TEDxHouston - Brené Brown

Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!

THE GIFTS YOU CAN’T HOLD ONTO

                                    

When new friends come into your life, take the time to savor the moment. It is like stepping into warm sand, solid, comforting, and shifting all at the same time. I do not know why in childhood, we think BFF, best friends forever is the norm or the continuum of our early, intense fellowships outside the home.

In kindergarten the brutal truth is, that we can love fully, another person, outside of familial circles and have it unreciprocated or worse, rejected, sometimes with verbal violence which marks our soul, like punch in the face that bruises the skin.

You grow up. In and out of grade school, where the friend ships change faster than your clothing from one day to the next.  Somewhere in my twenties I settled into a set of friends that came to me by way of college and work. With the intensity of watershed moments such as divorce, graduation, first professional jobs that slammed one against the other like a multi care pile up in the fast lane, my friends were there for me, as that old saw goes, to help clear the wreckage.

A friend took me in when I left husband number one. Another padded over in bathrobe and slippers to sip coffee every morning. I had friends who stood up at my wedding and friends who opened doors to jobs. After my first child was born, they drifted off my radar to parts unknown.  Maybe I should have sent holiday cards to keep in touch, but one by one, those friends disappeared.

A new set of compatriots began to show up. Neighbors also at home with children; moms I met in Le Leche League, women who train at the gym. There were new BFF, filling in the space in my heart where the others use to be.

No friends ever stay. We cross paths. Journey along side one another for sometime. I have stayed in touch with one friend for 41 years. I have collected others in the last decade. I think of the friends I have known. Feel lucky that we have met. Miss them too. Nevertheless, I have learned you cannot hold on or stay steadfast any more than you can keep a beautiful mandala of colored sand, in the palm of your hand.

I DID IT IN TORONTO

I DID IT IN TORONTO
JOINING THE PSYCHIC CIRCUS

If you are hearing Calliope music as you read this then you too have joined the psychic circus for you’ve just telepathically tapped into my mind as I’ve typed these words in my attempt to describe the four day Hay ride with Hay House publishing speakers event, dubbed I Can Do It, back in May.
It’s a blast listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer, Greg Braden, Robert Lipton and the Grand Dame of the evening, 83 year old Louise Hay. Speaking for 2 hours, prolific author, Wayne Dyer, dives into his latest book/movie, which recaps much of his own journey of self-discovery in The Shift, subtitled From Ambition to Meaning.
What makes Wayne so appealing for this humble reporter is that all his books may seem the same, but clearly they are not. He uses his own personal growth stories as examples of what he means when it come to changing his ideas. Another words, whatever life throws at him, or what ever he’s attracted to himself, Wayne puts it down on the page into a new book. He sits at a glass-topped table in Maui, Hawaii; writing on a yellow legal pad whatever comes to mind, letting ideas come through him. Not unlike the automatic writers of the past, such as Ruth Montgomery.
In Shift, (both the film and the companion book) he lays bare how he was blindsided with both a divorce, and leukemia, two personal struggles that he did not see coming. But shifting how to see these things is the crux of his new philosophy. The film and the book propagate the message that the drive to achieve for achievements sake must be pushed aside to allow for the deeper meaning of these life-altering events to surface. It is lot to digest on a Friday night.
Louise Hay, the founder of this publishing empire, welcomed audience members before Greg Braden, bounded on stage to wake everyone with his 2-hour power point presentation with what’s really going to happen in 2012. The world is going to change, but this time to a global consciousness rising rather than a cataclysmic disaster of biblical proportions. So put off the search for higher ground unless you’re committed to the journey within.
Next on the agenda, Dr. Christiane Northrup, talking about menopause and beyond. She’s also a person who will use her own stories of pain and recovery to illustrate how to get beyond survivor mode and think of your self as thriving. We’re hard wired for pleasure and a turned on woman turns everyone on. Apparently we send out pheromones that can make everyone around us feel good.
Tantra, author, Barbara Carrellas, tells us is energy moving in the body from the base of the spine where it’s coiled like a snake, shooting up through the top of the head. Mind blowing sex follows if you focusing your attention on intention, and practice controlled breathing. The sexy bit is all about linking the sexual act, with the energy of the breath while accepting the idea that sex is a spiritual expression. Sex is good. Sex is good for our bodies, souls and the energy release is good for the planet.
She says if you ever find yourself calm after any emotional out burst, you’ve had an orgasm, of the energy kind. She gave examples of angergasms, gigglegasms being the most common. An angergasm she cautions could be destructive unless you channel it properly, illustrating it with her own encounter with a chainsaw wielding tree killer who was stopped mid hack by her high pitched shrieking that brought him to an abrupt halt. Neighbors pouring out of their apartments in Harlem, where she lives, watched the howling spectacle which thankfully brought the police.
She saved the 60-year-old pear tree, with what she described as an angergasm.
From feeling yummy to feeling happy, I listened to psychologist Marci Shimoff had me rethinking how to reset my happiness set point. We are all born with one. Glass half, full or half empty view that is about 50% of our DNA. Only 10% is circumstantial. The other 40% she said was our perceptions. So Change your perception and you can change how you feel. Our perceptions of what is actually happening in our lives, she said, depends on what it is we are focusing on. She included a short film to demonstrate just that. “Watch the people playing basket ball, and count how many times the people in white tee shirts pass the ball,” We did. I counted 14 passes but was off by four. When she queried the audience if they saw anything unusual. Turns out that a hand full of people saw a gorilla stroll threw the basket ball players. Actually, the person in the gorilla suit, stopped waved and beat his chest before strolling off camera. He was clearly visible in slow motion. But to most of us, he was invisible. Life may suck, but it’s only sucking for you in the instant you’re focusing on the difficult parts. Everything passes. In five minutes, whatever it is will not seem as catastrophic if we can shift our thinking.
She also said that we are wired to be happy and this too is good for those around us, and the planet.
Overall, I’d give this Hay House conference a big thumbs up. I bought a suitcase full of books to pore over and share chez nous.
Also, 4 days is not enough to begin to absorb all the ideas put forth at the conference. Having a room for mingling over a buffet style meal would take care of several needs, food for the body and the need to share food for thought.
Now if I could only get my head out of the clouds long enough to finish this review and post it.

