Healing our pain, limiting beliefs, and unhealthy patterns requires that we continuously peel away the layers. Like the Turkish pastry baklava, with its fragile phyllo dough layers, the subtle layers of our patterns must be peeled away on a continuous basis. Often, we unconsciously create life experiences that reveal the next layer of a pattern to peel away, a process that occurs throughout our lives and is essential to our spiritual growth. This healthy clearing process is like skin sloughing off dead cells that accumulate and block the growth of new cells. Animals, birds, and plants also move through a regenerative clearing … [Read more...]
4 Ways to Transcend Fear and Negativity & Shift to Love
Transcending fear and negativity can be challenging when we are constantly bombarded with negative words, messages, and images. Yet, we can lift out of this toxicity by connecting to a higher power or divine source (whatever that means to us) through our hearts. Many of us feel adrift and detached, having lost our spiritual compass and any kind of higher guidance. We may wander aimlessly through life, waiting for something to fill the spiritual void we experience. Thus, we try to shift the burden of responsibility for our spiritual awakening onto others and do not acknowledge the innate power we have to create it for ourselves. From the … [Read more...]
4 Sacred Practices to Awaken to Your Soul’s Purpose
You are here to feel inspired, create joy, and fulfill your soul’s purpose. Like the phoenix rising out of the ashes, you are liberating yourself from anything that shackles your soul. You are being called, nudged and even frustrated to the point of waking up. It’s time---no more postponing your soul’s call to action. When you experience the things that take your breath away or make your heart sing, you live with passion and purpose. You step out of the shadows and into the light, aligned with your soul’s path. Above all, you realize that your full soul-expression is greater than the job you do, the roles you play, or how successful you … [Read more...]
3 Sacred Steps for Healing Your Wounded Child
“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” T.S. Elliot Although each person’s soul journey is unique, the developmental process we experience is the same. Such transformation involves spiritual growth in one way or another. And this growth requires healing our psychic pain, “our wounded child.” Most people choose to remain developmentally stuck rather than face their wounded child. Their emotional paralysis stems from their fear of experiencing their emotional pain. When we avoid working through such loss, trauma, and … [Read more...]
A Sacred Chat with Your Anxiety Journal Practice
Anxiety is your body’s signal that there’s something that needs your attention. It can be an emotion that needs to be processed, a painful wound that needs to be healed, or as spiritual information to guide you. Looked at in this light, anxiety is there to assist you, not harm you. It doesn’t have to be debilitating. In fact, it can even be beneficial, if you embrace it as part of your spiritual guidance system. You can embrace anxiety as a spiritual guide by having a sacred chat with it and seeing what it’s trying to tell you. When you feel anxious, your energies become scattered and it’s hard to focus. So, it’s important to first notice … [Read more...]
A Reflection Practice for the Winter Solstice
For millennia, winter solstice celebrations have heralded the return of the light and are a time of quiet reflection and intention. In many Native American cultures, tribes and families would gather to start up a new year at the solstice and have a special celebration where they would make a request to the Great Spirit to eliminate certain things that they no longer wanted in their lives. As a way of representing this, they would craft six arrows: three to represent the things they did not want and three for the things they did want. They called them “death” arrows and “life” arrows because they held respectfully, the things they wanted … [Read more...]
10 Ways to Get Emotionally Unstuck
Move Your Body: Moving your body tells your brain that you are unstuck. It shifts the energy to forward momentum. Practice mindfulness moving by taking your mind, body, and spirit for a walk. Start your practice by going outside in nature for a fifteen-minute walk. Before you start to walk, stand on the earth and draw your attention down to your feet. Take Deep Breaths: Slowing down and deepening your breath draws more oxygen into your body which reduces fear and restores balance to your nervous system. A regular deep breathing practice can help you remain calm when you find yourself in anxiety-producing situations. Trust Divine Timing: … [Read more...]
5 Supportive Ways to Regain Balance in Your Life
Balance doesn’t come from making every aspect of your life equal like two sides to a scale. It starts by prioritizing the aspects of your life that matter most, what you hold dear, and what’s non-negotiable to your soul. It’s means putting your time, effort, and energies into what makes your being come alive and your heart sing with joy. Most of all, it’s being true to your heart and soul…your core values or soul elements. When you are out of alignment with your soul truth, you can feel off center, ungrounded, and question who you are and what you really want. If you find yourself defining your worth by your job, achievements, or what … [Read more...]
Spiritual Resilience: 5 Ways to Move from Surviving to Thriving
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” - Jon Kabat-Zinn Spiritual resilience is what makes the difference between surviving or thriving in your life. It gives you the strength to not only rise above adversity and hardship, but to use it as a catalyst for spiritual growth. To do so, you have to trust that your spirit is stronger than any situation you can possibly face, and with every setback comes even greater transformation. Seeing life from this spiritual perspective, you view any problem, challenge, or difficulty as a stepping stone for change Like a surfer riding a wave, once you trust the experience and relax rather … [Read more...]
The Spiritual Practice of Letting It Be
A good way to release the need for control is by “letting it be”—a spiritual practice highlighted in Paul McCartney’s inspirational song of the same title. Simply saying to ourselves, “Let it be,” informs the brain that we have entered a no judgment zone which allows us to drop into our heart. In this heart space, we can let go of our attachment to a person, situation, or outcome and any associated negativity. The practice of “letting it be,” encourages compassion, forgiveness, and acceptance of our own and others’ soul journeys. It also allows us to trust the divine unfolding of our lives by leading with our hearts as they whisper words … [Read more...]