Yoga and Breathwork Meditation

Before :: “Oh yes, I know all about Breathwork, I’ve done it many many times.” - a student before coming to my Breathwork workshops.

After :: “what just happened!? I’ve never done anything like that before in my life” - the same student after coming to my Breathwork Workshops.

This isn’t me patting myself on the back for having fabulous workshops, (though of course I am biased and do believe they are fabulous), no this is simply a common perspective.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “yes, I do breathwork in my yoga class.” Or “that’s what my yoga teacher teaches us, breathwork while doing the poses”. Though I of course have no idea what it is your yoga teacher teaches, I can say, the lineage of Breathwork I teach is not the same type of breath that is taught while in your yoga class.

It’s confusing, I know, all the different types of Breathwork classes that exist, and I certainly don’t expect anyone except an expert in the field to really know the difference. I do find it humorous however how often we lump breathwork and meditation in with the category of yoga. It’s like lumping a spinning class in with soccer and saying, “yeah, I’ve done soccer before because I sweat in my spin class and that happens in soccer too.”

First and foremost, let me be very clear, I am not a yoga teacher. I cannot speak about the yoga poses, or even the history of yoga in any educated form except from the perspective of a yoga student who's been practicing yoga for the last 20 years. Yes, that means I have some experience, that means as a student I can speak to how my body practices yoga, how the yogic poses feel for me over the years, but I have not studied it. That feels like an important distinction because in today’s world of courses so easily accessible, of coaches acting as therapists, of hairstylists giving Full Moon haircuts, something has been lost. The art of mastery.

Don’t get me wrong I am in no way discrediting individuals who are professionals and have the expertise to create something that will help another. I believe deeply in coaches, just as much as I do in therapists, and I believe in psychics as much as I do mindset, or mental health support. I also believe in hairstylists creating a Full Moon haircut offering as a way to help you release, shed and call in the new. (How creative is that by the way?)

We need you all. There are a lot of people in this world who need help and we could all use support. There is a lot of healing work to do, and we need all of you who are willing to be on each other's support team to become an emotionally healthier society.

Can you imagine it!? If everyone of us could have a team of people on your side at every turn helping you learn about nutrition, about health, about wellness. We could all use people helping us emotionally and psychologically process hardships, pains, past traumas rather than medically spending so much of our time, energy and money on the science of it all, or in solving the problem, we need to keep connecting to the root. 

What I don’t agree with is when the hairstylist who has not studied astrology, who has not practiced the work, but who has read other people’s posts about astrology, then calls themself an astrologer, or a Moon Expert. Or when a soccer player takes a spin class, and decides they’re a spin instructor. Or when a yoga teacher has not studied Breathwork decides to teach a workshop on Breathwork. Or even when a Breathwork Meditation teacher claims to be a yoga teacher.

Go out and follow your passions. Be a yoga teacher AND a breathwork teacher. Be a spin instructor AND a soccer player, but study it first. Believe you are enough as you are, with the titles you have. You are enough as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a brother, a nibling. You are enough as a yoga teacher, as a hairstylist, as a soccer player. You are enough without a single one of your accomplishments.

There is space for everyone to be a teacher in the field they want to be in, but give yourself permission to be a student before claiming to be a master.

We are all students of life, that is what makes us teachers. What separates the great teachers from the okay ones however, are the ones that are forever willing to be a student. To recognize that by being a student you become a teacher and by never putting down the will to learn, your wisdom grows. This is true mastery. This is what I miss about the meaning teachers used to hold. Mastery takes time. It takes expertise. It takes study, and it’s okay that you’re not a master. I’m not sure I’ll ever be a master in anything, but you better damn well believe I’m never going to stop trying. You want to be a master yoga teacher, go for it! Study. Teach. Practice. But most of all, LEARN. Be willing to be a student of life and I promise you, your mastery evolves as it’s meant to. When you learn to be a student of life, and you feel the wisdom of the student become your superpowers as a teacher, that my dear friends is the closest experience I’ve ever had to realizing I’m both a Master of my practice; and therefore, means I’m right back at the beginning of my journey of being a student.

What emerged when I asked myself...

What emerged when I asked myself, what new action can I partake in that brings me closer to expanding into, welcoming in, my dreams?

First what came was a brainstorming session filled with new ideas that could support me.

• Be more compassionate with myself and the slowness, take slowness back where I need it, when I need it, allowing it to become my friend

• Talk to someone about the pain my heart is holding, the difficulty, the frustration, the questions, let this person hold me the way I am craving to be held

• A week long writers retreat where I sit by myself, with good food, go on walks in nature and write, write write all day long

• Hire someone new to my team of support and help bring in a new direction into my world view, help expand my heart

Then, I found as I wrote that taking action on these ideas is not even the point of creating and answering this question. The point of creating and answering this was to soften into what it is that I’m already doing to support myself. What I’m already doing to push myself towards my dreams, and what I’m already doing is A LOT. I am already holding a lot, and I don’t need to “do” anything else in order to step closer to my dreams. I only really must lean back into trust. Trusting that it’s happening. Trusting that it can happen differently than I had believed it needed. Trusting that I am worthy of it all happening. Me and my pal trust, we take this path once more. 

Sometimes the expansion comes simply from being willing to explore a new way of doing things, a new way of being, not from the doing itself.

Now is the time...

Life is hard right now. Though of course, you already know that and you don’t need another newsletter talking about the hardness of it all. What I do find to be valuable and necessary right now is the reminder that because of this hardness, everything in life has been made a little bit harder. That includes the joys of life, the celebrations, the excitement, they too have been muted by this hardness. We have less access to joy and hope the way we used to. Sure we can create more of it. Unique forms of it. Different ways for us to call the joy, the light into or forward in our lives. Yet still, with this change comes a natural mourning that little by little, moment by moment, we are pushed to work through. I haven’t hugged my 99 year old grandmother in almost a year. I couldn’t celebrate my dear friend's engagement. I miss holding my best friends babies, a true torture for this touch love language gal. You’ve been experiencing these hard things too I know, and though each hard moment as an isolated incident might not break you, it’s the collective holding of these small → big moment to moment hard things that just might.

Now is the time to anchor yourself into your body. Connect down to your power. Your body is important and needs to be taken care of. Your mental state is important and needs to be taken care of. YOU, need to be taken care of and I wonder if you too might have forgotten that anchoring yourself into your body, your power, is exactly what holds you through each hard moment...

“Are you placing all of your energy on getting through the hard moments?
Have you forgotten to anchor yourself?
What are you doing to support yourself through the hard?
What are you doing at this time to feel calm, safe, anchored in your body?”

These might seem like small questions, though the truth is we must continue asking this of ourselves, for ourselves. Otherwise it begs for a breakdown.

