Creating Ways to Remember Who I AM

There are times when we “forget” who we are and struggle with how to reconnect with the magical being we know ourselves to be. 

During these times of forgetting, or feeling ourselves in reaction to the world around us, it is necessary to step out of the chaos and recalibrate ourselves back into the ability to be present and respond to life.  

There are often signals happening to let us know we are neglecting to support ourselves and we have forgotten to care for our roots.  This may look like too many overcommitted days, for others it is a series of emotional overwhelms, and for others, it might be the physical communications of aching bodies or the onset of feeling a cold approaching.   In order to make deep and affective changes in our ability to remember, we need to train ourselves to do it differently.  We need to spend some time nurturing our roots so we can stretch and grow. 

I suggest the best way to do this is when we are away from the fray of work and activity.  Use these quieter times to find our point of stillness, and slowly re-introduce this calm mastery into those areas when it is most difficult to maintain or remember. 

Here is an example.   When I was younger, with three adolescent children involved in many school and after school activities, it was easy to forget how to stay centered and in my mastery.  It was imperative to find time in the day before the chaos started after work and school, to create a balanced, centered me.   Time was difficult to find in my busy schedule.   Yet, I needed time for self nurturing, which made it the easier to bend and respond to the needs of clients, family, my own scheduled events, and stay in balanced energy. 

To create time for myself, I walked.  I got up early, before the rest of the house was awake, and took the dog and myself for a long walk.  We did a 3 mile loop, down the street to the river trail.  This took me along both banks and across two bridges, and back up the steep trail to home.  I made sure there were no distractions with me, no phone, no music, no one to talk to…just me.  With each step I let go of the lists in my head and released the monkey mind, let it untangle from all the pressure of the day ahead.  The only focus was on my breath, my footsteps, the trees and sounds of the river, and the colors of the sunrise.  I took time at the first bridge to stop and breathe out all the thoughts that did not work for me, giving them to the river.  Sauntering back to the house at the end of the walk, there was fullness in my soul and I was in my body and at peace….Alive, alert, and open to what lie ahead.  I felt empowered and curious about the day.  I felt…..that was the most important part.  I felt my body and my presence in it.

I successfully created a bridge from my true self to my outer life by anchoring myself deeply and feeling the roots of my essence deep into the earth.   I taught myself with each day, with each walk, that I was here, solid, open, and ready for what was possible that day like a tree in full bloom. 

As we uncover the depth of our skills and gifts of the light and love we have inside, we will have challenges to how we hold our light open and be truly receptive to being the vehicle we know we are.  Whether it is family and kids, or work, health, or the constantly shifting energies of these times we can reach down into ourselves and coax our true self forward.  This takes intention and practice.  Here is a way to break it down into simple steps

Steps for creating consistent light.

1.       Notice when your stressors are present and where chaos resides in your day.  Is there a pattern?

2.       Identify the ways that stressors can create chaos and how it feels in your body and what your triggers might be.  Is this physical within your body, environmental, or person oriented?

3.       Notice where there are spaces of time available around these stress areas.  What times are under your control?

4.       Start small and create some free, non stress time to cultivate internal peace, confidence, and trust in your gifts.  Pay attention to what opens you up to inner peace and what relaxes you into your body.

5.       Practice the tools of creating peace and transfer these tools into the stressful times.  Transfer your peace into the chaos.

6.       Pay attention.  Notice what blocks you from transferring the peace.  Notice what calms the chaos.  Notice, adjust, build, and feel.  

7.       From this place of balance, hold steady and step further into leadership, step into your full ability of being.                                                          

As we ground in the tools that stabilize us and use them, they hold us steady.  When we are steady, we are open and receptive beings of light, shining out in all directions….like the glimmering leaves on a beautiful tree, dancing in the sunshine, spreading joy to all that encounter us.  To me, this is the essence of being a fully present being.

Shimmer on.

Denise 

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Embracing simplicity, moving the soul into presence

In the early 1990’s there was a wonderful movement inspired by a book written by Duane Elgin called Voluntary Simplicity.  His book focused on rebirthing the concept of simplicity much honored by Henry David Thoreau and his experiences living on Walden Pond almost a hundred and fifty years earlier.   Both Thoreau and Elgin valued the ability to step away from the distractions of the busy life, create quiet space, and focus on what really matters.  Both men wrote about how lifestyle changes on the outside create a path to consciousness and awareness.

