Soulful Healing

“Sticks & stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”  This familiar children’s taunt may be a nice way to dismiss a bully, but you and I both know that it’s not altogether true.  In fact, I often think that social, emotional, and spiritual wounds are far more painful than anything a stick or stone can do.  In addition, there are often severe emotional wounds that come from living through violent experiences.  I see this as especially true for those who are living in areas that are currently at war.  While there are many people in many countries and communities living with violence of some type, I’d like to focus today on U.S. soldiers returning from active deployment.  Many of our soldiers are coming home with lots of thoughts, feelings, and actions that the rest of us civilians might have a hard time understanding.  Witnessing violence and death (an inherent part of war) has serious effects on the human mind.  In a military setting, one is essentially re-socialized to incorporate these experiences into one’s worldview to build up the capacity to cope, but those strategies don’t work so well when the soldier returns to her/his regular life.

What is Trauma?
For our purposes here, the term “trauma” refers to the serious physical or psychological harm of Self or someone else, whether actual or threatened.  The seriousness of the event is usually observed in the person’s  response of fear or terror.  Per the DSM-IV-TR, the diagnostic manual therapists use to categorize mental health diagnoses, the common emotional and behavioral reactions to trauma include:

• Re-experiencing the trauma
  • Flashbacks:  Feeling as though the trauma is happening again
  • Nightmares
  • Feeling very distressed when reminded of the trauma
• Avoiding reminders of the trauma or feeling numb
  • Avoiding people  or places that might trigger painful memories
  • Forgetfulness related to the event
  • Feeling detached from others
  • Difficulty experiencing a full range of emotions
  • Not wanting to talk about the event
• Increased arousal
  • Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
  • Feeling irritable, grumpy, or angry
  • Increased sensitivity to sound & movement – such as feeling jumpy or on edge
  • Difficulty concentrating

Trauma Responses as Helpful
These types of feelings and behaviors might serve a person well in a dangerous environment.  That might sound strange at first, but stay with me…  Feeling detached could be useful because a soldier, for example, needs to distance himself from what’s happening or he can’t do his job.  Difficulty sleeping is helpful when the enemy might attack during the night and a soldier needs to be fully awake & alert with little notice.  Developing an increased sensitivity to sound & movement is useful when a soldier needs to carefully observe everything going on around her in order to stay alive.  It is also not difficult to understand how irritability and anger develop under constant exposure to injury and death, especially since military units often function with the closeness of a family.

From Helpful to Unhelpful
So we see that certain trauma responses are useful in environments where danger is actively, and perhaps relentlessly, present.  But these challenges with sleeping, concentrating, irritability, and increased sensitivity are not useful when a person leaves that dangerous situation.  Nightmares and flashbacks cause the nervous system to be on high alert, which can lead to irritability and difficulty communicating.  Lack of sleep is physically exhausting and if insomnia is severe enough, it can  eventually lead to odd perceptual experiences and hallucinations.  Feeling numb and detached can lead to social isolation and failure to reach out for help when it is most needed.  Difficulty concentrating makes it hard to get work done and perhaps hard to hold on to a job.  Difficulty maintaining a job can create tension in one’s close relationships, leading to more social isolation, and self-blame.  Quite the vicious downward spiral.

Helping our Soldiers
If you or a loved one is struggling with the above feelings and behaviors, the good news is that there is help.  Taking that first step of asking for help can be really difficult and yet it the first step that is so important in the healing process.  It can also be such a relief to lay down the burden you’ve been carrying.  Here are some great resources for healing from the struggles of war and military conflict:

Give An Hour — Providing veterans of Iraq & Afghanistan, and their families, with free mental health assistance 
Heal My PTSD — A wonderful compilation of information and resources about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) –Providing support, education, advocacy, and research on mental illness.  Broswe around the site or click the “Find Your Local NAMI” to search for a chapter near you.   
NAMI’s Veterans Resource Center — A variety of resources compiled by NAMI to support troops, veterans, and their families.

Stay mindful and be well!

The last entry in this review of the connection between body and soul brings us to an exploration of our spirit.  If you’re just now dropping in, you can read the previous posts in this series here:  Part One (the physical body), Part Two (the energetic body), Part Three (the mental & emotional body), and Part Four (the intellectual body).

