I had my first ever private Pilates session yesterday (Pilates is all about strengthening the core muscles). It was really fun! Of course, I am working with the best instructor in the whole world. She would tell me to stop saying that, but she is truly amazing. I've been watching her teach for a year and a half, and I have never seen anything like it. I have always dreamed of being able to work with her privately, and now I finally am. Yay!

My session with her was not only a great workout, but Sarah knows more about the human anatomy than anyone I've ever met. With each stretch or pose, she would not only help me feel my body in a way I've never consciously perceived before, but she would educate me as to why and how my body works the way it does. Amazing! When I knew and could visualize what was supposed to be going on deep inside my body, then I could tune into it until I became conscious of that isolated movement.

This one-on-one is really good for me. Although I was a gymnast as a child, I've never really been in touch with the body. For many reasons, I learned early on to check out and dis-associate from the body. With my teacher (Joey), I've learned how to be in the body and that it is essential and imperative to my work that I am in the body, but I could only go so far in that before I needed to work with the body in a much more physical way (as he's been saying from the start, of course).

I've tried group Pilates and yoga classes with other instructors, and of course Kung Fu, but I found that in all of those I injured myself because I don't yet possess the kind of body awareness I need to do those things safely. I can tune out pain to the point of injury that takes weeks to heal from. Or in not having private training or the kind of instruction someone like me needs, I can use the wrong muscle groups to support my postures and not even be aware. For example, in Kung Fu I was holding the horse stance from my knees rather than my gluteous maximus (my hiney). The knees are not designed to sustain that kind of weight in that kind of pose, so I found myself nearly unable to walk for 3 weeks after a single class where I pushed myself to be as good as everyone else was. What I didn't know was that everyone else is using their haunches, while I was using my joints. And even when I discovered this, I could not figure out how to isolate the gluts and get off the knees.

In working privately with Sarah, though, she was right there watching how my muscles were moving and where I was compensating. She guided and corrected my movements until I was not only doing them right, but until I could at least begin to feel the difference between one way and the other. It's like psychotherapy for the body. I felt this great joy and peace in experiencing the body, in knowing that I was safe, in letting go of that dissociation.

Having worked in a yoga and Pilates studio for the past year and a half, I've seen many people working out on the Pilates equipment. In all honestly, I wondered how on Earth they were getting a workout. They aren't moving fast, and they have all these straps and springs to support them...But Sarah is soooo enthusiastic and so brilliant with her art that I could not resist wanting to work with her. My heart wanted to go experience what Sarah had to offer because she's so passionate.

Here's my crow pie for wondering how this was exercise: After an hour of working out with Sarah, not only did I know things about my body that I never even knew I could know, but I had a blast, and my whole body was quivering with muscle fatigue. And all from very gentle and supported movements, none of which felt the least bit difficult. In fact, the movements were such that I felt like I was meditating the whole time.

This morning my whole body has this wonderful soreness deep into the core, the kind of sore that feels good and alive, not painful, aching, or traumatic. I feel like I'm being supported, like I'm wearing a whole body girdle, or have an Ace Bandage wrapped all over me. I feel springy and compact. There is a huge difference in the way my body feels and moves after a single one-hour session. How cool is that?

Okay, so here is something new for me: My beloved teacher and my beloved Sai Maa are together in Vail at the fall program, and I'm not there. Well, not physically, at least. In a little while Sai Maa will enter the hall, escorted by my teacher, and I won't be there to see them.

My heart is in my throat just a little bit, longing to be in their physical presences, and yet I feel very strong in the knowing that I am right where I need to be right now. If I was there, I would be very distracted from what I need to be doing this week. If I was there this time, I would be disempowering myself on some level, following, waiting for someone else to do the work for me, or to guide me and show me where to go and what to do. I would be putting off what needs to be done.

As it is, I am in the position of having to follow my heart, my own inner guidance, my own higher knowing. I'm not lost or left out. I feel the energy so powerfully already, like I am there. No doubt this will be an interesting week! And I know they have not forgotten me just because I'm not there in the body. Heck, for all I know, their work with me will be even more powerful in my absence. I am loved. :)

So I'm home, and what I'm doing here is finally getting my new website put together, finally creating some marketing materials to support the growth of my work, finally putting some ideas together to create a body of work that is MY passion, and comes from MY experience.

