New steps, and things I've learned

Happy birthday to me!

As I look back on this past year, I’m most struck by what a challenging and growth-inducing year it’s been. I’m happy to welcome what is newly emerging in my life, even without knowing exactly what that is yet.

Starting in September, I’m excited to be taking the next few months to travel from my home base in Chelsea, to explore and choose where I want to locate myself on a more permanent basis. I’ll continue to coach online and create destination retreats and trainings starting with Bali in early 2019. More about that soon!

photo by Paige Mills-Haag

A few things I’ve learned this year, in the order they occurred to me:

• Take care of myself first. All of the loving actions in the world won’t have their full positive impact if taken from a context of self-denial rather than self-love and self-respect.
  
• Resolve doubts about my direction before taking action. This lesson has crystallized for me as I’ve navigated a year with significant shifts around personal situations I created while experiencing inner conflict. Thinking “I’ll work that out eventually” led to a big mess and results I didn’t enjoy.
  
• Perceive that my coping mechanisms are/were at one time the most life affirming choice I had access to. Hindsight is 20/20. Even when I chose something I now see as a mistake, bring presence, compassion and openness to learning and healing to what occurred. At the same time, turn toward change and growth even when it stretches me uncomfortably.
  
• Welcome grief and mourning when it arrives at my door. The journey of being human and becoming more of who I am includes accepting myself, my past, what I see as my flaws, with love and compassion for the whole experience. Ironically to me, grieving contributes to healing inner conflict.
  
• Deepen bonds with people who can attune with me. (Me attuning with others is not the same thing as them attuning with me.) Notice when that’s not happening. Continue to develop my own capacity to attune to others and with myself at the same time.
  
• Embrace the paradoxes within me. The more my inner conflict resolves in a felt experience of wholeness, the greater my capacity to relate with who and what is in front of me so that something new can emerge (vs. recreating personal, generational, cultural or collective trauma.)
  
• Prioritize my wholeness, always. Continually notice how each part of my life aligns with my essence and be willing to let go and say no to what doesn’t align.
  
• Do what sustains me and the life I choose: Creativity, collaboration and contribution. Without putting the work I love in the center (which doesn’t really fit the definition of what most people call work) I don’t thrive. Accept how central my purpose is to me, and go all the way with it!

Dancing is always a good choice!

Love, 

Rhonda

Inspiration I'm catalyzed to share

Originally posted June 15, 2018

Since 2001, I am continually fascinated with the way human beings connect, learn, heal, create and evolve.

These days, the following questions most inspire me and catalyze me to share:

What is essential?  How can I embrace wholeness in me and in people around me?  How can I fully rest into stillness and delight in movement personally, as well as the larger movements of life?  How can I  gather with others to connect our consciousness, and to facilitate the processes of healing, deepening, and expanding light?

I have four workshops in the St. Louis area in the next 10 days.  Join me to dive in, explore and share in various settings in a conscious container of loving presence.

​http://www.transformationplayground.com/calendar--registration.html

The beauty of the question

Stay with the question. 

Don’t rush on through to relief, to action, to something, anything, to relieve this awful discomfort.  Stay.  Breathe.  Allow.  Welcome.  Be.  Wonder.  Relax.  Open.

That’s all there is to do now.

Eventually, when you are ripe, which may seem like forever from now, the question will ripen into an answer through you,

All on its own. 

Well, perhaps not only on its own,

But with the sunshine of your presence peeking through the clouds of doubt and anxiety, your question will ripen into the answer you are becoming.

Life is like a garden

Our lives bloom from the seeds our ancestors planted and cultivated. Their life experiences are the ground and roots which support us, or in some cases which hinder us personally and culturally.

We are the roots, and also the gardeners, of and for the generations to come.

How will we participate?

photo by Paige Mills-Haag

Contemplative questions:

• How can I make the garden of my inner and outer life more beautiful, compassionate and just?
• What weeds — in wrongful thinking or bad habits — would I benefit from removing ?
• What personal or collective growth is asking for the sunlight of my attention?
• What needs in the garden of my life call me to action today?​

​Note: Begin contemplative practice by centering yourself and breathing to cultivate a relaxed state in your nervous system. As you ask yourself the questions and receive answers, feel the impact of each answer in your body-mind system. Insights and wise actions that are aligned with your core resonate with some sense of life-affirming, peaceful strength.