A pipe in my kitchen exploded the other day spilling water all over in my 15 minutes between private clients. I stood in the puddles and cried. It wasn’t this one hard thing that broke me. It was all the little hard moments that had happened before this one. In between tears I looked at the clock and gave myself 3 minutes to release these tears before taking a breath, pulling it together emotionally, throwing towels on the water and stepping back into a client session. Five minutes into the session, I was laughing. My client was telling me a great story, I was connected to Spirit, dropped back into that Universal flow state, and I thought how funny life can be. To be crying one minute and laughing the next. I’m not so sure that crying and laughing are that different. They are simply two avenues of emoting. Different energy releases for your body.

I was able to show up for this session because of those 3 minutes I gave myself. Though if I had had more time I certainly would have taken it, 3 minutes was all it took for my body to open the valve and release the hard it was feeling. It opened me up to then release through laughter next, which in turn immediately opened space in my body to receive downloads, connect within. Moving from crying to laughing was a natural state my body followed having taken its cues from the container I’ve created for it’s emoting over the years.

When your body starts showing you signs of physical ailment, pain, tension, when your energy levels feel seemingly low, or you find yourself taking a deep breath at the end of the day, it’s your body’s way of telling you it needs a release. Have you forgotten to breathe all day long? What is your body in need of? Listen in. Nothing is wrong with you, you’re just finding your way through the hard and you dear friends, are doing a darn good job at it. Sometimes 3 minutes is all you have, and other times, 3 minutes is all you need.

Building Trust Resilience.

Healing happens in little moments.

For the last 2 years on New Years Eve I’ve chosen a word or a phrase to represent the year ahead. It would be a word that embodied what I was working on that year, and what I was desiring to break through. It would represent what I knew I was capable of and what I would lean on throughout the year for support. The last two years my word has been in the family of TRUST.

As we know, for so many people, this year has been anything but what they desired it would be. And yet for others, it’s been a lot of expansion & soul awakening moments. I’d say for me it’s been a mix of both. Nonetheless, I continuously let my word of the year guide me. TRUST.

Trusting in love and how it would show up for me, for us. Trusting in the steps I was taking towards my dreams in my personal life, and at work. Trusting in the letting go of opportunities that were no longer for me, trusting in the disappointment, in the pain, the hardship. Trusting in divine timing. When I chose this word at the end of 2018, I remember ending the year thinking, “mmm I didn’t quite finish with trust this year.” So I chose it again as we rounded the corner to 2020. And now, as I sit in the colder weather, feeling December 2020 wrap me in a cozy blanket, I feel the depth of trust I built this year. This year trust became a mantra. It became a guiding light. It became an inner knowing. Sometimes sitting in trust, believing, praying, feeling it. Sometimes taking action towards my trust. Sometimes so stuck in my head I had to remember to even  pull out my word.

Overtime, I began to feel my relationship with trust grow, and today, I can feel trust in my body in the deepest way I’ve ever known. I felt my own trust resilience flourish beyond a layer of healing I could never have described before this moment.

What I want to say about this is keep going. Keep trusting in your path. Keep playing with trust as your mantra. You can choose trust as your word of the year again for 2021. Choose whatever feels good to you.  In some ways I think I’ve had trust as my mantra for the last ½ a decade. It’s not about how long it takes our bodies to learn our lessons, it’s about how we choose to show up when we are presented with our lessons. It’s about the little moments. The moment when something happens differently than you expected. The moment you’re disappointed. The moment you’re sad, angry, heartbroken. In these moments it’s about choosing that all of your emotions are allowed to be there, and you can still choose to hold trust. Your relationship with trust will waiver. That’s okay. It’s like any other relationship, you don’t have to be absolute all the time. Building trust resilience is like building muscle. It’s like changing a habit. It doesn’t happen overnight. And this is how all of healing works. It’s something you choose to do in each little moment, and over time you begin to see you’re healing.

Keep healing beautiful friends. You’re doing it. You’re changing. You’re building your trust resilience. And I love you. 

some words on growth

The whirlwind of the energy of these last few weeks has been all consuming. 

I am feeling really proud of how I managed it, never getting fully sucked into any one emotion, simply feeling and being with them all. Though I had to work with all my might at times to hold the container for my groups, for my private clients in one hand, and for the energy I was feeling from the collective, plus my own emotions in another. It was a full time job to allow it all. So much has happened this year. We’ve been unveiled into growth. We’ve been held down by oppressors. We’ve been distraught with division. We’ve been pushed by the unknown. But you’ve gotten enough messages about what a tough year this has been. You know that. You’re living it. What I believe we could use to talk about more is stepping outside your comfort zone when it comes to managing your mental health.

Your old tricks and tools might not be working anymore. Or maybe they’re working but they’re not enough to support you right now. The patterns and habits, and maybe even the people you’ve been leaning on are in a different place than you are today. We are experiencing, and a part of massive growth. And with growth, comes the shedding of the old.

I want to tell you that it’s okay to grow.

To grow is the most natural beautiful experience we could embrace for ourselves because not only is it the only thing we know for sure in this world, that all things change and evolve, but it’s also beautiful to accept, to embrace what change has to offer you. It can be really scary to try new things. New healing modalities, new experiences, to new friends, to put yourself out there, it’s not always easy to do. And it’s okay to be afraid of it. To be afraid of being honest with yourself, afraid that being honest with others will hurt them. To be afraid of finding your voice, your truth, your path. It’s okay to be afraid of your growth.

Do it anyway.

To discover what works for you when managing your mental health, is the path to a happy life.

And I know your growth, the changes you want to make, I know it can cause some unrest with those around you. It’s hard for people to see you stepping into your power. It triggers them not only because you’re changing the name of the game, but also because there’s something inside them that’s being hit by the changes you’re making. It’s okay. Let them be triggered and make the changes you need anyway. Let them kick and scream their way through the changes, and hold steady to your heart. Taking care of your mental health means being willing to embrace change. It means being willing to embrace the new you that’s wanting to emerge. 

The message that gets me through right now...

The weather has started to get cold at night in LA,  our winds have been flowing strong and the city is on high-alert, firefighters are hard at work, tons of people are healing from the fires or still in the midst of it, and energy feels heightened all around. It felt like too much to hold the other day so I closed myself off in my office, turned all the devices on do not disturb, (my favorite iphone trick by the way) and I laid down for breathwork. 

It was all too much for me frankly. I did not know how to hold space for it all, while also trying to dive into healing work for my clients. And so I didn’t. Breathwork did not make me “feel better”, it did not heal the fires, or stop the tears from flowing, but I did receive a message during my practice. “I am light.” I heard loud and clear. Light is all around me, light is in me. And same goes for the man who lost his life the other day, he is light, he is made of light, those affected by the fires are light, they are made of light. I am light, and so are you. 