For a long time I thought I could just teach my teacher's work when I was ready, and that I'd be happy doing it. Now I realize that I can't do that, at least not exactly. I don't have the experiences to support that exact model, not to mention that he is already doing what he is doing, so why would I try to do the same? So while the core foundation is the same (Universal Truth is Universal Truth), my wisdom can only come from experience - MY experience.

You want to know what is really dumb? My teacher has been telling me this all along, and I just couldn't grasp the idea. I really have some duh! moments. I laugh at myself when these things happen. It's just so silly that I can hold onto an idea so stubbornly.

Last weekend I went to a Women's Expo here in KC, and there was a booth doing aura photos and chakra imaging with a 10 page report. After talking with the couple running it for awhile (they were really nice people!), I decided to try it. I wanted to see what this report thing was, and I'd never seen chakra imaging before and wondered about its validity. I normally don't go for this kind of stuff because overall I don't find it terribly useful. I mean, I know if I feel good, or if I could be better, so what's the point? It's like getting a psychic reading- you already know what any good psychic will tell you about yourself. But still, it can be fun, I suppose. Confirmation and validation can be useful and have their place, so long as we don't give away our power to someone else's knowing over our own.

The only other time I ever did an aura photo was a year ago, a month after my teacher yelled at me for 90+ minutes. I sat for a few minutes beforehand, calling in light, trying to make my aura look as good as possible. I wanted to trick the machine. It didn't work. My photo clearly shows the grief and confusion (the muddy colors above my head) I was experiencing over having been yelled at about my teaching, and that was the first thing the aura reader said (You are experiencing much grief over your career, and it is related to your spiritual path...). I cried tears of relief to have been seen so clearly through my smile, and tears of sadness that I had allowed my energy to become muddied by my emotion.

So this time I was like, yeah, whatever. I didn't prep myself at all (because I learned last time that it didn't work anyway). Interestingly, the photo people said the readout is on your baseline state of energy anyway, as in what state you normaly hold. I didn't know that! Not sure how that works either, but I found it to be true twice now, so I guess it works somehow.

The top photo isn't an aura photo, per se...
The left side (where the green is) shows the energies coming into me, or available to me from the Universe, the dots in the middle are the chakras, and the right side (pink, which is really blue-white, but shows pink since blue-white wouldn't show) shows the energy coming out of me, or in other words, how I am metabolizing the energies available to me, what I am doing with those energies in the world. What I am recieving to what I am giving.

The bottom photo with all the gold is the representation of my aura, also still showing the green and pink of the energies coming and going.





I found the chakras particularly interesting, and I was glad for the lady to interpret those for me. The report says turquoise comes into the crown, and aquamarine goes out the root. What the lady said is that since both of those colors mean healer with different qualitiies (peaceful and divine being the differing qualities), that it meant I was able to hold the energies I'm being given in their purity all the way through my energy system, and send them out to the world without distorting them.

The golden orb is my 3rd eye, and the bluish-white orb is my heart chakra. All upper and lower energies meet at the heart chakra.

This makes me think about chakras and the things people are told about them...

There is a misnomer that chakras are 'supposed to be' the rainbow colors - ROYGBIV, but that is not entirely accurate. Our chakra colors are constantly changing with information that is coming and going from us in any given moment. Balance for one person may look like a rainbow at times, but balance for another may not ever. Chakras are in a constant balancing act. One moment your sacral chakra may be wide open and you are feeling creative and connected, then someone who you know to be critical of you walks in and it slams shut in a protective reaction, while some other chakra opens on high alert status. It's a dance.

Also, chakras go through stages of enlightenment, moving through a range of colors as unique as the individual, to golden, then white, and stages of radiance and luminosity that don't have color names.

Many energy workers are taught to place the ROYGBIV colors (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) into the corresponding chakras to balance them, but the truth is that if someone's chakras are holding a state of vibration beyond those colors, you are not doing them a service by lowering their vibration back to ROYGBIV. One chakra can be 'enlightened' while other chakras are not. Some chakras may still be holding karma or patterns, beliefs, habits, etc., while other chakras aren't.

