A coach knows, anytime you’re avoiding something, it’s a RED FLAG.  Blech.  Time to go face the music, look inward and get honest with yourself, etc. etc. etc.  Sometimes, that just doesn’t sound fun, even if you know, from years of experience, that the benefits will be boundless.

Alas, that is the trick of the ego.  It tells you a myriad of reasons why it’s totally ok to avoid that thing, that very, very uncomfortable thing.  (A sure sign you are sitting on transformative gold!)

My ego told me:

Aw, that’s just one coaching tool of many. Who needs it?

I think I can just see what the clutter in my basement probably means and just make some moves to clean it up.

I’ll do that tool later.

Nah, that doesn’t sound like fun right now.

There’s probably something dreadful I’ll find out about myself if I face this tool, since I’m so afraid of it.

Notice the various tricky ways my ego kept me from going inward for greater self-awareness!  Fascinating!

What is the Living Space Tool?  It’s a tool that uses your home as a metaphor for your life.  You notice what you don’t like about your home and then apply that to yourself.  It’s kind of horribly accurate. I was avoiding this tool so much that I didn’t even let myself ask myself what my least favorite area of my home was.

Until, of course, Life forced my hand.  That’s the great thing about the mind-body journey of awakening to your true nature and following that truth.  Once you start, you can try to avoid something as much as you want, but if you need to transform it, Life won’t let you get away with avoidance.

I discovered having a baby is a GREAT way to face all kinds of stuff I used to avoid. The Living Space Tool was just one.  Yet, it was a pretty important one.  After Aela, my daughter, was born, I found that it is quite difficult to work in my shared home office, for a myriad of reasons.  So I had to scour the home for a quiet, out-of-the-way area with some privacy for client phone calls, recorded telecourses, etc.  My home is not that large, so it did not take much scouring to realize that the guest room was the only really useful option.  (However, I did avoid this for months by working in pretty much every other area in my home and becoming quite proficient at flipping the mute button on my phone.)

Finally, I had to face the fact that I’d need to clear out the guest room and turn it into an office.  Which made me realize that it was my least favorite room in my house.  Which made me realize that it was, indeed, time for the Living Space Tool.

To summarize, my guest room contained:

1)     Furniture that required a stressful conversation prior to selling

2)     Stuff that needed to go to the secondhand store

3)     Piles of gift wrapping supplies

4)     My husband’s old Navy uniforms

5)     A closet with no door (from the house renovation we contracted in which the contractor, unfortunately, vanished three-quarters of the way through the job)

6)     No doorknob on the door to the room

How do these things reflect my inner life? Watch this: (these correlate with the points above)

1)     Fear of facing conversations that require setting clear boundaries and honoring my needs

2)     Fear of letting go

3)     A deep love of giving to others, but a need for my own space to be alone and to receive

4)     A need for a place of my own since my husband and I now live and work in the same space 24/7

5)     A fear of setting firm boundaries with those I love

And there you have it.  Years of avoidance became, in thirty minutes, transformative gold.  I learned so much about myself from that simple exercise that I could write at least ten blog posts.

The result of doing this tool?  Forward movement in the honoring my own needs department, improvements and more awareness around setting boundaries (a pretty essential skill for effective mothering), and improved, honest conversations with my husband.  Yep.  Transformative gold.

I cleaned out the guest room.  I made changes in honoring my needs, setting boundaries, and communicating. I started working in my new office this week.  When I walk in there, even though it only contains a card table, a chair, a yoga mat, a sheet (my pretend closet door), and a pile of candles, I feel my whole being expand.  I feel my breath move easily in my body.  I have a new favorite place in my home.

Why is it my favorite place now?

There is plenty of space.  The room has lots of nothing..

How does that correlate to my inner life?

Easy.  Right now, my focus is on meditation and the development of awareness of that giant inner nothingness that we call stillness, being, presence, space…whatever word you choose.

Now, I am in sync with myself.  My inner and outer worlds both reflect that which brings me deep joy, connection to myself, and the ability to love and respect myself.  Which, of course, means it is so much easier to love and respect everyone else.

