A smart and hardworking client who is a full-time student and almost full-time employee shared this thought recently. A cause of her angst? She took a nap after getting more done in a morning than I do some weeks. It got me thinking about this particularly sneaky form of perfectionism and self-criticism. It’s a crazy-making Catch 22: I’m not doing enough, so I better do more, which still won’t be enough, so I can either continue doing more in an increasing frenzy or get stuck and avoid thinking, feeling, and acting because it all seems like just too much – at the same time it’s not enough. Just perfect. (Pardon the expression).

When I think I’m not doing enough, I often do less. When I believe I’m not doing enough volunteering/donating/ paperwork/exercising/de-cluttering/flossing/?, I can become immobilized or unmotivated. Or I do the opposite: way too much. I overhelp from an anxious, pleaser place, which doesn’t feel good. It’s also annoying to most and under-appreciated by the rest…of those whom I am trying to do more for.

Why do we do this? In my case, I think it goes back to basic human fears: I am not safe; I am not enough. The irony is that self-judgment and perfectionism create conditions for the perfect (!) storm of the fight/flight/freeze response. This creates feelings of being even less safe and less adequate. Closely related to its cousins, “I should be doing more,” “I should be doing it better,” and “I’m not doing it right,” it’s also a setup for distraction and procrastination. Nothing happens, except we get to beat ourselves up for not doing enough (or anything.) Those of us who experience mind/body pain, anxiety, emotional eating, and other symptoms courtesy of the stress trifecta also get an excuse to view our disconnection through the same self-critical lens, and the “beat” goes on.

How to free one’s self from this loop? Here’s the thought I am playing with: maybe it’s all true. Rationally, I know that sometimes what I’m doing is enough and I just need to hold that thought. It may also be true that sometimes doing more would be better, and I’m not doing as much as I could be doing and it’s still enough. It might be what my body, energy, time, and sanity have to give right now, so it’s actually perfect. And some days, doing more is taking a nap.

Wishing you sweet days and dreams,
Ann

Years ago I received this excellent advice from one of the wisest and most practical people I know. At the time I was attempting some version of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, relying on my mechanical style statement of jamming the stubborn item (drawer, door, key, trunk lid, you name it) into its “proper” place.

His advice, that the most important information was 1)not that it didn’t fit, but 2)why and how it didn’t, and 3) how to make it work with ease, it was a lightbulb moment for me. It led to noticing what what was stuck – and to non-violent household solutions.

For awhile “Don’t Force It” was my DIY mantra. Eventually I realized its truth as a more global philosophy. Force leads to struggle, which leads to a fight/flight/flee stress response, which leads to a host of mind/body pain, from IC, back pain, and fibromyalgia, to weight gain, anxiety and beyond. When I started listening to my body, it all fell into place.“Don’t Force It” replaced my previous all-purpose motto, the old Nike slogan, “Just Do It.”

One of my “do’s” had been to drag myself to the running trail whether it sounded like fun or flogging. I eventually started to notice that when my body’s need was to heal, my muscles and joints weren’t happy, the endorphins didn’t kick in, and the experience was more ordeal than exercise. Coincidentally (or not), I started reading about the concept of over-training, which provided scientific evidence for what I was experiencing. The gods of “should,” OCD, and habit didn’t strike me down for taking a day or week off. My physical being thanked me with energy and lifted spirits. I began to focus on my body’s messages and expanded my awareness to other areas of my life.

Additionally, as I played with listening to my body, I realized that at times she wanted something (physical activity, completion of a task, protein) and had difficulty being heard because of whiny thoughts: “It’s too much work, I don’t feel like it, I deserve six cookies.” That’s when my logic mind and my meta-consciousness (Compassionate Witness, Wise Guide) entered my awareness as helpful detective and observer. They have also become guides to what my being really desires: whether it’s doing, not doing, doing something else, or choosing to do/not do it this time, or file the info for the future.

