Creating the Future

The more I push, long for, or strive to be there the less I'm here.

I'm not saying having goals (being there) is a bad thing. 

I am saying that we don't get to argue with our here-and-now starting point, built on our past experiences which contributed to shaping us.  Ideally, we can fully feel through and digest our past so the experiences don't get stuck in our craw:  undigested, unfinished, and still bothering us.  We often need companionship and guidance about how to complete the past.  We humans really are not wired to process and heal totally alone.  (I feel another blog post wanting to write itself about this topic.)

Being here, now, in our bodies will bring up past stuff, which I personally don't think will be completely clear until we're dead, and some say not even then. 

So, having unfinished business is part of being human.  We can release our exhalation and enjoy being connected in our humanity.  And, generally speaking, the more we are complete with our past,  the more freedom, ease, and availability we have to connect now, and to create what we want. 

Coming home to body sensations, emotional and energetic movements, and noticing thoughts will bring up our past, since unfinished business tends to recycle through our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations, as if it wants to finish itself.  And coming home creates space, and opens us to insights, creativity, and our future.  Practicing mindfulness is not really the kind of thing someone is good at, or bad at.  It's more about practicing -- tuning in to these three realms (physical, emotional, mental) through our bodies with compassionate welcoming so we can "be with" what we notice vs. get lost in the endless cycle of what we notice.  Regular practice creates a habit which creates greater capacity for presence.  Whether a given practice is easier or harder often depends not just on the capacity of the practitioner, but also the content of what life is bringing us.

There are so many ways to practice embodied presence, and I really appreciate practices oriented around stillness AND practices oriented around movement, which complement each other and build both capacities.  My personal favorites are meditation, yoga, dance, as well as creativity practices of movement and writing. 

One thing that prevent us from coming into peaceful acceptance of what is here, now, and what is unfinished from our past is blame.  We may blame ourselves.  We may blame other people.  Regardless, blame functions like a protective shield from deeper attunement to something that is painful, perhaps too painful to presence and relate to without support. 

I'm not a fan of jumping to forgiveness in this context.  Putting our minds on railroad tracks to unconditional forgiveness may prevent us from digesting whatever happened through our bodies which leads to healing, insights, other gems that will remain unknown unless we organically go through (rather than around or over) our process.  I see forgiveness as more of a natural outcome of embodied presence than a practice in of itself.  And my experience is that each of us is wired differently - our own embodiment practices will attune us to our specific needs, which practices are best in a given moment to support our healing, creative power, and what we want to move toward. 

The more I push, long for, or strive to be there, the less I'm here. 

And paradoxically, the more I'm here, the more beauty I'm attuned with.  There's a visceral sensation of support as if I'm standing on my past:  personally, through my family lines, and culturally.  As I increase my capacity to be with me and include the past, I increase my availability to relate with others, am graced with more insight, and my future seems to appear and unfold as the next simple next step.  I'm so grateful!


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If you resonate with what you read here and/or on my website, I invite you to contact me to explore working together.   

May you walk in peace, accompanied ​by love, always, 
Rhonda

Writing to Bridge the Gap : Practicing My Evolutionary Tools

Writing to Bridge the Gap 

Practicing My Evolutionary Tools

I inquire about perceptions above and below the line separating vital creativity from stagnation.

Observing a clear line inside me and shifting my attention in a life-affirming direction was a relief; until I became a bit too sharp with it.

Sometimes my mind is a dictator coldly looking down and sorting to affirm and dismiss at will.  I can no longer condone such measures. It hurts. 

Within me, I practice including my energies home in my loving attention:  the domineering and the docile, the fearful and the sad, the wholeness and the brokenness, and most of all falling in love with my instinctual movements: rich, honest, and pregnant with primal power to ebb and surge and bloom within, a healing weave which makes everything new.

Photo by Paige Mills-Haag

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.

Gateway to Presence

​​Awareness is a gateway into presence, deepening our availability and engagement with life.

The practice of bringing awareness to our wholly bodies allows us to relate with what we are noticing. In any given moment, a rich tapestry of experiences within is pulsating with life beneath our habitual routines, just waiting to be noticed, discovered, and appreciated.

Neglect, abandonment, rejection - the wounds that so many of us carry and try to avoid - can begin to be healed when we practice wholly embodied presence.

The irony is that welcoming our experiences into presence is inherently pleasurable, even as the sensations and feelings we've been avoiding may be painful.

It's like bodybuilding -- but for consciousness!  In the love-gym of our hearts, we lift awareness which at first is heavy with entrenched habits and dusty remnants of past losses.  Through diligent practice, we bring awareness to meet inner experience, which impatient of waiting and hungry for presence, shout, "Yes, choose me!  I want attention!"

Bonus presence (conscious community) supports the process, as often it is easier, especially at first, to receive embodied presence from another than it is to create new pathways of wholly presence alone.

The eventual payoff? A strong inner presence muscle which can pleasurably welcome a greater range of experiences in a moment and be sustained for longer and longer durations, creating inner spaciousness which shimmers with new possibilities and wholeness that shines like deep wells through our eyes, resonates the sound of our voices, and pours through our pores.  If that sounds too good to be true, sometimes it is!  That is on a good day -- a moment of relaxed oneness within ourselves and with the river of life.  On other days we start again at the complete beginning, disheveled and askew, since like snakes we shed old skin so we can grow and emerge into fresh new versions of ourselves.