Pixons of a mirror

Trying to capture what it’s like when I am writing with all of my senses alight.

Last night, nestled in my chair, super soft blanket resting on my legs that felt so tired, heavy, relenting.

Wondering, ‘How does one tie kinesthetic experience with visual, with emotional, all into one image?’ For when any aspect has focus, it is seeing the others through its own lens. It is a trifecta of 2 additional possibilities = endless possibilities, like pixons* of a mirror.

What I see is me writing-what I hear is what I see inside, what I feel emotionally has physical sensation, which has a visualization to match, always still watching myself write. Each sensation has a visualization of energy, movement, texture, that overlays my visual and physical reality.

Someday, I may be able to both experience this completely emcompassing physical, sensual, mental, emotional experience and write about it…. but for now, I made up the word pixon. Or so I thought. Seems it was already a thing with NASA.

*I totally made this word up in the moment…

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Anxiety …All.The.Time.

Over the past couple of months, it has become more and more clear to me that I have a fairly constant level of anxiety….pretty much most of the time I am awake. It’s often at a low level, or maybe just low for me. If others could get inside my head, they might think different. Sometimes, it rears its head as frustration, exhaustion, anger, overwhelm.

I realized it in my resistance to feel, or to do things until I felt just right, in my inability to feel comfortable in certain situations. When I bring it up, friends say they don’t see it, but having felt total EASE in my life, I am aware of the resistance inside.

Lately, I am in limbo in life. I want to make some big changes, but it’s not quite time, and I am in a holding pattern, which is cRaZy anxiety-provoking for me! I want a plan I can execute, but I just spin and spin and spin. And when I stop, it feels unnerving (and that’s a sign I need to dig in)…so I stopped. I stopped planning, stopped figuring out what to DO, stopped feeling I had to be doing more, and I journaled. And I want to share what came out, because somehow I had let my inner critic run amok in my brain, and it’s cost me so much joy.

Anxiety, it’s driving me to obsession

I don’t know what life is without anxiety

-over what I look like (according to my inner critic)

-over what I “need” to do

-not having a plan

-my Body

-Not knowing enough

-not eating healthy enough

-not exercising enough

-not pretty enough

-not skinny enough

-not muscular enough

-not flexible enough

-not focused enough

Do you see a pattern here?    NOT ENOUGH

Not only am I hearing that inside my head, but it clearly doesn’t matter the subject, because the message is that it’s NOT ENOUGH.

So, I took it further into things that I feel more ok about, and then I had a thought…anything I have received praise for, or that has gotten me in a position of praise is subject to this critic. There are some things in my life that don’t bother me as much. And those things I didn’t get praise for doing so well. Like how I brush my teeth, or shower, or fold my laundry. I gave up on my hair a while ago, although I still get on myself for being “lazy” for not wanting to do anything with it, but only occasionally, and only very briefly.

And because it’s uncomfortable hearing this all day in my head, I (and everyone in society) do things to alleviate the anxiety caused by hearing and feeling that we are Not Enough.

Not enough for what?!? 

Not enough to manage the anxiety.

Let me repeat/rephrase that.

What we are doing in those situations is only trying to manage the anxiety we are feeling, and it’s never enough to manage the anxiety, because at some point, we have to stop. We have to slow down and feel.

We feel like when we “fix” these things, the critic will stop, so we go about dieting and exercising, and working harder, and having goals, and perfecting things, all to try and quell the anxiety, to quiet the critic and hear, if not from ourselves, then from others, that we are doing enough.

And it never ends. This cycle will not stop until we do.

What’s it like to BE ENOUGH? 

Not that you will never excel, but that at each moment, you are enough. I think that is when we excel the most, actually. The critic only serves to stall us and keep us small.

So, when the critic starts, and when the anxiety presents, I can STOP. FEEL. and KNOW.

I AM ENOUGH.

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Bathtime musings 1-25-17 …Authentic Embodiment

Recorded January 25th, 2017

Drippy thoughts on #Emotions and our resistance to them, our bodies as channels in the organism of the universe, and how it is beyond time that we fully embody what we feel so that the world can speak through us. We are part of a collective that needs our authentic embodiment.

