the groundwork - part IV our emotional (energy in motion) body and practical ways to ground it

mini cork collection

To bottom line it with our emotional groundwork (and bottom line it to me is 1500 words- sorry) - it's about 1. awareness 

(notice when we are feeling an emotion, notice the patterns of behavior we have that get in the way of us just being us),

2. expression - to let go of the behavior, we let out the excess energy holding it in

(writing, talking, yelling, crying, laughing - you can sweat, run and dance this stuff out, too - but if you feel neck tension or problems with anything in that area - jaw, thyroid, etc - getting out the words we are holding onto can be very helpful)

3. forgiveness -  some of this stuff is very old and it takes a radical approach to letting go and forgiving to move on

(There is a method called the Hoffman Process that works with integrating the four parts of ourself - physical, emotional, mental, spiritual - and maybe integrating isn't the right word here, I remember it from many years ago. It is very childhood focused and many of us would say we don't have any issues from childhood affecting our behavior today -

that we don't remember anyway, that we have forgiven, they all did their best, we have moved on - 

and for our mental selves this can be totally true. But for our physical selves which literally formed around this stuff and for our emotional selves which recreates this drama over and over in new ways until it is released - it isn't always so easy to let go. Being an armchair astrologer I see a lot of past life issues in this stuff, but the healing is always done in the present moment and although the mental part of us gets us to the awareness space, it won't get us much further.)

4.  moving on - this is replacing the old behavior with a new behavior

Hubs used to get really crazy in traffic when we were younger. I could never understand the big emotional response he would get when someone followed closer than he would like or pulled in front of him.

(obviously there are times when this could be a big deal, but he would make a way bigger deal out of little - non emergency - happenings of this than was called for)

Being cut off (other spaces where we have been cut off, where someone has shut us up, where someone appears to be have gotten "ahead of us"),

being followed too closely (other spaces in our lives where people are on our back, where people have been nipping on our heels, breathing down our necks, where we have not been fast enough) -

the themes driving activates are pretty universal - we've all been there.

When we feel an emotion that is out of proportion to what is happening we know it is activating something else - something our physical or emotional self is holding.

Now, the idea isn't to stuff it - that's how the emotional moves into the body in the first place - the idea is to release it. Releasing stored emotions is holy work. It's how we move into the connection with others and with our spiritual self.

If we can see the anger we are releasing as a fire spreading through us, burning up years of old undergrowth in the forest, clearing a path for the new or if we can see our tears of sadness as flooding our body the way a flood of water can clear a dirty sink or if we can see our fear as shaking loose dead branches from a tree or spent buds from our flower gardens to allow more room for new growth - if we think of images like these while expelling our emotions it helps, too.

We can also take on other people's energy. Sometimes when hubs would get mad at another driver I could literally feel the tension in my body.

(this is a very, very rare thing these days, the driving stuff I mean, but I still pick up all kinds of things from his emotions and his body - a couple weeks ago he drilled into his left thumb - the next day I started having shooting pains in my left thumb when I reached for things, tendonitis is the diagnosis - and yes, I had been working more, driving a truck with sticky doors and windows and carrying a heavier handbag than usual on my left shoulder - and also, yes, I think his injury allowed an injured space in my body to come up for healing through my left thumb - I didn't actually say this to my doctor though)

The people we live and work with can definitely affect our energy. The real reason couples should never go to bed angry is that we are sleeping with the other person's energy! When their energy is angry, sad or fearful - we will have to be very grounded to stay balanced.

So, to ground ourselves emotionally some good tips would be : be aware of when our reaction doesn't equal the situation, express what we are feeling, forgive ourselves and others (not just mentally) and replace one behavior with another.

Abraham Hicks' work is all about using our emotions to get us into the space where we line up energetically with good stuff - with the stuff we are wanting - if you resonate with that, definitely google it. I've mostly been focusing on negative emotions here but the real key is to practice a higher emotion (joy, peace) and move out of the lower energies . The more often we can operate at a higher level, the more we feel comfortable being there, the more our vibration lines up with positive emotions without us having to work so hard.

Emotional grounding is work though and just like physical and mental work makes those areas stronger emotional work strengthens us, too - all the parts work together.

part IV what does all this gounding mean for our business

if you think you want it and you don't really want it ....

sanctuary polarity bracelet - melissa nucera collection

I keep forgetting about Oprah's Super Soul Sunday show, but when someone reminded me that Marianne Williamson was on last week I made a point of turning on the TV that morning.

