Newsletter

You see, transformation is something else entirely than change…

Transformation calls upon the art and power of healing. Healing the unconscious mind. When the deeply seeded origin of patterning and behavior is healed, we can say that the walls between our true nature and our current self have been removed. On the other side of transformation, a new expression of freedom and authenticity, absent of inner struggle, awaits. No longer are we fighting with ourselves, we are, instead, enjoying a world that is totally new.

In contrast, changing our habits and patterns seems to show up as a massive effort to re-arrange personality traits accumulated from the past. “I won’t drink anymore,” someone might declare, “I’m going to change!” But has the underlying motive to drink transformed?! The experience of change can often leave us feeling like we are fighting something inside ourselves. And we often are! We are fighting the unconscious mind where all our childhood beliefs and wounding are stored. And over time, the unconscious mind always seems to win.

So, it’s not change that leads us to the life of our dreams, but transformation. It’s an inside out process, not the other way around! Rather than change on the outside to redirect our lives, we can transform on the inside, and allows changes to occur in reflection of our new operating system. Change doesn’t give us access to what is fundamentally not working, transformation does! And this deep inner shift is the key to a new reality, one that luminously reflects the new us!

In this new space, a very real level of responsibility for our reality arises. As through the process of healing, we come to discover that everything we need to heal lies within. Within us, we possess the alchemical power to transform darkness to light and set ourselves free. Once we touch this power, we know that we are the only ones that are responsible for our life experience, and a new sense of empowerment unfolds, prompting us to create new patterns and habits in lieu of the old.

Thus, hasn’t the time for transformation arrived?

Here are three guiding principles to stepping more fulling into the deep healing that leads to actively and consciously creating ourselves:

1.) Awareness – Everything begins with awareness. The greater self-awareness we have, the deeper and more profound the healing can be. If we ever feel stuck, we can be brave and ask friends and community to reflect to us the ways they see us acting and behaving that keep us from living our best life.

2.) Responsibility – Taking responsibility for our own transformation. Actively deciding who we want to become and what we want to create in our lives. Also, actively deciding what we will no longer tolerate in ourselves and environment. And not waiting for anyone to give us permission here!

3.) Intention, Imagination, & Focus – Through our innate powers of these three qualities, we must use our mind and our ability to envision our greatness. Staying dedicated to this vision of ourselves within, meditating on it, being devoted to it, to our true nature, our essence, our soul, our light.

In essence, transformation is an art and it brings us closer to our soul by removing the blocks that keep us from living a life on purpose. By choosing who we become in this life, we actively participate in creating a new world.

Free to be…

This month as we shift gears from summer to fall (at least, in the northern hemisphere), there might be a slight ‘uptick’ for all us. Whether we are heading back to an office, a home office, or whether the kids are heading back to school… or not, there is that feeling in the air that lets us know summer is slipping into the rear-view mirror.

And if there’s anything this pandemic has taught us all is that going with the flow is something none of us where doing enough of. So, here’s my invitation…

Before we “fall” back into the old habits of human doing, can we promise ourselves this month that we will remember we are enough as we are? Let’s all, collectively, give ourselves and each other the permission to be enough. Let’s put down (just for September because I don’t want anyone to be too overwhelmed by the sense of freedom that might be possible here) the desire to teach, preach, and/or judge ourselves and others. This month, collectively, we are off the hook for striving, pushing, pulling, and hoping. That’s right, I’m inviting us all to let go of even hoping!

Let life be exactly as it is. Let people be who they are. Let yourself be exactly as you are. In your strengths and your weaknesses. Let others be perfectly perfect in their strengths and their weaknesses. And don’t confuse the act of relaxing into being enough for inaction. When we allow ourselves to be enough, I have found myself to be more inspired and fearless than ever before. Why? Because I operate from a place of trust and ease. And from this place I have taken the biggest risks and made the biggest leaps. When I know I am enough, the power of life finally gets to move through me, uninhibited. And that’s a pretty extraordinary experience. I’ve also noticed a lightness of being that seems to add a sense of curiosity and openness to the day that is so easily shut off otherwise. Being has nothing to do with inaction, is what I’m saying. But it does have everything to do with how we generate energy, experience our day, and impact others.