My To-Do or Not To-Do Steps:

1) Notice the physical sensations and emotions from a situation/decision, especially heavy or light

2) Notice thoughts attached to emotions/sensations, if thoughts arise

3) Ask yourself what message is being sent

4) Act accordingly

5) When values, uncertain boundaries, or practicalities lead to actions that don’t feel body-centered (i.e. attend the meeting, change the litter box, pay the bills) give self a hug for awareness and file as “good to know for the future/what did I learn from this?”

The Quick Version:

I encourage you to experiment with ways of hearing what your body is telling you. I’m still learning and I would love to hear your own listening techniques. There are multiple benefits and no down side to getting your body’s opinion – and letting go of unaware force.

May the Ease be with you!

Ann

For the past five weeks, my family and I had a surprise Guest stay with us.   Guest arrived without warning and with no communication when Guest would depart.  Why had Guest decided to visit at this time and what was Guest trying to teach us?

Our questions were left unanswered until around day 21 of Guest’s visit I went for a run and the answer came to the surface.  Guest would stay as long as necessary and not a moment longer.

What the heck did that mean?

I dug deeper into the question.  I asked Guest, “Why would you stay for so long when we are really not very fond of you?  And to top it off we didn’t invite you.”

To which Guest replied, “Oh, but you DID invite me.  You ALL invited me, welcomed me into your bodies, each one of you.”

Allow me to blow Guest’s cover.

Guest started as a little cough and sore throat for a few days then progressed into a chest-rattling, gunk-producing, smoker-hack-sounding cough and none of us ever smoked.  I don’t recall in my life ever having such a cough.  No fever, no aches, no chills.  This Guest set up residence in each one of our lungs and got comfortable.

After using some mind-body tools, I discovered Guest’s purpose was to clean out years of toxins built up in the lungs.  I recently wrote another post about my son Ian, Ian’s Message About Toxins, where I began to put it all together.  He is my nine-year-old son with autism and one of my greatest teachers.

For the past six weeks, I’ve done a TON of work to clean out the toxic thoughts in my mind; clearing out painful, stressful thoughts using The Work by Byron Katie and Abigail’s mind-body tools.

What I’ve learned through my training as a mind-body coach and working with clients struggling with physical pain is that when you shift your mind, the body follows.  Sometimes that means there is quite a mess and that is just as much a part of the process of healing as any other part.  In my case, a four-week Guest setting up camp in my lungs.

Here are two additional golden nuggets.  Your thoughts create your reality meaning your view of life all begins with thought and according to quantum physics and string theory we are all connected on an energetic level.  Check out physicist Brian Greene’s TedTalk from 2005 on string theory.

So, it made perfect sense to me that as I cleaned out a Mack-truck load of toxic thoughts, my body would follow and rid itself of toxins as well as my family to whom I’m deeply connected.

I put out the welcome mat.

For my final week of “clearing”, rather than curse Guest I welcomed Guest with open arms and accepted the gift that my body invited.  My oldest son welcomed Guest two weeks after me so he continues to rattle and cough but I find it so fascinating that he’s not unhappy about it.  When he has trouble breathing, we do a breathing treatment and then he’s back to being happy.  He lives in the present moment, unencumbered by stressful thoughts about the past or the future.  And as I let go of the painful thoughts and release them from my body something amazing happens.  Not only does MY body heal but HIS body heals.  His healing has actually accelerated over the past year.

I share this story with you to invite you to consider the power of your thoughts and how they are connected to the health and healing of your body and even possibly your loved ones near you.  The power of thought continues to amaze and awe me.

I leave you with this thought.  At the core of every human being is love.  Some of us just have thicker layers of painful, stressful thoughts shrouding the view.  Let love and acceptance blow the view wide open.

This week I’d like to share a post with you from my good friend and fellow coach Bridgette Boudreau.  As soon as I read this, I realized I couldn’t say it better, so I’m bringing her words directly to you.  Bridgette and I have been coaching each other recently on allowing emotions, and I think you’ll benefit from her excellent summary of this important life skill.  Enjoy!