Anandamayakosha

Try this fun, gigantic word on for size…  awn-AWN-duh-mai-uh-KOH-shuh.  This term applies to the spiritual body or to the things that bring us true joy and bliss.  While many of us being our yoga practice because we know it will be good physical exercise, it holds so much more substance.  The ultimate goal of yoga is samadhi, or complete union with the Divine.  Other cultures call this by names such as nirvana, bodhi, or enlightenment.  In this space of unity, concepts such as “you” and “I” no longer exist because We are One.  You may have caught brief glimpses of samadhi in your everyday life via the experience of those “aha” moments where everything seems to make sense.  It is also something the people of every age have tried to achieve in ways that yield the opposite effect.  In his book Light on Life, B.K.S. Iyengar states, “I can assure you that everyone seeks samadhi, and most of us seek shortcuts to get there. … People seek samadhi through drugs, alcohol, the danger of extreme sports, the romanticism of music, the beauty of nature, and the passion of sexuality.”  As I noted in Part Four, there is nothing wrong with momentary pleasure in and of itself, as long as we recognize that it is a feeling that passes like any other.  True bliss is something else entirely.

In many a late night conversation with my dad, he would often say to me that we humans have a God-shaped hole inside.  Take a moment to reflect on this and I think you’ll know exactly what that means…  The place inside of you that hurts, aches, and cries out for connection.  The place you might try to cover up with a shield of comedy or harshness or doing too much.  The place that may even make you run away from truly connecting with others because that idea is just…  so… terrifying. The good news, though, is that it’s a space that can be filled by recognizing the Divine spark inside each one of us.  Yes, that applies to you.  You who are too hard on yourselves; you who blame yourselves and others for things far outside anyone’s control; you who yell at people in traffic (like me!); you who push others away; you are struggling just to get through each day.  Especially on those deep, dark, sad days, I recognize that belief in something Divine is hard to come by.

So how do you seek Oneness with the Divine?  What in your life brings you that sense of joyful contentment?  For some it visits during meditation or quiets walks among nature or śavāsana.  Some get to experience it in their daily work, whether that’s at home or office or factory or field.  For others, it is in finding ways to give back.  And for still others, it is in allowing oneself to receive the gifts that others want to provide (think about it…  when was the last time you brushed off a compliment instead of simply saying, “Thank you”?).  At all of these levels, I like to think that when we recognize the Light in each other, we make these connections spiritual ones.  And if not spiritual, then at the very least mindful, thoughtful, caring.  In my work as a therapist, I frequently see people working to turn their losses and injuries into helpful gifts for others (this applies so strongly to all of us healers out there!).  This is such a wonderful way to bring Soul into things.  We can let life’s injuries leave complete destruction in their wake and perhaps, for a time, we revel in that darkness.  But eventually there comes an opportunity to rise up, to reconnect.  Just be careful of the other extreme, giving too much and doing too much.  Balance is always the key.

As usual, I hope that I have given you many things to wonder about…  I find that there are very few tangible answers along our journey through life.  I believe our body and soul are connected in so many ways, with a lovely dance swaying back and forth among all of our layers:  body, energy, emotions, wisdom, spirit.  Consider how you might more consciously connect all these qualities of your Self in your daily life.  Are you eating foods that give you fuel for the day?  Or are you eating in an attempt to fill the hole?  Is your mind a safe harbor of gentle thoughts towards self and others?  Or is it a minefield?  Here’s wishing you grace and bliss in your own journey!  And to those celebrating Thanksgiving this week, enjoy the communion of friends, family, and feasting!

This week, we continue with the Body Meets Soul series.  This is an ongoing discussion about the koshas, or different layers of human experience.  So far, I’ve written about the physical body, energetic body, and emotional body as unique aspects of our awareness.  This week, I’ll turn to the intellectual body.

