? 18 Wednesdays left of this year? This will be a quick meditation to bring us to the clarity and knowing that all is well. Then we can see for ourselves what we need to do as we move forward into the school year, the election, anti-racism, the holidays and dealing with covid. It is imperative to keep our stress levels down so our health remains high. No doubt there will be some external challenges ahead just further emphasizing the importance of being calm within! I hope you will join us. Sending love to all of you Covid fatigue.
Can you feel it? Are you there with me? Let’s bust through it. This time of Covid is here for us to break through our fears. Each and everyone of us has a different Achilles heel, a weak spot, that we can crack open with the light of awareness, exposing us to something that has been hidden or is ready to be released, that had been buried or even denied. If you sit with that can you “see” what it is? Is it a surprise? Is it hard to look at? Are you ready to look at it? As the old saying goes, “there is no time like the present”. Can you imagine if that wasn’t a fear or an “issue” for you? What would that mean to you? What would be different for you? How would you feel? I have a lot of questions today hahaha. I am seeing this a lot. Take time today to just ponder this. Walk with it. Sit with it. Sleep on it. Meditate on it. Write about it. Answer these questions. See what bubbles up. Let’s do the work. This is a time of transformation for each and every one of us. As a whole we need to transform and yet this transformation begins with each of us, individually. If we want to help heal the world, let's start today and look deeply at ourselves. Let’s ALL move through to the other side. Let it begin with you.
How to do this meditation:Sit with a tall straight spine.
Interlock the fingers and extend the ring fingers (see video). Place them at the top of your rib cage with the ring fingers pointing up 60 degrees. Begin by tuning in with Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo (three times). Inhale through your nose and as you exhale chant Ong. Long and full with your complete exhale. Do a minimum of five Ongs. Notice the sensation as the sound vibrates throughout your body! This is very calming. I do this a lot when I wake up in the middle of the night.  We are in a time. The “feels” are deep.
What I know is: grief is in the air. There is a collective energy of grief. Whether we are grieving for a single beloved person or the loss of seeing our friends and family or our workplace and all the characters that participate in our daily routine or schools not going back in person (our kids are experiencing it too) or many, many other scenarios. Grief is in the air. What I am noticing is that there is a layering of grief right now and it is global. We may be stacking two, three or more of these events that are causing grief. In psychology they speak of the stages of grief. These are helpful to identify what we are experiencing. In coaching I refer to this as looking, seeing and telling the truth. Being with it, allowing and acknowledging the loss is so important. Like a wave, the emotions, memories, sadness, a funny story, a realization, can wash over us, gaining strength and then subside. Just like a wave. You can apply this to any grief. Don’t compare your grief to others. Don’t minimize it. “Well, it’s only going to our favorite restaurant every Wednesday for a date night, it isn’t like someone died.” The loss, the missing, the sadness that that isn’t happening right now will get stronger and more pervasive if we don’t just allow ourselves time to acknowledge that missing feeling. The loss of what is, needs to be acknowledged. And what is exciting is that when we acknowledge it and allow ourselves to feel it, then what appears is what the real "missing" is all about. “I miss that weekly connection, just being out, together, in the world, for fun, no kids, just being together.” Then, staying with that, may lead to an idea. What if we recreate that date night as a picnic, make food to go or pick it up and explore different picnic places together each week? The ideas are limitless but we won’t come up with them if we deny that we are missing the event and how that is making us feel. Or minimizing it, “geez there are so many worse things going on in the world. I shouldn’t even be bummed about this.” That won’t lead anywhere except feeling worse, which will grow and down the rabbit hole we go!!! A friend of mine passed last weekend. It is deep and sad. I acknowledge that her presence is gone from the physical form. Just knowing I won’t “see” her in the way that I always have, the permanence of this is real and needs acknowledgment. It also allows for other thoughts and memories to come up, again like a wave. The wave of emotions and feelings, thoughts and ideas then it subsides. This can be exhausting depending on the intensity of the wave. Give yourself a break. Time. Space. A little ritual of self care to ride this wave. If you are feeling stuck with any of this. Please reach out to a friend, a psychologist or a coach. Someone to guide you through the waves. Sometimes we just need a helping hand. Grief is in the air. There is a world wide grieving for old ways of being, people passing on, the way we used to connect with people, new people, friends, family, at work, at the grocery store. Everything is being reborn, reinvented and rediscovered. And yet, we can allow ourselves a little time and space to “miss” these things. Next Tuesday Tidbit I will send a meditation to help with grief. We can use grief like fertilizer. Fertilizer for our ideas. As the ideas come through we can create joy and love even from the grief. Sending hugs and love to all. Thank you for being here. Thank you.  Here is some great news.