-30-

Sticky days

It's not the humidity; It's me. I say that to my computer when all the spells in the world won't make the words pour forth. The routine is there, arrive at the desk, open computer. Write.

When I don't? Well, it's sort of like the dating delima when you break up before you begin, or uncouple before you refer to the person your dating as we; 'We are having dinner or going to the game, movie, slam...' A protracted running start, as a friend of mine calls my struggles.

Solution? If you blog it they will come...Readers, the writing. So, what if the blog is built but the writing won't budge? What then?

Last week I went to an energy workshop; actually I've been running my spiritual ass off in my physical body of course, to try and fix this stop and start write not write not right now, maybe later flow. I had my chakras balanced and unblocked several times. In fact, I think I'm becoming a psychic slut, swapping readings for treatments; going to churches I'd long since abandoned to light candles and petition saints I only hope are listening to intervene on my behalf.

Let the writing come, oh lord, great Gia. Guides, invisible entities that you can call on for help such as finding your glasses or car keys or parking spaces at the mall, are in my service too. In the fuzzy nether world that has become my menopausal brain, I now hear the dulcet tones of Sara Mclachalan singing "Send me an Angel" Oy. And so Archangels Michael, Urial, Raphael, and Gabriel, are now my constant companions. I started calling out to them when I felt fear for my self, or my family. Husbands can drop dead at work or fall asleep behind the wheel of a car.

My crazy mixed up mind would go to these extreme, catastrophic thoughts after hearing my beloved complain for weeks on end about fatigue or work. My beautifully, evolved brain would not know the difference between his complaints and reality so it complied with the words and began to pump flight or flight cortisol steroids into my body. If I didn't go to the gym, I was scared and worried all the time. Not good for me or any one else. As I ran along that treadmill, I'd let those crazy making thoughts pour through me, My arms pumping and my breathing steady as I burned them off.

When I run I pay attention to my body, adjusting my stride, making sure my feet are landing heal- toe, my foot rolling smoothly off the treadmill before I plant my other one down in a solid stride. No, thumping, but mindful of muscle and bone, abdominals slightly tightened, breathing. My favorite part, startling me when I pay attention is that I can breath, in, out, deep, lungfuls of air and keep running. Now I have no room for scary thoughts or feelings just strength, and the touch of a wingtip on my shoulder, as I feel the angels, flying beside me.