Transformative gold?  Yep.

In the end, it always pays off to look at what you’re avoiding, take a deep breath, and dive in.  Maybe even before Life forces your hand.

For example – motherhood.

I recently chose, knowing fully what I was in for, to step into Square One. I’ve been through many a Square One since becoming a coach, and I’m getting more comfortable with it. Square One, Martha explains, is like being a caterpillar in a cocoon, preparing to become a butterfly. It’s not the pretty part of the process. Apparently, caterpillars dissolve into a goopy-type substance in the cocoon before they morph into a butterfly and fly away.

A goopy-type substance is a good description for what I have felt like most of my pregnancy. I’m not saying it’s not a magical experience, because it is. However, it’s also a giant dissolving of who I was and the beginning of the new me – the mom me.

Being goopy is not always a pretty sight. It involves hormonal swings, sudden weeping, mother-instinct anger/protectiveness that is truly shocking (I suppose that part is just preparing me for what I’ll feel when she’s on the outside!), ridiculous amounts of nesting, and sudden, decisive decisions about my life. It’s a bit, say, up and down.

 It also involves looking in the mirror and saying, “Who am I?” Physically I’m completely different. But I also feel completely different on the inside. My identity is shifting and changing to incorporate this new, giant part of who I am – a mother.

Square One is about dissolving your identity and becoming a new version of yourself. We all go through square one over and over again, because we are always evolving. However, it’s not exactly a comfy experience. It often feels like, as Martha says, you’re in “no man’s land.” The key to surviving is to just surrender and let it happen.

I am in the midst of morphing into motherhood, and I surrender. It’s a beautiful thing, and it’s a messy thing. They key is to be okay with the messiness. Everything is changing, and I must let go of the old to open up to the new. Is that comfy? No. Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Yes.

So, if you, too are in your own Square One, let us raise a toast to feeling like a goopy substance, not knowing who we are right now, and to transformation. We are becoming butterflies, fellow Square One travelers. We are preparing to fly.

Re-defining my coaching business, creating a new website, writing a book, running my Mind-Body Coach Training, and being the Life Coach Training Coordinator for Martha Beck, Inc is kind of a lot. In fact, as I write that list, I realize I haven’t actually considered how much is going on in my work life. I might need a nap now.

Here’s the small problem with following your passion: it’s easy to fill your passion plate until it resembles a Thanksgiving feast. I am so in love with what I do that I am constantly getting new ideas. I literally have enough ideas right now to fill the next five years. I have audio/video courses I want to make, more books I want to write, classes I want to give, trainings I want to run…and on and on.

I even get ideas for other people. I am an idea factory. And when I get an idea, I make it a reality. So you can expect that after my book is done, I’ll be whipping up that first audio/video course, just for you! (Need an idea? I’m sure I can whip one up for you!)

You would think that I’d be slightly crazy, overworked, and exhausted from doing all the things I’m doing. And yes, I do get tired. (But it’s a good tired. A satisfying, carpe-diem-happened-today tired.) Overall, though, I feel a constant sense of inspiration. I feel joy. I feel alive.

It’s kind of like falling in love every day.

So what’s the key to my sanity? A little thing called Turtle Steps. I learned them from Martha Beck when I first took Life Coach Training. Turtle Steps are tiny, teeny-weeny, ridiculously easy steps toward a goal. To create a Turtle Step, you look at your end goal, break up the steps toward achieving it, and then cut them in half. Then cut them in half again. Keep cutting them in half until they are so easy that you could do them in your sleep. Then, you start with the first easy Turtle Step.  Follow that with the next one. And the next. It might be just one Turtle Step per day, but you keep on trekking. Lo and behold – you accomplish your vision.

In my previous life, I did not use Turtle Steps. I focused on Scaling Mountains in a Single Bound as my primary action mode. Needless to say, that worked so well that I ended up flat on my back, in chronic pain, endlessly overwhelmed by the constant pressure I put on myself.