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Let Vigilance Rest

Recorded Feb 14, 2017

I used to think I wanted a man to take care of me, because I was tired of doing it all myself. I came to realize that it had more to do with the ease I feel around competent people. Check out the audio for the realization.

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Grounding into Simplicity

Loving using audio blogs, because I can catch more things.

Thoughts after #sivasana about drifting into nothingness, the resistance that comes with that, and how, amazingly that translates into the anxiety in my life, and how I can feel more grounded in this ever-changing world.

What can I anchor into in order to feel steady in this ever-changing world?

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Choreographing Life- transcript

Recorded January 2017

So, I spoke with (counselor) today at work about what’s up for me, and I told her that last night, I was sitting, and it became very clear to me that I’ve been running for 2 years, since my divorce, and that I feel like it’s time to FEEL it. And I have all these things going on that are either distractions, or….it’s just all up for me right now.

She said, “I picture you, you know, making a dance of what you’re going through….like, choreographing a dance maybe around your divorce” and it really hit me hard..and I’m driving home, and it’s like…it’s pretty clear to me that I started dancing more and instantly I started shutting down, because when you dance, you feel more, you’re moving energy through your body, and you have to allow those energies through in order to dance, and just by the act of dancing, you open up channels that are maybe trying to be blocked…..

So, I’m just having an image of the therapeutic power of allowing the story to play through our body and to orchestrate that story and to be conscious of how that story is played out and how it WAS played out, and how we move forward into the world…and how our physical movement in the world and our energetic movement in the world, interaction with people, is no different…it’s no different.

And to choreograph a dance that illustrates the TRUE story of what happened could be profound. My first thought is to go learn about choreography more, and to dive into that, and about storytelling and the power of story, and find a way to combine the two in a way that can really empower people to understand what’s happened to them in a different way and to change their course consciously or to act out somehow what’s happening internally that they can’t put words to, because these energetic shifts… we can try and use our brain and rationalize it….or braini-ize it, or whatever you want to call it, but it doesn’t… at some point, you gotta just give that up, and the body starts talking. This might be a way to help listen to the body too. It’s amazing how one small suggestion, when I look at it, I see the potential for it, and that’s where dance therapy comes in ….

(sigh)……yeah…dance therapy. I like it. I wish there were more programs for it. I would be willing to see how to make that work.

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Pushing Up Against Myself – transcript

Recorded January 2017

So, I’m reading Soulshaping by Jeff Brown, and, um, he talks about the patterns …just kind of that person that’s really you. He says ‘there are more authentic versions lingering below the habits of daily experience. To identify them, we need to make real efforts to distinguish our personality traits from the deeper archetypal currents of our lives.’

I guess the words aren’t directly related to my sensation, but I have to wonder if the authentic me is a dancer if it’s just so hard to get back into it, or if I’m butting up against what I don’t want to feel by dancing again. (sigh)

I feel like..I was thinking of (Pdx friend) actually, and how he goes out dancing, and he doesn’t seem really impassioned by dance, but it fulfills a definite purpose, and so he goes out and he dances, quite a bit I think. And it’s a part of his life. So, that’s where I feel like I’m pushing up against something in myself to prevent dance from just being in my life, to prevent committing to dance, or a style of dance, and forgoing the other styles for a while. And granted, I live in a wasteland for dance, honestly. It could be a lot worse, but, …..yeah, there’s definitely not much here. So I am just wondering what I am pushing up against in myself.

It’s almost like someone’s standing there waving their arms in front of me, there’s a part of me saying “oh, no! Don’t go that way!” and I keep going….but there’s that resistance I’m up against…so, I’d love to figure that one out.

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Depressed – transcript

Recorded January 2017

(I really wish this audio was uploadable….because it really catches what I am feeling so much more than the words will… the pauses, the intonation, the sighs…etc)

My usual MO is to plan right now…to plan my mornings, find a goal, set a goal, figure out how to do it. I don’t want to plan anything. I don’t know if they call that depression. I don’t want to do a thing, and I have so much I could do…

Yeah…like,

“I could wake up early and go work out…” -what’s the point?

“I could get up and do yoga…- but what’s the goal?