Vijnyanamayakosha

Pronounced vig-nee-AWN-uh-mai-uh-KOH-shuh, this layer of human experience is governed by the intellect or wisdom.  This is not to be confused with knowledge, ego, or cleverness.  This layer is concerned with intelligence, conscience, and wisdom.  This kind of intelligence is that of wise discernment, not an inflated sense of self-importance.  The goal of wisdom is to unify our individual consciousness with our cosmic consciousness.  When first learning about these concepts of individual and cosmic consciousness, it was described to me as the difference between the small “s” self and the big “S” Self.  You might think about it this way…  There is a you that, when left to its own devices, may do whatever it takes to uphold the status quo, maintain inertia, make decisions that benefit only you.  We might call this the ego or the small “s” self.  Then there is the You that is your Higher Self, the one that perhaps believes in compassion, loving-kindness, and caring for the world around you.  These aspects of the self can often be found arguing with another…  Do I do what my ego wants to do right now  (“Food, drink, sex, pleasure, distraction… NOW!”)?  Or do I follow the path to which my Soul is calling me (faith, patience, perseverance, stillness, quiet)?  Remember that food, drink, sex, pleasure, and distraction are not problematic in and of themselves and can indeed be full of soul…   And that is the key question:  How can you make this next action one that connects you to your Soul?

In her book The Places That Scare You, Pema Chödrön writes, “It’s hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament.  Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and – without even knowing it – we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity.  Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.”  Insecurity and fear are emotions that can prevent us from connecting to our inner wisdom, our God-consciousness.  We experience these emotions and tense up, gripping, grasping, holding on for dear life.  Yet when we are able to soften our outer defenses, turn our attention inward, our wisdom can point us to our truth.  Try this as an example…  Tighten up your fists, really squeeze, feel the discomfort and watch your knuckles whiten.  Nothing can flow through when your hands are clenched this way.  Now open your hands, allow the discomfort to pass, feel the softness of hands willing to accept whatever they find.  Here we connect to the flow of life force and energy that is always moving around and through us.

My earlier statement that intellect and wisdom should not be confused with knowledge is not to say that knowledge is a bad thing.  In fact, self study and spiritual study are great ways to exercise our wisdom.  It is just that our educational achievements can puff up the ego, getting in the way of truth.  You are not your education.  You are not your job or career or lack thereof.  You are not the clothes you wear or the car you drive or the stuff you collect.  I know…  Our society says that you are and measures your worth based on these things.  But when you connect to your Higher Self, you know better than all that.  You know that health, family, and friends are all far more important than how many square feet your house is.  And if these first three are hard to come by in your life, then contentment in the struggle is something to strive for.  Radical acceptance of the present moment.  Seeking wisdom may involve asking yourself, “What is this moment trying to teach me right now?” particularly if the moment is something you want to run from.  Another question is, “How can I share what I have learned with others?”  This kind of sharing may be in a formal classroom or it may be in the simple act of a smile or hug or laugh or nod of understanding.  When connecting to your wisdom and sharing this with others, what you do does not matter as much as how you do it…  Approach the next moment, person, place, thing with loving-kindness and see what your own wisdom has to teach you today.  Have a wisdom-filled week, my friends!

Hi everyone!  It’s been waaaaay too long since my last post.  Needless to say, life has been really busy here.  Regardless, I’m thrilled to be back here at my keyboard!  I’d like to spend the next several weeks exploring the connection between body and soul.  Here in the West, it has become very popular to discuss any manner of “mind-body-spirit” topics.  It is good that we finally recognize there is more to life than our thoughts and our physical experience.  Yet, in yoga, there are five layers of being described:  Body, Energy/Breath, Mind/Emotions, Intellect, and Spirit.  The yogis call these layers koshas.  These five aspects of our experience must be in harmony with one another in order for us to be fully alive and healthy.  For example, if one is physically fit but an emotional wreck, that is not a balanced existence.  Or if one is intellectually astute but is physically unhealthy, they are not living in wholeness.  In other words, we cannot separate any one aspect of our Being from another.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll give you some food for thought on each of these koshas.

Annamayakosha

Yes, I know, these are long words with potentially unfamiliar pronunciations.  So here’s some help:  AHN-uh-MY-uh-KOH-shuh.  This is the  physical, anatomical body and represents the outermost layer of our being.  With it, we touch, taste, see, and hear the world around us.  This body is the container for the other four layers of our experience.  When our other aspects of being (energy, emotions, thoughts, spirit) are out of balance, they can negatively affect our bodies.  Think about how stress lowers your immune defenses, leaving you prone to illness.  Have you ever heard yourself saying, “But I can’t get sick right now, I have too much to do!!”  That “too much” just might be part of the problem…  Especially here in the U.S., we are obsessed with bigger, better, faster, more.  Yet the body has limitations and needs to be respected and soulfully cared for, especially as we get older.  Youth generally has physical energy to spare and we frequently miss that as we age.  But comparing ourselves now to some past version of the same means that we miss out on the NOW.