The message brought me back to the simplicity of being with what is. It reminded me that no matter what we are going through, we are united in our stories and it is through this union that we get through the weightiness of it all. It is through the owning, the complete knowing that we are all light, that we can make it through the times that feel too much to bear, or the times we feel unsafe to be who we are. This message will carry me through as I continue sending prayers, and resources to those affected by the fires, and to those going through turmoil right now.

And, if today you don’t feel like you are light, if today you don’t feel like you have space in your day to process, to deal with the emotions, the weight that grips you, okay. Be with what is. It’s okay to not feel good, it’s okay to not know. Be with what does not feel good. Be with what is challenging. Be with anger, frustration. Today just be with what is. There will come a day when you will feel yourself becoming, embodying, being light again. And there is someone out there in your community that can hold the belief that you are light, they will hold that for you until you can believe it again. We are not meant to hold all the pieces alone. We are not meant to be looking out for only our loved ones, we are meant to be holding hands, standing up in the intensity, to the intensity together. Lean on another to support you. Let them believe in your light until you can hold the  belief again for yourself. I’m sure they will need you to hold their light belief someday too. 

Stay safe out there, and may you always know, you are made of light. 

Don't let your wounds hold you back from change

Our wounds get triggered time and time again until we heal. That’s not to say that your wounds then go away, or that there is even a state of “heal-ED” to be in. (spoiler alert:: There’s not.) But the work that you do in healing allows you to time and time again, revisit the parts of yourself you have been rejecting. The parts of yourself that are screaming for your attention. The parts of yourself that have deeper healing work to go. 

I laid down for breathwork this week and screamed out all the judgements I was holding about myself. Judgements that I thought I had healed. The realization wasn’t that in fact I had not healed, or taken steps on my journey. It was quite the opposite in fact. It was that I had shed a layer of judgements, worked through them and the Universe was showing me the ones that I was ready to move through next. A disappointment I had recently experienced, an opportunity for my practice was suddenly gone and though on one hand I could truly hold the knowledge that this was meant to be. I could hold the feeling that this was the right move for both parties. The other hand held a lot of fears, a lot of judgements. This was the hand that began spiraling feelings through my body, not my mind, suggesting, questioning that the limiting beliefs I held about myself must be true. With the wounds activated in my body, the questions began: uh-oh, does this mean that you are not in fact worthy of all that you desire? Does this mean that you are not worthy, period.

Of course the answers are false. But sometimes in the moment of any big emotion or big disappointment, there’s a space where those questions might arise. 

One of the most magnificent parts of this experience for me was how in the exact moment I was holding disappointment, I was also holding deep trust in this being the right thing. Trust that this was happening for me. Trust that the Universe was helping me make space for something more. It was a surreal experience for the self I have come to know, a woman that moves through her emotions first, and lands on the side of understanding after. This time, they both felt equally true at the exact same moment. 

“Create space to feel what both hands are holding”, I heard from my inner-self.

And so I did. And less than 24 hours later, I’m okay. I’m holding myself through my wounds, loving the part of me that was afraid this was proof of her unworthiness. Pausing for reflection. Breathing into my heart. Meditating. Letting this be a deep self-love moment, not a time to jump back into life, but rather a time for my own healing. 

Healing is a reckoning with yourself. It is a life you choose time and time again. Even and especially when it gets hard. And let’s be real, without knowing your personal story of course, this whole year has been hard. There’s been a lot of good coming out of the hard already, but it’s still been hard nonetheless. Every moment can feel like a massive healing moment. Every experience an upheaval towards something we don’t yet know.

It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to be exhausted, to be scared. It’s okay to feel hopelessness. What we don’t have time for, is for you to sit in the hopelessness for too long. We are creating the change right now. We get to be a part of creating the vision that we want our future world to see, to be like.

Let’s not let our wounds, our disappointments, our pain hold us back from this change. Let’s hold space for the deep, big feelings in one hand. Let that be the hand that holds confusion, frustration, pain, fear, the unknown. The big feelings you’ll keep moving through time and time again. And in the other hand, hold trust. Hold a true belief, a deep inner knowing that this is going to get better, we are creating the better, and you get to be a part of it. 

Please rest as you need. Please look for moments of beauty, of joy. This is a rest so you can get back up and rejoin the fight. We need you. 

You know you best.

I’ve heard a lot of conversations around this moment in time being a sacred pause. Though I certainly think the encouragement to not be productive, the reminders that this is a hard year, that more rest is needed, more breaks, and tons of space to be yourself, to do what your body, what your heart needs, I do think these messages feel incredibly important. It also feels important to recognize that we are not in a pause. Time is still ticking by. Babies are getting older. Teenagers are graduating, changing schools. Families are growing, friends are moving. Time is ticking by. What we choose to do with our time, what feels right for you and your heart so you can be a part of this moment in history and take care of yourself, those are the questions to be asking. 

But calling this moment in time a pause insinuates a checking out. We are in this pandemic, we have awakened to, or stepped up our fight for racial justice. These are very real moments that are happening before our eyes each and everyday. Whether we are choosing to participate in them or checking out, is the conversation. 

There is a difference between pausing for the sake of space. Pausing for rest. For clarity. For an opportunity to learn, unlearn, re-center. There is a difference between this, and pausing for the sake of checking out. Checking out with privilege. Checking out with hopelessness.

If you’re in need of permission from yourself to not be productive, then YES, by all means, do that. This is not about productivity, it’s about choosing with intentionality how you are spending this time. There are moments for rest. There are moments for re-centering. Moments of complete lostness. Moments of hopelessness. And sometimes these moments are long moments, maybe longer than you’d like it to be. And there are also moments when it’s time to get up and join the change. To do more. To be a part of this moment in history.

I spent a breathwork session the other day crying, sobbing without a knowing of what the tears were about. It was a collective sadness. A feeling of despair, of hopelessness, of confusion, questioning how, why, does it feel so backwards sometimes. There were not words to describe the energy my body was processing, I simply felt it. And when it was time, I opened my eyes, I came to my computer, I wrote, I processed, and I moved on with the day. Then I spent the last 3 days cleansing my body in the ocean. As I floated on top of the water, my mind wanted me to feel guilty for not being “productive”. But what if this was productive? What if this was exactly what my body needed to reset, and rejoin the year, meet my clients with clarity with spaciousness?

Only you can decide where you are at, what your body is in need of and how best to get through this year. Only you know your needs, know when you’ve gotten so lost you need help, know when you’ve taken so much action, it’s time to rest. Know when it’s time to lay all day in a collective reset, and know when it’s time to rejoin the fight. You know you best. Tap in. Ask yourself what you need and then let’s get up and be in this together.

The Value of a Thought

In meditation every thought is of equal value. 

When we sit in meditation we discover that the thoughts that pass us by are just that, they are thoughts. There is no thought to beat yourself up over, and no thought to get pulled into. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve come up with the answer to your latest problem, or you simply got distracted by something insignificant, in meditation, all thoughts are of equal value. 