Getting Older

Getting older

I found myself euphoric the morning I woke on my birthday when I turned 50. I didn’t expect much of a fuss for this seminal decade, since I didn’t plan it; my kids were too young to organize it and slow death by poison might be preferable for my dear husband, rather than plan some event, for me.
So a party was out. I’m not that much of an organizer myself. Once, when I turned 30, I arranged a dinner in a restaurant for my friends and I. Most of these women, just stared at me wondering what do I do when I asked everyone to part with a piece of wisdom they discovered by crossing the great divide between young adulthood and middle age. Suffice it to say that the blank faces grew more animated as advice poured forth with the consumption of Dutch courage. I cannot remember a single pearl from that night. I can barely recall their faces and only Dianna, Helena and Les’ names come back to me.
At twenty I was in the throws of a passionate affair with an older man. My birthday, I’m sure, was celebrated but for the life of me I can’t recall any of it.
And at ten, I was hiding from bullies in school during the weekdays, reading The Little House Books, and attending Self Realization Fellowship services where I learned to meditate, on Sundays. Truthfully, when I look back on the teenage years that followed, I can credit the practice of yoga with keeping me from self inflicted expiration, before my time.
40 was the year my sisters planned to meet me in MTL to celebrate with me. They didn’t. So I grew jaded about the decades and what it all signified accept that I was lucky to still be drawing a breath.
That changed the morning I turned 50. I woke with a sense of euphoria that had me feeling as if I was levitating. I have no idea now, nor had I then, how or why this glorious state of being naturally high came about. It just did. I was. And it lasted for 6 months. Now perhaps an endocrinologist would diagnose a minute drop or increase progesterone, oxytocin or estrogen. Or a complete balance. Either way I had a significant change in mind and body that still occurs on my birthday. It’s as if I’m receiving a divine gift; or somehow figured out the internal switch to flip for happiness. It’s a great feeling, and I wouldn’t swap it out for anything. OK, maybe this week's 649 at $35 million.
This year the phone started ringing sometime after breakfast. My 93-year-old mother, my sister Annette and brother Paul serenaded me. Then it was sister and her husband also singing into the receiver.
While I was in the shower my girlfriend Tammy called and she too left a musical telegram on my answering machine. Phone calls continued. My girlfriend dropped in bearing a basket of gifts and my daughter, Lisa pulled out a bag stuffed with tissue paper, of her own.
What a great day. What great gifts. To be cherished, to feel that one real thing; is priceless.
Now as I sit her sweating out the remnants of youth, I look forward to flashes of insight with each wave of heat. Lighter clothes and lighter thoughts because you just can’t sweat the small stuff. Actually, the happiness is there, wedged in between the fuss, bother and worry. Small joys, that go unnoticed. Like waking up at 5:30 and not worrying about the loss of sleep. Counting the hours and recalling how 6 hours of shuteye used to be enough, once. Feeling the day stretch out before me with all kinds of possibilities; baking something special; or writing undisturbed when the house is quiet. Watching the sky lighten over the park as the sun creeps over the horizon. And if all those ideas seem like a load of wood on my shoulders by 2pm then if I’m home, I’m down for a nap.
What ever happens now is my time to enjoy it, or not. At 53, for me there is only now.

Repeating the Silva Method

Repeating Silva.