My chakras, for example, are mostly in the green family, which is a heart-centered color, a color of healing, growth, and renewal. My chakras are all in alignment with the work I am doing and the passion in my heart. My beloved who went with me to the Expo also had a reading done, and all her chakras were vibrant and beautiful oranges and yellows. This is perfect for her! She is a fitness professional, and her vitality and love of the human physiology shows in her chakras. We can't judge ourselves or others based on an overly simplified version of energetic health based on a color chart

Energy is intelligent. It knows where to go and what to do. My suggestion to anyone who works with energy is that they call on and use golden light (Christed Consciousness) and Divine Love-Divine Grace, which may appear white-ish or bluish-white, but is softer than 'white light', which in its purest form amplifies whatever is already there and can be too harsh for the job. Pink can also be used freely and liberally- it is a quality of Divine Love that is soft and gentle, comforting. The softer white of Divine Love/Grace is a pure form of intelligent love that purifies and enlightens by raising lower vibrations, not amplifying them.

For example, if someone is upset or in pain, if you see an accident on the road, or your boss is in a rage, you won't want to send white light to any of those situations. It's like a magnifying glass in a ray of sun. White light is very powerful, and is a magnifier, an intensifier. If someone is in pain or angry, they may be expressing a lot of red in their energy field in that moment. To amplify that can be like throwing gas on a fire.

Pink light, however, is soft and gentle, calming and nurturing. You can amplify pink light with white light (again, imagine a magnifying ray of that white light hitting the pink light, and if you perceive energy, you will see or feel the difference - the soft pink will still be nurturing, but it will become very powerfully focused as well, like a lazer beam instead of a cloud).

And you can always call on angels, guides, and beings of light for yourself and others. They cannot serve unless they are asked. They cannot interfere with our free will, so they wait until they are invited to serve in a situation. Call them. Often! They are longing to serve us.

I was reading a blog elsewhere on the internet, and I couldn't help but stop in my tracks and contemplate what I was reading. The author was saying that she has a great life-kids, husband, money- and yet she can't help wanting everything she doesn't have and being miserable that she can't have it.

For example, she has a large home that she loves, very near the shore, but what if she might be happier in a mountain home, or an English cottage? Or maybe she buys a pair of $200 boots, but she's still not happy because the clogs were so friggin cute too.

This blog post spoke to me of the state that our society is in, how we've become avid consumers, certain that happiness is hiding in our next purchase.

Then I clicked a link from this blog to an inspirational website the author recommended, where modern heroes are named and written about daily or weekly, some reminiscent of Hellen Keller or Martin Luther King, Jr., but most being folks in the self-help industry. I began to browse the websites of these self-help heroes for hire, and something else struck me- most of them focused their clients on the past, digging up old wounds to look at, discovering the root of this issue or that, finding your victim places and putting salve on your wounds.

Does digging up bones ever make us feel better? Does it help or serve to focus on the past?

I don't think so. I think for the most part that the past takes care of itself when we attend the current details while keeping the future in mind. I am creating my past right now. I am creating my personal history in this moment. In 10 years when I look back on this time in my life, what I will see is what I am doing now.

Even forgiveness for past events happens in the present and is carried into the future.

Drama is just so silly. It is a waste of time.

In my 20's-for most of my entire 3rd decade, in fact, I was stuck in a victim mentality. The self help books coddled me, encouraged me to dive into my personal history and mourn for whatever needed mourning.

I wasted 10 years! Oh my goodness! That should be a criminal offense, a crime against God. And it all meant nothing. NOTHING. And you know what else? I was more of a victim in those 10 years than because of anything that happened in my past, because I was giving my power to past events, past abuses, past abusers. Those were the things controlling my life.

The only thing that matters is who I am now, where I'm going now, how I am choosing to use or direct my life force now.

...I was born.

I realized today that in my forced liberation-by-layoff from the role of Super Student, I have gained the freedom to begin to see a life I could not perceive before- a life bigger than that of a role to play.

I feel this great sigh of relief and freedom to create at will, but I'm also intermittently experiencing tension and a little fear that I need to be very mindful so as not to go too far and become unbalanced in the opposite direction.

I don't have any experience with balance yet.