So in this moment, I’d just like to say congrats to myself for actually changing this mode of action. Learning to do Turtle Steps was a major achievement for me. I really thought that Scaling Mountains was better. Faster. More reliable. Until I realized Scaling Mountains was killing me. And that I often had trouble completing a goal because the mountain just seemed so darn big.

The truth is, I can get way more done by using Turtle Steps. Though tiny, they are so do-able. They accumulate quickly. Before you know it, there you are, at the finish line!

In creating my new website, I decided I wanted to write a free ebook for anyone who dropped by to visit. Then, being me, I decided a short little ebook wasn’t going to do it. I wanted the book to be jam-packed with helpful information. So the little ebook grew and grew. Until I realized it was actually a book-book. In the end, I essentially found myself with several mountains worth of writing projects – writing the copy for the new site, writing the book, writing the audio/video course I’m working on, and writing scripts for videos I wanted to create.

Yet, in just a few short months, it’s all nearly done. The videos have been shot. The website copy is done. The book is in final editing mode. Looking back, I can hardly believe it’s all happened so quickly. I owe it to Turtle Steps.

So, if you are feeling overwhelmed today, take a moment to break up your to-do’s into ridiculously easy pieces. (And don’t cheat on this step! Really make the Turtle Steps EASY!) Do one. Check it off. Feel a sense of accomplishment. Congratulate yourself. Repeat. You’ll be amazed at how much faster things get done even as you feel so much less overwhelmed. Stop Scaling Mountains. Your body will thank you, your mind will feel rested, and your soul will sing.

And…stay tuned. The new website and book are coming soon!

I wrestled with the In-Between, but finally sank into it and just let it happen. Then, just like that, it was over. Suddenly, the house renovation started moving forward again. The website concepts started coming together. I started knowing exactly what I wanted my living room to look like. I knew just how I wanted to put together new materials for my clients.

I went from inertia to motion in what seemed like moments. I kind of miss the In-Between. After all, I had just befriended it!

Somehow, suddenly, things are moving fast. This past week, I was out of town giving a workshop with fellow coach Koelle Simpson and then leading the Martha Beck Meet and Greet in my role as Life Coach Training Coordinator.  I coached up a storm, presented, taught, and generally had a blast professionally in a whirlwind nine-day trip.

Meanwhile, at home, boxes with lamps and decorative pillows and other décor poured in the door. The contractor renovated the living room. While giving workshops, I kept getting texts from him including pictures of my house. I came home to piles of boxes, a fantastic new look throughout the house, and new shelves everywhere. The graphic designer for my website sent logo ideas to review. My assistant busily added meetings and updates to my calendar. Progress, at full-tilt.

The whiplash of moving from nothing to everything caught me by surprise. Last Wednesday, I got an intense muscle spasm in my lower back. Then, I woke up in the middle of the night to let the dog out, bonked my thigh on the new shelf in our bedroom, tripped over an unpacked suitcase, and stumbled into the bedroom door. Thursday morning I woke up and realized that it was a cosmic convergence in which I had somehow scheduled roughly 47 clients, a meeting, a dog grooming appointment (for which I had only allotted 15 minutes to drop the dog off and get home for said meeting), a tree service to remove large parts of our landscaping, and, of course, the re-grouting of my bathroom tile.

Though I had specifically told the tree crew that I work from home, they periodically rang the doorbell for a chat throughout the morning. This caused my dog to bark manically while I apologized to clients and tried to shoo the tree crew back to work. Then they would return to making chainsaw/Earth-ripping sounds outside my office window.

Mid-morning I grabbed my dog and his leash, talking soothingly to him about his grooming appointment as we headed for the door. The contractor poked his head curiously out of the bathroom, thinking I’d finally lost it and was talking to myself. Almost.

Luckily, one of my trained coaches was scheduled to call and coach me (a part of her Endorsement process). My back spasm was still screaming at me, so she deftly used the mind-body tools to extract its message. (Sometimes there is nothing like having help, even when you’re a coach and have a million coaching tools handy.)

Not surprisingly, my back was asking me to stop. It was asking me to slow down. It was reminding me that though I do love action and creating, there is no reason to do everything at once, at full speed. It asked me to put a little do-nothing time back into my schedule.