I embraced the Voluntary Simplicity movement in 1995 and spent years with many passionate writers and leaders teaching classes, presenting at conferences, writing and co-hosting a radio show on creating simple practices of identifying a path of conscious consumption, evaluating how to physically downsize in ways that could lead to spiritual connection and relationship deepening.  It was a wonderful time and yet, it was not the right time.  How could it be?  We were trying to tap our audiences on the shoulder and ask them to downsize in a decade of supersizing!  During the ‘90’s our western culture was more interested in supersized meals, buying homes with low mortgage rates, using tax discounts for mega ton vehicles, and encouraging us to spend, desire more things, and focus on what we could build and accumulate.  After years of trying to create changes, the Voluntary Simplicity movement moved to the back burner.

Now, as we navigate our path forward through 2013 after the Shift, and we are all learning how to adjust out of a dependence on doing, into the divine feminine energy of being, it feels like it is time to embrace the beauty of simplicity.  It is time to re-evaluate how we can create a conscious way of living. It is time to look at how life can happen more organically, from within…from our consciousness.

If you are aware of the predominance of doing in your life and you are yearning for access to your deeper being, to your soul, here are a couple of ideas on how to discover a quieter, simpler way of being.

1. Take a few moments to assess your participation in the outer doings of the world.  Do you have long work hours?  Do you feel exhausted?  Do you have too many responsibilities?  When you are not at work, what does your time off work feel like?  Is it jammed packed with social engagements, chores, tasks and activities?  Is your home filled with the TV, computer, music, and the incessant input of distractions?   Is there time in all of this for you to access some quiet time to getting to know the inner you?

2. Carve out time for quiet and inner stillness, start small and slowly build some time to invite your calm presence to emerge for the inner and outer noise.  One suggestion is to take a walk before you start your day, or after a full day, without headphones, without your cell phone, without someone to talk to, with only yourself.   Another idea is to spend some time outside.  When you get home, slip off your shoes and head outside to slowly water the plants after a long day at work.  When you are outside, pay attention to your senses.  Let nature reacquaint you with yourself. Use your senses to become completely present.  What does the grass feel like under your feet?  Can you hear the buzz of the bees, or the call of a bird?  Can you smell the flowers, the trees?  Is there a breeze? What color is the sky? Can you touch the petal of a plant, or the bark of a tree?

3. As you are walking or hanging outside, feel yourself expand, stay with the quiet, stay in that stillness and pay attention.  Lean in and become curious to what is there.  Ask it questions and notice what comes up for you.  Pay attention to what opens you up and what distances you from your inner being.  Follow the lead from within.  The bottom line is that your inner presence is there, with a soft voice, and this is your opportunity to create the space and time for you to get to know this voice, to feel this voice.  

4. As you carve out the essential time for yourself and the joy and comfort levels increase with your relationship with your soul, pay attention to how you automatically make choices to create a quieter place at home, in your car, in your office.  Expand this happiness into how you take yourself out in the world.  It is my experience that when I am in sync with my soul, my outer needs fall into step with my inner needs.  Busyness seems less appealing than stepping outside and observing the full moon.  Cleaning and managing all my things becomes tedious, and I wonder what I am doing with all this stuff?  I have found myself seeking to create deeper relationships with others who want to include both me and my soul presence.  

Being in partnership with our soul, feeling the love possible, being in the moment and enjoying life, this is why we are here.  It is this inner peace and soul presence that guides us forward.  Taking the time to nurture this beautiful relationship is a gift we give ourselves and it is a gift we give the world.  When we are in sync with our soul, we chisel open opportunities, we let go of what shades or blocks our ability to shine, we connect with the greater collective, and we line up with our greater purpose.  Life becomes more effortless, and joy resides within us.  In this place we know the simple beauty of living in a world that moves in tandem with us.  We experience how others step into tandem with us and we shift how we live, how we consume, how we love, how we work, and how we envision a future.  We create what blooms within and around us.

This is how I see a simplicity movement.  Starting from within and moving forward in partnership with our true self…Moving the soul forward.  Forward into a new vision on how we live on this Earth.

Living simply, everyday, by choice.

Denise

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A Quantumness of Being

Many of us have been curious about the ongoing changes taking place on Earth since the Shift of 2012.  With an anticipatory curiosity, some of us spent the last couple of years learning how to step beyond the third dimension physically and became more comfortable with the multidimensional energy of quantum time and space.   Others are learning now to see what is behind the veil of this 3D world.  And some are just starting to get curious.