All in all, life can get -all too easily- pretty serious. So, this month, let gooooo of the stories you have about yourself and others. Give yourself an internal vacation from your own control and chatter. Instead, show up. Show you to yourself and to your family, friends, and commitments. Be centered in your body and your heart. Listen to life. Take aligned action. Repeat.

As many of you know, I’m of the ilk that everything is energy. Why this belief serves me is because it empowers me to influence my own life. From this belief, life becomes malleable. I can shift my mood, my thoughts, and thus manifest a reality that is in reflection of both. Additionally, it grants me the power to give back energy that doesn’t belong to me and transmute energy that no longer serves me.

Wanna try it? I hope so, because today I’m going to teach you a tool I use to transmute energy. I was taught this tool in my early years of study and use it almost every day today. There is no other tool like it, and it’s called The Violet Consuming Flame.

The Violet Consuming Flame was brought to the planet in the 1940s but Ascended Master, Saint Germain. What’s an Ascended Master? Well, you’re one in the making, as an ascended master is someone who has used their free will to continually evolve themselves by increasing self-awareness, making positive choices that align with their highest nature, and continually exhibit self-mastery over fear-based feelings and thoughts. This process of self-mastery eventually led individuals, like Saint Germain, into a state of enlightenment until the time of death, which is defined at this level as a conscious as a choice to leave the body and continue to assist humanity in their awakening.

So, there was Saint Germain, keeping an eye on humanity and he was like, “Humanity seems to need some help.” I mean, we were coming out of the 1800s – a prolific time of war and slave trading, and while we were evolving through the industrial revolution, humanity’s consciousness was couched deeply in the vestiges of separation rather than unity and oneness. AND, it looked like we had a long way to go.

Thus, in the 1940s, a new tool for personal development got introduced. And it was specifically designed to accelerate our development. Rather than working through each layer… by layer… by layer… we were given the choice to activate this flame of transmutation in our bodies, minds, and energy field and allow this flame to transform whatever there is to dissolve that no longer serves us. *When I say “flame” I am not talking about fire that is physical to the eye or hot to the touch. I am talking about an energy that is sacred and possesses certain alchemical qualities to transform things, like fire. This tool also builds, like fire, starting from a small flame and becoming larger with our intention. And whether it is a small flame or a concentration of large flames, the alchemical power to transform is present at all stages.

If you’re ready to experience this, jump into the meditation now. If you need an example, I got you.

There are cycles of intensity in my work as a psychotherapist. For example, there was as series of school shootings and suicides in Denver a couple years ago and many of my clients were touched by these events. One after the next came into my office processing this material. I knew, as a professional, that if I was not vigilant with my own energy, I could experience vicarious trauma, exhaustion, and even burnout. So, I amped up the Violet Consuming Flame. I filled my office with it, I filled my own energy with it. I meditated with it each evening to clean and clear my mind, my cells, and the space. The Violet Consuming Flame acts like a cosmic cleaner, and instant relief is felt. So rather than my office becoming a catch-all for deep anger, grief, and fear, it became a space of transmutation for these young people. They came in feeling one way, and left feeling lighter. And I was not overwhelmed by the consistent intensity that I was sitting with throughout the weeks. Instead, my own energy field was “padded” with the Violet Flame and anything that arose inside of me was washed away and anything that came my way my dissolved, like a paper-airplane circling the sun.

And this is why I say, everything is energy. Because if I didn’t, I would have been totally burned out by that month. And don’t get me wrong, I was tired, but using these tools gives me resilience and strength to support others at a different level while also taking care of myself.

“Energy flows where attention goes…”

Many of us feel that we are at the whim of life – just keeping up, just doing the best we can, just taking it as it comes. When we live like this, we begin to judge and control what comes our way because it fundamentally defines how we feel.

For example:
That thing that happened with the family or that thing that happened at work is ______ (fill in judgingly descriptive word here, like “crappy,” “bad,” “hard,” or “challenging”) because it makes me feel ­­­­­­­­­_____­­­__ (fill in feeling word here, like “stressed,” “scared,” “sad,” or “angry”).

Or, conversely, that thing is _______ (“great,” “good,” “wonderful,” etc) because it makes me feel _______ (“good,” “happy,” “successful,” “confident,” etc).