I’ve been at war with my emotions. I’ve spent my whole life trying to stuff them down, or my more recent nuance, trying to shift the bad ones away and create the good ones. I didn’t want to feel negative emotions because I believed I’m supposed to feel good–that feeling happy was the end goal–and if I wasn’t happy I should be actively finding my way back to happy. What I ended up believing was that something was wrong with me. And thinking something is wrong with me–which creates alternating feelings of anger, fear and sadness–was not something I wanted to think or feel either. So I distracted myself with overeating, over-Facebooking, overanalyzing, overtv-ing, over-you-name-it. This was not happening in the distant past, I was doing all these things NOW. And sometimes still do.

While I intellectually understand the concept of feeling my feelings, I didn’t understand the true nature of my emotions and how to feel them. I remember asking my coach years ago how to feel my feelings and she said just lean into them. That sounded sage and true, but it took me a year of practicing feeling my feelings before I deeply understood what she meant. This instruction was not specific enough for me to understand how to feel my emotions. I always say the weight loss gurus tell us to “eat less and move more” and that if it were that simple to put those concepts into practice, I would be out of business. The same applies for “Feel your feelings!” Sure! I’ll just feel my feelings after spending my whole life reflexively repressing them. I’ll get right on that. I needed more specifics on how this whole feelings-thing works.

I’ve been looking back over my blog posts for the last year and seeing how most of them are about some flavor of how to feel, live with or shift your feelings. Basically it’s been me trying to figure out my own emotional life. In the background I continued to struggle with allowing my own emotions to flow. I didn’t tune out emotionally anymore only to check back in six months later, but I still beat myself up for not being a happier person. (Which is funny since I’m a pretty happy person–I didn’t say my beliefs were logical!) I didn’t fog out by eating whole plates of nachos anymore, but I would eat just a little bit too much at dinner to try to keep that fear of uncertainty at bay. Things began to shift for me as I became willing to delve deeply into my emotional life. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

It’s not about Fun, Happiness or even Delight
Yeek! Did you think I just took a Debbie Downer pill? Fear not my friends for I am a big fan of fun, hilarity, and happiness in all its forms. I’m just going to stop chasing it. Happiness in its healthy state is a passing emotion. Its role is to show us when a particular thing or event is joyful and then it passes. Happiness is not intended to be a static state. Shifting my emotional quest from fun to delight as I talked about in this blog post was getting warmer, but what I’m really looking for is the state of peace. And this to me is great news. I no longer have to try to create an emotional state I’m not experiencing.

I can feel fearful and peaceful.
I can feel insecure and peaceful.
I can feel resistant and peaceful.
I can feel decidedly unpeaceful and peaceful.
I can feel angry and peaceful.
And, oddly enough, I can feel happy and peaceful.

Because now I know if I’m not feeling HAPPY! or JOYFUL! or GRATEFUL!, there’s nothing wrong with me. When I feel happy or joyful, I can relish that moment, knowing it too shall pass and that I don’t have to freak out and chase it when it does. Each of my emotions (even the “negative” ones) are here to help me. All I have to do is listen.

(Hang in there, I’ll tell you how to listen below.)

It IS about Peace, Groundedness and Flow
I now have a deeper understanding of The River of Your (and My) Emotional Life. I still think of our emotions as a river, and now I know that underlying that river is the foundation of peace and groundedness. Our emotional river is meant to flow, yet we try to dam it up by repressing our emotions and/or expressing our emotions in unhealthy ways. When the river is backed up, it floods over our peace and groundedness, making our foundation hard to perceive. The foundation is still there–it always is, we just have this little flood situation to deal with now. In my previous blog post I said it was things like overeating, overshooting, over-anything that causes the river to dam up. This is true, but we distract ourselves with these things because we are resisting some emotion. The other thing we do is try to constrict the river when we feel strong emotions–we try to squish our anger, fear or sadness into the narrowest stream possible in hopes it will go away. But you’ve seen what happens to large volume of water in a tight channel right? Raging rapids and flooding! The counterintuitive thing to do is to make your channel wider–allow more room for those swift emotional waters to flow.

