This is pretty long, about an hour and a half.  So be prepared to watch when you have the time.  I'm not entirely sure what to think, there's so much information here.  Parts of it really excite me and other parts I felt skeptical of.

http://www.sprword.com/videos/kymatica/

What do you think?

I had a disturbing dream a couple of mornings ago.  There was a large (think cat sized) cockroach running around outside my car, which was red although its not red in real life.  This creepy, quick moving cockroach turned into a creepy, quick moving black dog which slid into my car under the seats.  I wasn't in the car but someone else was and we tried to get the dog out.  

I immediately knew when I woke that this has something to do with my health.  That black creature disturbed me so much but I think I have to make friends with it.  Its like making friends with a cockroach.  After all my years in New Mexico, I'm still supremely creeped out by roaches.  So my task becomes to accept this very large one.

Last week I was released from the hospital after an 11 day stay.  I joke that it was my spa retreat.  It really wasn't so bad (except for the blood draws every 4 hours, even throughout the night).  And there were moments I admit I was scared.  I went to the ER because my pupils were two different sizes and one of my eyelids was heavy or droopy.  I felt fine but when I googled the symptom I discovered the cause could be quite serious.  Long story short, I have lesions or cracks in 3 arteries in my neck.  

How the heck do I end up in the hospital for 11 days?  No one could believe it.  Over the course of the week prior to my admission I had run 22 miles.  And without a doubt, everyone who knows me would say I'm the healthiest eater they know.  The neurologists believe the injury is from a chiropractic adjustment.  I'm just annoyed that its slowed me down.  I was just getting into a groove with running.  And now I'm adjusting to being on blood thinners, which sometimes leaves me exhausted.  

But here's the interesting twist for me.  I recognize 2 things this experience has done for me, 1) Its made me slow down tremendously 2) I now appreciate western medicine.  I've been so anti western medicine for so long now.  I wouldn't even take an aspirin for a headache and avoided my doctor as much as possible.  I went to acupuncture and a nutritionist and was on lots of supplements and herbs.  Now I'm not able to do any of those things because of the meds I'm on.  And I've decided to trust them because I'm told that I'm at risk for having a stroke if I don't take them.  I haven't done any research on them because I'm afraid that whatever negatives I find will influence me.  There may be more I'm meant to do in terms of my healing process. I have this sense that I need to work on the mind/body connection and am wondering what other types of healing I can use.  I'm open to suggestions.  For now I think I'll start with the cockroach/dog.  

What the sun showed me was that my room is very dusty.  I hadn't noticed the accumulation of dust and hair on my dresser.  It got me thinking about spring cleaning and more importantly, how a little light can show us what needs cleaning out.  Isn't it ironic how, at times, light can show us where darkness is?  It's hard to really see the darkness when that's all there is.  

I'm grateful for the sun today and unafraid of what it shows me.  If it didn't show me the dirt, I  wouldn't know what needs cleaning out.  And it also prompted me to return to gaia, which I realize now, I've missed.  It's good to be back.  :-)

So it's easy for me to be there for others but not always easy for me to be there for myself.  I have a lot of tools to use in helping others and I know I can use them with myself.  So what holds me back?  Well there have been long periods of time when I do take the time to really use what I know and I have amazing experiences in meditation and just in being present.  What holds me back is just busyness.  My challenge is to learn to use what I know even when working long days all week.  Its been so much easier during those times I worked part time or hardly at all.  But the reality is that I want to work enough to settle some debts.  And I take this challenge to work hard for others and for myself. 

What I've realized recently, in learning a somatic approach to working with trauma, is that our bodies have an incredible ability to heal themselves.  Yeah, I'd heard it before but never really felt it.  Really its more than just an ability for the body to heal itself, its also an ability for the body to heal the psyche.  It's kind of amusing to me to watch how surprised my clients are at the results of using this somatic approach.  I think, even though I do my best to explain the science behind it, that they sometimes feel like its magic.  How cool is that?  Remember what that feels like to feel magic?  I just look at them and say "I know.  Its pretty awesome."  And I feel tears come to my eyes.  Recently I've also noticed in my work with children, their incredible ability to pendulate between processing trauma through aggressive play and healing through nurturing play.  They naturally do what I try to teach adults to do.    

So I've begun to use the approach on myself to work through my health problem.  I think maybe I need to schedule a therapy appt with myself for myself!  I think I'm a better therapist than client when it comes to working with myself.  

If you're interesting in learning the method, check out the weekend trainings with the Trauma Resource Institute.  I did one of the trainings a couple of weeks ago and will most definitely go back for the second one.  

             

The first talk was about faith.  It was really interesting to hear what that word brought up for others.  Some people talked about having faith in something and others talked about how they cringe at that word because it reminds them of whatever faith the were raised in.  Several people had very strong feelings about that word and talked about being told what to believe as a child. 

So I had to share my perspective just because I felt it was different and interesting.  My experience with faith is that my faith has always been my own.  From the time I was born I was raised in a very liberal religious community.  I was never told what to believe.  And in fact I remember being in a Sunday School class when I was really quite young and we were asked what we believed about God.  We drew pictures of what we thought "He" looked like and then the teacher asked us all kinds of questions.  She asked us how we knew that God existed.  How did we know he was a man?  Another student stated that God was a woman, and really we were just repeating what we had heard from others.  But we were able to have some kind of dialogue about it and it affected me deeply.  This is when I really began to explore.  I realized that day that no one had the answers to these questions.  And I was scared.