Truthfully, a little do-nothing time is the perfect prescription for me. I love the power of doing nothing and how it makes me more efficient and effective. I get better ideas, clearer directions, and have more fun when I make sure to do nothing often.

The In-Between is over. I’m now in the Full-Tilt. So here I go again, learning how to navigate this part of my life just like I learned how to navigate the In-Between. I’m remembering that discomfort always has a message for me, and knowing that this, too, is perfect.

I have a feeling that this Full-Tilt is teaching me how to manage my full plate without losing my mind or not listening to my body. It’s likely teaching me how to slow down and listen to my inner wisdom right when I think I should speed up and get more done. It’s probably teaching me how to insert doing nothing into the Full-Tilt so that this full-speed train doesn’t derail.

I’m being reminded, by the over-scheduled day and my back spasm, that I am the one creating my life. I can tap the brakes when necessary. I love living from this place of strength. It feels good to ask myself what I want and to honor that answer instead of shove it down or ignore it, as I used to do

Looking back over the week, I am laughing at myself, at the ridiculousness of the schedule, and I’m prioritizing some do-nothing time.  My Full-Tilt stamina will last much longer if I do intervals. Do nothing. Do a lot. Do nothing. Do a lot.

The funny thing is, the same question that helped me through the In-Between is now helping me with the Full-Tilt. It is, simply, this:

What do I need right now?

My answer? Right now, I need to do nothing.

It’s been a couple weeks of endings. I find sadness welling up in my throat, because though I know we’ll interact and meet again in different ways, these platforms of connection are now coming to an end. Though I’d love to sit around and be a part of amazing growth and transformation with groups of brilliant coaches all the time, I also recognize that it wouldn’t really be great for them. They’d never get to go out and embark on their own journey, or lead their own groups. So with each experience, an end must come to create a new beginning.

It’s been a year of beginnings and endings already, for me. In January, it was the beginning of pregnancy and motherhood. In March it was the end of the pregnancy, much sooner than I had expected. Then it was the beginning of opening up to the messages in that experience and the changes I needed to make within myself before moving forward again. Shortly after that, there were a few endings within my coaching business, followed abruptly by new beginnings I could not have foreseen. (Such as being hired to be the Life Coach Training Coordinator for Martha Beck Inc.)

I feel a bit as though I have beginning/ending whiplash. Change has come so fast this year, in so many ways. I’ve had to really perfect the art of surrendering, which is no easy feat, I must say. So, in this moment, I am sad that this year’s group of mind-body coach trainees is leaving the nest. But I surrender to the experience and am letting go.

I first learned the art of surrendering when I was in physical agony. I was tortured by interstitial cystitis for years, and then wound up with vulvodynia as well. I hated my body, wanted all the pain to just leave, and fought like mad against the experience. Until I simply couldn’t fight anymore. I often say that the universe had to wonk me over the head before I would surrender and allow myself to have the experience I was already having – in that case, pain. That’s the funny thing about surrendering; it’s about laying down the weapons in the battle against what is.

I remember literally lying down on the couch and saying, “Okay, I give up.” But I wasn’t giving up on everything. I was just giving up the fight. I knew I had to stop trying so hard and just let the experience teach me what it was teaching me.

If this sounds hard, it’s because it kind of is. Yet, it’s also easy, in a strange way. It’s so much easier to surrender than to fight. It’s easier to say, “Okay, I am willing to have this experience that I am having right now” than to clench every muscle in combative argument against it.

If you’re dealing with anything stressful or hard in your life right now, don’t forget that surrendering is an option. You can set down your boxing gloves and say, “Okay, I allow this to happen right now.” It doesn’t mean you’ll suffer forever. In fact, your suffering will end much sooner. As soon as I stopped fighting the pelvic pain syndromes, the way out arrived in the form of mind-body healing.

On the day that I miscarried, I knew something was wrong. All day, I fought that knowledge. I avoided the knowing. I tried so hard to not have the experience that I knew was coming. Finally, as the evening wore on, I remembered the surrender option. I told my husband we had to talk about the possibility that I was going to miscarry. So we did. And we knew, in that moment, that we could handle it, no matter how painful it would be. As soon as we aired that, I was able to say, in my heart, “I surrender. I allow myself to have this experience.” Ten minutes later, the miscarriage happened. I let go. I let the universe take over, and I trusted.