Awareness is proof you are growing and moving toward a life more fulfilled. As we work on new patterns that serve us and new ways of being that create different results in our lives, when a slip, back to an old pattern happens, boy is it obvious!!! This recently happened to me. I knew what I needed to do. I knew my answer and yet I threw it out to someone to “ask” what I should do. They not only didn’t support my idea, they negated it AND I went with that. It’s been years since I have done this. I didn’t recognize it at first but as a day or two went by and I got input on doing what I originally knew was the best thing in this situation I realized what I had done. Wow!!!! I was shocked and mad at myself. Hahahaah I really stepped into all the old patterns in one situation. The good news here was that I saw it, realized it, didn’t stay there long AND even celebrated myself for seeing what I had done. I flipped it. I am proud of myself for stopping that cycle and I am grateful that this happened to point out how the new way of being has been working so much better for me. I could have gone down the rabbit hole of beating myself up, not correcting the course, and on and on, ugh you know that vicious cycle! The key is seeing it and not staying there. This is the practice!! When we try to do something new or change our way of being, It takes repetition. Repetition to build the muscle to our new way of being. We have built the muscle, maybe for years, the “old” way. So learning to do things a new way takes repetition to re-teach our brain. This is why I am always talking about it as a practice. It isn’t one and done. Hey, I worked out today, now I will be in shape for the rest of my life. It is obviously a consistent and continuous practice to keep ourselves in good, physical shape. This, too, is true of our behavior. If we know that the way we are being isn’t serving us anymore we need to be patient with ourselves as we build that muscle through repetition and consistent and continuous practice. If we slide into an “old” way, observing it and noticing it means we are on the path. If we didn’t know when we weren’t doing it then we wouldn’t know we needed to get back on track. I know that sounds wacky but in the observation is the growth. It is sooooo obvious with our body but often we think we should just get it when it comes to our mind and actions, our patterns! Patience, perseverance and repetition! Kundalini yoga (the yoga of awareness, hence why it is so transformational), breath work, coaching, support, mindset work, etc….are all tools that help build this pattern-breaking-muscle. Stay the course and when you slip and SEE it!!! Celebrate!!!! You ARE getting it. Give yourself a high five, a pat on the back and acknowledge how far you have come and all your growth! And then keep on going. Keep up and keep on!!  Is it summer? Spring? Winter? Haven’t the kids been home already for months? Do you have vacation plans? No plans? Can you even make plans? Are you working? More? Less? Do you feel a little upside down?
