Living and Loving Contrast

A concept I have come to embrace from Abraham-Hicks is the idea of contrast. Contrast is the stuff you don’t like, the negativity you feel when life isn’t going your way. Usually, if you sit with it for a little bit, you will soften and accept, grow and expand. Sometimes you just won’t!

I was walking on the beach and hit a sticky spot, sharp hard shells in every direction. I was trying to find the nice soft sand I had been enjoying but it was all behind me and would take me in the wrong direction. I braced myself, tip toed through the mean shells until I found relief in the welcoming soft sand. What relief!

Without the shells, would I have noticed how loving and comfy the loose, soft sand was? I doubt it. I expect I would have taken it for granted, as we do most things in our experience. So I appreciate my journey through the shells, they provided the contrast to know and appreciate a gentler path.

The Abundance Shell Game

Twice while walking the beach in recent weeks, I have found beautiful, sculptural conch shells. Each time I found one, it felt as if I had found a very precious gift, because there are very few to be found on a typical day.

For the past month, I have been a dedicated student of Abraham-Hicks, The Law of Attraction, and am enjoying the meditation recordings immensely. I recently downloaded the mobile app and use it during my walking meditations on the beach.

Today is a fabulous beach day, full sunshine, nice breeze, a little brisk so bundling is recommended. I decided to commit to a pier to pier walk/meditation. I am not sure on the mileage, but it is at least an hour walk at a good pace.

A few minutes into my walk, I found a small portion of a conch shell, just the inner spiral, but pretty, so I pocketed it. A few minutes later, still listening to my abundance meditations, I found a larger , more complete shell, marveling at my luck.

Enjoying the waves, the birds, the people and the exercise, I stumbled upon a third shell. This was unprecedented,and I laughed aloud, marveling at my shell abundance. And then a fourth shell gleamed in the surf, I thought oh, wow, now I am just getting greedy.

I was ready to walk past it and a thought popped in my head, perhaps this was a limiting belief? That I could only have so much, and then I needed to be done? So I picked the shell up, put it in my pocket with the rest of my haul and continued on my way.

Then I decided to play a game with myself, valuing each shell I found at $1million. And immediately felt an anxious pang in my gut, now that I had monetized the shells, I feared i wouldn’t find any more. So I went back to the thought of finding as many as possible to maximize my immediate shell abundance.

With two pockets overflowing with shells by the end of my walk, I was almost giddy with the embarrassment of my riches. I had actually left two less attractive shells on the beach, no more capacity to carry, and ok with leaving some treasures for others to find.

What I enjoyed most about this shell game of abundance that I played with myself is that I had no resistance to the shells themselves. I didn’t ‘t have a back story about how there aren’t enough shells for everyone, that I didn’t deserve any more shells, or that all the good shells are taken. I just felt new glee with each shell I discovered and thanked the universe for her eternal abundance.

Today I will view all aspects of abundance in my life with the same innocent glee as conch shells.

Center of Attention

I took a new turn on my walk this morning, and found myself on the end of a pier, overlooking the ocean.

It is a cool, windy day so immediately my attention latched onto the incoming waves. With complete focus, I watched each wave come in and go out, relaxing into the space of mindfulness and meditation.

It was about 10 minutes into this contemplation that my eyes drifted beyond to the widening, quieter waters that extended as far as the eye could see. The vast expanse was awe inspiring and brought a chill up my spine.

It was then that I realized how often I do that in my daily life, focus on the waves which are busy putting on the show and forgetting the peacefulness that is available just beyond, still within reach, perhaps not as flamboyant and exciting, but also deeper, more transforming and expansive.

Today I will reach beyond the waves to the vast expanse of possibility.

The permanence of the ocean

Walking on the beach this morning, it occurred to me, as transient and ever changing as the ocean is, it is also incredibly permanent. Living as I do in a constant state of flux, it provides a restorative underpinning to see that paradox is the essence of all things. The waves may flow in and slide out, but the fabric of the sea remains intact.

Just so, my life continues to ebb and flow in new patterns and combinations; but at my essence I am the newborn soul arriving 45 years ago to have this experience.

A nip on the lip

Otherwise described as “pay attention”.