There are tools and skills to help lift some of the limitations of our five main senses, encourage development of our intuition, learn how to access our hearts, and step into the quantumness of being.  Here are a couple of tools I use in my coaching to work specifically with nurturing our relationship with the soul and expanding into the multidimensionality of the universe. 

This first tool is really good for those of us with chatty, overactive brains that are not always easy to quiet.  In order to communicate directly with your soul and cut through the chattiness, you teach your soul to bypass the brain and talk to you through your body.  You teach your body the simplicity of communicating an intuitive Yes or a No. 

Start by standing next to a chair or wall and steady yourself.  Take a few deep breaths to center yourself, feel your feet on the ground, and ask your brain to help you out.  Set the intention of communicating directly to your deepest presence and ask for guidance.  Ask your body to show you what a Yes feels like.  Sink down into your body and let go of any perceived answer, let your body show you.  Pay attention… Do you fall forward, to the right, to the left, or backwards? For me, I tilt forward for Yes.  Once you've discovered your body’s answer, test it out a few times with a few simple questions to make sure you can feel the tipping feeling naturally in your body as you ask them.  Do this process again to find out how your body gives you a No answer. 

Now that you know how your soul/heart speaks to you through your body, it is essential to ask the question without judgment or limitations.  I state my questions by saying “Is it in my highest interest to ____________?”  The more specific you are with this question, the easier it is to feel the answers.  Start with simple ones like what to eat, what movie to see, who to hang out with, then move onto more difficult questions when you can feel a mental attachment or stubbornness taking over.  For example, when I know there is a difficult conversation coming up with someone, I can create a flurry of scenarios that take me into the drama and cause me to procrastinate having the conversation.  Checking in with my body gives me an opportunity to cut through the drama and uncover the real issue to be discussed.  The conversation becomes clean and clear.

Learning to incorporate this tool into your daily life can have so much value.  It is like having a cheat sheet of how to live authentically available to us at all times.  Do you remember when you were little and played the game Marco Polo in a swimming pool?  You would keep your eyes closed and try to figure out where everyone was in the pool.  By shouting out Marco, all you had to do was wait to hear the answer, adjust your direction and start moving towards who you targeted.  Using the Yes and No process is the same.  Am I on the right path?  Is this in my highest interest?  If there is a Yes, proceed.  It is that simple and wonderful.

The second key tool is also working with your body as a conduit for information.  This is a good tool to use when there is doubt or the need to get past what we “think” we know and get a glimpse of the bigger picture.  This gets you past what you understand in the 3D world and opens you up to the quantumness of the whole story.

Start again with your feet firmly grounded, take a few deep breaths and ask your body to open up and listen, really listen to the question and respond.  Then ask the question to the deepest part of your remembering, and wait for the answer.  When the answer comes, it is usually a shiver up the back and sometimes up the neck into the back of the head.  THAT is a confirmation.

Here is an example of how this tool has worked for me.   My boyfriend and I were chatting the other day about my mom.  He has the magnificent way of seeing her; he loves her energy and understands her far more than I could even hope to understand her, even as her daughter.  When I asked him what his connection is with my mother, he pushed it off, diminished the idea of anything different than “normal”, and told me everyone knows how to connect.  And, the next thing he asked was why? Why does he feel so strongly about her?  I asked him if we could do a quick exercise… to close his eyes, ground himself, and would he please listen with all his heart to a question I would ask and would he tell me what he felt in his body in response.  I then asked him if my mother is part of his soul family and had he spent other lifetimes with her?  He listened intently, and a shiver ran up his spine, and his eyes filled with tears.  Yes.  He said yes, he had.  As he said this, he just glowed from within.  He opened up for a brief moment, he saw what was possible. 

Then, as quickly as he opened up, his mental process kicked in again, and he went back into doubt and wanted to know how this was possible, how he could know that…..etc. He dropped back into the relentless questioning that so many of us do when we are in doubt. 

It is at this time that it is good to immediately go back to the first tool and let the Yes and No processes guide you away from doubt and keep pursuing the AHA you just experienced.  This will help you trust your intuition and build a new way of understanding the quantumness of all things.  As you communicate with your soul through your body and feel the sensation of your body leaning and answering, you learn to trust the answer and your truth.  You open to the guidance of your soul.  You are in a beautiful relationship with your soul.

This is a way, an opportunity to access more information.  We go below the surface of what we see without our physical five main senses and ask at a deeper quantum and soul level. 

Stepping out beyond what is known…this is an adventure…this is a quantumness of being.