Emotions are Here to Help
I thought I understood how emotions are here to help, but I was missing the boat. I understood that our “negative” emotions alert us to something that needs to be attended to. But REALLY deep inside I believed they were something to be banished as soon as possible and preferably avoided. After all, they don’t call them negative emotions for nothing. Except they aren’t negative. Again, I probably read that in some self-help book somewhere and said to myself, “Yeah, yeah, nothing’s negative, it’s all for the good. Blah, blah blah.” But I didn’t really get it. Now I look it is this way–strong emotions are there to get my attention, and each emotion has a specific useful purpose that helps me deal. I’ve been reading a book recommended to me by my fabulous friend and fellow coach, Abigail Steidley, called “The Language of Emotions” by Karla McLaren. I’m not sure I buy everything McLaren says, but she sure knows her shit when it comes to emotions. Here’s what she says about the so-called “negative” ones:

“I can also see quite clearly that happiness and joy can become dangerous if they are trumpeted as the only emotions any of us should ever feel. I’ve seen so many people whole lives imploded after they disallowed the protection of anger, the intuition of fear, the rejuvenation of sadness, and the ingenuity of depression in order to feel only joy. In short, throughout my life I’ve found that what we’re taught about emotions is not only wrong, it’s often dead wrong.”

She goes on to explain how anger allows us to determine what is acceptable to us and what is not.
Fear activates your focus and intuition.
Sadness allows us to release that which isn’t serving us.

Pretty frickin’ cool.

When you allow these emotions to free-flow, they deliver important messages into your consciousness and move on.

How to Feel Your Feelings
Here’s where we get down to it.

I was onto it with this blog post, but I’ve got better tools now.

Use the below questions to keep your emotional river flowing–check in with yourself several times a day. (Another shout-out to Abigail for sharing these great questions!) This allows you to build your emotional-acceptance muscles and create that feeling of any-emotion+ peace. I’ve been keeping an emotion journal to help me keep close to my emotional ebbs and flows. I’ve noticed that by doing this I don’t feel the need to overindulge in food or engage in as many distractions.

Question 1: What emotion am I feeling right now?
Build the habit of naming it. I like to try to boil it down to one of these four basic emotions: mad, glad, sad or scared. Don’t get all rule-bound about it, but see if you can capture it in one word. Then write down anything else that occurs to you about this emotion such as:
Where you feel it in your body
Details on what it feels like (hot/cold, spiky/smooth, dull/sharp, etc…)
Ranting about the emotion or the circumstance (It’s ok to rant! Ranting helps the emotions to flow.)
Thoughts related to the emotion

Writing anything beyond the emotion is optional, the main thing is to keep this simple so you keep doing it. If you forget to do it, no problem, don’t make it a thing–that only causes more resistance.

2. Can I accept whatever I’m feeling right now without judgment?
The answer is yes or no, but either answer is correct. The idea is to explore why you can’t accept the emotion and find out what you can accept about it.
If you can’t accept it, can you accept your resistance of it? Great! Start there.
Can you accept that you’re pissed that you’re angry? Awesome.
Can you accept that you’re sad that you’re afraid? Excellent.
Can you accept that you can’t accept any of it? Aha! That’s perfect too.

Here’s another little tool to use here. I want you to try it on yourself real quick:
– Think back to the last time you felt anger, anxiety or fear.
– Notice if there’s any tightening in your body. Usually there is because we’re taught to try to suppress the emotion, hence the tightening.
– Imagine a container around the emotion.
– Now make that container bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.
Did the sensation of the emotion change?
Most people report still feeling the emotion, but that it is more manageable. This is the sensation of allowing the emotion to flow. It’s still there, but now you can again sense the peace and groundedness underneath.

Neat, huh?