Sometimes i can get so caught up in the busyiness of doing for the sake of doing, I forget how important the why is.

This week, it took a nip on the lip to recalibrate my doing into being.

Faced with probably the smallest of flesh wounds it would require to get my attention, I was forced to look within and decide how important my current project and efforts are to me and my future.

I had to make a decision that my face marred with a fat lip and stitches would not deter me from flying to Wisconsin and participating on a panel to speak on the value of mobile technology in fundraising. It could not prevent me from fulfilling a commitment to a wonderful client and new friend. And it would not stop the progress of the efforts my business partner is so diligently putting forth. I would not be deterred from making new connections even if i wasn’t at my prettiest or perhaps would not make my best first impressions ever.

My dog taking a small chunk out of my lip 12 hours before I needed to board a flight is not the ideal way to get a wake up call, but it was enough to remind me of what is important and why I need to have faith, hold the vision and the why as we strike out in this new adventure.

The Invention of Ideas

I have lots of ideas, all day long thoughts pop into my head, good ideas, bad ideas, ideas that are embarrassingly stupid, ideas that need to be left in the genie’s bottle and once in awhile, ideas that you know just need a little polish to become gems. The difference between all these ideas is that some are turned into action and others are left to float away into the ether.

The deciding factor? Filtering these ideas through my hard earned wisdom and the wisdom of my network. Exploring which of these multitudes of ideas will work and which will take me off target. Which ideas will take way too long to implement and which ones are Eureka! moments, gifts from the heavens? There are no guarantees, but self-trust, personal awareness and very candid friends go a long way in this filtering process.

I’ve been thinking alot about ideas and inventions because I just left a job where they are very concerned about the creation of ideas, claiming those ideas and protecting those ideas from others. The extreme opposite of open source or the very open principles of social media. In today’s world of Wiki and interconnectedness; pretty much a lost cause, but I digress.

When you work for someone else, in an ideal world, they have hired you for both your brilliant ideas and the accumulated wisdom to filter through those ideas. And for as long as that works well, you feel energized and excited to see your ideas come to fruition and deliver results. Clearly you are trading your ideas for resources that you do not have yourself, or you would do it yourself; maybe those resources are time, skills, money, energy or focus. You are trading your ideas for compensation instead.

The difficulty lies when your wisdom is no longer valued. While your ideas might still be harvested, your insight isn’t applied. You know that is the time to move on.

But ownership of those ideas? I would argue that once wisdom has left the building, ideas left behind have a very limited shelf-life. And as goes the wisdom, so goes the new ideas, which may look similar to those old gems, but are being created in the next moment, as with new experiences and insights come new inventions.

Easy Shifts from Seeing Red and Feeling Blue to Living the Rainbow of Possibility

Easy Shifts from Seeing Red and Feeling Blue to Living the Rainbow of Possibility

Click here to listen to the interview!
“Just calm down!” Do those three little words affect you in the same way as waving a red flag in front of a raging bull? Do you find it is virtually impossible to settle down after you have experienced rising emotions in the heat of the moment? Do you sometimes wake up on the wrong side of the bed and then find yourself in a funk that lasts a week and drags your loved ones down with you?

There is a perfectly good explanation for why women find it so difficult to shift gears and release our negative, harmful and escalating emotions. These perfectly normal and human responses are directly related to our physiology, hormones and emotional management skills. Read on to learn specific easy-to-use techniques to release negative emotions and move forward in a proactive and healthy manner.

Q: Tell me about the concept of Coherence and emotional management.

A: Coherence is the state of optimal synchronization between the heart, brain and nervous system. Coherence is a measurable physiological state that can be felt physically and emotionally. Over time, regular practice to sustain coherence enhances your ability to enter and perform to your peak capability on demand.

Q: If Coherence is a physiological state, what does that look like?

A: “Negative” emotions, such as frustration, cause chaotic heart rhythms – part of a physically harmful chain reaction leading to inhibition of the cortex. If you saw it on a graph, it would look like a jagged mountain range.

Positive emotion, such as appreciation, creates smooth coherent heart rhythms and a beneficial chain reaction resulting in cortical facilitation. A graph would look like an even sine wave, very organized and even above and below the line.