What an empowering concept!? Can you imagine, if you paused for long enough in your active daily life, and witnessed every single thought that came through you, and let them each pass by as though they all held the same level of importance. I find this wildly freeing. The ability to step aside from the weight that you give to any passing thought, and choose how much importance you can give it. That is up to you. That is up to me. We do in fact have that power. That power comes from meditation. 

If everyday we allowed ourselves to take control over the thoughts that come and go by deciding how much weight or value we will give to them, it seems to me life would be wildly different. It would mean each of us taking our own innate power back within ourselves. 

To choose to analyze your thoughts, is a beautiful gift. You can pick up a thought, ask yourself if it’s really true, take a look at how you feel when you believe this thought, and then consider what your life might be like without that thought? {see Byron Katie’s The Work for more detailed breakdown of examining your thoughts in this way}

Once you’ve taken a look at the thought, the belief you’ve been giving power, then it’s decision day. Here you choose how much power you want to give this thought. When I’m working with private clients, something that often comes up is the concept of binary decisions. Our brains often make us believe that the decision is black or it’s white. But it is often, if not likely, that the decision lies in the grey. It can be hard to see that grey area on our own sometimes because our brains have categorized the decision as only being possible in one lane or another. But it’s when we look at the grey that we discover an abundance of opportunities exist there

I  have found no better way of doing this than meditation. Breathwork is amazing, you all know I love working in that space, but practicing alongside a meditation practice, I find the synchronicity between my head and heart really helps me understand what thoughts I am giving value to, and what thoughts deserve that time and attention. It’s because of meditation that I can see more of the possibility that lives in the grey. My meditation practice takes about 20 minutes in the morning. Twenty minutes is all it takes for me to have this ability to feel within my body the power I’m giving to thoughts over the course of the day. I find this incredibly empowering. 

You have the ability to choose how much weight you give to any given thought on any given day. Change your thoughts, change your life.

You can always begin again.

art by @biancacash

In meditation we’re taught that the thoughts that run through your head, are just that, they are thoughts. They come and go as quickly as time passes on a fun day, no one thought holding more or less importance than another. 

In meditation, with each and every thought you have, you identify that you have been thinking, you let the thoughts go, and you begin again by bringing your attention back to your breath.

What’s important about this is that it’s a continual process. You do this time and time again. You have another thought that pulls at you, or have become consumed by thoughts, you let go, and begin again. Another one comes in moments later, you notice, great, you’ve noticed which means you’ve woken up, and you begin again. There is no matter how many times you begin again, you just do, time and time again, you begin again. Every thought is of equal value, always ending with the same goal of letting go, and beginning again.

What if we adopted this same perspective in everyday, awake life? When the going gets tough, we begin again. When we don’t get what we want, we begin again. When we get knocked down, kicked down, we begin again. When our hearts are shattered, we begin again. Time and time again, we begin again. If that became embedded in our bones, if that became more than just a way of thinking but rather a way of living, I can’t help but wonder how much kinder, softer our world would be. I can picture all the art that would be created. The books that would be written. The dreams that would be chased, accomplished. The love that would flourish. Because the pain, the heartbreak, the let down would still be very real, and still, the body would naturally choose to just begin again. 

We let so much minutiae get in the way. Our limiting beliefs about ourselves, about the world we live in. Our circumstances too, they get in the way. The things that we cannot yet see how they would happen, what the path towards it would be, they take this back seat simply because we don’t see or understand the actual steps to getting there. And yet, if we kept going, kept trying, kept beginning again, we would have this ability to well, do anything.

What might be possible if I just begin again?

What if I allowed the thoughts to pass me by, and start again, time after time after time?

What does beginning again allow me to cultivate?

To begin again, to start over is a mentality I will be adopting for the month of August. I invite you to join me, and see what might be possible. 

The good news is, when you notice that you are not allowing space for beginning again, all you have to do is notice, maybe say, “oh, here I am again, thinking”, gently let go, and you guessed it….begin again. 

The belief that you won't be a humble person if you grow too much self-love, that is simply not true.

“Can there be a positive side to having low-self esteem?” My heart leapt out of it’s chest, what an important question my client was asking!

We live in a world that has trained us to believe we constantly need things to be fulfilled. Through marketing, media, and being sold “The American Dream” at a young age, even if you’re not American, you have likely been on a search for fulfillment at some point in your life.

If we have learned anything from 2020 so far we have learned that the systems we have in place as a society are no longer working as they are. We may not all agree on what the new solutions should be, or even know at this point, but the general consensus is that things are not working right now. This is in large part because of what we have been told to believe, what has seeped into our subconscious by nurture and nature. Whether this was taught to you by your parents, or not, there is an underlying teaching that if you grow too much self-love, you won’t be humble. If you love yourself too much, you won’t be liked. If you don’t have some self-criticism, you will be too egotistical. These are simply not true. 

First, by the simple act of asking this question, I can answer without a doubt in my mind that there is no amount of self-criticism that would be healthy for my client. I can almost as confidently say the same thing about you. Reason being is because you are here to begin with. Simply by being here I know that you have an innate desire to heal, to grow, to evolve. And it is likely that you want to feel better within yourself, and your life because you too know that you create a ripple effect in your world, and by healing yourself, you are naturally helping others heal. 

Your desire for healing, to feel better in your body, to feel more yourself, to love yourself, is not too much. 

“There’s a part of me that thinks that low-esteem and low self-worth is helpful.” Another common misconception that is also simply not true. You think that this critique of yourself is what motivates you, what keeps you in check, or you think that your will power is what stops you from eating chocolate. It’s not. It’s actually this exact thinking that is keeping you stuck. When you keep your attention on the negative things you don’t like about yourself, or on low self-worth, your mind begins searching for proof of this belief system and wont’ stop until it finds it. And what does that do? Well it only leaves you feeling worse about yourself than before. And what happens when you don’t eat the chocolate? You might feel proud for a moment, but that pride is fleeting because suddenly you will change the goal post of success in your mind without even telling yourself that you’ve changed it. And then you’re right back at feeling bad about yourself. 

Creating a new habit is not about will-power, it’s about creating new patterns in your brain. It’s about healing yourself from the old way of thinking, and creating space for you to replace it with something new. It takes time, it takes patience. It requires commitment and a willingness to change, to grow.

This is not to say that you can force loving yourself on yourself. If you don’t believe it, that won’t work, and in fact could make your self-criticism worse. “Where your awareness goes, energy flows.” This means that if your awareness is focused on self-worth, is focused on making the changes you want to make, on celebrating the small moments that you have shifted, on the things you do love about your body, the things you do love about yourself, you will begin to create flow through the energy of love. But if you’re focused on the critique, on the low self-worth, you’ll continue to perpetuate this energy. 

