You are a miracle!

“As for me, I know nothing else but miracles”

— Walt Whitman

Do you know what a miracle you are? What a phenomenally sophisticated apparatus your sentient being is? Your ability to translate these squiggles into something meaningful involves a highly complex orchestration of brain activity. And the extracted meaning affects your entire body - producing chemical reactions, sensations, emotions, activating memories and connecting thoughts. As you read this your body intelligence is aware of your surrounding environment, filtering out the unimportant while keeping partial attention to what is relevant. Your body continues its ceaseless functions, digesting foods, pumping blood, breathing, regulating your body temperature and filtering out toxins. Your body is doing all these things and sending feedback back to your brain, guiding with messages about how to care for
yourself.
 

Perhaps you’ve forgotten or did you never realize what a miracle you are? I hear how you talk about yourself when you come see me. You don’t like how your body feels or how it looks and you are struggling to get to some remembered or imagined state of being. In that struggle, you have left yourself and can no longer hear the messages from your body. You just want your body to behave, but you don’t realize what you view as “misbehavior” are compassionate, intelligent messages sent from you... to you.
 

Maybe you’ve forgotten the language that your body uses to communicate with you. The language that we translate as pain and pleasure. These are intelligent communications. Pain, discomfort and agitation signals us to change our situation and move towards ease. Are you uncomfortable? Is there strain on your wrists, back, shoulders? Maybe you need a pillow, a drink of water, a walk or a nap. Are you distracted? Is your head or heart moving towards conflict at work or the bleak state of the nation or the endless things on your list you feel incapable of completing? Maybe you need to sit still and listen to what your heart is telling you. Cry, ask for help, let something go, apologize. Pain and discomfort are not punishments. They nudge us to feel for another direction, urging us to find the places with more space and ease. And this miraculous guidance never leaves you, gets louder if needed and guides you back to yourself!
 

Likewise, pleasure, joy, ease and delight are also messengers. Are you sitting with a warm cup of tea right now? Was breakfast nourishing? Did you get a hug from your child today? Can you feel the warm sun on your face? Did a compliment make you smile? Did you enjoy listening to music? Then do more of these things, but more importantly, take them in when they are happening. Let them soak into the core of your being. Don’t deflect or overlook them. These pleasures are ambrosia for the miracle that is you. But don’t mistake the pleasure for the miracle or you might create pain chasing after those small moments.
 

The miracle is that you feel pain or pleasure at all, that your guidance works ceaselessly and effortlessly.  Whatever you are doing. your entire being is automatically operating in an incomprehensible and divinely complex way. When you remember, understand, accept this, you won’t reflexively run away from pain or towards pleasure. You will naturally respond to the language of your body with sensitivity and respect. You will move towards ease and joy. What an amazing miracle you are!

In Health and Community, 

Coming Apart at the Seams

“ We feel vulnerable and raw, unable to feel truly safe with our invisible garments. Why is this happening? It happens when the core of who we are, our identity and what we love are threatened.”

At the DMV this morning, I had some time to reflect on my musings and why I haven’t been able to write one recently. Last month, I didn’t turn one in for the first time and this month’s musing is already running late. Writer’s block? Burn out? Lack of inspiration?

The truth is, I’ve started many musings since July but I couldn’t maintain the momentum because I felt things were happening so fast and furious that when I had time to continue, edit or craft my writing, it no longer felt relevant. Big aha moments, deep reflections and urgent thoughts I wanted to share became stale and lifeless after only a few days as something new and more urgent came to the forefront. Things have been happening like this for many weeks and judging from what my patients have to tell me and what I am observing in the world, I’m not alone.

It feels we are collectively coming apart at the seams. As I pondered the ramifications of this, I realized that what is coming apart are the seams of the emperor’s new clothes. We can take this in a straightforward way, as in the emperor of our nation and his lies and false promises. But broader and deeper than that, our collective and personal garments, the ones we put on and rely for safety and protection, the ones that make us feel important or special, the ones that become our identity, are coming apart at the seams. We feel vulnerable and raw, unable to feel truly safe with our invisible garments.

Why is this happening? It happens when the core of who we are, our identity and what we love are threatened. It happens when we are forced to consider losing what we have. It happens in intense times, be it politically, environmentally, globally or personally. It’s happening on many fronts for most of us. The urgency of situations, as in war time, requires we live in the present moment and discard any notions superfluous to the moment and survival. Burnout is when all that feels overwhelming and the notion of so much sacrifice sends us into paralysis and hiding.

And that is why I have not been in the mood to muse. No time to craft and develop a thought to the expectation I have set for myself. Those expectations are parts of my invisible garment. And rather than showing up naked, I withheld. The interesting thing about an emperor’s garment coming apart at the seams is that it doesn’t really matter. The garment doesn’t exist.

At the DMV of all places -not Portugal or New Mexico- I became determined to show up just as I am. Today that is some amalgamation of so many things. A sudden gratitude for this unexpected gift of time for reflection, a feeling of joy and re-connection through words with you all - my community,  gratitude for my eldest child (whose birthday is today!) who often points out my invisible garments, the acceptance of my humanness, a feeling of breakthrough, a stack of work and personal tasks piled up before me that are not invisible, and a true vulnerability where fear and aliveness and gratitude come together. What happens when we are naked. We are alive and innocent.

 In Health and Community, 

The Space to Heal is Here

“We have the internal space to heal. We only need to be willing to let go of some of the discordant clutter and noise of our minds. ”

Healing requires space. As we plow through day to day life, we dream about finding a time when there will be space to heal, rejuvenate and refuel. Some of us are holding off until the weekend, while for others the breaks are fewer and farther in between. When we can’t find that space in time, we fall sick.Then we are forced to have some bed rest, some space, some time to heal. Sometimes it is just a few days we are in bed, sometimes it is much longer than that.  

We think of space as if it were a far off destination or something we create. But really, space is ever present and everywhere. A room crammed full of stuff doesn’t have less space than an empty room, It just has more stuff in it. We are not creating space when we take stuff out, the space is already there. There is nothing but space.  

Inside us is space as well. Like our external space, our internal space can become crowded with stuff that might impede our ability to move around and do things efficiently. Our internal space becomes more and more crowded with thoughts, beliefs and judgments that keep us from healing, movement and growth. Much like a hoarder who crowds his life with material things because he fears he may someday need them for survival and well-being, we hoard and crowd ourselves with unnecessary beliefs and judgments.

“Should” thoughts and “can’t” thoughts and “have to” thoughts and “never/ always” thoughts are dis-empowering and create impossible conditions for our healing, depleting us of our energy. Thoughts like “I will never have enough time, space or resources to fulfill my needs.” Or thoughts like “the only way to feel better is to have or do x, y and z” set us up for failure time and again. These thoughts crowd our internal space and become externalized in the form of judgments of others and the world.

We have the internal space to heal. We only need to be willing to let go of some of the discordant clutter and noise of our minds. We need to trust and accept ourselves enough to let go of the stockpile of unnecessary thought weapons and defenses that are weighing us down every day, every moment. This acceptance in and of itself creates space and expansion. A spacious and trusting internal world can positively affect both internal and external environments in subtle and miraculous ways. De-clutter some outdated thoughts right now. Replace them with: I have the space to heal, I have the capacity to heal, this very moment.

In Health and Community,