7/16/2023 0 Comments AT A SNAIL’S PACEI decided to go back to the forest, to plant myself amongst the trees and unleash my spirit in the air. It was a moment in time, where wind and breath become a continuum of fresh born life. It was a cloudy day, pregnant with a sense of rain but not a drop touched the ground and with each step forward, I unfolded through tiny wildflowers peeking through leaves and sticks. There were exotic mushrooms mounted on trees, and open-faced acorns awaiting complete consumption by frisky little critters lurking about. The trail was supposed to be 1.2 miles, but time seemed to be moving at length and the path felt like it ran on and on forever. Every time I thought I completed the loop, I found myself walking more and I must admit, I was feeling a little anxious. I was walking alone, and the ground-scape seamlessly blended into the path so, I had to hold on to my footing very carefully. No sooner than I thought, “Am I headed the wrong way?” I heard a young couple walking up behind me. As they neared my location, I asked with an awkward chuckle, “Hey, does this trail ever end?” I was assured by the young man that we were all close to our final destination. At first, they followed me and again very awkwardly, I uttered, “Well, if we never get out of here, at least we have each other…” but the path veered in a direction further into the woods. Once we realized that, the young man took charge and redirected. Now, I was walking behind them.
Boy, they moved fast and at a rapid clip! Talking and laughing and moving swiftly by, just maneuvering with accuracy and skill; up and down small hills, squeezing through narrowing paths, stepping on top and underneath rocks, jumping over fallen trees and beyond! One foot in front of the other, onward they went! At first, I just wanted to keep up with them, so I didn’t feel alone or lost. Then I became curious as to how in the world they were conquering this path like some secret walking weapons of destruction or something. I was trying to keep up with them, my feet in rhythm and pace with theirs but the terrain could easily twist and break an ankle. I couldn’t imagine how fast they were going with such ease when I was gasping for breath to the point I could almost taste stagnation. I thought about youth and age and the differences between, sweating through this fury to the end. Nothing in the path phased them and I was falling further and further behind. Then, I decided to just be me, to go at my pace and come back to the ground where my steps followed the wild-flowers and magic mushrooms. I deliberately slowed my pace down and found my footing. I kept one eye on them and an inner eye on me. I moved gracefully and with reflection, engaging with the secrets and signature of nature. My lungs found breath again, my body caught up with my feet, my heart rate balanced, harmonizing with the surroundings and I was present. I was moving but I was here, and I was now. They were fading, moving out of my vision but I was here, and I was now and then eventually, they were gone. Now, just an apparition of others once walking their path. That’s when I stopped. I looked down and saw the pearlescent spiral of a shell, like a backpack of wisdom moving atop the rocks. It was a snail moving at his own pace, one meter at a time. I’ve never seen a snail in person before and then I heard the wind whisper, it said, “When you slow down, you get to see what’s for you and experience what’s yours.” Love, Jennifer Inner Beauty Blog - Tiny Poet, At a Snail's Pace, 7.16.2023
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5/15/2023 0 Comments Self Healing is Self AligningELEPHANT MEDICINE Elephants represent many things. They are beautiful symbols of luck, prosperity, and the strength to endure. They are caring, intelligent, and deeply compassionate beings that give an air of presence and ground. You can't push an elephant around. However, what's deeply special about elephant is that although, they have a strong and sturdy presence they are gentle, kind, and graceful with their power. Perhaps wisdom has taught them well, as they teach their children down the same line. Elephant represents family, tribe, protection, and inner power. There is so much to learn and receive from elephant with just a few highlighted below.