Both these sentences depict a state-of-being that is dependent on an external factor. And while experiencing feelings as a result of the world around us is normal, it can get us in trouble when we can’t control the world around us. In other words, when we live the majority of our day from this perspective of life, we start trying to control life, and at best, we start having a really strong opinion about our day and letting others know about it. And if there is no one to hear us, then we start telling ourselves, which can be draining and stressful to our inner listener.

I’ve noticed this in my own life. When I feel that my ‘to-do’ list is rivaling the length of the yellow-brick road, I can feel, too, like I’m keeping up with my day rather than feeling like I’m meeting my day with presence from moment to moment. This is my preferred experience of a day and I find that this experience is something I can influence, so I let myself have an opinion and feel invested. The other day, I became aware of feeling like I was keeping up, so I took a deeper look at where this experience was coming from. How did I get myself into feeling like this? I felt revved up, out of the moment, disconnected, and worried. And through that investigation, I was reminded…

I was reminded that we have the power to focus our minds wherever we want. It’s our freewill, our right. And when I start focusing on the tasks in front of me rather than the emotional state I am bringing to the tasks, I start to feel like I’m keeping up. Fascinatingly, when I’m disconnected from what I’m feeling in the moment, I start to just show up to the ‘to-do’ list; meaning, I start to focus on “getting things done” and reacting to life, rather than consciously creating my day’s experience!

“But what if I don’t want to feel what I’m feeling in the moment?” you ask. I hear you. And I’ll say it like this, awareness of what we are feeling has nothing to do with whether or not we have to feel it long term. Bringing awareness to a feeling we might not want to feel – like overwhelm – simply gives us the opportunity to choose something different. Recognizing our ability to influence our day can be a total game-changer, and it starts with recognizing how powerful we are.

Sharing personally again, I was running through my list the other day and I was feeling disconnected. My disconnection was amplified in the reflection of the landscape I was driving through. Breathtakingly beautiful fields of green, thick canopies of trees blowing in the wind, the sun shimmering over a vast lake, and mountains reaching out of the horizon into a blue sky. Yeah, if you’re seeing that and you don’t feel anything about it, I advise you to stop and check in. So that’s what I did. I stopped. And I simply turned my attention to my state of being. I noticed I was running through what I had to get done that day, but at the expense of being present (which, by the way, can make getting things done sort of painful). I took a breath and re-focused my attention on the wild amounts of gratitude I have for my life right now. And suddenly, the scene around me became brighter. I heard birds I hadn’t heard, I felt the temperature (yes, the windows were down), I felt the air move through the car, and I reached over and turned on some music and started to sing. Guess what? I got to where I was going in the same amount of time and I got all the things completed that I had slated for that day. And guess what else? It all happened inside a rich and full experience of presence. How did I make that happen? I chose to shift my focus. From overwhelm to gratitude. I decided to activate the feeling I wanted to feel and bring it to my day. I became a conscious creator.

When we choose what we focus on, we let life off the hook. Yes, we stop blaming life and external circumstances for “making us feel” the way we feel. Instead, through our awareness, we bring agency to the moment and energize an emotional state of our choice. External circumstances can influence us only to the degree we allow it. Am I a total pro at this? Nope. Do I need reminding? Yes. Does this teaching give me access to living a more satisfying life? One that can support others and celebrate a beautiful day? Yes.

In conclusion, I invite us all to keep caring deeply about life. But let’s care a-heck-of-a-lot more about what’s happening inside of us rather than what’s happening outside of us. Focus on what you can control rather than giving your power away to that which you can’t.

Enjoy Discovering You!

“Let’s talk about stress, baby, let’s talk about you and me, let’s talk all the good things and the bad things that may be, let’s talk about stress.”  — Salt-N-Pepa

Okay, stress is not the word Salt-N-Pepa use… But you and I are gonna talk about it.

Stress has become the underlying culprit to serious mental and physical health issues in our country. Because of this, the fads of self-care have flourished into a booming industry and stress itself now reigns as a demonized force to be tamed, dealt with, or avoided completely. What sucks the most – to use professional language- is the polarity we have created. Not only are we responsible for contending with lives that are stressful, but now we are accountable to combating the stress by finding more hours in our week for self-care, and if we don’t make strides toward implementing this dire remedy, then we, instead, deal with our stressful lives and feel guilty about doing nothing to change it. So now we have stress, obligation, and guilt. How did we get there so fast? Has self-care become stressful? If it has, it’s only because we don’t understand stress.