Q: How are the heart and brain involved in all this?

A: The incoherent pattern inhibits cortical function and promotes inefficient thinking, reactive, judgmental responses, while we are “under the influence” we are only able to repeat past behaviors as stored in the Amygdala (our reptile brain). Picture a pathway from the heart to the Amygdala to the Medulla, which regulates our Blood pressure and ANS, so if we are reliving a bad experience, those emotions are sent to the Medulla to tell the body how to respond. In contrast, a coherent pattern facilitates cortical function and motor skills which increases clarity of thought, innovative problem solving, and creativity. So the coherence pathway goes to the Medulla, which regulates our Blood pressure and ANS, then moves to Thalamus which synchronizes cortical activity and finally to the Cortex or the Thinking Brain. You can think of it as the Amygdala lives via hindsight (negative emotion) and the Cortex lends us foresight (positive emotion).

Q: Tell me more about our physiology and emotions.

A: Our ANS regulates our heart rate, blood pressure and overall physical state. When adrenaline is released into our system, we experience a heightened heart rate. It is when we layer emotion onto our physiology and then experience either anger, joy, depression or peace. If we experience a negative emotion, cortisol is released into our system. Cortisol is a hormone and has a half-life of 12 hours in our system, so once we “take our medicine” we feel it for an extended period of time. If we experience a positive emotion, DHEA is released into our system and we experience the DHEA high for approx. 12 hours.

For example, perhaps a spouse says something hurtful. First adrenaline is released, and we feel Anger building up. Then the hormone cortisol follows, placing us firmly in our heightened state of anger and “seeing red.” This is why when someone tells us to “calm down” we become even angrier. It is physiologically impossible to change our ANS at this point. We have to give the hormones a chance to actually leave our bodies. Our only hope is to find a way to “insert” DHEA into our system. DHEA is the anti-aging hormone, which acts as a brake to Cortisol’s gas pedal. It is how we can balance our emotions and stay more balanced.

Q: So how would we respond to the directive “just calm down”?

A: Recognizing that we can’t change our physiology and calm down in the blink of an eye, we need to look for another solution. This solution involves shifting our emotional state to release DHEA into our system. This means shifting from a negative to a positive emotion. So perhaps from anger, we can move to challenge, or opportunity. This has to be a purposeful choice.

Q: It sounds so easy to say, but how do you recommend someone make this shift?

A: So first, we need to find a way to create space in our response. If we can’t find a delay in our emotional response, we will never get off the incoherence rollercoaster and we will be stuck in the red and blue spectrum of emotions. The rainbow of emotions will never be available to us in a proactive way. In the case of “seeing red” we have to know that we are actually experiencing adrenaline and take time to breath. Literally breath. The longer, deeper breaths we take, the better. This might involve a very deep belly breath and a very long exhale. The next step is to actually put our hand on our heart. The heart is the brain to our physiology and by reconnecting with the heart, we reset our system. The final step is to find a moment of gratitude or appreciation. It can be about anything, I keep a picture of my dog on my iPhone to remind me to smile and feel love. But it might be your toddler, your husband, your favorite hideaway, a peak moment or even a sunset at the beach. Anything that will help you shift to a positive emotion.

Try to actually live in that emotion, while breathing and feeling connected to your heart. Try to stay here for a couple of minutes. You should start to feel better. If not, stay here longer.

Q: I usually go for a run or take a yoga class when I am not in a good mood, that seems to help. Can’t I just do that?

A: That is an awesome way to release stress and shift emotions. As a pilates and yoga teacher, I am very much a proponent of physical fitness and health. The problem is carving out the space and time to get a workout in. This technique is a little more available “in the moment” and is a tool that can be used anywhere, anytime.

Q: What benefits can I expect if I were to practice this technique?

A: Regular connection to heart, breath and emotion allows you to experienced heightened mental clarity, increased physical energy, focused concentration, a sense of inner control, enhanced optimism and more creativity.

Create a daily practice that works for you:

• Take deep breaths before responding to stressful news, important emails or phone calls.
• Smile & feel excited before starting a task or beginning a project.
• Appreciate and enjoy the experience of connecting with others.
• Visualize & articulate a successful result.
• Write a gratitude list each day.
• When faced with stress – breath, focus into heart, choose to shift to Positive Emotion.