#BE AWARE OF YOUR OWN POWER Recognize your own strength and power and take charge of it. Know that you have the power to create anything you want, at any time. The ability to create is inherent to your being and the gift of Divinity. Being who you are will help you know the strength of your power. #STABILITY Deeply connect with the earth, the land, the ground. Feel your feet deeply rooted and the weight of every step you take. Seek your steady progress over time. Inner stability comes from knowing you have what it takes to move forward with confidence in the power of your presence. #WISDOM Embrace what you know through experience. Wisdom gives you understanding in how to live in the world and what is needed to live a balanced life, that's personal to you and your needs. Being true to yourself is the best path to take. #INTUITION A gentle and sensitive nature allows you to feel your body in its full expression. Here, you can value your thoughts especially when they come from a deeper place within you. Being kind and gentle with yourself gives you a place of ease. Tune in and receive what’s happening around and inside you. #PROTECTION Protect yourself by standing your ground in what you know is best for you, without wavering. Sense for harmony in all things. This is how you stay safe and balanced. #NURTURING Be more aware of your nurturing instincts and those of others. Take care of yourself by respecting what you need, what your personal limits are, and do so in loving ways. In the natural expression of maternal love and compassion, you can be the healing impact of love for yourself and others as well, a source of deep care in action. #SLOWING DOWN It’s okay to slow down. Honor your own pace and take your time with people, places, and things. Breathe in extra space and receive what’s there, what's yours, before you “try” to fill it with stuff that may not actually be needed, desired or truly fulfilling. #SENSITIVITY Being sensitive is a spiritual gift that taps deeply into your surroundings. Pay attention and feel your way through. Accessing a place of sensitivity supports your ability to be more authentic, open, and honest, to what is present in the moment. #LOVE, Jennifer Healing through Compassion - Self-Healing is Self-Aligning, Tiny Poet, 4.29.2023 "In order to feel okay, we need to feel safe. To feel safe, we need to feel stable and grounded." There are many reason's why one might not feel okay and often times, it's simply because we don't feel safe. We all have a right to feel safe, all the time. However, it can be a difficult experience to create when an unresolved emotional wound kicks up. One common emotional injury is the worth/value wound which says, "I am not okay to just be. It's not safe to be who I am." If we were to dissect the worth/value emotional wound, we would see there are many moving parts to it. At the root is a belief of not being seen that often fuels an attachment to the experience of neglect. Neglect of any kind can leave us feeling alone on some level and desperate to connect in ways in which, we ignore our needs and/or allow others to not take our needs into consideration. Both are forms of neglect and can perpetuate a behavior pattern better known as "people pleasing and/or gaining approval" to cope with feeling alone or that we don't exist. What it means to be seen is that the parts of us; our identity, emotions, our needs and/or physical presence gets fully recognized through validation, support, and/or inclusion. When we don't feel seen or have had that experience it leaves us feeling invisible, unheard, neglected and abandoned. Worth/Value Emotional Wound Distorted Belief: "I don't exist" - This belief can often translate to I am alone. Dysfunctional Behavior Pattern: 1. People pleasing and/or seeking approval of others. 2. Over-effort and over-striving. The Cycle of Worth/Value Wound: the cycle of the worth/value wound can start with not feeling seen on some level. In order to cope with that, we might slip into a behavior pattern known as people pleasing and/or gaining approval. This pattern of behavior might look like, doing more, being more, giving more, etc. which feeds into the core belief, "I don't exist." This distorted belief then triggers the emotional wound of worth/value. Most people don't usually want to touch that sore spot so, we take matters into our own hands. We work harder, do more, be more, give more, and sometimes, even to our own detriment. We push and push, trying to "make it happen" to "fix it" or to just "do" something. There's no rest in doing more; running on fumes, not having enough, doing enough, being enough. It's exhausting. It depletes and distorts our energy, creating feelings of insecurity and stress or moods like anxiety and depression. If we're always doing and never being, we don't rest. Rest gives us space to create and when we feel safe, okay to be who we are, we can rest deeply. The creative process is our capacity for magic. It is a true freedom in expression and natural abilities. When we rest, creative energy aligns and expresses itself through the power of creation. A baby in the womb is a great example of this. A baby developing in the womb does absolutely nothing but simply rests while, the creative process creates itself into a full fletched human being. If the baby tried to "do" or "fix" and involve itself in any way, it would just create unnecessary work and exhaust itself in the process. It doesn't work. It's not effective and in fact, it complicates an intelligent process already in action. But somehow, we think or believe if we stop working hard, something will not be okay or even worse, that something might be wrong with us. Over-efforting and over-striving creates tension, stress, insecurity, and seizes the self, better known as anxiety. It also corrupts the creative process, freezing any potential for creation. When we don't feel safe, our neurology shifts into survival mode, building consistent levels of stress that sustains overtime. Unresolve stress gets trapped in the body and that chaotic energy containment, leaves us feeling ungrounded; we fight, freeze, or flee. A desperate response to trauma on repeat that continues the emotional wound cycle. "We all want to feel centered and safe, yet the ways we're trying to get there are actually creating more stress." Feeling grounded in the body is key. It's a form of showing up for ourselves and a greater overall feeling of support. When feelings of insecurity arise or moods like anxiety peek through, we can ground ourselves by coming into the body. We can pause, connect, breath deeply into our presence in the present and notice how the body communicates through us. What are the sensations? Where does your body direct your mind for attention or insight? Does your breath create space inside you or is it constricted and stuck? This is how we emotionally support ourselves. We can also physically ground ourselves by noticing what it feels like when our body is supported from the outside; on the earth, in a chair, bed, car seat. Grounding is about supporting ourselves deeply, inside and out. We can learn to relax deeply inside the body and the mind rather than the tendency to run on urgency. We can deeply listen to what's actually going on in our body and support ourselves in ways that create a safe place for us to land. We can show up for ourselves by just being and the more we can practice and anchor into that, the more we can understand we are inherently good and okay. You are safe to be exactly who we are and were created to be. This is the gift of personal worth and value. MINDFUL BREATHING PRACTICE
Focus on the exhale: The exhale reminds us that we don't have to keep it all together, hold it all up, get it all done or be more. In the release of your breath, the exhale reminds us we can let go, one moment at a time. Love, Jennifer - Healing through Compassion |
TIS` THE SEASON OF HEART
December can be quite a magical month and fulfilling time of year. We get a chance to embrace the spirit of holidays and witness the wonder through the eyes of children and adults alike. Tis` the season of heart, when the world steps into a place of family, togetherness, and hope. It’s an end of a year that begins an active path into giving and receiving, rooted in a coming together of values and the essence of home. The season fills the atmosphere with magic; crisp air and snow falling from sky, lights aglow on streets and in homes, long gazes into loved one’s eyes by the crackles of fire and sparks of sweet-hearts. We take care, nestling into hearty foods like soups, stews, and hot chocolate. We bundle up with sweaters, scarves, blankets and loved ones and we find ourselves surround by light, the illumination of our hopes and dreams in the stillness of love within our hearts.