Denise

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Consciously Manifesting

The concepts of manifesting have been around for along time, and most of us grew up with the financial ideas of Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich, the motivational approach of focused on Fake It Till You Make It, and the spiritual principles of The Law of Attraction.  All are good tools to use when exploring manifesting, yet, as we progress through the year of 2013, we are being asked to move out of our heads into our hearts.  We are being asked to release the idea of creating what we want from our thinking and believing mental perspective.  The process of releasing our dependence on our mental manifesting requires a great deal of discipline and effort for most of us.  The old ways of imagining, concentrating, holding the intention, and bringing to manifest does work, but it is difficult work. 

There are easier ways.  When approaching manifesting from the heart, we transition from form and what we can see, touch, and mentally trust, into energy. This is very different.  We are bringing consciousness into our manifesting.  By dropping into our hearts we can let go of what it looks like, or what form it takes, it is inviting what we would like to manifest to present itself to us. We let go of confining our wants into form.  We drop into how it feels to create what we desire, how it feels to see it as already present, and allow the energy of the full experience to hold within us. By doing this, we co-create what we would like to manifest.  We align our hearts and our essence together and the energy is so much more powerful than what we can do with simply our minds.  We are now fully connected.

By offering ourselves in alignment with the universe, we call to what we want to manifest and the energy begins to line up with us to provide.  We are that powerful, we are that significant.  We are that good at manifesting.

It is just switching from one tool to another …and we all know that we often stubbornly stick to what we know and feel comfortable with, instead of spending the time to get to know a new method or new tool that take some training!

This is a cool new tool that works effortlessly once we get the hang of it.  Think of the story of Harry Potter and how strange it felt to him to learn how to use his magical wand.  Then, month after month, year after year, it became a part of him and he was able to grow and mature in how he used it.

Manifesting is not something to struggle with.  It is a surrender and release into our hearts and allowing ourselves to feel what we want and desire, and trust that it is already happening.  Feel, trust, and create….the redefined words for 2013.

So, set some time aside over the next few days and allow your mind to soften and drop into your heart and imagine what is possible from that spot and see what happens.

Many blessings.

Denise

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Let's talk about feelings...

For years and years now there have been constant reminders to move from our heads to our hearts as we walk through life.  This has made sense to some, and yet, for many of us, this has been an illusive goal.  Our reliance on creating from our minds has served us well over the last few generations (or so it seemed) and letting go of the idea of being able to figure things out has made the transition from the head to the heart more difficult.   I had to let go of something I knew, something I could depend on, and open to what it really means to come from the heart….which was unknown to me. 

As a baby boomer, there is an entire industry of self help books and programs aimed at teaching us the skills to quiet the mind in the areas of inner simplicity, de-cluttering the mind and creating stillness, deepening into mindfulness, and the “Zen” of living.  All aimed at helping us learn the tools to go inward instead of being dependent on the outer forms of life.  As a self help junkie since the 1980’s I have collected many of these books and read them.  I have purchased guided meditations, gone to weekend retreats, and even taught others what I have been learning along the way.  The process of quieting the mind was working to a degree, yet the transition to the heart was still mostly vague to me.

I had the gift of a true spiritual guide appear in my life a few years ago.  She taught the concept of allowing us to feel, to seek out our feelings above all else.  I struggled with this and for months and months I would use the phrase, the F word…You know, the word FEEL, because it was difficult to allow this part of me to emerge and become present in my day and I would often become frustrated nurturing this new way of being into a way of life.  Yet I hung in there and kept learning the value of how to feel, to really feel.

Last year, in the few months before December, there was a barrage of very good teachers and guides, offering essays, blogs, and simple steps for awareness of what was possible with the approaching Shift.  I prepared throughout the year for what could be possible, I read most of what could be found and took it on, like the junkie I know myself to be!  Yet this work was different.  This work was specifically aimed at opening the heart, and opening ourselves up to our feelings….empowering our emotions… allowing our emotions to transition into feelings in the body.  

It was there, this awareness of how to connect through our feelings, that I learned how to feel the presence of myself in my body, to feel my heart, and to learn to trust what I felt, over what I thought.  I began to see my mind as an over active computer most of the time, spewing all sorts of data out there to guide, educate and inform, and holding onto much of the old histories and stories, much of what I was emotionally ready to release.  As I deepened my skills, went after my feelings, I could feel the rigidness of my mind, and I could contrast it with the softness and compassion exuding from my heart.  I was learning how to let my heart guide me….finally.