Sure enough, we did survive. We could handle the grief, the pain, and the loss. That’s the thing; that which we fight, even though it is painful, is always something we can handle. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s painful. But it’s ever so much more painful to fight than to surrender.

Though I often write my blog posts with a particular client question in mind, today’s post is written for me. I am the client today. Because now that my body, mind, and spirit are healed from this experience, I arrive at a new doorway. A new beginning. A place to start anew. But to embark on this motherhood journey again, there’s something I have to do. I have to surrender. I have to say, “Okay, I am willing to have this experience, whatever it may be, and I trust that what is right will happen.” Coming on the heels of the miscarriage, a new pregnancy sounds a little scary. Maybe difficult. Maybe not such a good idea. Yet, when I really look inside, it’s not the experiences that could happen that scare me. It’s the pain of not trusting, not surrendering, and not letting go that is terrifying.

It’s time to surrender to my own inner wisdom, to the wisdom of mother nature and the universe, and to life itself. I can’t know anything with my human mind about what will come, but I can trust my soul to guide me somewhere good. Yes, there were endings this year, but they made way for beginnings. There is innate wisdom in this process that I could never have seen in advance, but for which I am now grateful. So, if you, like me, are standing on the edge, peeking through a new doorway, or are just plain tired of fighting, here’s your invitation to surrender. I surrender to the experience of pregnancy again, whatever it brings. Would you like to join me in this surrendering experience? What are you surrendering to? I would welcome the company.

I get emails from clients like the sample below pretty much every week:

Agh! I think something is terribly wrong with me! Oh no! I am crying a lot! I feel terrible! What should I do? I can’t live like this! What if I’m never happy again!

To which I usually reply something like this:

Yay! Soooo glad you are crying and feeling your emotions! Don’t worry – this won’t last forever. It’s what we’ve been hoping to accomplish. Remember when you said you wanted to stop stuffing your emotions and actually feel them? Well, this is the beginning!

I have gained a reputation for being the coach who makes you cry. In a good way. In an “I can finally let down and let this emotion flow” kind of way. I joke about this crying coach thing with my clients, who thus far have not thrown tomatoes or eggs at me, or toilet papered my house. This may be because most of them live far, far away from Wyoming. Thankfully.

Once they get through the initial panic over actually feeling these darn emotions, however, they report feeling much, much better. Emotionally, physically, and mentally. Storing all that emotional stuff in one’s body really doesn’t feel great, takes a lot of energy, and leads to physical pain. You’ve gotta remember the reason you embarked on this mind-body healing journey, whether it was to relieve pain around issues like vulvodynia or interstitial cystitis or gain confidence and quiet the self-doubts and inner critic. You wanted to feel better. You wanted to actually let yourself have emotions. You wanted to connect to your soul wisdom, even if you didn’t know it in so many words.

Well, the first step is to actually feel those emotions you’ve unwittingly stored away. Conceptually, this sounds great. In reality, it’s very unnerving, at first. This is because you’ve spent years NOT feeling them. Trust me – as a champion emotion avoider, I have so been there. The reason we don’t want to feel these things is they are sooooooooo uncomfortable. (Along with other reasons, such as feeling vulnerable and “weak” if we let them flow.)

Like many, many things in life, when you start this process, you have to make it through the rough patch where things seem worse before they get better. In physical healing, this is often called the “healing crisis.” In the mind-body process, I just call it The Mess. It generally involves a lot of Kleenex tissue, reassuring one’s spouse that this is not an emergency, and a cave-like place to which you can retreat and blubber. A lot.  (My spouse has mentioned that spouses need a blog post on what to do with mates who are going through the mess. He too, speaks from personal experience. Possibly I’ll write that one next…)

The only reason this seems so awful, for most of us, is the panic and fear that arises from the inner part of us that thinks these emotions are not to be felt. They are to be avoided! Stuffed away! “Run now!” shouts this inner suppressor inside us. “The tears are coming! Noooooooo!”