One thing I love about yoga is that many of us come to a yoga asana practice with the goal of becoming physically healthier, and then realize it is so much more.  I became interested in yoga therapy when I started to see the emotional benefits that yoga was having in my life.  Increased calm, less tension, steadier responses to stressful events.  So the connection between our bodies and our other layers of being goes both ways.  We care for our breath, emotions, thoughts, & spirit, and our bodies will thank us.  If we care for our bodies, it will be easier to manage the other aspects of our experience.  Even while we seek the guidance of our souls, we mustn’t forget that we are still living in a physical world that takes a toll on the body.  Caring for our bodies is done on many levels.  Do you get enough sleep each night?  Do you eat foods that nourish your body (versus just tantalizing your taste-buds)?  Do you drink enough water?

In his book Light on Life, B.K.S. Iyengar says, “To be spiritual, one must not deny or forget the body. Throughout the journey to the spiritual goal, the body must be kept active.”  I recently did a presentation on this topic in the context of Christianity.  It is the religious tradition with which I’m most familiar and I believe these concepts can be explored from the perspective of other religions or schools of thought.  In my research for that presentation, the Bible verse that struck me most was, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? … Therefore honor God with your body.” – Corinthians 6: 19-20 (New International Version).  Regardless of your faith background, I think it is helpful to consider whether we are treating our bodies in a sacred way.  It is a gift and its health enables us to do the work of our spirit in this world.  And so, as you go about your life tasks this week, consider how you might bring some soul back into the ways you treat your body.  As C.S. Lewis says, “You don’t have a soul.  You are a Soul.  You have a body.”  Have a blissful week!

During a recent discussion on yoga’s therapeutic benefits, one of my colleagues asked me, “What’s it like to have a stress-free life?”  I know this colleague was mostly joking, but it was a good conversation starter.  I laughed and said that I have anything but a stress-free life.   Mindfulness is not about eliminating stress from your life, it’s about changing the way you respond to that stress.  That may not be what any of us wants to hear…  I have certainly wished that mindfulness and meditation and yoga could get rid of the stressful things in my life.  But they don’t.  What they do, instead, is make it easier for us to separate ourselves from our stress.  That way, we stop being defined by our automatic reactions to events and begin to choose our thoughts/words/actions more carefully.

I know…  this may be disheartening news to some of you.  If you can’t make the stress go away, why bother practicing mindfulness at all?  Here’s the tricky thing, though:  separating your Self from your stress does make the stress go away in a manner of speaking.  For years, one of my mentors would describe to me how it was possible for me to watch the drama unfold around me without getting caught up in it.  I tried and tried and tried and had a pretty tough time of it.  I suppose it’s one of the hazards of being a professional empath, this soaking up of other people’s emotions as if they were my own.  But when I really started to delve into the breathwork and meditative practices of yoga, I started to understand what my mentor was saying.  I was slowly able to sit in the presence of people’s emotions and hold on to my sense of Self.  Sometimes it was only for a few moments, sometimes much longer, but there it was.

I won’t try to tell you that I’ve mastered this skill now.  I’m certainly better at it than I used to be and there are a variety of situations that cut through my equilibrium…  people who drive dangerously, stories about the darker sides of humanity, those that would play the shame & blame game with me…  These are just a few of my triggers.  I get flustered, I get tense, I get judgmental.  Not my best moments, by far!  Yet I imagine these triggers will always be there in one form or another, so there is always room for me to improve   I guess what I want you to know is that coping more effectively with your daily stresses is indeed possible.  Plus, it is never too late to start.  If you’ve been wanting to find some peacefulness in the chaos of your everyday experience, begin the practice today.  Know that it is not easy and takes commitment, but try to love what you find in the clutter of your thoughts.  If you would like some guidance in your journey, here are just a few of the many great resources for mindfulness, meditation, and yoga:

Yoga Therapist Finder
InsightLA
Mindful Valley
Yoga Alliance
Yoga Finder
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
Learning Meditation