Having low self-worth, being critical of yourself, self-berating, are all forms of self-rejection, which is not loving yourself. It’s a system we were born into and is deeply rooted in our culture. We cannot help that. What we can help is ourselves. We can change the way we respond to the messages we are told. We can change the way we respond to the criticism in our heads. We can love ourselves, instead of rejecting, through the things we don’t love, until we grow more self-love. 

Learning to love yourself is a daily journey. 

A journey that involves deep cultivation from within yourself. A journey that is then supported through Mother Earth and strengthened by your own healing of it day in and day out. By the words you use towards yourself, but the actions you take towards yourself. And when you are overflowing with self-love, you spread that same light and love to others around you. That is why you can never have too much, because if you do become full on it, and by it I meant the true deep self-love from within, you spread it to others. 

And I can promise you, no amount of true, deeply cultivated self-love is too much. Typically, the people you think might love themselves too much, are very likely the same people that are hurting deep inside. 

Self-love is  something that you work on constantly because as soon as you learn it, as soon as you heal one aspect of self-love, you get to another lesson or learning wrapped in a different cloak.

We learn from our relationships with others

Doing healing work together opens up a unique form of healing. We cannot, do not, heal in a vacuum. We learn from our relationships with others. They hold up a mirror for you to see something you did not know you needed to see. When you feel triggered by another person, by their actions, by their words, by their presence, that is showing you a judgement you hold about yourself, something that is in need of greater awareness. It could be a blindspot you have about yourself, it could be something you know is there and is in need of healing. When you’re jealous of someone else, feel stuck in comparison mode, or irritated by the work of another, there is something inside yourself that is wanting voice, attention. And when something that excites you about another, attracts you is something that you’re being asked to cultivate within yourself. It’s something you likely want more of, or enjoy being around and therefore have within you if you were to give it some time and attention.

We hold a piece of each other's hearts in each of us. For as different as we can feel at times, and today is definitely a time that is causing divisiveness and separation, there is as much similarity amongst us as there is uniqueness. 

Where you feel heightened, or frustrated, about the state of our world, where you feel triggered about how someone else is handling COVID, where you’re feeling deeply saddened about the racial injustice that persists today, or downright pissed off, where you feel stuck in comparison mode or unmotivated, all are experiences that are giving you information on how to help heal yourself.

Let’s learn from our relationship with others. Learn by exploring our inner-workings. Learn by listening to each other. Learn by growing our minds, our hearts to what we don’t yet understand, or don’t yet know. 

Some questions I’ve been asking myself lately...

:: Can I let my triggers be my greatest teachers today?

:: Who in my life is showing up as a mirror today and what might I be able to learn from it?

:: When was the last time I felt jealous, stuck or activated, and what might that experience be asking me to pay attention to?

:: Who have I not been listening to, ignored, or had out of my mind that I could really learn from?

We are one another’s mirrors. We are one another's teachers. Here’s to the information gathering you are being asked to do today for the betterment of your own evolution and the evolution of our world.

Morgan Harper Nichols :: https://morganharpernichols.com/

changing ourselves, so we can create change in our world.

To be on a healing journey means to be willing to change. In Buddhism they talk about change being the only constant, the only thing we can truly ever depend on. Change is the only absolute.

We have all experienced adverse reactions to change. We have all experienced stepping into change kicking and screaming, stepping into change despite our will. I understand. 

I also understand what it’s like to crave change so deeply, we can almost feel desperate, paralyzed by the enormity of the desire for it.

One thing is absolutely clear from everything our world has been experiencing, we are changing. White friends: you can either be a part of the change, or let it drag you along kicking and screaming. Personally, I choose the way my teachers and teachings have taught me, a way that has never led me astray, and even amongst the enormity of emotions, and the enormity of the problems, I believe in this way :: the way of love. I choose the path of love and that today means to choose to let my own world views evolve, change, and grow as our world does. To look at where I have been the problem, and to explore where I can be more of a partner, an ally. Not where I can be part of the solution because though solutions are where we are heading, this is not about fixing anything. This is about dismantling. This is about evolution. This is about rebuilding a structure that was not working. And just like every single healing journey ::  This is about changing ourselves, so we can create change in our outer world. 

It’s okay if the way you are stepping into this evolution is not the same as the next person. It’s okay if it’s different from your partner, or your best friends, or your social circles, or your social media following. It is okay if the way you are stepping into this is your way. You are entitled to do this your way. You know you best, and may you support yourself in the way you choose. But if the way you choose is with hate, is with reluctance to change, fear of evolution, I understand. I understand though there is no longer room for those emotions to drive. Step back into love. Ask yourself what you might be afraid of, hold yourself through the evolution, and let your change, and the change of the world support in the uprising no matter what. 

Rise up together friends, for we most certainly have an opportunity to be a part of the uprising together. 

And a little note to each and everyone of you, because if you chose to be on this mailing list you have chosen to heal. You have chosen to let healing be a lifestyle, a way you evolve into all that you desire, all that you want this world to be, a way to make a difference, to make a better world, I love you, thank you, and I will continue to be here to support you in your healing, and unpacking of all things comfortable and uncomfortable. 

Radical Love FOR Justice

I had an entirely different newsletter planned, and scheduled to go out today, and then this weekend happened and suddenly everything I said was no longer the right message. So I sat down yesterday and here’s what came out….

I have always believed that love is a guiding light that will take us through the darkness. I believe this because I’ve watched it happen time and time again. I’m lucky enough to work with people, seeing upwards of 100 people a week oftentimes, watching every individual come together to better themselves, to heal, to open their hearts to more love. Day after day I watch love grow. It builds my faith in humanity, in the knowing that people are doing what they can to unravel their own pain, their traumas from the past, the hurt that they’ve caused others. Love will always win, but sometimes we have to go through an uprising to let love and justice reign.

I don’t want to get political here, though I know when we talk about race, the conversation can quickly become political. Instead I want to talk about Radical LOVE for the sake of Justice. 

A woman of color, an activist I love and whose work I follow @mspackyetti said beautifully “Not hate of people, but love for justice.” That is what we are experiencing currently, a fight for justice. Not love of justice. Love FOR justice. 

Now I KNOW because of the inherent nature of this topic that I will get unsubscribes, unfollowed, and comments back. That is a risk I must take. I cannot be silent any longer for fear of losing reach. I am in the work of love. The work of uncovering love to set yourself free. And today the work of love, the loving path requires fighting FOR.

These protests, not the riots, not the looting, not the criminal activity, not what we are seeing on the news, but the message behind the peaceful protests is the human spirit saying ENOUGH. If we want to keep the human spirit alive, we must all do our part. Black lives are instrumental to the human spirit. We don’t exist as a collective without them.

“Crying won’t save or feed a hungry child.” {Dave Matthews song lyric.} This line keeps running through my head over and over. My sadness cannot do shit to help save black lives. I need to do more. 

Listen more. 

Educate myself more. 

Have the hard conversations more. 

Speak out more. 

Unlearn more. 

Participate more. 