3. Ask the emotion what message it has for you.
Seriously. Say, “<Emotion name here> what message do you have for me?”
Then listen.
The message will be in the small quiet voice that speaks to you right before your mind tells you what you should think about this emotion and a few other things while it has your attention.
Tune out the mind and put down whatever pops into your head from the small voice no matter how trivial, weird, ridiculous it seems.

That’s it.

There’s nothing to resolve, nothing to “work” on. This is simply you feeling your feelings, creating peace and accepting your full human nature.

I can tell you that I feel much more peaceful now that I’ve let myself off the hook for being happy all the time.

I am so excited about this fantastic new program! It combines everything I love – mind-body tools, yoga and body awareness tools, and…coaches!

If you’re not a coach, you might be wondering what’s up with this mind-body tools for success idea.  Let me fill you in!

Though you may be focused on strengthening your mind-body connection to relieve pain, lose weight, and gain health, you will get much more than that in actuality.  Connecting your mind, body, and spirit is about removing blocks.  We all have blocks.  We inadvertently stop ourselves from taking steps to create dreams, innovate, be creative, and put ourselves out there.  When I was in the midst of discovering my own mind-body path to health, I would NEVER have dreamed of writing a blog, starting a coaching business, and doing what I really wanted to do with my life.

In fact, the thought flitted through my mind a few times…”Hmmm, this sure is amazing stuff, the whole mind-body healing process.  I’d love to teach other women with pelvic pain about it.”  This thought was followed by…”Nah.  That’s impossible.”

I was blocked by fear, my own thoughts regarding my abilities, insecurity, perfectionism, and many other things.

Notice, however, that I have indeed realized that dream.  So what happened between the “Nah, that’s impossible” and the present day?  I kept up my mind-body processes.  I released emotional energy, worked my thoughts, and created a strong mind, body, spirit connection.  Now, I know how to play at work, how to create ease in what I do, and how to chart my course and make things happen.  (I like the word magic for this – because it feels SO easy.)  I also know how to course-correct if something isn’t flowing or feeling good.  (Case in point – recently, I discovered I felt overwhelmed.  I used my mind-body tools and discovered that my inner wisdom wanted me to admit I needed help.  So – I hired an assistant.  Ah – relief!)

I also know my own definition of success.  I am free of others’ expectations (my own mind’s desire for approval), and I am in love with my life.  I also know how to love the imperfections of life, the things that don’t go as expected, and the amazing journey my inner wisdom reveals anew each day.  I trust my inner wisdom to steer me, and it does.

Little did you know that these tools are so powerful!  Little did I know, when I started using them myself.  You have much to look forward to, as do I.  I cannot wait to share this understanding and process with the 12 coaches who get to take part in this fun-filled program.  Because – coach or not – the mind-body-spirit connection is in itself one perfectly designed system.  Learn how to get out of the way of the system and watch the magic begin!

Coffee with a Coach!

Coffee with a Coach is a series of recorded conversations between myself and other Martha Beck life coaches.  We hope you will enjoy listening to us discuss a variety of topics and are excited to offer this new opportunity to learn more about self-discovery and personal growth.  You have to understand that when we coaches get together, we can really talk!  So the possibilities are truly endless for fun and fantastic conversations.

To kick off this new series, fellow Martha Beck Coach Bev Barnes and I thought it might be fun to answer the ever-popular question: What is Life Coaching, exactly?

In this discussion, we give our personal definitions of coaching, discuss some of the central concepts of Martha Beck life coaching, and also talk about why coaching is helpful for anyone who is dealing with chronic pain and illness.

So, grab your cup of coffee and listen in to our chat!

Click the link to listen, or right click (control click for mac users) and select “save link as” to download the file.

What is Life Coaching?

If you’re listening, that is. 