Me too! One of my biggest personal learnings over the years has been to be nice to myself. It sounds simple and maybe even obvious and ridiculous but, man, have I been hard on myself. And during this unprecedented time it is more important than ever to drop that habit!! So, if you are still doing that, please let me encourage you to stop that now. Really!!!! We are all doing the best we can. You know that little video game that came out a long time ago where the little frog has to jump from log to log while he is moving and all the logs are also moving. Hahaahha right now I feel a bit like that. If you hesitate you miss the log and end up in the water and if you jump without getting into the rhythm of the logs you end up in the water too. If you get mad about ending up in the water then, for sure, you are going to be staying in the water. What it boils down to is the acceptance of the moment. That is all it is. We can’t control outside circumstances, when the logs come by, how fast they move etc. What we can control is how we react to them. THAT is what will affect our state of being. Covid has made this a great time to practice this. As we all have been home, together for months, with apparently no end in sight. We must be gentle to ourselves. When we are on a roll and a family issue arises and knocks us off the “log”. We step in and deal with it, be present to it, accept it and don’t beat ourselves up for being knocked off the log. When we are able to do this the recovery time to getting back on the log is soooo much faster. There is no emotional, energetic drag. We can just get back on track. Otherwise it is like dragging a bag of rocks with you. That is not fun or efficient. It is downright harmful. SO, GET UP. Come on, right now. Stand up, bend forward, reach your arm up high and bring it down and pat yourself on the back!!! I mean it. If it makes you laugh and feels silly then all the better. DO IT. Let me be the little voice inside your head that reminds you to be kind to yourself. NO matter what. Love you guys. Reach out if you need help. I am offering a free session so that you can explore coaching to see if it would help you. Reach out if you want to set up a time (it’s on the phone so location is not a problem). Happy Tuesday.  A lot of the work I do with clients is about observation. Starting to see and notice your go-to reactions, habits and patterns. Then they can be shifted. However, before you go anywhere your GPS needs to know where you are starting from. Then it can set your destination. Coaching is very much the same. One valuable thing to notice is where you go emotionally when you are tired or stressed? Or maybe tired and stressed are a pattern. Where is your habitual home for your emotional state? It might be worry or sadness, fear or anxiety. The reason this matters is because if we want things to be different we have to do things differently and the state we are in is crucial to making lasting change. How does that work? For example when you are in love, blissful, exciting new love can anything go wrong? NO. You are so blissed out you just let things roll off you, you figure them out. It is like you are in a protective bubble from stress and worry hahahahaha. You know what I mean. Likewise when you are cranky and miserable don’t you just get more cranky and miserable to support that way of being, “oh great, now I have a flat tire too!!!” So changing the pattern of your state is everything. Where you are coming from, your state, affects the decisions and choices you make. Which then affects your actions or procrastinations. You can shift your state when you observe yourself going down the rabbit hole of an unwanted patterned way of being. Try these practices: 1. Choose 5 words that define who you are willing to be.  Repeat them often. Throughout the day. Before you have a phone call, a meeting or even breakfast with your family. You will be amazed how having a simple intention, of conscious way of being, to be kind, loving, generous, flexible and grateful will totally shift an interaction.
2. Move around. Just stop what you are doing and do 25 jumping jacks! Seriously! Break your pattern by doing something physical, for no reason, that is big and a bit crazy. Get out of your box here. The point is to shift a pattern so you have to shake yourself up. Clapping and cheering with loud whoooooops is a good way to do it too! Adding a sound magnifies the shift!!!!!! 3. Acknowledge it and shift it. If you feel locked into an emotion and you are sick of it and you know it isn’t serving you yet, you have been unable to get out of it. Set 90 seconds on your phone. Go on a full rant about it. For instance say you are stuck in frustration just purge everything out as fast as you can, out loud. Don’t think, just spit it out. Go, keep going, use the full 90 seconds (“ugh, this sucks, I can’t do this, I hate it, I feel so bad, I want to run away and live on an island, ugh ugh ugh ). When the time is up immediately jump up and down (set the timer again for at least 90 sec. if you can do 2 minutes even better) cheer, clap, dance, jump, don’t stop, I mean it, don’t stop, standing cross crawl, breath of fire while jumping MOVE!!!!!! When the timer goes off, sit, close your eyes, bring your breath back to the center and think of three things you are grateful for. Then go back to whatever you need to do. If you need help with any of these let me know. They are game changers. Are you willing to do things differently? Yes!!!! I know you are. You feel better when you feel better hahahaahah and we are in control of that. Even during covid!!!!! Happy Tuesday. Thank you all for being here. If you need the tool of kundalini yoga. August 1st is coming up so sign up for the monthly membership and get my yoga classes in your house whenever you want them!!!! Click here to learn more about the classes. Love you all!!!  A week or so ago I posted-what if you knew you had to open 305 doors before you got what you were focused on? That would change everything because then door 99 would just be a stepping stone to 305.