Love will hold us in our pain, love us in our darkest moments and show us how to walk together forward. I stand by this. Love is what brought this outcry of human emotion forward, and I know love will take us to more love. But there is no more love without justice.

If you’re feeling angry, sad, frustrated, confused, pissed off, and everything in between, I hear you. I see you. If you are not, I hear you and I see you where you are. Let us meet each other where we are, do better, and do more.

All living beings, all living things have rights. Being not racist is no longer enough. We need to fight for our brothers and sisters, a piece of our human spirit. We must fight for anti-racism so that there is possibility to live in a world of peace and love. A world where justice FOR all means something, bleeds through our beingness.

As a white woman of privilege, I don’t have answers, and it’s not my place to say either. I can only say what I have been doing for my part, which I can do more of of course, and  will be different from your part because we are all at different places in this conversation, in this fight. I will say :: consider the natural bias that you hold. The news you are consuming. The voices that trigger you. The emotions you feel. The emotions BIPOC might be feeling. Consider what you have learned. What you don’t yet know. What you might be in need of learning. Consider each other and let’s build a way forward for LOVE AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.

And if you’d like to hear from some of the prominent voices of this movement, some of the people I have been following and learning from, see below. These people and organizations have incredible resources, including language, education, causes to donate, and ways to get involved. Listen. Learn from them. & when you find yourself getting triggered, may you remember that is something in you to heal. Let love hold you in your trigger, hold you in your pain, and bring you through darkness. 

I love you all, and are here to support you however I can. May you show some love to someone you don’t know this week. 

Follow all of them for different reasons. 

@blklivesmatter

@blmlosangeles

@mspackyetti

@osopepatrisse

@laylafsaad

@wp4bl

@cleowade

@bldpwr

@nyjusticeleague

Why should I give people love who have hurt me?

In short :: Maybe you shouldn’t. Though it’s also possible that you could hurt yourself more by building a wall of conditions around love, then it does to let love flow through you.

Zazzle.com

In Expanded Wild Hearts this weekend this was a big question that was explored. When we are in pain, when we hold anger, we can be known to withhold our love for protection. That’s not bad or wrong, it’s just interesting to explore. If you are withholding your love for protection, the question becomes how much are you protecting yourself from allowing more love in? From allowing it  to be the way in which you engage in the world?

This is not about giving your love to people who don’t deserve it. It’s not about letting them “off the hook” for how they have treated you or what they did. It’s not about forgiving them, in fact it’s really not even about them at all. When you protect yourself from love by creating conditions around it, you’re cutting yourself off from the energy of love.

We can’t force ourselves to forgive. 

We can’t make love exist in some place where it doesn’t.

We can’t, and we shouldn’t be giving our love away freely to anyone and anything no matter what.

But we can choose the forgiving path time and time again.

We can choose to let the love lens be the way in which we view the world, time and time again. 

We can allow the grace of love to be the root of our decisions, time and time again. 

We can meet ourselves where we are, time and time again, and we can continue breaking down the need for defense or protection of any kind. 

Giving and receiving love from those you have a strained relationship with, or those who have hurt you is not about those people at all. It’s about living in the presence of love. It’s about letting love be the force of grace that flows in and out of your life. Unconditional love can and does have strong boundaries. Loving people for who they are, as they are, without needing to change them, accepting them for who they are, as they are, without giving from your own well, that is a powerful love boundary. Exploring our own love boundaries is like holding your beautiful hearts little hand as it ventures out across the street to where it was hurt once before. Hold your hearts hand, and discover the love boundaries that are right for you. 

The grace of love, letting love move freely in and out of your life, in and out of your body, is usually going to be the harder choice. The body wants to be protected, it will do what it needs in order to survive the emotional experience or trauma you have been through. But once you are no longer in the trauma itself, can you recognize the new place you’re in and choose to step forward into more healing?

Giving love is a symbol, it sets you free, as much as it sets the one who hurt you free.  If you aren’t at a place where you can wish loving wishes okay. There is nothing wrong with you, and you are not in the wrong place, that is where you are. You can’t force yourself to be ready to give and receive love to those who have hurt you before you are ready. That’s okay. There’s no need to jump into love if that’s not where you are. Send them well wishes. Send them peace. Send them health. Ask your body what you are ready to send, and practice, imagine, sending that life force their way. Imagine receiving it from them. You can work your way through various energy forces, sending and receiving whatever it is you are ready for today. Notice where you are, meet yourself there, and maybe somewhere down the line there will be a time when you can give and receive love without conditions, love without protection. But if today is not that day, okay, start with where you are. 

You are worthy of exuding unconditional love each and every day. Worthy of feeling full on unconditional love yourself. Giving love to someone who has hurt you is less about them and more about you. You are the one you are healing. You are the one who desires to live in unconditional love. 

From riding the waves of our emotions, to choosing to love through the uncertainty

Riding the waves of my emotions is a wildly familiar sentiment to me. When you let emotions wash through you, you’re able to process them, get the information you need from them, understand the messages in your pain, and move forward. But in today’s world, riding the waves of emotions holds a whole new meaning. The depth of uncertainty that lies beyond the wave, after we’ve done the riding, is too big. After a really big wave you usually get a break for at least a minute. That’s how it works in the ocean. The big waves come in sets, maybe 2 or 3 of monstrous sizes, and then you’re able to coast a bit. Bobbing up and down over some baby waves, your body relaxes, you sink into the water or float on top, it’s like being cradled by the ocean. 

We are in uncertain times yet we crave certainty, an attempt to grasp on to the future. And so how do we get comfortable with uncertainty when you have no idea when the waves will subside? 

We trust. We trust in the course correction as it unfolds before us. We trust that we are being initiated to step into more. We trust in the natural evolution of life’s cycles. We trust that our overthinking will not control us, and we fall back into our hearts.  We trust in the love. 

Love is never promised, never certain and yet we choose to trust it time and time again. We choose this because the other option is to stay in self-hatred, stay in loneliness, stay in doubt, stay in the small cave that was built for us from our stories, but we are now keeping intact ourselves. Let love in and you begin to discover the untamed, wild heart living at the bottom of your being.

This is the genius of this moment. Can you, faced with all that you are being faced with, still choose to let love in, to trust in the love, in its path, and to stay on the mission to discover what lives in the untamed space of your wild heart?

An exercise for tending to and caring for the untamed space of your wild heart?

Write down a list of all the emotions you feel today, last night. The good, bad, the ugly. Dump them all down on paper. 

Close your eyes and feel the energy of what those are bringing you. Imagine them physically washing through, and then out of, your body. 

Get a picture of your happy place. Or close your eyes and see a picture of your happy place. 

Feel the energy of this space in your heart.

Say out loud…

I trust in the energy of my happy place. 

I trust in the love my happy place brings me. 

I trust in letting this love into my heart.

I trust in this love.

I trust in love.

