Willow

Have you ever felt like you set yourself into a tailspin of doing, doing, doing, that left you feeling exhausted and empty?

Know anyone else like this?

If you said “oh, yeah” to either of these questions then read on!

We live in a world that is elementally out of balance, meaning that our alignment with what is natural has gone askew. Which element might I be referring to in the case of “doing, doing, doing?”

Yep, the FIRE element!

As a human culture, our fire element is waaayyyy out of balance, partially because of media telling us that we are not “worthy, lovable, good enough” if we don’t look a certain way, carry a certain i-gadget or have a certain status in society.

We also might have received this message from our parents, who are passing it down from their parents. Doing, doing, doing, and rushing around all the time has become an epidemic. We are passing the importance of “productivity” on to your youth in a way that is not healthy.

When your fire element is in balance there is a sense of contentment. When we are in a state of contentment we are not looking for things to be “other than the way that they are.” This is called acceptance and acceptance breads contentment.

In that state of being your breath rate is slow and steady, and your heart rate is stable and consistent. Your nervous system likes it when your mind is content, and you are accepting of what is.

I recently met a young career-driven man who cringed when I spoke the word contentment “I hate that word,” he said. “How about acceptance?” I asked. “Oh, even worse,” he said, “acceptance is like giving up.”

I smiled and replied, “I understand that argument, but I believe that accepting what is, does not mean that you don’t want to make a change.”

Why is it important to make changes and grow from a place of acceptance and contentment?

A few reasons:

1. Simply put it is better for your health! That same young man who hated the word “acceptance” suffers from anxiety, stress, loneliness, and insomnia.

2. The change or growth that comes from a place of acceptance is more sustainable. It may take longer for the change to come about, but it will last longer and it will support future changes in a direction that follows your truth.

3. It allows you to be authentic in the changes you make. You do what is right for you, as opposed to shifting your life around because you think someone else will love you more for it.

Taking the time to develop a practice of acceptance and contentment will not only add years to your life it will make you feel more at peace in the moment. You can develop this practice in moments of stillness (lying in bed at night), or times of contemplation (commuting to work in the morning). It is a mindset shift, accepting yourself and your life for who and what they are currently and acknowledging that it is just as it “should be.” Honestly, if it ought to be some other way, then it would be some other way, and it will be as it “should be” when the time is ripe for that.

It is important to plant seeds of consciousness in your mind and in your heart, so that you may create whatever you desire to create and the physiological/psychological experience of contentment will only augment your growth and the changes you make to create a better life.

A mantra to help you practice: “All is well”

Good morning God’s and Goddesses!,

As I land back in California after a month of retreat and a little bit of work in Indonesia, I am called to share with you my newly resourced practices to create more pleasure, NO MATTER WHAT YOU ARE DOING!

Let’s begin with why pleasure is important in the first place, because some would argue that it only leads to pain eventually.  This theory is based on a fear that once you have found true pleasure, true delight that you will loose it.  Let me ask you, do you think keeping pleasure at arm’s length so that you never have to know its shadow is a good idea? Me neither! I KNOW that pleasure is one of the main reasons we walk this blessed earth, there are others of coarse, but feeling enjoyment, delight and sensual pleasure are some of the most valuable gifts we get to cherish as humans.  Let’s celebrate this by creating more pleasure today!

What if you had 100% access to pleasure?  Or rather you kept your pleasure tools in your back pocket 100% of the time, so that you could pull them out and tinker with the moment to create more pleausre.  How would your day feel different if you could change your work tasks into a pleasure tasks?  Or if you could ENJOY communicating with that person at work who “rubs you the wrong way?”

Imagine how your day would end differently than if you just keep letting that person get under your skin.

Here are the 3 simple pleasure practices I love to share!

1.Breath: It sounds too simple, cuz it is! Creating more pleasure should be easy, if it were difficult that would take the pleasure out of it, don’t you agree? To unite consciousness and breath is to be mindful, which is the foundation of all meditation and inner peace.

Here’s how: Exhale and draw your naval back to your spine clearing all the stale air out from the very bottom of your lungs, as you Inhale, do not “Take” a deep breath, but rather “Receive” a deep breath.  Repeat 3-7 times, thinking of how each exhale clears a path inside of you that harbor fear, doubt, shame or a belief that you don’t’ deserve pleasure.  As you breathe in and think of receiving this amazing Oxygen which gives you life, also receive the magic that life brings, know that you are receiving an interconnected web of Qi or energy that connects all things throughout time and space! Wow! What an honor it is to simply breathe, and expand your senses to receive more!