All of the panic, fear, anxiety, anger, and depression surrounding your health issues do a fantastic job of blocking the communication between you and your essential self.  To communicate with her again, you need to discover the thoughts behind all of your feelings.  Those thoughts (remember the Thought Log?) are in your head making a lot of noise.  You can’t hear your essential self through all that ruckus.  All you hear is, “I’ll never get over this,” “I can’t stand this anymore,” “everyone else gets to have a normal sex life and I don’t,” and on and on and on… 

The amazing, awesome essential self is a major key to your return to health.  You absolutely want to contact her, because she is very wise.  In Finding Your North Star, Martha shows you how to access her so you can discover your true purpose in life.  For those of us with health issues, your essential self takes on a new persona.  I like to call her your Inner Healer. 

Your Inner Healer, when she can be heard, will tell you what is right for you every step of the way through your medical crisis.  She will tell you when a doctor is not the right doctor for you and when you’ve found the exact doctor you need to see.  She will tell you whether or not the medication you’re considering is really something you want to try or not.  She will tell you what alternative medicine avenues are right for you.  She will tell you what you need to do on your own to help yourself heal.  She is a genius.  But she has a very soft voice – probably because it’s hoarse from trying to shout over the noise of all those panic-creating thoughts.   

The fastest way to talk to your Inner Healer is to enter that relaxed state of being (discussed in previous posts) in which you watch your breath and remain very quiet.  As you quiet your mind, releasing your hold on your thoughts, and focus on your breath, you will start to feel an inner calm.  Stay in the breath until you feel this – it may feel like a floating sensation or just a very relaxed quiet.  It might help to take any thoughts that pop in your head and imagine them scrolling across a page and then disappearing.  Don’t panic if you don’t hear any messages or don’t have any flashes of intuition.  Simply keep returning to this place as often as you can.  Soon, you will feel moments of knowledge – you will just know what is right for you.  Very peaceful yet insistent ideas will float into your head.  Sometimes these happen during the meditative state, and other times they just happen randomly.  I often hear my Inner Healer the most right at the end of a meditative session.   

I’ll be talking to you about my Inner Healer in future blog posts, so I wanted to introduce you to the idea today.  Have fun with this – your Inner Healer is a blast to get to know (she’s the person I was talking about in my last post – the one who rocks).  See if you can meet her and start the flow of communication today. 

I remember this feeling well.  I was living in a beautiful little house only a mile from the ocean with lots of friends, a great husband, a really cute dog, and a good job.  From the outside looking in, my life was great.  Inside me, however, everything was dark, black, and unbearable.  I had struggled with depression prior to my vulvodynia diagnosis, but the onset of physical symptoms seemed to bring a whole new level of depression into my world.  I couldn’t find it in myself to enjoy anything, even if my symptoms were slightly less at the moment.  I was too busy worrying when they’d be back, stronger, and whether or not I’d have to live this way forever.  All I could think about were the things I was missing out on and the life I wanted but did not have. 

Looking back on this time, I have a lot of compassion for this me who was suffering so much.  She was in as much emotional pain as she was physical pain, and remembering brings a wash of gratitude into the center of my chest for what I have learned from her.  She went through a lot to bring me to where I am now, and she was a warrior.  She refused to collapse into that black hole of depression and instead took a learning journey right through it to the other side.  She faced the darkness by accepting where she was right then and allowing herself to learn from it.  That is a most humble, self-loving place to be, and I am still in awe of her ability to be there in the face of physical pain.   

I think of it as surrendering.  It felt like it, at the time – I was waving my white flag and saying, “Okay, I’ll stop fighting.”  Realizing the simple truth – I was where I was, no matter how much I resisted, somehow released me from my own mental nightmare.  I know the minute I stopped fighting, stopped resisting the experience, was the minute I began healing.  I didn’t heal overnight, and I quit expecting to heal overnight.  I quit looking for someone outside of me to give me the perfect answer, because they couldn’t.  I turned inward and found the only expert available on myself – Me.  Not the me thinking all those crazy-making thoughts (I’ll never get better, etc.), but the Me beyond those thoughts.  The deeper, smarter, wiser, calmer, intuitive me.  She rocks.   