Now, as we have passed the mid mark of the year, there are signs all over our country, all over the world, of people awakening to the feelings of their hearts and following these feelings.  Yes!  There is an awakening going on, out on the planet, simultaneous to the awakening I finally discovered within myself. 

We are no longer separated from ourselves.  The ability to match a creative idea or concept to a feeling within the body has bridged the separation we have all experienced between what we think and what we feel.  Opening to the surrender of an emotion, and the sensations within our bodies, allows the emerging feelings to release us from the repetitive thought patterns that have restricted us from truly living.  Accepting all the different forms of feelings has opened us up from the limited 3D world and provided the access to the many additional dimensions possible.  Feelings… these are the transition portals into a way of living in the moment, seeing the possibilities, and detaching from the rigidity of how we exist, into how we create life in a new way.  Feelings have offered us freedom…Freedom to grow and expand.

My dear aunt is in her early eighties and she is on her computer all the time, reading and tracking what is out there.  I spoke with her the other day and she told me her favorite quote for last week.   “Don’t believe everything you think.”  I agree, and I would add, believe everything you feel.

The lyrics to the Avicii song Levels….

I get a good feeling

It’s a feeling that I’ve never, never had before!

Enjoy your feelings,

Denise  

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Tibetan Bowls

Last Friday night I participated in a group session using ancient Tibetan bowls.  Bill Cael, the bowl master, comes to Whitefish a couple of times a year with his bowls and holds these amazing healing sessions.  In preparation for the bowls, we were asked to set our intentions.  We were asked to let go of something, and to set the intention for what we want to allow and create.  We shared these with the group, and then laid down to open to the bowls.

The first session was a little over an hour long, with all of the bowls playing at different times, sending out deep, old vibrations to open and realign us.  I paid attention and followed the pace of the bowls for a while, and as my body felt liquefied and non existent, my mind held on as long as it could, my ego striving to keep me present in the room and not surrendering to the bowls.  Then Bill played this ancient 15 inch bowl and the resonance from that bowl hit my cheek bones and the vibration lifted top of my head off and I was gone, completely surrendered to the cosmos and all that was possible.

When he completed this first part of the evening, it took our group a long time to re-gather ourselves back into our bodies and become aware of the room and those around us.  We all agreed that something really deep took place in the room with these new bowls.  Next, we each had an opportunity to lie down and do an individual healing with two large bowls on either side of our heads and one on a chakra that presented itself for the work.  For me, it was my second chakra, where my hips have been tight and I have felt restricted in aligning my body with my intention to move forward.

At the end of the evening we were asked to be gentle with our bodies and limit our access to technology and music with lyrics, and film…all those components that have influence over us.  It was necessary to honor the process of the bowls and allow integration to take place.  I was told it could take a couple of days because of the power of the two large bowls.  Good advice, necessary advice…. and for me, by Saturday morning it was apparent that I needed more time to integrate and it was important to get out in nature and separate myself from the hum and buzz of our busy mountain town in full tourist season!

Ted and I loaded up the truck and took off to Little Terriault, a high mountain lake up north only 30 miles from the Canadian border.  We spent two peaceful nights camping at the edge of a shallow clear lake under the tall evergreens, protected by a magnificent rock formation on the side of the mountain peak, basking in the almost full moon of Saturday and Sunday nights.  Between the sacred geometry and balanced encoding of nature, and the moon rays of the evenings, I aligned back into my body. 

Now, almost five days since the bowl healing, I am re-gathering still, yet in new form, knowing the old me, and this new me is here, scrubbed clean and ready to move forward.

The bowls were a magnificent gift, delivered to all of us up here in Northwest Montana during the time of the Grand Trine and the Full Moon.  I can only hope each of you has an opportunity to work with the bowls at some time in your life….they are life changing and bring the soul to the surface so beautifully. 

Peace to all.

Denise

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Looking Up

Ever since I was in college I have been dabbling with astrology, not seriously, just as entertainment.  I understood most of the sun signs and what they stood for, and it has always been fun to match people with their signs.

This all changed when I landed in Whitefish and started getting to know a few real students of the soul.  This small mountain town has some of the wisest people I have encountered in my life; running shops, building houses, running farms, and doing life on many different dimensions.  With this group of friends and colleagues, I have learned the beauty of astrology and developed the curiosity to know more.  It has not been easy, for I am not a scientist by nature, nor a mathematician (if you were to ask my dad or my 9^th grade teacher!).  Yet the more I learn about the planets and what energies they hold, and how they influence the other planets and the earth, the more I see the connections.