I want to tell you a tragic and graphic story that ends with me in a private residence mansion earlier today at a Planned Parenthood benefit.

You know how in some families the children have "aunts" and "uncles", and even "cousins" who are not actually related, but dear friends of Mom or Dad instead? They are given honorary family status, and the kids call them Aunt Mimi, or Uncle Spud? Well, I had quite a few "aunties" and "cousins" growing up. Heck, I would adopt more "cousins" if I met a cousin of a cousin by marriage, and if we became good enough friends, we might even become sisters. DNA be damned, we had ties that transcended things like gene-pools. We were family by choice, and those are some strong bonds.

My mom had fled her Midwestern childhood home and landed alone with a small child in Los Angeles in the late 1960's. I came along in 1970, and most of the time our family really was just those people my mom had collected. I had lots of moms, other single moms my mom became friends with, and no dads.

The dearest auntie I had was always soooo sweet to me. I adored her! And she was a nomad type who would change states of residence with the wind, so you had to enjoy her while you could, because you might wake up one morning to find she'd left the night before with her 3 daughters and whatever she could fit in the trunk of her cowboy Cadillac. She'd always be back before long, never quite finding the peace she hoped was on the other end of  (usually) Interstate 10.

When I was 15, we got a phone call during one of her 'away' times.

We were told 2 things we didn't know with this phone call:
1. She was pregnant, and
2. She was dead.

She'd told her children she'd be right back, that she had to go out and get some milk. Being very intuitive children, they sensed that something was amiss. They begged her not to go, said they didn't need any milk. They were so freaked out, the 16 year old even - and this was not normal for them - that they chased her car down the road, screaming and crying for her not to go.

That image haunts me, imagining her final vision of her children screaming behind her, and imagining the girls' final image of their mother driving away, looking back in the rear-veiw mirror, feeling she had no other choice.

It sets me on the edge of madness to imagine.

When she'd been gone a couple of hours, the girls called the police. Within a short time, her car was found in a ditch on the side of the road with her body slumped over on the seat. Foul play was suspected, as the blood left in her body had coagulated on her back side, rather than in her legs and lower areas.

An autopsy revealed her pregnancy, and a week-old puncture wound in the fetus. There was also a fresh puncture wound in the fetus, that had also perforated the uterus, leading to her death.

As the story unfolded, it turned out that my auntie sought the help of a lay abortionist because she was scared. Terrified. She didn't know what to do or where to turn, and abortion was illegal in the state she was in.

Out of desperation, she sought an abortion. The first attempt failed, so then doubly desperate and knowing that there was no longer a choice not to terminate, she went back to try to finish what was started.

When her uterus was perforated, she began to hemorage badly. She wanted to get help. The abortionist panicked. He pinned her down, tied her to the table, and intentionally let her bleed to death. Then he put her in the car, drove her into a ditch, and pushed her over, leaving her in hopes that her death would seem natural, or at the least, not lead back to him.

This was his testimony, not speculation. He was found because several women in the town came forward about their own illegal abortions, all by this same man, when the story broke. They didn't want him to get away with murdering this woman and orphaning these children.

He got 6 months of probation for this murder, while my auntie was trashed by the media as a baby-killing monster rather than a frightened and desperate mother.

Her ashes and her children were shipped to California. It's been 23 years, and the sight and sound of her daughters, my "cousins" sitting in front of me, in the front pew of the church, holding one another, screaming and wailing for their mother has not faded. It was the last time they were together for many, many years. Against their wishes, they were each sent in different directions, and they were no longer a family unit. My mom no longer had a best friend, and I no longer had an auntie and cousins.

To the youngest, the 9-year-old, I became a surrogate sister as she grew up. We lived about an hour apart. I was the only one who would tell her about her mom, who would let her talk about her mom, who would answer questions, and share memories. It was 'too painful' for those who ended up raising her, and they thought she'd be better off to forget her mama, so they forbade her to speak of her.

One tragedy became another and another and another. A series of aftershocks still felt to this day.

So a few weeks ago, I was invited to a Planned Parenthood benefit. I felt tumultuous about it, and a little sick to my stomach. It challenged me. It is difficult for me to get past sometimes- the pain on all sides is much too easy for me to imagine, but ultimately I learned some things that really helped me turn around. That, and I don't want my aunt to have died in vain. Her death can mean something and can make a positive impact. Somehow.