Stress is a natural part of life and is not something to be avoided. We can’t avoid it. A potted tree grows taller if it feels a slight stress around its roots in the pot. However, if you don’t pay attention by eventually giving the tree a larger pot when it’s ready, the tree becomes sick and can die. Healthy stress vs. unhealthy stress is all around us. Short bursts of stress release hormones that can help us perform at work, in school, at sports. Some stress experiences can feel enlivening and energizing! Longer episodes, where we experience frequent bursts of stress in a row, can help us focus to complete projects, hit deadlines, and accomplish goals. But extended periods of stress where there is no room for our bodies to rest – when our nervous systems recalibrate and our hormones rebalance – can make us sick both emotionally, mentally and/or physically.

So, what we need to know more than anything is that there are many different kinds of stress. And not all stress is bad.

Stress falls under three major categories: acute stress, episodic acute stress, and chronic stress. The first one is categorized by short bursts of cortisol and adrenalin through our bodies like what happens when we are at a starting line for a race, about to walk onto stage, or conversely when we get into an argument, get a flat tire on the way to an important meeting, or drop something by accident and it breaks. We feel “activated,” but it passes. There is a clear beginning, middle, and end. This kind of stress is normal and okay. It’s part of life and our bodies are built to experience it. After a short burst of acute stress, we may find ourselves gratefully climbing into bed and reflecting on the experience with perspective and thoughtfulness. This is a sign that the nervous system has recalibrated and we are back to neutral. Recovered and good to go.

The ability to recover more quickly and build our capacity for acute stress can be improved through study and training. However, the 3 basics of eating, sleeping, and exercising mindfully can help to naturally improve our ability to recover.

The second stage of stress, episodic acute stress, is when this feeling of being activated starts happening more and more frequently. In this category, there’s a feeling of needing “to come up for air” but not necessarily getting it. We feel this when we have a big push for a deadline, like closing a business deal or studying for end of semester exams. The nervous system is turned on, however, we know there is an end in sight and we will rest soon.

This is a really important moment. The part where we have promised to rest after the episodic acute stress experience. The deal is closed. The emergency has been de-escalated. The family is safe. The semester is complete. The project is finished. In this moment, we have been in “go-mode” for awhile and it’s easy to bypass the conscious effort it takes to switch gears and create the environment our nervous systems and hormones need to rebalance and recover. But we must. This is the time to put our phones down long before bed, to get 8-10 hours of sleep for several nights in a row, to play, to lounge, to laugh, to nap. To work less. We do not take recovery time seriously enough in our society, and I’ll tell you now that every high performer we have on a pedestal in our culture has a recovery routine that would blow your mind. It is taken with as much seriousness as the business launch. But without the seriousness. Learn to let go. It will change your life.

Because if we don’t let go, take it from me, we enter a whole different category of stress. The world of chronic stress. I found myself in this place almost a decade ago and it took a long time to undo. It can happen when things such as family emergencies, a death, company lay-offs, global circumstances, all out of our control, are piled on to the aforementioned stress experiences. In other words, there is no “end” in sight, no rest period waiting, no coming up for air. Physiologically speaking, the nervous system feels stuck in the hyper alert “on” position. Stress hormones keep getting dumped into our blood stream which can create a weakened immune system and mental health issues.

This is the place that bubble baths and massages don’t seem to touch. Why? Because those are fabulous short-term tactics for acute stress experiences. Here, we need a long-term view. Lifestyle changes, mental health support, and even medical support. Chronic stress is a wake-up call to action. It was for me. It was time to break the pot I was feeling constantly ‘root-bound’ inside of and grow into something vaster and wider, filled with more possibility and support; a time to root down while reaching for the sky. When I found myself with a Lyme Disease diagnosis following a major car crash, I knew I had some internal work to do. It was uncomfortable, but I turned inward to face unresolved trauma, mental and emotional patterns that no longer served me, and belief systems that were no longer letting me grow. I trained my mindset, and asked myself some deeply probing questions about what I really wanted for my life and relationships. It was a profoundly transformative time in my life, but now I understand the unquestionable interconnectedness between mind, body, and spirit and how it can all manifest in our one beautiful life.