I am a scanner by nature and a collector of pieces of wisdom… I am sort of the packrat of bizarre information.   I entertain myself with putting odd pieces together and pulling information from them.  Astrology fits right in there.   I watch the Sol Lunar tables for the best times to fish, the tides and the moon cycles.  I play attention to Facebook and what my friends are experiencing, and what is posted.  I watch people in the grocery store and notice who is smiling, who is in pain, who has joy, and what they have in their grocery baskets.  I pay attention to the news.  And then I read the astrological insights for each week and I see the patterns.  I see the influences at work and I put them together with the outer actions of the world around me.  Most times I feel the connection of all things, and yet sometimes I feel like the crazy woman seeing the undercurrents when no one else seems to see them. 

As a coach, gently, I put these connections out there to start building awareness.  I post some stuff on Facebook.  I bring the weekly influences into my sessions and bring to awareness how they might be influencing the situation we are discussing, and I try to introduce the concept that there are influences in our world, our lives, our energies, that are bigger than we know and truly understand.  We have information presenting itself to us each day in the sky, by the layout of the planets and alignments, by the squares and trines, and there is information there that can make life so much easier and more fun. 

Richard Tarnas say that the heavenly bodies show us the big picture but don’t cause it.  I would add that once we can open our curiosity to this kind of big picture, there is all sorts of information there to guide us.  All we need to do is look up. 

Enjoy the stars, the planets, and the beautiful Full Moon this Sunday!

Peace exists there.

Denise

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Coaching into Consciousness

It is my opinion that working with a coach requires vulnerability… a deep, self exposing vulnerability.  For it is in the acknowledgement that we have tried all sorts of different approaches to solving a problem, or making a change, and we can reach out for someone else’s support and clarity to move forward.  This takes courage, to admit we are stuck, we do not know how to proceed, and courage to try something new. 

                              

As a coach, it is such an honor to work with a person when they are open and vulnerable.  It is such an honor to walk with them for a while, and hold the space for them to uncover what is wanting to emerge, and to ask the deep questions that bring forth the path.  It is an honor to witness someone uncovering themselves and discovering their truth. 

The challenge is in developing the skills for this vulnerability to stay open over extended periods of time.  When we are truly open and vulnerable, our presence is awakened and our ability to create change and see a new direction is possible.  As a coach who works primarily with this awakening process, it is amazing seeing the glimmers appear more and more often, and the skills deepen in lengthening this experience. 

Then the real magic happens.  Once we are in that awakened place, there is consciousness.  From consciousness, the ability to address relationships, parenting, work issues, money, and all of our challenges in our lives, are simplified.  They become opportunities and possibilities, instead of obstacles.  Life becomes a playground with constant amazing discoveries and adventures.

For me, there is nothing I would rather do than co-create levels of consciousness with another person and experience their clarity on what they want for themselves.  It is a gift guide the soul into presence, coaching into consciousness and creating magic from that place.  For life around us is only a mirror to what we experience from within, and bridging the gap between our soul and our lives is essential and fun to do once we become motivated and curious to go there.

Celebrate vulnerability, courage, and consciousness…. May they be your guides ever present guides!

Peace.

Denise

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Follow the Energy

Follow the Energy.  This is a line I learned from Alan Seale, a magnificent coach out on the East Coast.  Over the last few weeks, I have found it most useful when I am working with clients looking at deep change. 

Yesterday I worked with a brilliant college graduate who has phenomenal academic skills and is flustered about how to get out there and start working.  We talked about the pressure to get a real, full time job and start the process of building a “grown up” life… making the money for a nice place to live, starting to accumulate furniture and building a home, and having money for clothes and entertainment.  So alluring after four years as a struggling college student!

Yet there is the reality that we have many, many years of work and home building ahead of us and often the urge to anchor and settle is premature.  It is my opinion that the 20’s are a time of exploration and mistakes, lessons, and experiences.  All meant to practice skills discovered or transferred from other areas.  For this student, it was important to look at transferring the strong skills in academics and performance into building skills in independence and deeper self awareness.

It was a beautiful process to capture on paper all the existing skills, passions, and challenges that came to mind during our call and then look at where the energy exists.  The words sort of jump out in order when asked to present themselves…what is here, what wants more attention?   Identifying the next skills to build became easy and then it turned into fun, as we talked about challenging the universe to unfold a path towards those skills.  “Put it out there” was my advice, make some calls, post on Facebook, explore the internet and look for the energy.  Where there is immediate response, step in and follow it.  Allow the emerging energy to take you to a place you could not have dreamed of yourself.  Allow yourself to be surprised, and then the most important part:  Step into it!  Let the energy guide you.

