Healing Touch Summer Newsletter

Thanks for checking out my latest newsletter!

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcd9qd87_57g9k5cmcw

'In The Flow' launches...

Plug into this new Facebook page and help get the conversation started about what it means to live in the flow!

Geared toward women and girls (and the men who love them!), In The Flow is about empowering each other to live and move from a state of ease and grace, guided by intuition and introspection.

Through workshops, events, celebrations, and above all, a supportive community, the goal is to help females reach their highest potential. We'll look to cycles -- in nature, in our bodies, in our culture -- to reclaim a sense of purpose and connection.

Whether you're a girl, maiden, mom, seasoned single or crone, you need girl power. Visit the page and LIKE IT! And keep watching for conversation, inspiration, and events.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/In-The-Flow-Empowerment-Productions-for-Women-and-Girls/221435611204122?sk=info

Spring Healing Touch Newsletter

No, my blog hasn't gone all-newsletter, all-the-time. I promise to post something other than Healing Touch news. Stay tuned....

In the meantime, all you newsletter junkies, check this out:

https://docs.google.com/View?id=dcd9qd87_54cbb2dtdb

January Healing Touch Newsletter

New Year, New Moon!

Start 2011 with some good energy...check out my latest newsletter here:

https://docs.google.com/View?id=dcd9qd87_52frdz7sgc

Thanksgiving Healing Touch Newsletter

Here is the link to my Thanksgiving Healing Touch newsletter. Thanks for looking....

https://docs.google.com/View?id=dcd9qd87_39hfcw83cq

I'll Meet You There...

I am the most powerful person in the universe.

Do you believe it? Or are you already rolling your eyes?

How about this? YOU are the most powerful person in the universe. How does that feel?

No, I'm not about to lead you in a round of affirmations designed to boost your self-esteem (although affirmations definitely rock and I reserve the right to use and share them at any time). I'm just in the kind of mood where it's fun to see how far my mind can bend, and if I can mess with your mind too, all the better.

So first I'll say that both statements are true. And then I'll add this: there is no such thing as true or false, or right and wrong. There's only what you or I, in our own private universes, allow there to be.

Don't bother protesting. It'll only slow things down. Just go with me here. If it makes you feel any better, know that I'm as uncomfortable with this as you are. And I won't laugh at your squirming if you won't laugh at mine.

Here's where my squirm begins: I've recently resolved that everything anyone says or thinks about me is "true" and everything I say or think about anyone else is "false." So when my son says "mom, you don't listen!," I have to believe him. When my boyfriend says "you expect me to feel like you feel" or "you always have a script that I have to follow," I get really pissy and angry and usually self-righteous, and then go Jeez! He's right. Because why would these people be in my universe if not to show me who I am? Defining who I am is the closest I can come to defining right and wrong, good or bad, true or false. And even when I arrive at some hard-won truth, it's only ever my truth. If you haven't noticed, we all have our own variations on what is right and wrong, good and bad, etc. and that kind of sucks, because I'm much more comfortable when everyone falls in line with MY way of thinking. Aren't you?

But this isn't about comfort. In my experience, seeking truth is rarely comfortable. Especially when I make my vastly superior judgments about others and then remember my stupid resolve. Now, goddammit, when I point the finger and say he needs to be more self-aware, or he needs to get in touch with his anger, I have to realize that my observations are only true about me. I need to be more self-aware. I need to get in touch with my anger.

You might wonder, why bother with such an annoying experiment? I'm not sure myself. I only know that I was upset the other afternoon, fuming that so and so shouldn't have done this or that, running through all the things that made this SOB such an SOB. But it wasn't making me feel any better. I reached for my journal and jotted a few things, inlcuding this quote from Rumi:

Out beyond right and wrong, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

I've always liked this, but only in a vague way. It's been like one of those drawings that are one thing when you look at the black space, but something else when you look at the white. I can see the old woman, but the guy next to me sees a young woman. Usually, if you stare long enough, whoa! you see it.

I needed help to see it, and it came the next morning, in a service I attended. The speaker threw out the same quote from Rumi (another whoa! moment for me). The point of meeting out there, he said, is that it is the place of forgiveness. Aw crap, I thought. Not the F word again. Have you ever been lost and end up circling the same spot, noticing the same landmark again and again? Well, forgiveness has been a big ol' rock in my path. It tends to block my view of the field, which is a place beyond duality, beyond the black and white, where we give up being right or wrong. Rumi's poem continues:

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about
language, ideas, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense.

A lot of it doesn't make sense to me. At least it strikes a chord. I'd like to make it part of my universe, but at this point, I'm still doubting my powers. I like what India Arie says in this song:

Been trying to get down to the heart of the matter. But my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter. But I think it's about forgiveness. Even if you don't love me anymore.