In essence, my invitation to you is to begin to identify what kind of stress you are experiencing. Begin to try and respond more appropriately to each kind. Let the acute stress rise and pass, ask yourself more deeply challenging questions is you feel you are entering a longer term stress patter, seek support. I would never be who I am today without the support of the mentors and teachers in my life. Asking for support, both familial and professional, is something we should never be ashamed of. Learn to embrace the good stuff and train your mind, body, and spirit into greater capacity so you can enjoy the life you know is yours. In the words of someone who I was not able to identify on Instagram, but give whole hearted credit to for this gem of wisdom:
“Self-care is not a long hot bubble bath, chocolates and good wine – self-care is cultivating the life I do not need to escape from.” 

Blessing of Light

Please join me today in this short guided practice, where I offer a gentle blessing of light for you to open to and receive…

Got Overwhelm?

For some reason, overwhelm seems slightly pervasive right now. Hopefully, it’s not for you, but if you’re human and living life, you probably know what it feels like.

When I was in high school, I used to call my dad in tears, totally overwhelmed by all there was to do and pressured by the caliber that I wanted to deliver at (yes, even then). I went to a boarding school on the east coast, so there was a lot to learn and handle on my own. And I remember how my dad would talk me down from the cliffs of maddening panic. “Take it one thing at a time,” he would say. And I would cling to the easy way the words would fall through the phone, and I would start to breath. One thing at a time.

It’s a mantra that never left me and one that I found myself repeating to clients over and over in sessions this past month. So, looking ahead, let’s all take a breath – inhaling…exhaling…relax our bodies…and repeat after my dad, “One thing at a time.” That’s it. One. Thing. At. A. Time.

When we feel overwhelmed, we have done one thing: we have given the same weight of importance and priority to everything on our list. Suddenly, making a decision about the next content piece you are going to release, calling back a new client, running out of toothpaste and needing more, needing to workout, thinking about buying that sweater you saw on Instagram, calling your mom to check in, paying those bills, and calling a random 888 number to double check the charges you saw on your Zoom account the other day, ALL FEEL EQUALLY URGENT and like they ALL NEEDED TO HAPPEN NOW.

They don’t.

And we love our moms. And we do need toothpaste.

But what we need to do in these moments is prioritize and schedule. And here, you might be thinking that prioritizing is about urgency. Nope. It’s about your goals and larger commitments. What are the big things you are committed to? Work backwards from there. For example, if I don’t communicate in a timely manner with my clients, my business falls apart. So, number one is communication with my clients – that means calling my new client back and getting my content organized and ready to go out on time. Now, it’s easy for me to start sacrificing my personal needs like working out in order to free up more time and power through my list, but that’s a bad idea, because if I do it once, I start making a habit of it and then I’m not a really a fun person to be around. So, I make sure I get that workout in next.

All the while, I’m starting to attune to the present moment because I’ve freed up mental and emotional space by scheduling the items on my list into my calendar. And because I don’t like being rushed when I’m checking in with my mom, I text her and get a call on the books for the next day.

The Principles of Healing are found in the Laws of Frequency. Not the rate of how often we do something, but the length of the vibrational wave of the thing – the action, thought, or feeling.

fre·quen·cy

/ˈfrēkwənsē/

1. The rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time or in a given sample.
“shops have closed with increasing frequency during the period”

2. The rate at which a vibration occurs that constitutes a wave, either in a material (as in sound waves), or in an electromagnetic field (as in radio waves and light), usually measured per second.
“different thicknesses of glass will absorb different frequencies of sound”

Working with the second definition, we can safely say that absolutely everything has a frequency. From a stone, to a tree, to a thought we have about our neighbors, to a feeling we carry around in our body. The frequency can be measured on a scale. From low to high or from slow to fast.

Colors all have a frequency. Reds wavelengths are longer than violet. Neither is better, it’s just a fact, a Law of the Universe. This is how the third dimensional reality that we exist in creates itself.

Working with the second definition, we can safely say that absolutely everything has a frequency. From a stone, to a tree, to a thought we have about our neighbors, to a feeling we carry around in our body. The frequency can be measured on a scale. From low to high or from slow to fast.

Colors all have a frequency. Reds wavelengths are longer than violet. Neither is better, it’s just a fact, a Law of the Universe. This is how the third dimensional reality that we exist in creates itself.

However, we seldom understand how to apply this information about frequency to our own life. How do we apply this principal to our own reality?