“I could get up and dance” – but I honestly want to just sleep.

I don’t have a lot of energy. I’m tired of being sick.

something…..(sigh)…

.

.

I don’t want  to feel my body.

….

There’s something there.

(Sigh)….and if I feel my body, I’ll have to feel it. I can certainly sense my resistance…to feeling.

Ooooooh,…..it’s tough being human.

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An Uncommon Bond – transcript

Recorded January 2017

I’m not sure what to think about An Uncommon Bond. I don’t feel like typing. I don’t feel like being on the computer. I don’t feel like dancing. I know I’m running away from my feelings and finding ways to not feel everything.

It brought up a lot around (Ex#3) and my experience with him, and it made me realize that I have some healing to do, and that I haven’t fully forgiven him, and that I’ve just been so Busy, um, …….you know, “Move on and be strong,” …..

…there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t processed. The residue is still there. That, along with wanting to dance again and finding myself dancing last weekend but then eating a Lot the past couple weeks. It’s really interesting….

Just to see how I’ve started eating less consciously, eating a lot more…just as soon as I start down the path of possibly dancing more…considering moving to another state…it’s alot of flux, potential flux, and I ….could just stay here..but ..this uncommon bond…made me think about (friend) and how I really don’t …I shouldn’t push anything. He’s not ready for anything, and there’s no rush with anything.

It’s funny, I haven’t really had much connection with (Bestie), and I messaged him today, and he said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about you every day, and I was just about to contact you after work”, and he added #soulconnected. And it made me cry, because I think I had been missing being connected with those people in my life. Somehow, (Distant Friend) is connected, and my ex husbands are not anymore. Ex#3, I don’t know. I don’t know what to make of all that.

I had all kinds of thoughts, but I didn’t write them down or record them, or anything when I was reading that book.  I just kind of let the book sink in. I think a lot of what hit me was where he described how he was preventing himself from feeling by not moving…by eating lots of food. I mean, the obvious is drugs and alcohol and food, but when he talked about getting really in his head, and not moving his body, and therefore not allowing emotions to move through him. It made me realize I’ve been doing that.

It’s hard to be fully alive, and yet I desire so deeply to be fully embodied. It just takes so much fucking presence. And willingness to open …and to go with the flow and to process what comes up, and to move through it. Because you have to let it move through you, and you have to move through it. Otherwise, you stagnate. It’s work, man….

So, I’m all over the place, and all I really want to do is just go to sleep and pretend like this isn’t bubbling up for me, and pretend I’m not lonely. And pretend I’m not scared and lost and feeling like I don’t have any direction in life. Trying to remember to be good to myself and have compassion, but I’m just feeling really lost right now, I guess.

 

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From Here to My Heart – transcript

Recorded January 2017

I realize I don’t know how to get from here to my heart, and for some reason I get to a place…and maybe it’s just before the next level of movement…and I give up, or switch course, or basically just don’t continue.

I was at San Francisco Ballet School, and I quit.

And then I went back (to dance), and I was doing really well that summer, but I didn’t know how to handle the drugs and bad relationship, and so yet again, I didn’t continue.

And then, at University, I decided not to give up on my second dream….as if I had already given up on my first, and maybe I had. And I was dancing Really Well. And I had a potential research path in dance that TOTALLY fascinated me, consumed me, consumed my curiosity, and I felt so alive….and then I chose biology. I chose the path of career ….vs vocation.

And I kept moving….I thought, “maybe I didn’t allow myself to do body building”..so I did the Oxygen challenge. It didn’t fulfill me. I didn’t need to get on stage to know I could do it. It would have been awesome. Don’t need to do it.

And here I sit, feeling like I’m ready to finally finish. And right now, I’m really supposed to be getting  ready for dance (chuckle)…and it feels lie it’s so far out of reach. I had it…I had it,…I was there.I was dancing, and I didn’t continue, and it kills me. Because now I just don’t feel…..I don’t see the avenue here. Maybe I’m just missing it, but now that I’m searching for it, it’s not really there.

I feel like I missed my boat…I gave it up too many times….I don’t know…. I don’t know how to get from here to my heart.

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