Convergence Divergence

I came on this page to write a letter to someone, and then I saw the Daily Prompt: Blossom. I don’t know about you, but there is something about the word Blossom that makes my heart swell, and I am reminded of the quote:

The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom -Anais Nin

And I find that I am up against some tightness in my life, and not sure where to “break through,” but I sure know I want to blossom again. I have been in this stuck place for quite some time, and the more I look at where I am and talk to the amazing entrepreneurial people in my life, the more it is clear to me that I don’t believe in what I do.

When people ask me what I DO for a living, I tell them I am a Pharmacist, but I don’t say it with pride, and it’s not that I loathe what I do, or that I am not proud to be a Pharmacist. The problem is that I don’t believe in our Sickcare System. We have hundreds of thousands of people trying to take care of our population, but the insurance companies have tied our hands behind our backs. We document in ways that are not meaningful, and we focus on externally defined clinical measures, and we reduce the time with patients to get more through, all so we can survive and keep our doors open.

The problem is that people are getting sicker, and the truly heartfelt HealthCare providers are either burned out and leaving, or they are starting concierge services outside of the System. Not everyone can afford this……But, I digress. I could go on and on about our SickCare System, but I am here today to put words to this divergence within me.

A little over a year ago, I realized I wanted to dance and perform again, so I found a small local dance company and performed with them last April. This January, I found some ballet and modern dance classes in Portland and San Francisco, and it was AMAZING to feel my body respond after 11 years off! And I come home to my tiny hometown of Ashland, and there is just not enough here to get me in dance shape and to perform. My work as Director of Pharmacy is certainly not fulfilling that part of me. It fulfills other analytical, strategic and creative parts of me, but it doesn’t touch me deeply like movement and dance. My work does not help me get closer to myself.

So, I decided to start bringing more somatic experiences into my life (stay with me…..I am going somewhere with this). By day, I was building my little Pharmacy empire, and on weekends and evenings, I was doing Contact Improv and going to workshops like Orthobionomy and the Psoas with Liz Koch. You know, my timelines are all messed up. This really started last year when I did Mogadao Sacred Sexuality Workshops with Sarah Byrden. The Mogadao work so spoke to me that I have done pretty much everything Sarah has offered in my area since then. I did a 5-day backpacking trip in the Trinity Alps with 11 other women (Sarah included) last summer, where I entered a portal of existence that felt more consistently awake to the synchronicity of life than ever before. Recently, I went on a writing retreat called Writing Back to the Body, with both Sarah Byrden and Kate Grey, in the most beautiful area of Hood River, Oregon. Wow! I couldn’t believe that all the times I had gone to Portland, I had not continued north into the Columbia Gorge. Put that place on your Bucket List! At the same time, I was starting an online course with Sarah to take more time to learn her work, which I had started in person with her the prior year.

So, now I have somatic experience, sacred sexuality work (which includes qi gong), and what is called the Gateless writing method at the most recent retreat working their magic in my life. The Gateless method is an amazing way of not only fostering an immensely safe and loving space between a room full of what may be strangers, but also a surefire way to turn off your inner critic and see what comes through. 

multnomah falls

Feeling radiant after a week of Gateless writing, sharing and loving

During the retreat, I realized that the Gateless method could be used in so many ways, and potentially with dancers. If I could have tapped into that and seen that the critical way is not the most fruitful way, I may not have put aside my dance shoes for so many years and I may not have suffered 24 years of shame and guilt and wondering. So much wondering…

It didn’t take long before I contacted Suzanne Kingsbury to sign up for the Gateless Teacher Training in July. I explained to her that I have this profession of pharmacy that I worked very hard for, and it allows me a good living. Yet, what I am most passionate about is movement and the spiritual alignment that happens through conscious movement. I explained to her that I want to find a way to marry what feel like 2 divergent sides of myself. I was offered the Golden Scribe scholarship, and am excited to say that I will soon be certified in the Gateless Writing Method!  