That last line hurts, I'll admit. It feels like a huge white flag. While I'm still on my feet, me here, in the right, you there, in the wrong, there's still some fight in me. Still a chance to win....what? Love? Approval? Yes! The point of being right is to feel worthy, lovable, deserving. Conversely, being wrong means I'm bad, unworthy, unlovable.

But...maybe it doesn't work that way. Maybe my right can be your wrong, and my truth can leave you cold and what you love, I hate, and oh, let's call the whole thing off! There's a nice little spot just over here, soft and green....

The Art of Sitting

I finally did it. I forgot one of my kids. I've managed to keep track of pick-ups, drop-offs, carpools and playdates for multiple munchkins going on a decade now. But the other afternoon, talking on my cell to my brother while my oldest son played soccer, I realized I was ten minutes late to pick up my younger son 4 blocks away. I dragged my daughter to the car and we sped over. It wasn't just being late that was unsettling. It was the completeness of my space-out. I'd dropped him at kung fu an hour earlier, and never made the connection I'd have to be back. Adding to my anxiety was the certainty that this kung fu studio has no real system to keep the kids from wandering out the open door after class. And Boone, poor forgotten one, happens to be a wanderer.

And wander he did. Luckily our house is only two blocks away, but...well, let's just say moms have different worries about different kids. One you might not hesitate to drop blindfolded at Union Station with nothing but a debit card, and the other might awe you with fantastical details of an underground world populated with worm people, but not remember his address even after you incorporate it into a rap.

The good news is that Boone did go home, find no one there, and was in the process of heading back. The bad news is that he burst into tears when he saw me, scared because I hadn't been there. Have one of those moments, moms, and experience the fear I bet we all share: I am not enough. (Fill in the blank ...not smart enough, loving enough, organized enough...)

We want to do it all. And most of us come pretty darn close, but there's a price. Last week two of my mom friends were diagnosed with adrenal fatigue. Having had this myself, I know it's no picnic. (Or maybe the kind of picnic I'd throw together on the fly in an effort to impress someone, where I spend $200 at Whole Foods on imported olives and chocolate truffles and then run to Linens N Things for some marked-down cloth napkins, and doesn't World Market still have some of those cool beach mats? And a little light jazz on the Ipod would be the perfect touch if only I could remember the name of that band, and shit! the forecast calls for rain, there must be someone I can talk to about that.... yeah, maybe that kind of picnic.)

And while I'm speaking for moms here and can attest to the slogging-thru-mud feeling, the cotton-wrapped head, eyelids of lead, the jolting awake at 4 am drenched in sweat, I'm not pretending stress doesn't affect men. In that phone call with my brother I heard the same refrain from him I've heard for years: "I fucking hate my job. I don't want to be around people. I want to go live in the mountains and be left alone."

But we're not a society set up for restfulness or introspection. We bluster around making sure everyone knows how busy we are, yet we don't have the guts to be true to ourselves, to say no when we want to, to risk being judged when we miss the Open House, or ignore requests to volunteer. When we're not appreciated for these sacrifices by people who are too busy resenting their own sell-outs, something inside starts to boil. In this way, our guts (or glands) have us.

Sometimes, when I'm riding high on the illusion of super-momhood, emblem pinned proudly on chest, cape flapping loud and proud, some tiny piece of kryptonite trips me up. The other day it was my favorite Target store, which now carries groceries (awesome) but had to be rearranged as a result. Doesn't anyone know that a complete overhaul of Target is hazardous to an overstressed mom? I felt like someone had added a double shot of espresso to my carefully rationed afternoon decaf. Then dropped in a hit of speed. My heart nearly exploded trying to find a lightbulb. Menswear where toys were? Towels moved upstairs? The only department I could see that hadn't moved was intimate apparel, and what mom shops there? I happen to be wearing a cast-off bra from my mother that's 2 sizes too big.

Without these mini breakdowns, though, could I remind myself to slow down? Or would I be like my friend Jessica, who sat next to me at the school playground while she shared her diagnosis? Though she'd known something was wrong, she was surprised to be labeled with a 'syndrome.' Why not call it the busy mom disease? she wondered. But I'll take the label if it validates the craziness. And I'll continue to be ticked off that we have to --any of us, not just moms -- seek validation. Jessica's taken action, cutting her work hours to part time so she can be sitting at the playground. She tells me she's learned more from sitting on her butt on this bench once a week than she has in years. She's talking about mom things, but I think she's named the prescription for the syndrome.

Sitting. It should be elevated to an art.

Because when I practice being still, that's the only place where I am enough. In that quiet space, when the schedules and the commitments fall away, when I slow down, do nothing, and allow that thing that breathes my body to have its way, only then is there no forgetting. Just remembering.

Franz Kafka puts it nicely:

You don't need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Don't even listen, simply wait. Don't even wait. Be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked; it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.