Marianne was inspiring as usual, but it was something that singer India Arie said that literally made me have to sit down.

The truth just came at me like a fireball, or maybe I should say mosquito - yes, the truth of it hit me like a mosquito.

(we need to stop this stupid war on drugs and get focused on the mosquitoes - they are taking over)

She had been nominated for a whole bundle of grammys a few years (?) ago and she didn't win any of them, so now when someone in the music industry loses big - they say they did an India Arie.

After her loss - she left the industry to just be for a while and to reconnect with her love of music, without the agenda of "winning" and what she realized was that parts of herself were just not ready for the kind of success she was having. The parts that weren't ready, the little self-sabotaging spaces most of us carry, made sure she didn't have it.

"If you think you want it and you don't really want it, it makes you weaker." ... India Arie

I would add "If you know what you want it makes you stronger" - it's not the getting it that makes us stronger, it's not just the action toward the getting either - it's the wanting

(the real kind, not the 'you should want this' kind of wanting);

it's the totality of all parts of us wanting it.

Anyhoo, I'm going to come back to this with a series after I finish the emotional foundation stuff because I am thinking there is a really important message here and many of us makers are spending a whole hell of a lot of time making ourselves weaker, but I just wanted to write it down, so that

1. I don't forget it (my total lack of short term memory situation)
2. So anyone out there working with these same themes and might resonate with it can hear it now

merc goes retrograde in cancer - plus jupiter moves in, too

anne-julie aubrey collection (magnetic ring)

I should have posted this a couple days ago because I would have looked prophetic with the Supreme Court killing DOMA yesterday (reversal).

Mercury goes retrograde 3-4 times a year for about a month.

This retrograde period started yesterday which makes now a good time to be thinking about all those re-do things - revising, remembering, re-evaluating, renovating, re-inventing, reflecting, reawakening, restoring - see this is not bad stuff!

Mercury retrograde gets a bad rep because sometimes electronics, communications, etc (mercury ruled stuff) can get wonky (in a very real sense Mercury has moved down into the darkness of the underworld - we'll be feeling our way in the dark at times, too, but the good thing about this darkness is that all our other senses will kick in and we'll see things we hadn't noticed before).

Also yesterday Jupiter moved into Cancer for a nice year long visit. Jupiter (the universal Santa Claus) is about expansion and good fortune and Cancer rules the home, family, water (yes, more water coming - sorry), ancestry, mothering (mothering ourselves, too), real estate, reunions, 4th house stuff - Jupiter will expand all this stuff universally (this transit is good for home based businesses in general).

If you know where this transit hits your own chart you will see where the universal Santa Claus will be most apt to expand your life. Later on this summer Jupiter will oppose Pluto in Capricorn which could be a great driving force for us makers to get stuff done (as long as this stuff doesn't involve manipulation or trying to control others) - it could be a driving force to help us achieve a level of security we might not have had in a while!

It's all good. And if it doesn't look like it's good to us - this is a great time to change what we are looking at - it's a great idea to say to a negative thought - "It's not important that I think about this now" - then move our minds to a positive thought.
xo all

the groundwork - part III our emotional (energy in motion) body and what those little blue pills are really all about

oh deer - polarity locket - artist: raceytay

Now, I really will tie this foundation stuff back to our businesses - if we are ungrounded we will be building our businesses on shifting sand

at best they will last until the first big storm at worst they can suck us down with them, like quicksand, when they topple.

(although I have just been advised by hubs that it is scientifically impossible to drown in quicksand unless we dive in headfirst, I wouldn't want to test that out - I might be willing to let him test it though)

We've talked physical and mental spaces, so let's talk about the emotional part because this is the heart-felt stuff many of us find the most challenging.

Our emotion (energy in motion) is where stuff shows up in our body before it shows up in the physical body (as healing or disease) and in our physical world. People say we have to control our emotions. We can't control our emotions; how do we control our emotions? I think it is this kind of thinking that gets us into trouble.

We can control our response to them (we don't have to punch the wall if we get mad). We can make changes within ourselves that let us see things differently so we feel different emotions. But I don't think controlling them is the way to go - unless by the word control we mean master as in the opposite of an amateur - master as in command won't work here.