This is what we call resistance. Resistance to feeling these emotions is normal. It’s just part of the process. You might feel it in spades or feel it just a little, but it is likely to show up nearly every time you start to really feel an emotion, especially at first. Just acknowledge this resistance, reassure it (you can talk to it like it’s your friend) that you are okay and that you will go gently into the emotion swamp.

If you can stay slightly in the role of observing yourself feel (this feels like you’re watching yourself in a movie), even as you are crying (or throwing things at your poor, unsuspecting spouse), you’ll find that the swamp is just that. It’s only knee-high. You won’t drown, you won’t feel overwhelmed, and you will make it to the other side.

Once you’ve started letting yourself feel emotions and have integrated that into your daily life, they’ll be like just a blip on the screen. Just a normal, simple, passing part of your daily existence. You’ll become a pro. You might still feel some resistance every now and then, and you won’t do everything perfectly, but you’ll feel much more at peace with emotions, and you’ll feel much more relaxed and energetic in your body. If you were in pain, it will fade away. You’ll start to feel like you know yourself. You’ll start to feel like you like yourself. And dare I say, even love yourself! You’ll find yourself having fewer bouts of self-doubt, and when those do arise, you’ll see them from a slightly detached place instead of getting totally knocked flat and immobilized.

I write all of this simply to say this: stick with it. You can do it. It doesn’t feel this hard forever. If you can get over the hump and through the muddiest part of the swamp, you’ll get back onto dry ground. It’s much easier to just keep going forward, through the discomfort, through the resistance (not forcefully – just with a steadfast willingness to go forward) than to start and then stop, over and over again. That tends to feel horrific, like you are never going to make it out of the swamp.  Martha Beck, my mentor and the original reason I became a coach, calls this process going through the ring of fire. This is an apt analogy, because it does burn hot. If you move forward, however, you don’t catch fire. You end up in what she calls the Core of Peace. Ahhhh. If you start and stop repeatedly, you end up just standing in the fire, burning. Gack. I’ve done it, and I don’t recommend it.

Keep feeling. Be willing to be a mess. Be willing to have a melt-down, even if it’s not in your schedule. (Because really, have you scheduled your melt-down time? Is it listed in your calendar between the haircut and picking the kids up from school? Didn’t think so!) Emotions are not logical, not linear, not organized. They affront our intellect with their very kindergarten-style way of doing things – so haphazard, so random, so…undisciplined. Yet, they return us to our own bodies, our own soul wisdom, and, ultimately, peace.

Embrace the mess. This too shall pass. You can do it. Stock up on Kleenex. Celebrate this sign that the mind-body process is working. Know that most people have no idea how to navigate emotions, so they may not understand what you’re doing. Reassure them that it’s okay, and don’t bother worrying about what they think. You are on the path to healing, and you will most definitely arrive. Just keep going forward, through the swamp, through the fire, and remember to breathe. You will not only survive – you will thrive.

I’ve been writing a lot about stress lately, because it’s a universal issue we all face. There are many underlying causes of stress, one of which is perfectionism, which I’ve addressed in the last couple of weeks. If you enjoyed the Three Simple Steps to Calm Your Inner Perfectionist post, you might want to check out this video by Martha Beck. It’s fantastic!

This thing we call stress seems to interfere with our feel-good on a daily basis. Yet, what exactly is it? It’s not an emotion, though we often think of it as one. One of my favorite authors, Karla McLaren, explains that stress is the result of not knowing what our emotions are, in this moment. Avoiding or suppressing them results in an internal sense of pressure building, like steam collecting in a pot with no release mechanism. Pretty soon, the lid starts to rattle and water splashes down the sides of the pot onto the stove. If you’re cooking, this is the point where you dash into the kitchen and turn down the heat.