I was always encouraged to "find my own truth", to explore and ask questions.  We learned about different religions and visited other churches.  I always knew being involved in any kind of religion was a choice for me, although there were periods of time when I didn't want to go to church and my parents forced me too.  But that was never about faith, it was about laziness.  

So I think I was maybe in 5th grade or so when I felt so overwhelmed by the uncertainty of this world.  Its a very strange thing to be a child and to realize that the grown ups don't have all the answers.  It can be quite petrifying.  When visiting other churches I thought I wanted to be Catholic.  I had a friend who was Catholic and it was actually appealing to me to be told what to believe because I was struggling so much with life's questions.  I also really liked the structure of the masses and I still feel there is a sacred and magical aspect to Catholic churches.  For large portions of my life I was very conflicted about prayer.  I wasn't really sure what I believed but I knew I liked to pray.  Sometimes I wouldn't out of some kind of intellectual justification.  But at a Catholic church it was ok to pray and that felt good too.  We didn't really pray at my church, we had silent meditations.  I wanted to pray at my church but felt like i couldn't, although now I know I can if I choose.  I always felt like I needed more from my church, more spirit.  I was always finding those moments throughout the service when I could go a little deeper.  I had this sense of the Divine but I had to go after it.  I had to allow it.  I had to close my eyes. I had to pray. I had to practice expanding my awareness.  And when I went to Catholic churches I was immediately connected to that Source.  I still have that experience today but I understand now that its about the space and not the faith.  

As I got older I learned more about my own faith and it developed into something quite strong.  I pray quite a bit but its rare that I pray with others or share my prayers.  I got over that need for someone to tell me what to believe and really enjoy my process of discovering things on my own.  But its an interesting thing to think about if you're raising children in the same way I was raised.  Think about how scary it can be as an adult to think about big life questions sometimes.  Imagine being 8 and thinking about those things.  

When I was a child I developed these practices that I can now identify.  Its funny to read about a practice and say "oh, that's what I've been doing. Now I have a name for it."  And now that I go to the Shambhala Meditation center its funny to me that people state that they like the lack of structure in it because for me its very structured and its a sacred practice.  BUt within that structure there is much freedom.  There is safety that allows us to just be and to explore.  

The main premise of the dreams is that there is a cobra at my work and it comes alive. It's kinda like a stuffed cobra and it looks as if its ready to shed its skin. I look at it and see that its dead, like an ornament (not so uncommon in the southwest). And then it comes alive. In the first dream I am at a new job, at this agency that 2 of my coworkers have left to work at and I've been considering doing the same. The snake got into someone's things and was brought from the first workplace to the new one. And in the second dream, the snake is at my current workplace and i think my boss tries to catch it.

So I looked up snakes and of course people say that they symbolize major change; like shedding your skin and leaving it behind. Yes! I'm so ready for that. And I found that some interpretations say that they symbolize fertility and sexuality as well as creativity. So I'm wondering what this means in terms of my work. If I shed my skin and leave it behind where will I be headed? Does it sound like I'm headed towards this other workplace?

I remember that snakes can be a little sensitive when they're getting ready to shed. They start to look cloudy in their eyes and in their skin. I used to be friendly with a beautiful female albino corn snake. We wouldn't hold her when we knew she was getting ready to shed. I remember having this incredible feeling when I held her, like I was connected to the beginning of time. She moved around my body in one smooth motion. She had an energy like nothing else I've ever felt.

And it is exciting to think that maybe there is also a connection to awakening kundalini in this dream.

There's a woman at our saangha who was a student of Trungpa Rinpoche and sometimes she tells little stories or anecdotes about him. She said that people would ask him, what is the meaning or purpose of life? And his response was something to the effect of "there is none" and that we create our purpose in each moment. And this makes perfect sense when you think about the impermenance of life. How can there be one meaning or purpose when life is constantly changing? So this woman said that you could feel the response in the room when Trungpa stated this. And I noticed my own reaction was at first a mixture of fear and disappointment, "wait a minute, then what the hell am I doing?"

That feeling passed pretty quickly and I felt extremely liberated by this idea. The weight of the world is not on my shoulders. There is nothing to strive for. All I have to do is live in each moment and create my purpose in each moment. On my drive home I was in a state of thinking, becoming aware I was thinking and then letting go of that and just being and lapsing back into thinking and so on and so on. And I caught myself thinking about all the stuff I need to get done, stuff that's been hanging over my head for quite awhile now. Then I go to that place of being present and I realize that I have become lazy. Trungpa talks about watching out for laziness and I'm afraid that maybe I've used this practice of being in the moment to avoid doing things I need to do, like an avoidance tactic. And I understand that its really not stuff I need to do for my survival but its stuff I would like to do. Trungpa teaches that the warrior has clarity and wisdom and the ability to see things as they are, no judgment. So in that place, you just do what you need to do, you know.......chop wood, carry water. Its all quite simple really.