First we have our INSTINCT - it's like our collective unconsciousness in the world of matter - we have lost touch with much of it. We still have our fight or flight instinct; probably all things connected with staying alive are still a part of us - if lost in the wild it would probably tell us which berries we could eat and it would kick in when we need it to survive.

Years ago, I was managing a bank that was robbed. From the time the robbers walked into the branch until they left - we were all operating on pure instinct. We all just wanted to stay alive; the robbers, too, I think (I wonder if they are still in jail. They had robbed one of our other branches the week before and they were caught a few weeks later during another robbery while having a shootout with the police on the parkway). Later we were surprised when we learned from the video tape the whole thing had lasted less than 3 minutes - it felt like time had stopped.

At one point I was alone in the vault with one of the robbers and he had a gun to my head and was telling me to open the vault. Fear was pouring off him. I was totally calm and focused. I went back into the lobby and was asking for one of the tellers to come into the vault (I had half the combo and the tellers had the other half) and I was looking into the tellers' eyes and knowing that none of them was coming into that vault. Their instinct was to stay put.

Luckily one of the other robbers, a couple of them had robbed the teller windows, was saying let's go and they left.

Then we have our INTUITION - it's like our collective unconsciousness in the world of spirit - our connection to the I AM.

Then we have our EMOTION - the word emotion comes from the Latin ex-movere, which means to move out. Emotions need to be moved out - not by behavior but through verbalization.

It is no coincidence that so many women (especially at mid-life when our voice in the world may not even be our own voice anymore) have neck, thyroid and jaw problems - this is a 5th chakra issue about saying the right thing to the right person at the right time with the right intensity - which sounds pretty exhausting.

There is a scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the mother says the husband is the head and the wife is the neck that turns the head. Well, being the neck is freakin' exhausting - trying to convince everyone in the family what direction they should be going in - supporting the head (especially some over-inflated ones), chomping at the bit with our words - I need a nap.

Now forget the family/relationship stuff and just look at us personally.

The neck is all about the passage of concepts, ideas, wishes and will (from the brain) into practice (action). The neck is a passage. Not yet the action itself. The neck precedes the action.

The neck represents flexibility and our ability to look around and back.

The back of the neck, the nape, is the most yang part of the neck (male, active energy), and the one that is most affected by excessive yang behaviors. The front part, where the larynx, the trachea, the throat and the vocal cords are located, is affected by excessively yin (female, receptive) behaviors.

I could talk about necks all day. I think I am a neck expert.

Chronic neck, shoulder and arm tension is stored anger. If we had dealt with this in our emotional body it wouldn't be showing up in our physical (and yes overwork, smoking, bad dental work, car accidents, injuries, etc can all play a part, but they all play a part in not valuing ourselves, too and in the things we judge as unfair and in storing up anger - it's all connected).

I heard a medical intuitive on the radio (Carolyn Myss maybe?) say that tension is anger, drooping is sadness and shaking is fear. This sounds true to me, I would like to think my neck tension is something nobler, but unexpressed anger sounds about right.

(this is probably what men's little blue pills are really all about at mid-life - sadness - something male energy has a lot of trouble expressing)

Emotions need to be looked at with nonjudgment and compassion - "oh that's interesting, this car in front of me that just cut me off is making me mad" - don't judge the emotion as bad. Just let it come up, look at it "isn't this interesting" - then release it. Exhale through your mouth and imagine exhaling the color red. Then inhale some peaceful white or green and exhale any left over red.

I think I got off track with this since I am icing my neck! More emotional body stuff next post - how to use our emotions to head toward what we want and then we will work all this foundation stuff back to our businesses - this really is a business blog ... sort of.

Full Moon in Capricorn on Sunday ... balancing the private and public and stepping into our responsibility

new cork necklace about to bloom

This isn't just another full moon post (please don't groan) - this is a SUPER FULL MOON - (biggest and brightest of the year) and it's also in Capricorn.

(the sign of our work in the world)

The full moon is a time of completion - it is also a time of action - outerworld action; the stuff we do.

So we have the moon (where we've been, what we know, feminine energy, being) and the sun (where we are trying to go/be, masculine energy, doing) as far apart in the sky as they can be from our earthly perspective during a full moon - this month we have the sun in Cancer, the moon in Capricorn.

The moon is not well positioned because the moon rules Cancer and it is in the opposite position right now

so this could leave us with the push pull between home (Cancer) and work (Capricorn) - the balance of our private vs public lives - the question of how much of ourselves we are willing to reveal.