I remember, on my own path, how I began to heal aspects of pain that arose in my relationship to my mother. As if living inside a miracle, elements of how I understood my mother, what I thought she thought about me, and what I thought about her, completely and utterly transformed. As I dove into the game of frequency, patterns of hurt and misunderstanding that lived inside of me seemed to dissolve. By gaining a new perspective, I not only saw where I had been stuck, but I saw how my own healing and freedom where in the palm of my hands. And how do you think my mother felt when I dropped so much baggage? Pretty good, I can tell you that. By healing myself through the principles of frequency, I helped elevate our connection and improved our relationship. (Remember: I did not set out to heal, convince, educate, or enlighten my mother! I focused on me, and thus, was able to show up with more love and more ease and inevitably the relationship shifted).

Healing, thus, brings about transformation. And this happens through raising our frequency. Please note here that transformation is very different from change. Transformation means something is different forever, at a core level. It’s the difference between painting a wall in your home (change) and knocking it down to open up the room (transformation). So let’s get down to it! There are several ways to raise our frequency. Today, I’ll walk us through the key methods: intention, breathe work, and visualization.

What do you want to serve that is greater than yourself?

That’s this month’s question…

Asking this question is powerful. It can break the cycle of obsessive thoughts and downer feelings that create suffering. It doesn’t take away the hills we will climb or the pain we might feel along the way, but asking this question can certainly accelerate us through it all.

Knowing what we are of service to gives us purpose. And when we have purpose, we have direction. And when we have direction… well, watch out, direction leads to focus, and focus is what creates extraordinary lives. With invigorated spirits, choosing where we focus the mind is everything. It is the most important thing we can do to define our life experience. And defining or re-defining our life can start by asking a simple question.

Remember, suffering is created as a result of where we focus the mind. In other words, what thoughts we listen to in our heads, what feelings we allow to take over our bodies and drive the thoughts into endless cycles. We can so easily create our own hell, and with a breath and a change of focus, we can so easily create our own heaven.

The number one thing to watch out for is whether or not we are focused obsessively on ourselves. If we are asking ourselves, “What do I have and what don’t I have? What am I getting and what am I not getting? How much money am I making or not making? How do they see me? What will they think of me?” then we are inside the game of comparison. And that is a game of self-obsession. A not-so-lovely game designed to keep the ego in the driver’s seat.

Thus, we can shift our focus from suffering to freedom by asking the question “What do I want to serve that is greater than myself?”

This can lead to a big answer like world peace, global unity, enlightenment of humankind, OR you can start right where you are (which helps the aforementioned by the way), and look to serving your partner, your children, your clients, the environment, animals… to name only a few possibilities. And if this question actually feels too big, then I invite you to ask yourself, “Who can I serve today?”

Let’s continue to break the cycle of selfishness together.

And not at the expense of our health and personal time. That’s called co-dependency, which is a different topic entirely. Service rejuvenates, is life-giving, it inspires us to care for ourselves -our bodies and minds, our sleep and diet, our spiritual connection, and more.

February is the token month for love – commercially speaking. I’m already seeing strings of hearts going up on the walls of gas stations that dot the highway from Denver into the mountains. I’m seeing the bulging isles of pink and red in Walgreens. (Who goes to Walgreens anymore? I know, I do). And while I believe that love should be celebrated, I think chalking up our most romantic gestures, gifts, and quality time to February 14th leaves us missing the point of this incarnation entirely.

Let’s just state the obvious, love should be celebrated every day, right? Then why does that feel so hard sometimes? One reason is because we collapse love and relationship into one entity. We make them depend on each other. We have gotten deeply attached to conditional love and we are suffering for it.

Let me explain.

If we allow love and relationship to exist separately as two different entities, we can begin to ease the pain many of us carry from collapsing them into a dependent association. For example, if we consider this principle and examine a parent who has treated us badly, we come to realize that our decision about the relationship can exist independently from the assessment of whether or not they deserve our love.

Too often, we decide that people -based on their behaviors- don’t deserve love. There’s actually no one on this god given earth that does not deserve love. However, what someone might not deserve is our trust and our time. This distinction can heal hearts. How? Because it is, in fact, holding back our love that hurts our hearts the most, even more than the distance between us.

Let’s go deeper.

Love is something that the heart is born to do.