I'd always thought of Planned Parenthood as an abortion clinic, but I discovered that  95% of their services are education and prevention. In KC alone they provide nearly 40,000 women with free birth control. That is a lot of prevention! Their purpose is education and planning, and the majority of abortion services they do provide (that other 5%) are extreme cases of the nature that no one wishes to experience- rape, incest, birth defects, severe, life challenging health issues, circumstances where a girl would be disowned and thrown out for revealing her pregnancy, and on and on.

So I attended the benefit, partly to find out more about the people running the show, half afraid I'd be stuck all afternoon with a bunch of pro-abortion feminatzis (as with the last 'womens' thing I was invited to).

What I discovered is a group of people who are passionate about education, about women and girls, who desire to create empowerment with knowledge, and who wish more than anything else to prevent needless suffering. I was with people, who like me, are pro-life and pro-choice.

I met people who are not only giving their money, but their time, opening their homes, serving in abuse shelters and being there for women in need of support, providing education and meeting needs. There were young, college aged women there, but mostly women over 40, many over 60- those who can remember what it was like not to have a choice, and also a couple of men, also in their 60's or so.

I'm really glad I went. I hope to meet these people again. I am inspired by who they really are and what they are trying to do.

I've noticed something about PMS...at least for me. I only have PMS when something in my life is out of alignment. It's like the hormones act as a magnifying glass on little things I can normally push away from my consciousness (you know, the little things I don't want to deal with, even though I know I should?). So things are going along, and something pops up, I shove it down, hoping it will resolve itself, only to have it explode inside of me when I reach that more sensitive time of the month.

This pattern isn't normal for me anymore. In fact, I haven't had any significant PMS for years. It stopped when I gave up cow's milk/cheese, and when I met my teacher, which were close to the same time. I credit the spiritual work, but I think that stopping the consumption of all those bovine hormones shortly before I met my teacher certainly helped make the transition easier.

Anyway, enough about my hormones. Probably too much FYI for most of you, but I mention it because I saw that pattern in myself of PMS being a magnifier to show me what in my life was out of alignment. And it makes a lot of sense!

So I was needing to speak with my teacher about some things going on with me and in me, but I kept putting it off, making excuses to myself that he was too busy, and although what I was experiencing was a big deal, it was good stuff, not traumatic or anything, so I kept waiting and waiting for the 'right time'. When my hormones amped up, though, I could see that waiting had not been in alignment. Communicating with my teacher should have been a priority, once I knew I needed to communicate with him. In response, my heart energy seemed to close up on me. I couldn't seem to connect with my heart, so then I didn't want to talk with my teacher, and the more I didn't want to talk with my teacher, the more my heart slammed shut.

It wasn't that I didn't want to talk with him, per se, it was the fact that I was not where I should be, and that I got there through inaction when I knew better. I kept thinking, okay, one more day and I will feel better, then I can talk with him. The next day though, it was worse. One more day. Worse.

Finally, he called me wanting to know what the heck was up, because my energy was way off.

Because I hadn't wanted to talk with him until I found my heart again, I avoided him the first couple of times he had called. I'm so glad we finally talked. Well, he talked. Every time I tried, I either couldn't find the words and was silent, or the words I chose were poor and he thought I was saying I was leaving.

At first, he asked me to talk to him, to tell him what was going on with me, and I said, "Ummm..." and then sat in silence for awhile. My teacher said to me very gently, "Relationship is about communication. If we don't communicate, there is no relationship...so we have to communicate!"

I appreciate how he can make make me feel so loved and valued in such a non-threatening way. He did not offer me the option of letting the relationship go, rather he made it clear that it was important to him, and that we could fix this.

I was still a voiceless moron, but a voiceless moron with a touched soul anyway!

I started to say something to the effect that I didn't know where I belonged anymore, leading to something fairly benign that had been troubling me, but was weighing me down, but it sounded to him like I was saying I was considering leaving him and the organization. He responded immediately, not allowing me to finish uttering words that could change everything. He was not going to let me go without a fight.