If you have a Cancer or Capricorn sun sign or rising sign or moon sign - you could be seeing people from your past coming back or you could be seeking some connection with the past.

(since in a very real sense there is no time - we can totally change our past btw - forgiveness can erase all that bad mojo and give us a clean slate - forgiving others and most of all forgiving ourselves)

This full moon will be a big part of the emotional (water) stuff everyone of every sign will be dealing with this summer.

With Uranus in Aries- think moving forward, pioneering - with Pluto in Capricorn - think digging stuff up - do we need it or not. These are deep soul lessons we are dealing with. With the sun in Cancer it tends to make us long for things. Saturn is in Scorpio (if you are old enough to remember what was going on in your life in 1983-1985, you may see some patterns) - find what house Scorpio resides in your natal chart and this is the area where you can get a lot of work done now.

This will be the area of our life where we have relinquished power and where we need to step into our responsibility (thank you Lynn) - we are talking soul work here. When we fear something we relinquish our power and this is the time to get it back - not just for our own sake but for our entire collective - Jupiter is coming and life will totally support us with this now. The new world is in our hands!

native vermont print

happy summer solstice - the new world is all right here waiting for us

melissa nucera - sanctuary locket

Tomorrow we celebrate the Summer Solstice - first day of summer; the longest day of the year.

This is our fifth Summer Solstice with Pluto in Capricorn so our challenge continues to be finding confidence and holding our center throughout all the chaos

(in our personal life this will show up in various ways and in varying strengths - the stars show a time of intense feelings and an “urgency to discover”)

Though these days we are living in are unstable

(this birthing a new world is hard work, but we were born for this - we can do it)

thanks to crazy squares and T-squares that are keeping every one of us on planet Earth on our toes  and showing up in our individual lives and in society (which is just a reflection back to us of our individual stuff) as restlessness, revolution and false safety net breakdown - there is actually nothing to fear.

Our real safety net is still here.

The Course in Miracles teaches "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

(one of my favorite teachings - if you can lose it, it isn't real)

Together we continue our journey to the sanctuary we began to seek around 7 or 8 years ago. If we look at what is emerging in our life and we make decisions and adjustments (however tiny because baby steps are totally allowed) to reorient toward that, toward the new, we will be ok. Acceptance is always the place of peace. Resisting change is painful.

Let go of obsolete, stagnant, or stuck emotional responses

most of the time we let go of things mentally or physically, but it is the emotional heart-centered connection we need to release the most.

The themes of compassion, more water (stay dry), stuff coming up to be looked at

(no more secrets - we see this in our own lives and our systems, which just reflect ourselves back to us - the entire NSA scandal is a perfect example- their actions cannot be hidden but also our own actions; ie conversations, etc they are listening to cannot be hidden - there really are no boogie men, no real enemies),

the rising female energy -

we could think - how can you say female power is rising when all around us I see examples of female energy being repressed.

What we are actually seeing now is what is hidden coming up to be looked at so we can deal with it.

This isn't really about female power, this is about female responsibility - we just have to step into that energy. It is right here waiting for us.

When you say to a woman - step into your female power - she might think, "whoa, wait a minute I'm not sure this power thing is for me", but say to a woman - it is time to step into your female responsibility and she gets it.

And because we are all connected every little baby step anyone takes, moves everyone else along, too. This isn't all about women, men have female power also.

We cannot stand on someone else's back without standing on shaky ground. It may appear to make us taller, but it's all illusion. If we look at the shadow (and shadows can no longer be hidden), we can see the struggle underneath.

Our precious Mother Earth is female energy in living form - the more we nurture ourselves and each other, the more she is cared for, too. The repression of female energy is the repression of Mother Earth - it's all the same stuff. It is not a coincidence that this is all coming up for us to deal with at the same time - our stewardship of this planet and how girls and women are cared for here.

The celebration of the summer solstice was stolen from us a long time ago (although stolen is the wrong word here because it sounds like the power is with someone outside of us and it truly isn't) - this year let's say a little prayer for our planet and for our sister energy that is being healed.

We can use tomorrow as a little touchstone to let go of our fear (stepping into our power when we have so long been in the shadow), let go of our narrow views and interpretations and remain focused on the bright, blinding, rising sun that is on the way. Tomorrow will be the most light filled day of the year - how we choose to use our light is up to us!