To learn more, you can contact me at smaravetz@essentialpath.com

I Know Where I Am, But I Don’t Know Where I Am Going!

A friend and her out-of-town friend came to pick me up for the movie, Eat, Pray, Love. After we had made it throught the introductions, my new friend started to drive away, paused, looked both ways and said “I know where I am, but I don’t know where I am going.” Wow! Yoga in action!

I can’t tell you how many times have I thought that same thing. I can tell you that many of my clients have expressed these thoughts to me, whether they used those words or other phrases. It is easy to know where we are, we can take inventory of our lives and see what is working and not working. But it is hard to figure out where we are going or should be going.

This ties back into my Think and Grow Rich readings. I have now read the book three times. Each time, the missing links get a little clearer. What I have come to realize is that without the “burning desire”, aka “where I am going,” all the plans and wishes in the world aren’t worth much. What is also coming to the surface is that my burning desire has always been to help others fuel their burning desires. So I now realize that it isn’t that I do not have a burning desire, but that my instinctive habit of providing service to my friends, family and clients to help them achieve their vision has always ended up substituting itself for my “burning desire”. Or perhaps, more likely, I just didn’t recognize that the desire to help others achieve their goals was my “burning desire”.

I know where I am, AND I know where I am going! So satisfying and exciting!

Yoga Teacher Training, Take Two!

Between January and May of 2010, I experienced the in-depth immersion of EVOLVE’s Yoga Teacher Training Program with Carson Efird. My successful completion provided me the credentials RYT-200, which means Registered Yoga Teacher with 200 contact hours with a trainer. It proved to be a very reductive experience, meaning that I came away from the four months exploring what could I let go of, what was no longer necessary in my life, what could I release? And the Universe responded with its own ideas of what was insubstantial and should shake loose; some of which I may or may not have been ready to let go, but aligning to that space in my life has proved to be rewarding.

The blessing in all this stripping away is that clarity of thought was left at the end. I stood in the center of emptiness and could chose what to do next. My dharma has brought me back to the YTT program again, this time as the administrative assistant for Carson, but also with an opportunity to reorganize the information and immerse myself in this system of wisdom without the pressure of homework and deadlines. This weekend launched the new class, eight beautiful and open-hearted women who were apprehensive about what they had committed to, but also eager for transformation and possibility. I found for myself this kickoff weekend, comfort and validation, but also enormous space for new knowledge and community to flourish. Namaste!

Yoga Teacher Training!

I started a 200 hour course in Yoga Teacher Training at the beginning of January.  It has been everything I was hoping for and actually alot more. I was excited to gain a deeper understanding into the principles of yoga and I definately understood there were other aspects of yoga beyond the physical practice of asanas, but I have enjoyed reading ancient texts and finding some new perspectives on the big question….How To Live?  For the past 2 1/2 months, I have met each Wednesday night  and (thus far) for 3 long weekends with my instructor and 9 other women in the course, all of us on the same path but for lots of different reasons.  And while the course is strenuous, both mentally and physically, I have found it to also be rewarding.  The changes are dramatic.  I walked into the studio in November with virtually no relationships or connections; not only do I help run the studio now, but I also feel a strong sense of community when I walk into the warm and inviting sanctuary.  Physically, my practice has deepened and strengthened. Poses that would literally “spit me out” when I started the program will at least tolerate me now.  I have noticed the constant mental chatter of judgement dies down within a few minutes of starting our Vinyasa Flow and is pretty much non-existant by the point of final OM.   One of my favorite elements of the course happened spontaneously, a potluck luncheon the second weekend we gathered has become an event we cherish and get excited about.  Sharing food is such an elemental aspect of community and that give and take of recipes and history is so wonderful.  We begin weekend #4 on Friday, it is our Fire Weekend.  We’ve been working our way through the Chakra System and this will take us to Manipura (Naval) Chakra: Solar Plexus: Willpower & Anger.  Fun!  And really, that is what I have learned thus far, to just relax and have fun with all this.  Learning is fun, moving is fun, community is fun!