This is a practice.  Opening up and asking for the next step, then paying attention with every fiber of your being and listening to the whispers, see the cues, and feel the coincidences.  Feel the presence of joy.  Follow the energy.  Let it take you into the change you desire. 

Life is an adventure, allow the adventure to happen.

Denise

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Little Kids Within

Last weekend Ted and I camped out at the end of an old logging road, on the shores of a little mountain lake.  We explored the lake in my kayak, fished a little, and watched the sunset.  We cooked over the fire and enjoyed the mesmerizing flames deep into the night.  In the morning we played in the lake and laid in the sun to dry.  We picked dandelions to make tea, watched butterflies, and we lazed late into the afternoon before returning home.  Time disappeared and we both felt the magical peace of the lake and the sun.

My favorite line from the trip came from Ted at breakfast.  He sipped his tea and leaned back in his chair, and said as he smiled from ear to ear “this is amazing, I feel like I am eight years old! The coolest part is, I can drive and I have money!”

When the two of us are out on our weekend adventures we are both eight year olds.  He is solidly in his little boy energy and I am solidly in my little tom girl energy, by design.  We left our adult selves at home and took off, taking our two inner kids on an adventure.  It is in the recognition of the kids within us that we match our energy and we are at our best. 

Both Ted and I have enjoyed discovering these balanced happy little kids within.  As our relationship has developed, we have done the work on identifying what persona’s we take on when we are out of balance, and when we are in balance.  And we have learned tools to keep ourselves in balance as much as possible.

Let me explain.  For me, when I am in my head, trying to do a lot of things, make a lot of things happen, and trying to control more and more, I hold the energy of an out of balance adult male.  My energy is focused on pushing, accomplishing, and efforting.  These are old behaviors of mine and as I recognize them, I have the choice of shifting into seeing the world through the eyes of a child, the eyes of a little girl.  When I am there I soften, and become more inclined to watch and see what happens.  I become more curious.  I allow life so much more.  And I am more playful.

There is a way to decipher what kind of persona we take on when we are in and out of balance.  We can choose to be an adult, a parent, or a child, male or female.  Each has their own ways of acting out and seeing things.  Exploring this is a great tool for catching ourselves and redirecting ourselves back into balance.  Sharing this information with the ones you love provides a playful way of meeting in our balanced states of being and creating more joy in our relationships. 

For Ted and I, we know when Teddy and Niecie get together, we are kind and patient with each other, and there is going to be fun and adventure!

Life is an ongoing adventure!

Enjoy it!

Denise

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The Power of Leisure

    

With all the enormous energies colliding over this last week, the full Sagittarius moon, a lunar eclipse, and several severe solar flares predicted, it made sense to seek the peace and quiet of the mountains in Montana.  There, up in Polebridge, nestled along the North Fork River and the magnificence of the Glacier Park mountains, we spent an extended holiday weekend inviting leisure in. 

We placed our little trailer under a grove of Aspens so we could hear and feel the presence of nature.  We listened to the rushing flow of the spring run off in the river, and we let the birds tell us the time of day.  We slept till we were rested.  We read and played dice inside when it rained.  We hiked along a pristine lake.  We sat in front of the local mercantile and sipped tea and dabbled in pastries, and allow our bodies tell us what was necessary.  We invited leisure to guide us.

There is magic in unplugging from our daily schedules and letting nature recalibrate us.  The sacred geometry of the leaves, the trees, the clouds, and all that was surrounding us was there to hold us and help us shift into ourselves, a form of surrender.  And what glorious surrender this last weekend was for us!  On Saturday evening the little restaurant and bar had eight musicians blending their gifted skills out on the front porch, sending soft vibrations of beautiful notes out into the ethers, and they played tirelessly for hours.  There were people gathered all around on picnic tables, sitting on the rail fences.  Children and dogs wandered around, moving with the music.  The light of the waning day brightened up the scene and the colors of the sunset showed on the faces of the musicians.   The feeling present was that of complete contentment.

Whether we do this form of surrender at home or escape to a place where nature is fully present, it is a gift to our souls to honor what is needed….what is necessary…to give ourselves the space and time to uncoil the overlays of our outer lives and let our souls breathe for a while.  Let our souls breathe long enough to feel natural and free again.  Then we can take that rebalanced presence back into our daily world and use it to anchor us into being.