I’ve repeated the Silva Method self mind control several times in my life. The materials are the same. What’s new for me each time is what I learn about myself, and what the human mind is capable of doing.
Each passing decade has left me with a handful of memories, when normal life events triggered a Silva training response.
Recently I used the Three Finger technique to turn a bad mood into a better one. I was rushing around the house getting ready for work, when a series of events set off a flood of rage that seemed to envelope me. I got into my car to drive to school where I supervise students at lunch for one hour. I did not want to come to work with a bad attitude.
Being in charge of a roomful of 11-year-old children has enough challenges. I need a good mood, and I needed it now. So with my hands clutching the steering wheel, I put the thumb, index and middle finger of both hands together, and went to level with my eyes opened.
I came to the first stop sign on Spring Garden and counted down, using the three to one method. “ I’m in a bad mood,” I said aloud in the car. “ I don’t want to be in a bad mood. I want to be in a good mood. In a few moments, I will be in a good mood.” I felt tiny tremors in my body as if I was picking up the vibrations from the car engine followed by a lifting sensation. My mood had altered to my chosen state before I finished saying the last sentence.
In another work related area I was on the receiving end of an unfair decision that resulted in lost wages. During the discussion with my boss I grew agitated. I put together my three fingers. While maintaining a calm firm voice, outwardly, as we discussed the issue, I heard a voice in head saying ‘time to move on’ followed by a sensation of not really being there but in some other alternate present.
I left the office feeling the outcome of the moment seemed unfair, but sensed new freedom to move on both in my work life, and from an uncomfortable state of mind.
I’d like to reiterate here, the need to acknowledge the reality of the situation and the negative thoughts and feelings. As a popular television psychologist says: “You cannot change what you don’t acknowledge.
When I first took the course in 1973, I had an opportunity to use Glove anesthesia just days after learning how. One afternoon while washing dishes at the sink I cut my right hand on a broken glass. The blood shot straight into the air while my training took over. I covered that cut with my left hand and said aloud: “No pain, No blood,” I remember waiting for a few minutes before looking at the damage. In those minutes, it felt as if I were in an elevator going down, pausing between floors.
When I gingerly lifted my left hand to inspect the injury on the top of my right, below the knuckle of my thumb, I was astonished. I could see the layers of skin right down to the soft pink flesh of muscle. I kept mentally repeating like a mantra, no pain, and no blood and watched as a tiny bright red drop pooled to form a scab.
I knew I needed stitches. No one was home. I had a license, but no car available, so I walked out the front door to the neighbor’s houses and began knocking on doors, looking for someone to take me to a doctor.
Since no one was available, I remember going home. Later that evening, I showed my cut hand to my parents but because there was now a scab, with a bandage over it; the injury was dismissed. It healed on it’s own and I have a lovely scar to remind me to this day, of how powerful my mind can be.
Now, fast forward from this scene into the future. The year is 1994. I’m a young mother of two attending a playgroup with other mothers and their pre-school children and babies. I’m serving myself an instant coffee while talking to the other mums. I take a Styrofoam cup, put some instant coffee in it, and pick up the kettle of boiling water. It’s still plugged in when I pour boiling water into my cup and over my left hand.
I freeze and my first thoughts are no pain, no burn. Again, the glove anesthesia technique I learned 22 years ago surged to the forefront of my brain and took over the body’s autonomic nervous system to produce the following results. As I walked around the counter to the kitchen sink, one of mother’s was screaming “Trudy, my God, you’re burned.” I replied, “No, I’m not,” She continued “how can you be so calm!” I turned the cold water tap on and let the water run over my injured left hand and felt the familiar sensation of going down, down, down, in an elevator. When I finally looked I had a red mark, the size of a quarter. Another spot the size of my pinky nail. No blister, and no pain. I showed the friend who was still quite upset on my behalf, reassuring her that there was no cause for worry.
These are just the dramatic stories that bear retelling again and again to demonstrate how powerful the mind really is when trained.
I ask myself sometimes why I need to keep repeating this course. It came to me today as I recalled that Jose Silva studied electronics. In electricity there is built in resistance. Copper is a pretty good conductor of electricity but there is still resistance. Perhaps, as we chase these formulas for successful lives we are pulling against our own, innate resistance to change.
So rather than feeling disappointed that I need to repeat the course, I’m grateful that I can and do. Each time I’ve gained new insight into myself, family and work situation. Like the fat person I once was on the road to fitness, I keep applying, and modifying the techniques I learned all those years ago, to correct my brain, direct my thoughts transform physically, and spiritually. With time and application, practice makes improvement.
Like anyone still lucky enough to still be drawing a breath I’ve experienced many of the riches and heartaches life has to offer. I’ve come to accept, deep in my bones that we attract in our life all the experiences needed to learn, grow and fulfill our destiny.
Whether it’s physical injury or an emotional one, practicing Silva has helped me get through difficulties and turn these lumps of lead into lessons of gold.
What simple steps can I take now that will make 2010 a great decade for me? That was easy. A quick review of the basic lecture series, with the remarkable Louise Blouin, on two subsequent Saturdays gave me a chance to practice problem solving techniques I’d discarded.
This time, I focused on a few specifics like goal setting and regaining my balance. I’d been battling bouts of vertigo; have trouble falling asleep, and migraine headaches were putting in an appearance. Lately, my daily habits are more reactive to my life and the issues and people in it. Just a dip into the waters of the basic lecture, in a group with like-minded people has helped me hit the reset button so that I’m experiencing life and leading the experience.
I’ve had perhaps a couple of bouts of vertigo since. Each time, I breathe deeply and count my self down into level. A quick trip to my laboratory for a tune up with my councilors has me feeling right side up in a few short minutes.
I recognize the migraine symptoms from the moment my neck is tense or a pulse is felt in my right eye, and again focus on the pain, turn it into discomfort and breath it right out, without grabbing for my bottle of headache pills. As for sleep disorders, well there’s nothing like going to level in the comfort of my own bed and playing in my laboratory or chatting with my councilors or working cases to put me on the road to dreamland.
When I tell people I’m reviewing the basic course it may look like I’m just a slow learner. Perhaps I am. However, on closer examination I can tell them that while I still experience the bumps, grinds of life that when the blood starts flowing, literally or figuratively, my first thoughts are to grab from my Silva Method brain wave training and ride the experience out.