I trust in love.

Imagine this love roaming through your body. Feel it, basque in it.

You are worthy of discovering and trusting the love that lives in your wild heart. 

*I will add that I recognize my privilege as I write this. I recognize that my inconveniences are someone else’s luxury. I recognize my privilege and still choose to believe in the sentiment of the piece.

To choose freedom liberates us all.

Your stories, your pain, your frustrations, they are valid. They are understood by some, they are felt by many, and they are completely valid. For me, what I refuse to allow is for my pain, my stories, frustrations or fears to run my life. I refuse to allow my pain to drive, or to sit in my pain and frustrations for longer than necessary. That’s not to say there is a timeline on your healing, or on feeling your pain, in fact it’s the opposite.

I’m saying, feel your pain, allow your pain, your frustrations to be there, and when you are ready, pick yourself up off the bathroom floor. 

There is a lot we can learn from our pain. Our pain has stories to tell, they have healing messages, lessons to learn, and heart-opening expansion to offer. And if where you are right now is in your pain, then that is where you are. May you meet yourself there with kindness. But you won’t be in pain forever, it doesn’t last that long, unless of course, you choose to make it do so. There is and will always be space for you to feel your pain, your trauma. Our nervous system post trauma requires some resetting and everyone’s reset looks different. What I invite you to ask yourself however is are you waiting for the reset to arrive for you, or are you inviting it in? To choose to feel your pain, heal through your stories is one thing. To choose to sit in suffering is quite another, and you don’t have to sit in suffering. 

I cried for the world today. I didn’t understand it, or what I was crying for specifically, but I cried for all those in pain, for all the helpers. There are some painful things going on in the world right now, and so I wept for the world. It is important to create space for pain to move through us. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor tells us that emotions take 90 seconds to wash through our bodies. That is to say that if you feel your feeling as it arises, when it arises, truly feel it, not suppress it, or let it drive you actions, but close your eyes, focus on the feeling, feel it, and let it move through your body. Then, all it takes is 90 seconds for that emotion to move through you and be released. 

When you feel pain you have an opportunity to let the emotion move through you. When you allow this, it gives it permission to be released, as it’s ready to be released. When it gets released, it makes room for incredible things, more love, more synchronicities, universal flow. 

To choose freedom from your pain doesn’t just free yourself. To choose freedom from your pain liberates those around you. It gives them permission to do the same, it gives them an opportunity to see another way of being, it gives them freedom from their own suffering, (when they’re ready of course). 

To choose freedom liberates us all.

Suffering is not the way I choose to live my life. I choose freedom. And I hope I’ll see you on the freeing path. 

Pinterest

If you’re ready to free yourself from pain or frustrations here are some journaling prompts that can support you and maybe even give you some release. And you know there’s always more breathwork or guided meditations from yours truly as well. 

• What emotions want to be washed through you today? 

• What pains, frustrations or fears, do you have? Write them down, let them move through you, and immediately go to the next questions.

• Are you more comfortable sitting in suffering than you are possibility? How so?

• What does it mean to you to choose freedom and to liberate yourself from your pain?

• What tools, techniques, support systems can you lean on to support you in moving through your emotions?

Creating boundaries with so much outside noise

Pinterest here.

Been a hellava last few weeks. How are you doing? For real, you, how are you doing? And I’m not asking for your I’m fine answer, unless truly, you are in fact fine. I want to know how you are doing. Feel free to respond to this email here, or just take this note in and respond in your heart. 

That’s an interesting question to ask these days isn’t it? It seems there are a lot of ways to answer this right now and that’s likely because moment to moment the answer changes. Two weeks ago for me, the change occurred moment to moment. Then last week the answer would change hour to hour. So far, and it is only Monday as I write this, it’s shifted into day by day. I’ll take it nonetheless. I’m doing everything in my power to show-up for you right now in ways that you need, and I am grateful to connect with you, and have these important conversations. So truly, how are you?

The answers I have been getting from clients in private sessions, and from my groups over the last few weeks have been a range, as to be expected, though most of them are fairly on theme with one another. Last week’s theme was feeling overwhelmed from the noise in our outside world. People had been living, breathing, feeling the intensity from Covid-19 for the last 2 weeks or so here in LA, more if you’re elsewhere, and sitting in the constant noise was too much. It’s exhausting, it’s like trying to sit in an emergency-mode for a long period of time. It’s too much of an emergency all the time, at some point you have to give your body a rest. And so together we talked about boundaries, about what those looked like. We talked about the almost yearning desire to be blissfully ignorant, and we talked about the exhaustive fear, panic swim that the world was feeling.

For many of us, this is something new that this particular set of humans who are alive on the planet today, have not experienced yet. And as with any new situation, it requires an evaluation of self, an evaluation of our life and of how we are addressing the two together. Part of this evaluation is learning about the new boundaries that you might need to put in place so you can work with the collective energy and not always be living in an emergency. Most people I worked with last week, were learning about the boundaries that they were in need of as it relates to this new world. We explored the concept of boundaries, and discovered what boundaries had been crossed based on claiming and assessing the emotions they were holding. That is how I can spot that a boundary has been crossed in a client, if I notice they are feeling triggered, and almost unclear on where it’s coming from, then it’s likely time for a good boundary to be set. 

How to create boundaries with the outside noise can begin with noticing how you’re feeling. Take stock of what emotions have been coming up for you lately. Is there anything there that you might be able to support, protect, and not in a defensive kind of way, but rather, hold, or care for? Then ask yourself, what do you need to do to care for you? I’m sure you will get some clear boundaries coming from this place. 

To be clear, a boundary isn’t something you ask someone else to do or hold for you, but rather something you set, and take action on to uphold. You are the sole human responsible for upholding your own boundaries. If a boundary has been crossed, you have an action you can take in order to best support yourself. Though it can be set out of self-protection, it is best if the boundary is set with love, firm love included in the ‘with love’ category. Here’s an example of a specific boundary :: COVID-19 text message threads were causing my client anxiety, specifically with the way in which a certain friend was handling it, so she set a boundary around engaging or participating in those threads. She told the people on that thread that she would not like to receive any more text messages about this subject, removed herself, and started a new thread with friends for other conversations to happen. If she still gets sent text messages, she can choose to block that friend, and tell her she is being blocked with love because not talking about this is her boundary, or she can simply choose to not read them. 

Usually I know when the new boundary that I’m setting is right because it makes my whole body take a deep breath. You might feel your body feeling a little lighter, or stronger because it feels taken care of, heard. Pay attention to the shift in your body when you’ve landed on the boundary itself, if it doesn’t feel supportive, keep creating, you’ll get there. 

I thought I would share with you some of the boundaries we discovered were best for these clients. These boundaries will of course be different from person to person depending on who you are, what you hold, how much you want and/or are able to hold, and what works for you and your body. Keep that in mind as you read through these boundaries, but feel free to use some of them if they support your well-being too. 