As we enter this summer, let leisure guide you, inform you.  Let leisure in nature recalibrate you.  It is powerful.   

Peace.

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Co-Dependence and Abundance

After reading several wonderful weekly and monthly reports about what is going on energetically this month, I am aware that with Pluto and Uranus pulling at us, we are all still being asked to dig deep and take a look at some of those stubborn old wounds or sticky patterns of ours that are refusing to coming loose very easily.  As a woman who coaches the soul into deeper awareness, I feel it in my clients.  I hear about it from my tribe of other coaches working in the realms of intuition and soul awareness.  We are all observing how these old pieces deep within each of us are begging for attention and causing all sorts of complications and physical pains present in their lives.  Mine included.

Finally, it was time to sit myself down and open to these powerful planets and see what might want to surface within me… Do some self discovery on what was within me that may desire some attention.  Low and behold, the first feeling that came up was my pervasive worrying about money and lack of feeling connected to abundance, especially financial abundance.   Just below these feelings was the word co-dependent.   These two seemingly separate concepts have presented themselves in different forms to me for years and seeing them together was a bit overwhelming at first, yet, as I invited them to talk to me, this beautiful, neutral, compassionate story unfolded.

I am a wise, strong, and courageous woman, and I can be full of bravado at times.  A great deal  of that external blasting of energy is aimed at covering up the consistent feelings of not knowing myself, seeing myself clearly, or seeing my worth.  Underneath my exterior, I struggle to know or trust who I am.  Instead, I like to be in relationships with people who see me, and then, through their eyes, I have glimpses of who I am. 

I surround myself with men and women who shine me back at me, so I can feel connected to myself.  This externalization of self has been present in me all this lifetime and the pattern is as old as my soul (taken directly from the Osho Moon card).  Perhaps the dependence on seeing ourselves through another’s eyes is something that many of us experience?  As an externally driven culture here in the states, it takes quite a bit of self knowledge and practice to ignore the constant mirrors around us and trust ourselves.

The experiences of these first months of 2013 have pointed out to us this dependence on the exterior world, on others, and what is asked us to gather back into ourselves …. Hence the invitations to take a deep look at where co-dependence comes from.

How are co-dependence and abundance connected?  If my version of self is compiled of what I see in others, and I enjoy seeing these parts of me that I cannot see within myself, doesn’t it make sense to want to keep those “others” close by?  Right next to me where I can feel connected to self, worthy, and I have meaning?  These “others” have been the men I have loved, my children, my close friends, and even co-workers.   They have been the other souls chosen to walk this life with me.  If I am dependent on what is shown to me externally, then it makes sense that do as much as I can to keep those eyes, those mirrors, shining on me as much as possible.  So I design a life around how often I get to see those mirrors.  I plan my work around people that see this in me.  I choose men who see the beauty in me and I step in, sharing their view, seeing my own beauty.  I choose friends who provide deep conversation, real relationship, and within all of this, I know who I am. 

With an attachment to the mirrors showing me myself, I am aware that I then limit how far I am willing to stray from these mirrors, these “others”.  I limit how much time I will really advocate for myself and risk separation.  I limit my creativity and imagination.  I limit my free time and create elaborate schedules of time with my “others” so I can feel connected to myself.  I limit my ability for independence, emotionally and financially.  I live within the means of those I surround myself with, because I am seen.  I LIMIT what I am able to create.  And, I limit how I allow my life to expand and be abundant.  I limit abundance in so many forms, especially financially.

Knowing this gives me great comfort.  It is not good or bad, or healthy or unhealthy.  It is what is, and now that I able to know on a deeper level what has driven me all these years to stay close to “others” and limit myself.  I understand how and why I have chosen relationships over myself. 

Now I can softly and compassionately lead myself into a place of self understanding, self awareness, and appreciation of self.  These are some steps I know to take towards breaking the patterns.   I can pay attention to what brings up the doubt within me.  I can use tools of breath and grounding to check in.   I can create feedback mechanisms to notice when I am choosing the company of others and what my motivations might be.  I can use my morning meditation and journaling practice to pay attention to what wants to happen, what wants to expand and emerge.  And I can begin saying YES to these ideas and possibilities more often and feel how it feels to live in abundance.

I have a path ahead allowing me to see me, and loving all the wonderful “others” for who they are, instead of what I need from them.  The practice of freeing up the strings of attachment and dependence opens me up to further discover who I am here to be. 

Thank you for reading my first blog!