This is exactly what you can do for yourself, too, when internal pressure builds and you’re a moment away from snapping at your spouse simply for existing. When you feel the urge to say, “I’m so stressed,” it’s time to turn down the heat. The quickest way to do that for humans includes taking a few deep breaths, resting for a minute, and finding a way to connect to what you’re actually feeling. Take a moment to find out what is in your pot. Is it an anger-fear stew? Is it sadness with a dash of anxiety?

If the pressure has been building for a while, it’s likely you have a mix of things going on. First, you’ve probably been suppressing or avoiding emotions that want to surface. The effort it takes to hold those at arm’s length builds internal pressure. Second, you’ve probably been using a lot of mental effort to figure out how to deal with current problems in your life. This means you are likely not connected to your inner intuitive genius, or wisdom. This leaves you feeling a bit lost, disconnected from yourself, and yes – stressed.

If it’s come to that point, you can employ a technique that takes advantage of technological advances and knowledge of the human brain. When you are thinking hard in problem-solving, analyisis mode, your brain is producing what is called beta brain waves. If we hooked you up to an EEG, you’d see the results on-screen; your electrical activity in your brain would be largely beta brainwaves. When your brain produces excessive beta brainwaves, you start to feel frazzled and stressed. You lose touch with your emotions and your intuitive awareness. It’s time to help your brain shift into alpha or even theta brain waves, which feel relaxed, gently alert, creative, and peaceful. In this mode, you can access stored emotions, reconnect to your inner genius, and release stress. (There is a fourth type of brain wave – delta – but you experience that primarly while asleep.)

There are many ways to shift your brainwave patterns, but one of my favorites is to put on a pair of headphones and listen to what is called “binaural beats.” Here’s the Wikipedia definition for you: Binaural beats reportedly influence the brain in more subtle ways through the entrainment of brainwaves^[3][8] and have been claimed to reduce anxiety^[9] and provide other health benefits such as control over pain.

Many companies out there make recordings of music or ambient noise mixed with binaural beats, or of binaural beats alone. I enjoy both, and I have collected a few different CD’s and mp3’s, to say the least. My latest favorite, however, is an iPad/iPhone app called Brain Wave. I’ve tried several apps for binaural beats, but this one is my fave. It has a mix of different ambient noise choices with different binaural beat patterns. Ahh, sweet stress relief!

If you’d rather stick with regular old recordings, I highly recommend a company called Hemi-Sync. I enjoy their variety and have amassed a sizeable collection of recordings. However, there are many other companies out there, so see what resonates for you. (One caveat – if you’re transferring CD’s into iTunes, make sure your settings are set for stereo, not mono, when you do the import. Binaural beats must be listened to with headphones for maximum effect, because different beats are played in each ear.)

I’m not an affiliate of any of these recommended products. I’m just an enthusiastic enjoyer and wanted to share with you these resources that have helped me and my clients. So, if you’re feeling stressed, grab your i-something, be it iPod, iPad, or iPhone, and change your brainwaves. Let your brain rest. Then, feel what you need to feel. Sad, mad, afraid, content…whatever it may be, or whatever mix of emotions might arise. Finally, check in with your inner genius for some guidance. (I like to do this by simply asking, “Hey Inner Genius/Wisdom, what can you tell me to help me out right now?”) You’ll not only feel less stressed, but you’ll likely end up solving problems in creative, calm, and resourceful ways.

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.

In mind-body coaching, we often work with the message behind the physical pain/symptom.  I’ve often joked that I’m somewhat stubborn, to put it gently, and my body really has to give me a good smack to help me make important changes in my life.  But, this smack takes a little decoding to understand.  To help you decode the messages in your pain, I often write about the common ones I see in my coaching practice.

An extremely common message behind physical pain has to do with setting boundaries.  Boundary-setting is something I didn’t fully understand until I went through coach training.  I knew that I often said yes when I wanted to say no, pushed myself past my own limits, and let others’ approval trump my own deep desires.  What I didn’t know was how to say no, how to put myself on my own priority list, and how to set healthy boundaries without being harsh.  It was a confusing issue.

Thankfully, my body told me I needed to set boundaries.  It let me know that I was letting unhealthy patterns exist in relationships, and it told me I was not really nurturing myself.  But it couldn’t teach me to really understand the messages it was sending me, day in and day out, that were designed to help me set healthy boundaries.