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a mindful week!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on this three-part series on self-reflection.  In Self-Reflection, Part 1, I go over the various benefits of engaging in a self-reflective practice.  In Self-Reflection, Part 2, I share some ideas for bringing more reflective experiences into your life.  Here, in the third and final installment, I’d like to discuss some of the signs that one might be doing too much self-reflection.  It’s all about balance, as we are forever dancing between seemingly opposing concepts.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Like so many helpful practices we can use to further our personal growth, self-reflection has many benefits.  There does come a time, though, when it may be too much.  Remember the myth of Narcissus?  He fell in love with his own reflection and wasted away.  This kind of self-obsession is possible for us, with the symbolic shriveling of our other relationships.  Remember in all of this that your relationship with yourself is not the only relationship you have.  Relationships must be nurtured in order to thrive.  Be careful to balance your self-relationship with those social connections that help you to be a whole person, giving to each relationship what it needs to be sustained.

When utilizing self-reflection as a strategy for personal development, an important distinction to make is between the little “s” self and the big “S” Self.  By little “s” self, I mean the ego, while the big “S” Self represents the Soul. The ego is a tricky character.  Its voice can be whiny and entitled and demanding.  The ego wants what it wants and wants it NOW!  And when the ego’s demands on the rest of your psyche don’t work, it can resort subtle, insidious messages of maintaining the status quo.  It can be challenging to differentiate the voice of the ego from the other aspects of your Self.  Usually, the ego wants anything that is immediately pleasurable and rejects that which requires any effort to achieve.  So as you embark on your chosen self-reflective practices, watch out for a few ego reactions, such as tantrum-like thoughts & emotions, as well as prideful, entitled ones.  The ego may try to trick you into self-obsession, as well.  Anything to keep things exactly as they are!  But the whole idea of self-reflection is to grow and learn, not maintain the status quo, right?

Soulful Self-Reflection

Obsessing over your thoughts, feelings, and actions will not be helpful for you or anyone else in your life.  The idea behind soulful self-reflection is to set aside a specific time to make your observations, then let… them… go…  Release your judgments, worries, and plans over the things you have noticed and allow your Soul to do the rest.  There is so very much about your experience that your mind cannot figure out.  This is where the Soul/Source/God/Higher Power/Great Spirit/I AM comes in.  Trust that just engaging in the process of reflection has done what it is supposed to do:  slow you down, clear out the clutter, and make room in your psyche for your Soul to do its mysterious work.  There’s a reason why some of the best advice we can get is to “sleep on it”.

If you do the best work you can do on the conscious level to sort through the gobbledy-gook of your thoughts and feelings, well, that just needs to be good enough, doesn’t it?  The rest can be sorted out on deeper levels that take time and mystery and the willingness to embrace the unknowable.  And I am certain that there is a hefty part of all of us that is not fully knowable by anyone, at least not by the small percentage of our brains that we are typically using.  A good friend of mine once told me (and I have since shared this with many more friends and colleagues), “Some things you can’t know until you know them.”  Have faith, dear ones.  I believe you will one day have the answers you are looking for.  As for the questions that can’t be answered…  I hope you will learn to trust your Soul.

In closing, I’d like to leave you with a quote that gives me encouragement when my mind is working overtime to understand the magical mystery of this life.  Thanks for reading and enjoy…

“…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ~~ Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903, in Letters to a Young Poet

Hi all!  What’s that?  You’re surprised I’m posting a third blog this week?  I know, me too!  This one, though, is a guest blog for the Serenity Week over at Everyday Bliss, by Kathy Sprinkle.  Be sure to check out her other posts on the 13 virtues of Bliss.  Happy Friday!

I’m not talking about the kind of self-reflection you see in the mirror every morning     Self-reflection is really just about taking the time to reflect on you…  your actions, your thoughts, your feelings, your experiences.  Our minds are always working as we sort through all the things we experience each day.  We tend to focus most on our interactions with others; thinking, feeling, and doing in reaction to something someone else has said or done.  It is equally, if not more, important to spend time reflecting on our interactions with our Self.  Here is my first entry in a three-part series on why self-reflecting is good for the soul and how to achieve the most from whatever self-reflective practice you choose.