Yep, I signed up for the training, and instantly entered the Convergence Zone.

You know how sometimes your life goes through phases of being almost freakishly synchronistic? My last couple weeks were very much that way, and it has me feeling nervous and excited. I went home to visit family in New Mexico and to celebrate my sister’s wedding. Well, after 5 days of being with the whole family, they left town and I had a whole week to myself in my parents’ home.

Ok, you ready for this? The Mogadao Institute was founded in Santa Fe, New Mexico by Zhenzan Dao, the man that trained Sarah Byrden in the Sacred Sexuality work she teaches. He had been in silence for quite some time, and recently came out of silence and started teaching again in Santa Fe. I had the immense pleasure of entering 2 days of training with him and his students, two of which I did the backpacking trip with last year, and who moved from both Oregon and Montana to train with him! It felt so new and like a reunion at the same time.

I could write a small book about the magic of Santa Fe that week and what transpired in the classes with Zhenzan and his students, but I will save that for later. Suffice to say, the sky was alive, and so was my heart and my curiosity. I left knowing I would train with Zhenzan at some point. And that Wednesday, after gong fu and Mogadao yoga and then meditation, I met with my best friend Shane Robinson, whom I had met in Albuquerque 16ish years prior, and we had both lived in Maui at one point, and now he happened to be flying into Santa Fe! Lives converging on this planet over thousands of miles, over and over, I refuse to consider merely a coincidence.

Many other magical things happened, but the magic of the possibility of the Mogadao training and the softness and strength of reverence and daily attunement to our body’s needs speaks to a place in me that is timeless and not of this current realm of reality we live in.

And so, what led me to a Sacred Sexuality course was curiosity of having a more intimate experience with my partner at the time, and I was inspired from there to partake in my first backpacking trip, deeper communion with nature, more embodiment, a writing retreat, Gateless Teacher Training, and potentially training someday….someday with a monk named Zhenzan Dao in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Life is a beautiful unfolding of possibilities and connections. We have only to trust in that unfolding and allow ourselves to blossom into our desires.

To be continued….

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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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A Year to Clear

As is par for the course on a New Years Day, I slept in. Thankfully, I remembered to turn off my alarm, and at 10am, I awoke, with crusty eyes, swollen hands, and an internal panic of all that I “have” to do.

Insert big EXHALE here.

Let me start over. I know 2016 is going to be big. 2015 was huge. I let go of a lot and brought in so much that I now don’t have enough hours in the day to do all that I brought into my life and would LOVE to do! It’s a real problem, folks.

I wake up, and my mind starts with, you “should” do yoga. That’s a healthy way to start the day, every day. You shouldn’t drink coffee. It’s hard on your adrenals. You really should go play on your pole. Don’t sit down on the computer right away without stretching and being active first. And on and on… I think I have an internal mother on overdrive.

And then I think of all that I want to DO in my life.

  • I want to dance more, like full dancing, with jumps and leaps, and performing, and pirouettes, and floorwork, and all the pain and beauty I remember.
  • Oh, and I have a pole downstairs that I want to learn to use, but for some reason am not.
  • I want to write more, so I think a daily blog again would be good.
  • I started a fellowship, so I know I need to study.
  • Of course, I want to somehow turn that into a business where I actually help people be healthier, vs. approve medications that are prescribed by other people and that I know are making them sicker.
  • Oh, and I want to be healthy and strong, so I want to keep up the workouts in the gym, and of course the meal prepping.
  • Perhaps I might do a figure competition as well.
  • Somewhere in there, I really want to have more close relationships with people. Yet I am reticent to have a relationship outside of myself. I want to let people in….slowly.
  • I want to clear the clutter in my home….starting with the file drawer full of things to file…and I need to download my quicken for the YEAR and figure out what is biz and not…and organize so I can study, so my heartrate doesn’t quicken in panic every time I walk in the office….
  • And all of those things take Time, …and Focus…. and Presence.