The love I am talking about is a universal love that is bigger than us, while also being the fabric of what we are made of and bounded by. It’s a substance that emanates from the heart, and is not conditional. It is the kind of love that exists without opinion. It just is. And the heart celebrates this kind of love!

When we allow the shifts of relationship to complicate the heart’s desire to express itself, we suffer unnecessary pain. The love I’m pointing to does not need words or phone calls or apology letters to make it so. It is the inner choice to release oneself from holding back a natural and infinite flow, alleviate the strain we’ve bound our hearts by unknowingly. The choice is energetic and intentional.

Thus, asking our hearts not to love can actually cause physical pain, illness, premature aging, and more. The pain we feel from ending a relationship is not always about the separation or the absence, as I said, but about holding love back.

I understand, we withdraw our love because we don’t feel safe, or we want to “hurt them back,” or we want to make a point – all things that end up hurting us in the long run. I’ve been there. I’ve done it myself. And what I am saying is that you don’t have to hold back your love because you’ve set a boundary. Allow the heart to remain open while re-defining the relationship.

There are many kinds of relationships -friends, lovers, partners, parents, acquaintances, siblings, co-workers, spiritual community members, teammates… the list goes on and on. When we give ourselves the chance to see that each category of relationship carries its own unique signature of values, agreements, and style of connection, we adjust our behavior and our expectations, the way we interact, our trust and our time, but not the openness of our heart. The heart stays open.

You see, emotional freedom happens through the heart. And emotional freedom is our birthright. But in order for the heart to operate well, it must be permitted to open to the world and emanate its vibrational field to all of life. Not just some of life. In the same way a flower releases its fragrance, showing no bias to who walks by, or who admires it, or who picks a petal… it simply and freely emits its mesmerizing scent. Our hearts long for the same permission.

Therefore, if someone in our life moves from one category of relationship to another, our job is to make the necessary adjustments in our expectations. It’s an invitation to uphold our values and be in integrity with ourselves around how we show up. In this way we become empowered in our boundary making, in our communication, and in our guiding values. And when we do this, we can surrender with ease to allowing our heart to do what it does best: emit love.

FIRST: WHAT IS CAPACITY?

The most common definitions are: “The maximum amount that something can contain.” “The ability, capability, or fitness to do something.” “The ability to contain or deal with something.” “Mental or physical power.”

More often than not, capacity refers to containment and how much something can hold. A theater is at capacity. The cup is over capacity. The object cannot hold any more. It’s at its max. It’s reached its limit. I think we can all remember a moment in 2020 when we felt our emotional edges. I know I can. And it was being pressed up against these limits that had us grow past them. The struggle of 2020 was also the gift. The pain it caused also instigated growth. The challenge was also the opportunity.

So how did we cultivate capacity unknowingly? In 2020, we were all served up two key ingredients for transformation: intensity and consistency. The intensity was all around us and many felt that intensity internally as well, on an emotional level. The consistency was found in being asked to adjust and show up otherwise without relief. We were all asked, on a consistent basis, to do things differently. And when we have intensity and consistency operating, we open to transformation.

Thus, I welcome you to a new year as a new you. Whether you knew it or not, you have gained capacity, new strength to hold and contain the emotional spectrum of life!

But why is capacity so important?

Our individual capacity defines our life experience. I’m pointing to our life experience as our ability to know ourselves, relate to others, have deep meaningful relationships, feel like contributing and impactful citizens, and continue to consciously create and embrace our lives. Our ability to safely hold the inner ups and downs in the way the sky holds the weather, or a mother holds in her arms the many expressions of her child, directly correlates to our quality of life.

Yet, the most beautiful thing about capacity is that you’re never stuck with the limits of what you’ve learned. You can always create more! And that’s what we want, greater emotional capacity.

Let’s learn to manage our inner state rather than be in reaction to it. Let’s grow capacity to hold the great expanse of human emotion and learn to be the container of love that our inner life can rise and fall safely inside of. As the more we can have capacity for ourselves, the more we have for others. We lead with genuine curiosity and heart, able to manage whatever we discover inside along the way. We are less reactionary, more stable, more consistent, more fearless, and more trustworthy. By nature of this, people feel more accepted and safer in our presence. Thus, the more capacity we have collectively, the more transformed and united our world can become.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!