I was horrified to realize my poorly chosen words had hurt him, and again felt so cherished that he would move further into vulnerability to reach me, rather than anger, defensiveness, or just giving up on me... He didn't allow the pain my words inflicted to cause contraction in him. Instead, he chose to expand even further.

There was something so incredibly holy in that moment. There I was so scared to speak, to be vulnerable, afraid of rejection, and in the midst of my energetic chaos, my fear, my teacher put his heart in my hands and showed me the trust I had moments ago been unable to find in myself for him.

Always teaching. He is always teaching me, if I but pay attention. He was showing me how to walk on this planet as a master, open, vulnerable, loving in the face of pain and chaos (even one's own, especially one's own). And in that, showing me that love heals.

He trusted me fully with his heart in a moment when I had the power to crush it.

Never before have I seen love so fully in action. For me, love just grew exponentially. It will never be the same again.

Love without expectation.

Ripped open, raw, lonely, loved beyond all reason...It was an interesting weekend. I found my heart again. Fully.

Something I've realized by not being able to attend the fall week with Sai Maa (and my Joey) is how much I counted on that time to nurture me, to be nurtured, to nurture myself. Although I do volunteer work there as well, I strive for balance, to walk in nature, to sit and be, to maintain silence, to contemplate. I have a whole week to live fully in God without distraction. Even in my volunteer work there, I tend toward the tasks and teams that may be very demanding, but are not frenzied or chaotic (no drama, mama!), and I also do my own seva that nobody else ever knows about. That is my favorite. Doing what needs to be done without being told, without expectation of recognition, that does it for me. Serving the human heart. It nurtures my soul.

The following was not at a spiritual retreat, obviously, but last winter I was sitting in a noisy, busy local coffeehouse one evening, reading a book while my girls visited with some friends. A homeless man came in to get out of the cold. He sat at a table alone, put his head down in his arms, and amidst the chaos, went to sleep. After awhile, I went over quietly and put $5 on the table without disturbing him.

There was a large group nearby, and they fell silent as they noticed me approach this man, which embarrassed me a little, because I didn't want to be noticed. I guess God had a different plan, though. I quickly went back to my book, and then hid my tears behind it as I saw the people in this group gather money from their own pockets, and place it silently on the table with the fiver I had put there.

Anyway, at my own teacher's events, I am constantly on the go. Even during the lecture and meditation hours at the last couple of events, I have been running the camera, not sitting and absorbing, which is a new shift for me. The energy he directs to me in that service is very intense. I am definitely not getting the short end of the stick - I am getting more than I ever imagined. And yet there is this place in me I am becoming increasingly aware of in these past weeks without contact that feels untouched, that desperately wants to be nurtured.

I wonder, is that my baby-self? Is that some immature aspect in me? It must be, don't you think? Because the truth of the matter is that there is no place in me that God doesn't touch, doesn't fill, doesn't nurture...so why do I feel this emptiness, this longing for the physical presences of my beloveds? Why does a look, a hand on the shoulder for a moment, some brief physical connection, feel so doggone nurturing, so filling, so complete?

And yet, what if it is not my baby-self? What if my soul needs this time to commune with my beloveds on this physical plane? What if this need is as real and physical as it feels in me? Isn't this one of the many reasons I have teachers? My teacher will drop everything to go spend a few hours with his teacher, just as I do with him. And Maa has spoken of her longing to be with her Baba...This longing is a small part of what sustains spiritual communities and brings them back together over and over, is it not? The other part being to serve God as a community. That is the real glue. We can't always be with our teachers, but we can always serve God.

Here's a mind-bender: I don't want to feel this way, and I don't want to ever not feel this way. This desire, this longing for my teachers, keeps my heart open, keeps me humble, keeps me in alignment, keeps my focus on God and the divine.

It has been too long without my own teacher. Normally I would have been with him in Vail, at Maa's program. Normally I see him every 4 weeks or so. It has been twice that long now, and during a time of exponential growth for me. I feel tall and a little wobbly, which of course is precisely why I need to be alone just now- to find my center, to find my inner strength, to stop my own wobbling. And yet they are there to catch me if I stumble and fall. It is no accident that I am here, right where I need to be.

I can feel them so strongly with me, in my heart, in my energy, in my perceptions. I am not alone.

So why do I feel so loney?