And yet, I am remembering going through some of my old posts last night after coming back from New Years festivities. So many of the posts are about Surrendering to the unknown, to letting the current image of things as we think they should be fall away. They are about Trust, Self Love, and BEing.

So, I sit down with my coffee, open up my computer, and this page is looking at me (which I opened last night)

A Year to Clear What is Holding You Back!
Premium on-line course by Stephanie Bennett Vogt
(9,538 people have taken this course)
 

This is a 365-day on-line course available from Stephanie Bennett Vogt. We will email you when your new lesson is available and you will be able to login and read each lesson on-line or print as they become available and click to listen to the guided audio meditations. Your first lesson will be available immediately after you enroll.

“The journey is the treasure.”-Lloyd Alexander

 

Well, I took it as a sign, and I signed up. Part of me thought, “Amy, there you go committing to yet one more thing,” and the other part of me said, “It needs to happen. It will help me focus on what is most important each day, help me in seeing that I don’t have to do it all every day, that it’s ok to let some things go so other things can come in.”

So, no New Years Resolutions, except maybe to ALLOW my Self to be all that I imagine and more, or less than I imagine, and to trust that letting go of what I imagine will allow something I cannot imagine because it is a whole new way of being.

I like the sound of that!

What is on your mind as we head into 2016? 

 

 

 

143- So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

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This excerpt of T.S. Eliot’s work from Four Quartets: The East Coker speaks to my need for silence, and the innate uncomfortable-ness of that space between the light and the dark. It is in the anticipation of what lies beneath … Continue reading

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142- Oh, to Die Again, and Again….

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You say I am repeating Something I have said before. I shall say it again, Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go … Continue reading

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141- Going Inward

Photo by Lee Johnson www.collectivescience.org

I have found myself lately wanting to be alone, not to avoid others, but to truly BE with myself. I have so often over the years kept myself too busy and too distracted to spend valuable time with myself getting to know ME.

As my moon cycle approaches, and shifts are happening in my life, I feel a definite pull inward. Before, I would have pushed myself to do, do, do. Now, I am happy to have a good chunk of the day to relax with myself, and to honor my own personal ebb and flow.

I may even kidnap myself away for the rest of the week, like I would a lover on a honeymoon. Yes, a Self-Cation!

Going inward…. let’s catch up when I emerge.

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138- Marry Thyself

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“A woman’s highest calling is to lead a man to his soul, so as to unite him with Source. … A man’s highest calling is to protect woman, so she is free to walk the earth unharmed.”~ Cherokee Proverb My … Continue reading

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130- Spiritual Bypass

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Following is from When Spirituality Disconnects Us From What Really Matters Have you ever: Used spirituality as a sort of escape from reality, or as a way to avoid some painful aspect of your life? Let yourself get taken advantage … Continue reading

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120- Does This Facebook Post Make Me Look Spiritual?

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I want to talk about all of these viral pictures with positive affirmations, spiritual quotes, etc. Yes, Picture Quotes. You know the ones on Facebook with quotes from Rumi, Osho, Buddha, and anyone who is quotable. Perhaps you have re-posted … Continue reading

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110- Getting back to that “Happy Place”

The following is borrowed from a Facebook status of a friend, and I felt it so timely:

In many shamanic societies if you came to a medicine person complaining of being dis-heartened, dis-spirited, depressed, they would ask you one of four ?s

when did you stop dancing
when did you stop singing
when did you stop being enchanted by stories
when did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

I keep finding posts about how to get back to that “happy place” for people who are entangled in their old ways, their old patterns.

Just this morning, I was thinking that dancing, kirtan, and meditation are certainly ways to happiness, given they are engaged in mindfully. They are ways of staying present, ways of experiencing anew what may seem like the same activity.

Each day, a new life. Each breath, a new attitude. Each moment, a new beginning.

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