The heart symbolizes life, love and the engagement in partnership. The heart never leads alone... It never beats alone... One pulse follows the other in the direction of union. A sense of union requires partnership. We learn to connect and re-connect through the heart-experience, magnified between a pair of arms that allow us to reach out and touch what we love, while, cradled and comforted between two breasts that safely hold what we feel. We are given an opportunity to feel the magic of life, connection and harmony both, individually and collectively. The season of heart reminds us in order to create a spark of life, we cannot go at it alone. We simply relate and create in a blended continuum of wholeness. The heart does not beat alone... It does not lead alone... One pulse follows the other in complete unification. This is a time of un-veiling, re-vealing, and an un-folding of self to the inner sweetness of comfort and warmth. It’s a reminder of the mother-child experience, the inner connection and bond of unconditional love. Our very own place to rest soulfully in the wonder and awe, completely disarmed and embraced in the natural state of being. The heart leads us to a clear passage and cleansing, a shedding of old, a point to nurture life and all that we live for. It is a space given in which to surrender, to lay down a clean slate, to be re-born in concept as we celebrate into the new, calm and cradled in the mother energy, inside the season of heart. Love, Jennifer #HeartSeason #SpiritofCalm&Comfort #MotherEnergy #CradledInHeartEnergy #TistheSeasonforMagic #HeldinLight CONSCIOUS BALANCE
It’s time to get out of the “cookie cutter” version of what healing should look like and shift back into our own personal experience and guidance. Sometimes, the path to healing can feel off balancing and can cause concern. We forget that being off balance is also for good purpose in defining it. The act of balance looks to the center of opposing forces to reveal a place of wholeness. This is the path to healing. The gift in that is in being open and available to both sides to integrate them as a point of conscious balance.
Let’s look at pain for example. Pain is real. It’s relentless. It reveals itself through the body. It wants to be seen. It beckons to be heard. It tugs at you every minute of every day. Pain is restrictive, trapped in the body with no space and we suffer. Pain is suffering, the physical manifestation of being held in, held back, shut down and buried within your own emotions. Your physical becomes the storehouse for emotional energy that has been ignored, unacknowledged and suppressed. Pain is a barometer, an internal broadcast system for the feelings buried inside, screaming to be heard. To be acknowledged. To be cleared. To be loved. Every healing journey will not look the same. It’s a personal pursuit- Have you ever sat with the inner voice of your own pain? I have and it had a lot to say. Pain is a lot more than just the name we gave. It’s the culmination of stuck emotions, blocked feelings, experiences, memories, unconscious belief systems and because of this, pain can be the source of evolution. Acknowledging what exists inside you, begins the path that serves as a healing direction. All of it is important information. Sometimes, the tendency is to give up because we don’t like what we see and it can be hard to move through. This is when healing becomes dedication and time invested becomes discovery. I’ve thought about pain. I’ve been in pain. I’ve worked through and with pain. It occurred to me, like a whole being awareness that the other side of pain, is pleasure. What a revelation! It never occurred to me that pleasure could be a root deficiency to the experience of pain. I was totally invested inside the pain that I missed out on any form of pleasure. I thank God for that moment in wholeness. Pleasure was now part of understanding personal balance and became a priority. When we embrace the other side, pain can rest. We cease falling back into rigid, perfectionism disguised as discipline and the “trigger” has a place to go, a space to flourish. My personal healing did not look ideal or what I had anticipated. I found rest. There was no more pushing or forcing life forward. The grip was loosening and I took in some fun, sweeter foods, conscious movement based on my needs rather than any “should’s.” My healing journey through pain helped me find a better balance within myself, a conscious balance. When you make your healing journey personal, it moves you, changes you, transforms you. Shift away from the “call to action” approach to healing and move deeper into intimate understanding. Let that be the life-giving medicine you need. Love, Jennifer🌸 Gentle Touch Healing Healing through Compassion - Inner Beauty Blog, Conscious Balance, Tiny Poet, 4.19.2024 AUTHOR OF INNER BEAUTY BLOGSJennifer is a truth seeker and artistic expressionist. She is certified energy therapist, emotional wellness coach, yoga/meditation instructor and intuitive. She is known her poetry and the deep care she feels for others. Categories |
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