Instead, for a lot of us, it is, “uuuuuuuiigggghhhhh another door, it’s not the door yet, omg how many fricken doors am I going to have to open, uuuggghhhh door 35….man, maybe this isn’t meant for me, maybe I am not “supposed to figure this out”, I am so tired, I can’t keep doing this.” See the difference? One perspective is energizing, filled with ideas and looking for possibilities to get to the next door. The other perspective is deflating, it feels heavier and heavier and leaves you not even wanting to open the next door because you just “ know it won’t be the answer.” Wow! Seriously. Which way are you living your life? This is huge. I think we all start out like the first way. Most of us do. We are eager and excited and filled with knowing we can do it. Then…..the doors start to pile up. This is different for everyone. For Walt Disney, 305 banks said no to his idea, for Thomas Edison 1,000 tries, for JK Rowling 12 publishers turned her down and on and on. You have all heard this before. Nothing new here. However, what I have realized recently is that you might have stopped short somewhere, in one area of your life while continuing to open the doors in a different part of your life. Here is an example, I was diagnosed with RA a couple years ago. It was a long and painful discovery because of course, no one knew what was going on at first it was, “mono, then Hashimoto thyroiditis, Lyme, torn rotator cuff on both shoulders…” At one point I had to have my kids help me get my shirt on. I couldn’t hook my bra, and finally it got so bad that one day I had to uber my son to his coach (cause I couldn’t drive) drop him there and then uber to the ER. I was in the most insane pain. Why am I telling you this hahahaha? Because I realized that recently I have settled for this way of being. I didn’t mean to settle but while I have been busy, working hard, opening doors in other areas I have settled in this area of health! Well shoooooot. That is not acceptable because health has to be #1! It is like building a house in sand. It doesn’t matter how incredible it is if it doesn’t have a solid foundation it will just fall apart. What I realized is that when I was first diagnosed I was really looking, exploring, trying different approaches to find answers and solutions. Eventually though I got tired and just let it be. Can you relate? It is like maybe I am at door 302. I just pooped out but what if 303 is the door and the key to turning this thing around? Putting it back in remission? Would that be worth it? Heck yea!!!!! So back to door opening I go. The process continues. Let’s go. Let’s all keep looking. You just never know what is behind door number……….. :) Are you bumping up against frustration, exhaustion, worry, anger or even resignation?
Shifting your focus can make all the difference. It doesn’t matter if it’s finances, friends, career, or relationship sometimes we get in a rut and we start feeling bad or frustrated. In the coaching arena we like to call this being “at the border”. Don’t stop there! Three steps that help shift your focus:
Then if we switch the focus and take a small action (and I mean small), something that is very do-able right then and there. We will feel a “success” and that will start building our mental muscle for shifting focus. Here is an example. With covid and all that is going on with business, I have been trying new things but ugh the technology is killing me. It takes me hours to do it. I am sure it takes other people five minutes. It is sucking the life out of me. Ugh I don’t want to try any more UGH. Obviously this isn’t serving me because I want to quit which will get me nowhere. Then all the work I have done will be in vain. Then I will feel like a loser because I gave up. So, I could focus on the fact that if I were to get the technology working then I would feel soooo good. I would be proud of myself for sticking with it, figuring it out and I will reap the benefits from what my original idea was! So (action) I am going to reach out, and ask for help. Log in immediately and get on the chat with someone who can guide me through it. Yes, I can hear you. I already know all that! Yes, but knowing and doing are not the same!!! Take the challenge and push yourself through this. You will be glad you did!!! It is mental toughness!! Build your mental muscle. Let’s go!!! |
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AuthorCourtney Gebhart, Life Coach, Kundalini Yoga teacher, and Human Being. Archives
January 2021
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