I came across the work of Koelle Simpson while in coach training.  It was one of those big aha moments that create a giant leap forward in self-understanding.  In one fell swoop, I saw how I could say no, create healthy boundaries, and still be loving, compassionate, and kind to others.  The confusing “how” was finally solved.

Koelle is an equus coach, which means that she uses horses as giant coaching tools.  Very, very giant, I might add.  This sounds perplexing until you understand the nature of horses.  Horses respond to the non-verbal communication that you give in each and every moment.  Though humans respond to non-verbal communication too (in fact, this is the primary way we relate to each other, even though we may not be aware of it), horses are unique in that they cannot understand language.  They also spend much less time around humans than domesticated animals.  The upside of this is they treat humans just like they treat other horses.

If you walk into the horse ring and say hello to a horse, it could care less.  If you tell it everything you want it to do, it will simply walk off and eat whatever is handy.  The only way to communicate with the horse is via body language and energy.  There is no fooling the horse.  If you are afraid, it knows.  If you are angry, it knows.  If you think you want to create your own space, set a boundary, and be strong, it will show you immediately whether or not you are actually doing so.  If you are not setting firm, loving boundaries, the horse will 1) invade your space 2) not respond to your actions 3) assume a leadership role.

When an animal with one hind leg that weighs as much as you assumes a leadership role, there is no cajoling, begging, or smiling that will make one bit of difference.  You have no choice but to learn how to project leadership energy, set effective boundaries, and take charge of yourself and the horse.

My experience in the horse ring was so transformational that I knew I needed to share this opportunity with you, my fellow health creators!  The difficulty has been in explaining how a horse is going to help you heal.  (I just have to indulge myself and tell you what I imagined you saying:  “How in the hell is a horse going to help me heal my hoo-ha?”)

The reality is that a horse will not only help you heal – it will help you heal the root issues behind the pain.  There is only so much ignoring your poor body can take before it says “PLEASE!  For the love of God, say no, stop living your life to please others, and LEAD YOUR LIFE!”  (I put that in all caps because it sure as hell felt like my body was yelling that at me!)

Leading my life does two things.  It makes me feel joy, and it keeps me healthy.  Then, when I lead my life and set healthy boundaries, the funniest thing happens.  Not only am I healthy and happy, but my relationships improve.  All those things I thought I had to do to please other people turned out to be getting in the way of true, honest, relationships.  Every single relationship I have is now a hundred times better than it used to be.  My body is at ease, because I am at ease as the leader of my life.

So here’s the deal: if I could design the perfect experience for you to learn everything about boundaries, listening to and honoring your body, and creating health, I would spend 3 days with you.  In those 3 days, I would hook you up with Koelle, take you through several Yo-Ching(SM) classes, and teach you mind-body tools.  I’d also plunk you down in the middle of nature, which is extraordinarily healing in itself.

Coincidentally, I have created this very thing.

All joking aside, the upcoming Turn on Your Inner GPS Workshop is this ultimate combination.  I can’t think of any better way to share everything with you to further your healing journey.  I felt the need to tell you that, because it’s important that you know!  I’ve tried to be extremely aware of the financial end of things in creating this workshop, and though it does include Koelle, myself, and Jess Ryan, (yoga teacher extraordinaire and my Yo-Ching(SM) business partner), the price is not any different than one of Koelle’s Primal Leadership Workshops.  (If you check it out, remember that all lodging and meals are included in the price.)  I really, really, want this experience to be possible and helpful for you!  (The Early Bird price is good through Friday, July 16.)

If you’d like to check out all the details, Click Here.  You can join Koelle, myself, and Jess on a free informational call about the Turn on Your Inner GPS Workshop on Thursday, July 15, at 11:30 PT/12:30 MT/1:30 CT/2:30 ET.  The call will be recorded and sent out afterward, so even if you can’t make it, you can email me any questions you’d like answered.  Here is the call-in info:

(724) 444-7444

Call ID: 85297

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Check out what Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher Jess Ryan and I are planning for you!