• Staying off social media in the morning, and at night.

• Limiting social media use to 2 hours per day, and setting screen time allotment to notify you when you arrive there.

• Informing friends and family that you will not be responding to COVID-19 text messages throughout the day, or at all, but you would be happy to FaceTime or talk about something else together

• Morning’s (can claim a certain time) are dedicated to you and your self-care

• Make a list of trusted news sources, and unfollow all other accounts/limit engagement with other accounts so you are only taking in news from your trusted news source

• Consciously choosing what energies to engage with both in your personal virtual world and digital presence world

With so much outside noise, we must be taking care of ourselves, setting boundaries is a beautiful and empowering way to do just that. We have a choice on how much we let that outside noise affect our inner world. And what a beautiful choice we get to make, because I don’t know much else that is as empowering as taking care of myself, my body and my heart.

Stay safe out there. Here to support you however I can. 

All the love,

Jenna

Feeling sensitive to the ups and downs of our world right now?

Like so many of you I’m sure, I have been feeling it all lately. One minute I’m uplifted, I know the gravity of this situation, but can still feel the spirit, the possibility, the interconnectedness of our world, hear the Italians singing in the streets, the penguins at the closed zoo wandering around meeting the other animals, the Earth receiving so much nourishment from this rain, seeing the Spirit of this world. The next minute I feel fear pulling at my heart, saddened by the hoarding of supplies, the elderly who need help, and the people who aren’t taking this seriously. It’s too much. 

I sit down for my regular work schedule from home (though I always work from home anyway) and I can’t seem to function the same way I used to. It’s as though my heart is pulled between the Spirit of possibility, of how I can help, and doomsday. This is what it’s like to be a highly sensitive person living in a highly connected world when times are wildly unpredictable. 

One minute your heart settles into your body, and the next in the middle of a regular task like responding to emails, I feel like I could cry. The back and forth is debilitating. 

What I know for sure is this, compassion, and gentle vulnerability is the only answer right now. This is the best thing you, we, can do for ourselves right now. In order to show up with grace and ease for our world, in order to keep our bodies healthy, and be a leader in our communities, we must be practicing compassion and gentle vulnerability with ourselves and with one another. If you need to go cry in the middle of a task, go cry. If you need a dance party break to bring some laughter, and joy into your day, here’s my favorite dance song right now. (and check out my instagram LIVE story which has my dance party from yesterday for you to join in) Do not expect yourself to operate the same way you did last week or the week before. Things are different today, and as we adjust to what that means for our world, for your family, and for you personally, you need compassion, gentle vulnerability and grace.

There is only so much you can control and the rate of your heartbeat is one of those things.

Soften to your heart, listen to what you need and give in to you. Create boundaries. If you don’t like how you’re feeling on social media, turn your phone over, scream and then dance it out. If the news from friends and the articles they’ve read is too much for you, tell them you can’t hear about it anymore, you love them and ask what else you can talk about. Look for the compassion in the world, uplift those around you with stories of good, heartwarming stories. There is a lot of joy in uncertainty, sometimes you just have to seek it out.

We will get through this together, that I know. In the meantime, where can you call forward more compassion? And where are you being asked to be a leader for your community in bringing that forward? You are powerful, and right now your heart needs you, and your world needs you. 

So take care of yourselves beautiful people. Stay healthy. Be there for one another. And I hope you know, I’m always here for you too. 

All the love,

Jenna

Image from : Be Just Fear Not Tumblr

Finding your voice.

I am inspired by activists that speak up for issues and world views that are close to my heart. I often sit in awe scrolling on instagram through the many accounts of strong leaders in their field speaking their message, crystal clear on what it is they feel called to say.

Speaking up can feel like a scary thing for many people. I know it is something I have felt, and still do feel when it comes to certain issues or topics of conversation. And I’m not talking about speaking up just in terms of an instagram page. Speaking up references speaking up when something in your circle, in your world, is doing something that is wrong in your eyes. It means speaking up to your mother, father, family members about what’s important to you. It means fighting for any topic/conversation that you feel called to claim. It means allowing people to disagree, to unsubscribe, to not understand you or your view points. Speaking up means hearing another's perspective when it’s difficult, when you don’t agree, and speaking truth to what you feel in your heart anyway.

Speaking up does not have to be confrontational though we have for some reason given it this lens. Speaking up can feel confronting for many because if you feel called to speak up, then it’s likely because you feel passionately about something. And if you feel passionately about something, it’s likely that someone else also feels passionately on the other side of your perspective. The essence of speaking up does not need to be about anything other than an opinion or perspective being put into the world. 

When I am speaking up, it feels fulfilling because I’m giving space to something that though it might be uncomfortable, I believe should have space in the world. I feel a release, a sense of duty, importance in allowing my voice to be heard. I also believe that when using our voices, we must allow ourselves to feel clear. When I spoke up recently in a way I had not ever done before, I felt the channels in my body clear. I felt the power of the message come through my body clearly, and it’s because of this that the importance of the message, the way it wanted to come out into the world was able to be delivered in a natural expression of my words. 

I also believe that you can speak up strongly, beautifully, and respectfully. I believe it can be done with strength and with kindness, and that in fact, when done from this place, the message tends to be more impactful. Speaking up for me, using your voice is not about scoldingly, blaming or shaming. It’s about doing what you feel is right for you, your body, your family and what you stand for. It’s about allowing yourself to be one of the many voices that make our world go round. 

Words have power, and you cannot take them back. Be conscious, be kind with your expressions, and find the voice that wants to take up space.Speaking up means finding your voice, understanding where you want to use it and then claiming your voice.

Image from Artist :: Paper Moon Print Art

If speaking up has ever been difficult, or uncomfortable for you, if you’re not sure what your voice is, or you have some idea, but you don’t know how to begin allowing the words to take up space, here are some subtle, but powerful ways you can move the energy that is your voice. 

:: find where the topics that you care about are on instagram and join the conversation. Start by observing if that feels best, and then move into saying something soft, simple or easy. Let your words find themselves for you. 

:: bring up something you’ve been feeling called to say but have not yet, to a dear and trusted friend. Talk with them about all that you’re holding on this subject or issue and share what you’re feeling called to say or do. Tell them you’re vulnerable, nervous, and let them hold you with compassion.

:: write out exactly what you’ve been wanting to speak up about in a journal, writing as though you are having the difficult conversation, asking for the thing, in real time. 

:: write about the topic/issue that you’re feeling most triggered by lately. Write everything that you feel, and think about this topic. And if that feels like enough, beautiful. If something more feels right, edit what you wrote, and submit your thought piece to some online publications that the piece might work with. Who knows who might see it, or who it might help?

Be sure to love yourself through each and every one of these. Depending on where you are, each one will feel different, maybe easier and harder than others at times, which is why extreme kindness and self-compassion will be important.