2.Sensualize your senses: Huh? What does that mean? It means to vitalize your senses.  You were given the most glorious 5 senses (some would say 6, but we will stick to your physical senses today).

As you eat today, take in the tastes and flavors of your food as if for the first time!

As you kiss your loved ones goodbye for the day receive their sent into your nose and let it linger for as long as possible!

As you wash your hands today delight in the sensation of the water as it runs across your skin and the feeling of the soap as it slithers through your fingers, don’t miss this pleasurable moment! One of my favorites!

When you gaze upon the sky today allow the shades a depths of her colors sink into your eyes and cleanse your vision of the many screens that you look at daily.

Listen to the sound of the morning, as her dawn breaks her creature’s rise and the birds begin their song, all for you to hear!

3 Pleasure Sounding: Make pleasurable sounds all day, and especially if you are getting frisky! Sounds of delight and pleasure are always welcome. Simply choose 1 vowel and sound out that vowel in ways that enhance your pleasure for 5-10 exhales.

Start with “A” and work your way through the rest of those vowels throughout the whole day! Make this pleasure sounding a practice that can change a not so pleasurable moment into a pleasurable one.  In this case your first sounding of your chosen vowel might sound more like an “ugh” but as each breath passes it will start to sound more like an “Aaah.”  I use this for everything form hard workouts, to challenges in business to changing the tone of my loved ones who come home with an “ugh”

You have the tools you need with you all the time to create more pleasure; it’s just a choice you get to make in the moment.

Joy is the highest vibration of emotion, and when you are really enjoying something you are in the midst of pure pleasure.

Enjoy more Pleasure now!

Free of gender or status the magic of your womb is ready to live!

Healed, alive, and tuned into the deep mystery of life that we call the Tao…

All around me women are giving their wombs the time, space and attention to truly heal form the shame, pain, and resentment that has been buried deep inside for centuries. I am seeing some men do this as well and it is so beautiful to guide and support them as they acknowledge this creative center within, for it does not matter if you are male or female if you are young or old, if your organs are in tact or have been severed or removed all human beings have an energetic womb, and place that reside 3 fingers width below the naval. This is the creative center of your being and many philosophies recognize it as such. It has many names, such as Hara, 2nd chakra (Swandhastana), Guan Yuan (original chi), and I would even recommend naming her (this part of you) yourself. Listen to her, she will tell you her name.

If you are ready to heal from the long line of womb suffering and return to the celebration of your creative essence and purest magic, place your hands over your womb and say “ My womb is not a place to store fear and pain, my womb is a place for creating and giving birth to life.” Say this 3 times and feel the words as you say them. Then place your hands upon the earth and say, “Your womb is not a place to store fear and pain, your womb is a place for creating and giving birth to life.” Say this 3 times and again feel your words sinking into the earths’ body. Let this be reconciliation to the earth and to masculine and feminine energies within you.

As your relationship with your womb is mended and a new bond takes form, explore the sensations of pleasure you receive from your ocean of creative life giving source. And give birth to the song, breath, movement or art that comes to be expressed through you. Experience the wild feminine with in you, she does not color inside the lines and she is not always pretty, but she is certainly raw, powerful and full of beauty! She is you!

Can the Emotional Roller-Coaster be eliminated?

Understanding what is happening in your blood stream on a daily basis, sheds useful perspective on your moods.
Your hormones are like little messenger that run up and down your blood lines, they tell other glands which hormones to secrete and when. If you are a woman you may have noticed that this constant cycle of hormone run-around can cause you to feel on top of the world one day and completely useless the next. It can be exhausting especially if there is an imbalance.

I’m giving you these 5 Key’s for healthy Hormones so that you can start to feel like you have a handle on your hormones instead feeling like they have a handle you.

If you were to put a red star on your good days and a blue star on your bad days month after month you will likely notice a pattern. You will probably notice that blue stars tend to stack up right before you get your period. Interestingly this is also the time that your progesterone levels are high. Another time you might notice some blue star days is right after you ovulate, which corresponds with a big drop in estrogen.

I actually started doing this years ago to show my boyfriend at the time that my ups and downs had a pattern and that the pattern corresponded with my cycle. He had to see it to understand it. Now I ask my patients in my Holistic Wellness Practice to do the same. This allows them to experience a deeper connection with their bodies and emotions. They can easily see how the emotional state is connected to the physical state.

Key #1

Stars!

Start your own star calendar! This is a fun way to begin the journey of understanding your hormones. I recommend you use red for happy days, yellow for medium days (neither hear nor there), green from low mood days and blue for days you’d rather stay in bed.

Every woman has different levels of good and bad days and as you start to watch this with your stars you may notice that you have less and less blue star days as the months progress. Simply by paying attention to your cycle you can change it.