Let me just introduce you to page 51.  Well, you’ll need to read up to this page to truly understand it, but even if you only read this much of the book (but how, oh how, could you stop there?!!) you would discover an essential piece of information about healing.  On this page, Tolle talks about identifying with a physical problem or illness too much.  In other words, your identity becomes tied up with the illness in your own thoughts – you think “I have vulvodynia,” you say “I have vulvodynia,” and you do both frequently.  It becomes the central focus of your life.  “Since I have vulvodynia, I can’t…”  Or, “If I didn’t have vulvodynia, I could…”  Your thoughts focus on vulvodynia frequently, if not constantly.  You can no longer separate yourself from this illness.  You can’t imagine life without it anymore, even though you long for just that – desperately.   

Read page 51 carefully, because if you can release yourself from this kind of thinking, you will move toward a state of mind that invites healing rather than blocks healing.  You are not your illness.  You are you – the illness can come or go.  If you tie yourself to this illness and think about it constantly, the illness cannot go.   

You are you. 

Who are you, when you think of you without vulvodynia?  Does that very thought – that you are you, not you with vulvodynia – bring you a tiny sense of relief?  

 I reached a point, brought on perhaps by the endless doctor’s appointments, where I just got tired of the word vulvodynia.  I felt irritated every time someone said it.  I felt silly saying it.  I felt embarrassed saying it.  It just didn’t seem right to even say the word in connection with me.  I think my inner self was speaking up, rejecting the illness and the word and asking for health.  I stopped saying “I have vulvodynia.”  I stopped reading about vulvodynia.  I threw the word out of my vocabulary.  When I felt symptoms, I said to myself, “I’m a healthy person who has some symptoms right now.  It’s okay.”  It no longer mattered what those symptoms were, why I had them, or whether or not they were going to go away.  They just were.  Nothing else.   

This was the major turning point in my return to health, the beginning of my discovery regarding  the power of the mind and emotions, and the beginning of my journey towards life coaching, my true North Star (to use Martha Beck language).  So when I read page 51, I felt a welling of gratitude for Tolle, who is sharing with everyone this powerful, incredible secret.   Vulvodynia does not describe you.  You are more than your thoughts, so step outside of them with the breathing techniques I’ve mentioned previously and just discover what you are thinking.  Jot down thoughts that seem prevalent or quite painful in your Thought Log.  It’s always incredible to see what you’re thinking and then to realize you don’t have to buy into it – you are not your thoughts.  You are you.   

I include my iPod in pretty much every breathing and relaxation session I do.  Music is far more powerful than we can even fathom, though someday perhaps science will be able to measure more and more of its effects on our minds and bodies.  Including music in your relaxation session will increase your body’s relaxation response, as long as you use music that you find soothing, of course!  I am a violinist, so I tend to prefer very new age, non-melodic music.  Otherwise, I find myself following the music rather than my breath.  Try different kinds of music and explore what feels right for you.   

Exploring the many recordings of music written specifically for healing can be fun and fascinating.  A lot of people are researching and studying the idea that music has healing power, and it’s really no secret that music influences emotions.  Find the perfect music for you and your switch from panic to peace will be quicker and longer lasting.  As for sound healing, well, I have an open mind.  It certainly can’t hurt to listen to music performed specifically for healing purposes (Dr. Andrew Weil has a fantastic recording that also includes guided imagery).  I have found healing music to be profoundly relaxing, enjoyable to listen to, and very mood-enhancing, which is perhaps the very secret to its power.  The emotions we feel affect us physically, as you know, so the more we can move from negative to positive emotions, the better we will feel mentally and physically.

Besides, with your headphones on and soothing music blocking out other noises, you pretty much can’t help but relax.  It makes it even easier to focus on the breath and invite relaxation into your mind and body.  Some of my favorite sound healers are Jonathan Goldman, Kimba Arem, and Steven Halpern.  Once you start exploring this fascinating genre of music, you just might get hooked – on the sounds, the feelings, and the healing.