Why Reflect?
I like to think of self-reflection as an exercise in “taking inventory” on oneself.   If we don’t examine our own thoughts, feelings, motivations, and subsequent actions, how do we really know what’s true and what isn’t?  We encounter so many people, events, tasks, noises, demands, and stuff in every moment that if we are not careful, we start to think we are defined by all that extraneous “junk”.  Reflecting on these things helps us to:

1)  Remember who we really are
2) Figure out our priorities
3) Determine next steps to take or actions to stop taking
4) Identify our feelings to figure out which ones have important information for us and which are just reactions to old baggage
5)  Sort through our thoughts to determine which ones are helpful to our greater purpose and which ones aren’t
6)  Clear our minds for another day full of “stuff”

These six benefits of self-reflection are important to us in that they allow us to re-connect  to our deepest sense of well-being.  We can be reminded that we are not defined by the stressors and obligations and worries and overwhelming tasks that fill our days.  I’m not saying it’s easy to remember our bright shiny undamaged soul in the midst of a stress storm, but self-reflection can make it a little easier on you the next time a storm like that hits.

Stay tuned next week for strategies for self-reflection, in Part 2 of this series.  Thanks for reading and, as always, be well!

About three weeks ago, I injured my ankle playing tennis.  I knew well enough to use the combination of rest, ice, and elevation to decrease the swelling and allow it to heal.  I even got myself a neoprene brace to help keep my ankle stable.  But I jumped the gun a little and after a bit more than two weeks post-injury, I started walking around normally on my ankle.  It promptly swelled back up again and started hurting.  I went to the doctor just to make sure I hadn’t really messed it up.  There I received confirmation that I had not given my ankle enough time to fully heal.  Turns out that my ankle has a minor sprain and I would have done well to continue resting it.  Yet another reminder to slooooow doooowwwwwn…  It’s challenging to allow ourselves to be right where we are and love the present moment, so here is this week’s mindfulness tip to help you out:

1)  This takes the mindful walking concept a bit further.  When walking around this week, focus your attention on each step.
2)  Label each of your steps…  left… right… left… right… and make an effort to slow your pace
3)  Once you’ve settled into a slower rhythm, bring your attention to your breath
4)  Match your breath to your steps, at a rhythm that works for you, breathing in for an amount of steps that seems reasonable to you, then breathing out to the same number of steps
5)  Notice your thoughts and physical sensations as you practice this, remembering to release each observation without judgment

Wishing you a health-full week and plenty of time to rest!  Be well!

I went to sing kirtan with a friend recently at Yoga Desa in Topanga Canyon.  Led by teachers from the Art of Living Foundation, this experience of singing/chanting along with a few dozen other people reminded me how good it feels to connect with myself and a community of like-minded people.  Kirtan is something I’ve only experienced a few times, yet each time I have walked away feeling calm, joyful, and grounded.  Music in general is a wonderful way to get connected (whether kirtan, hymn, classical, pop, jazz, bluegrass…).  It brings us back from all the journeys our minds take every day.  Back to the present moment.  Back to our feelings.  Back to our deeper meaning.  Whether instrumental or lyrical, music can help to release emotions, create relaxation, inspire, rebuild, uplift.

This last time, I was particularly moved by our leaders’ reminder to “sing with the innocence of a child”.  We spend so much time thinking about how we are being perceived that we forget to just sing/speak/share from that shiny, unbroken part of our Self.  When all alone in the car or the shower, we might actually allow ourselves to sing out.  But the second we realize someone is watching…  slam!… we shut ourselves back down.  This literal description of how we silence ourselves and each other also carries figurative meaning.  Granted, some of our destructive characteristics may need silencing, but certainly we have many gifts we do not share with the world due to that ugliest of four-letter-words:  fear.

While fear is a subject for another blog, this did set me to thinking about other ways we might use Soul-connecting practices to counteract fear.  Musical experience (whether you prefer to sing or listen) is one way to remember who we really are underneath all the noise and confusion of our daily lives.  Physical exercise, knitting groups, walking clubs, sewing circles, prayer, meditation, laughing with your children, sharing a meal with friends…  I suppose the list really is endless!  Is it possible to take a moment each day to reconnect with either yourself, a friend, or family member? There are so many demands on our time each day, it’s easy to take ourselves and one another for granted.  I invite you this week to slow down and take a moment to reconnect.  You’ll be glad you did!