Key #2

Create time and space to pay attention to your body!

Your hormones are a sensitive system. So just as much as it will improve with awareness, it will get worse with neglect. One of the main reasons we neglect to tune into our bodies is because we are too busy. This “too busy” state translates to stress in the body. Stress can reek havoc on your endocrine system.

Key #3

Nutrition is of the utmost importance! It is interesting to take notes on what you put into your body and how you feel. You may want to keep a food diary for 3 days. Simply make 3 columns, one fore the date, one for what you eat and one for how you 10-29 min after you eat. It is especially useful to do this practice 3 days before you bleed. You will notice that if you have more stimulants and sugar the days leading up to your period your period will elicit more severe symptoms.

Key #4

Eliminate sugar! And not just refined white sugar, but everything that turns to sugar as soon as it hits your blood stream, like bread, pasta, and alcohol. Research show that your daily carbohydrate intake should be 60 grams or less, not including vegetables, but it does include fruit.

Many adults are consuming upward of 3,000 grams each day, which causes insulin resistance over time leading to a staggering statistic, which is that by age 65 77% of adults will be diabetic or pre-diabetic. The pancreas, which pumps insulin into your blood stream every time you take in carbohydrates, is one of the major glades in your endocrine system. Balanced blood sugar supports a balanced hormonal system.

Key #5

Take supplements! There are so many wonderful herbs and supplements that support a healthy hormonal system.

We need this extra support simply because we don’t get enough nutrition in our food, due to soil damage.

Here are a handful of the supplements I give to my patients and clients:

Chaste Tree – Can be taken all month long by women and men. It supports the LH surge responsible for ovulation, so very important to those who want to impregnate.

Dong Gui – Can be taken all month long, or right before during and after your period. An essential herb for cleaning and augmenting the menstrual cycle, can also help clear pain from blood stagnation.

Pituitrophin PMG – This is a protomorphagen which is the nucleic acid from the nucleus of the glad of the Pituitary, which is responsible for telling the hypothalamus what to do.

Hypothalamus PMG – helps to repair the Hypothalamus, which tells is responsible for orchestrating the rest of your endocrine system.

There are many more supports you can implement to create a well-balanced and healthy hormone system for yourself. It is not difficult and if fact it is fun to see the results in your body, your emotions and the way you feel in the world around you.

Find yourself some guidance, either myself or another acupuncturist or functional medicine expert in your area to help you feel like you are on top of the world!

When you commit to creating a union between two entities, be them breath and movement or man and woman you are creating a unique spiritual connection in your own life that then permeates the rest of the world and all the lives you touch.

This unity brings you into a state of higher consciousness and allows you to feel the interconnectedness of all things. When you choose to unite any two things in your life a synergy is created that propels you into more fluidity and grace.

This gift of union is pure magic and you have the option to create it every day. I invite you to create union in your everyday life and see what happens…..you may find more ease, more pleasure, more presence, more joy and less stagnation in your overall being.

To create union you may use some of these practices, or simply create your own authentic practice that feels good to you….. The point of Union is to feel good, to feel supported, to feel held, and to feel like you are not doing it all alone.

Union of Movement:

Yoga (Yin Wellness You tube link)

Chi Gong (Yin Wellness You tube link)

Walking
Running
Swimming
Dancing

Union of Relationship:

Communicate remembering that 90% of communication is listening (when you are truly listening you may hear more than what is being said)

Breathing together (keep it simple: inhale together; exhale together. You may choose to sit back to back or face to face, just be comfortable.)

Eye Contact (frequent and brief, just enough to acknowledge that you are present with your partner)
Pause (take a time out with your lover to experience the moment the sensations that it brings. It can be 10 seconds or 10 minutes)

Union of Life:

Upon waking name 3 things you are grateful for and breathe in that sensation of gratitude.

At meals take 3 breathes, and in that time bless your food and the people, plants and animals that took part in getting your food to your plate.

Drinking water is one of my favorite times to create union, as this resource becomes more and more precious it calls for us to collectively and consciously receive it’s nourishment in gratitude.

As you drift into dream space unify that which you wish to create with your deepest time of rest.

Union of Creation:

• Create art with another
• Create song with another
• Create life with another
• Or create while envisioning the other you are creating space for in your life.

Come close to me, I will whisper in your ear Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes
around in another form. For there is so much More to this life Than you now understand Observe the wonders as they occur around you Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent For the Truth has been Divinely Conceived Deeply within each of us Each of us touches one place and understands the whole in that way This Union you want with the earth and sky This Union we all need with love Stay here quivering like a drop of mercury

-Hafiz & Rumi