I thought it would be fun to do a little video today, and to show you all my new office! (Can you tell I’m excited about it?)

I’ve been experiencing a lot of change and transition in my life lately, so it seemed apropos to talk about navigating big change while on this mind-body journey! By that I mean; what do you do when you’re in a big transition and want to use the mind-body tools, but find yourself sometimes feeling totally lost or off track?

Here you go!

By Endorsed Mind-Body Coach Gail Kenny

You know the feeling, you’re just getting comfortable or at least stable with most parts of your life then something happens that throws you off-balance and back into uncertainty and not knowing. It’s got you overwhelmed with emotions and in a fearful place. You’ve become unsettled and are questioning everything in your life. What you really want is to want to feel in control, balanced, safe, financially secure, comfortable in your body, and happy would be good too. Just when you thought you had it all figured out, shift happens. This is what I call chaos. It’s also been referred to as the mess, a crisis of the soul, or the ring of fire.

Extreme Shifting

I’ve been thrown many times by this kind of change. At first I didn’t recognize what it was and I reacted unconsciously. One of the first times was when I left my parent’s home and transferred to a university 300 miles away. Very quickly everything changed. I moved into a house with people I didn’t know well, I started classes at the university and a new job. I began a new love relationship, and within a few weeks ended a long-term relationship with my high school sweetheart. The grief of leaving my former relationship and the emotional swings of the new one are what I remember most about that time. Not surprisingly, I experienced my first vaginal yeast infection which later became chronic. Then a few years later chronic pelvic pain set in.

Unconscious Survival Habits

Looking back it’s no wonder I got sick when I had major changes in all aspects of my life. This is the recipe for chaos. Life as I knew it changed dramatically. I was unconscious of my habits of stuffing emotions and making like everything was fine. These unconscious survival habits were hard-wired during childhood. In my 20s I had several other relationship and job challenges I also resisted feeling. I coped by using recreational drugs, alcohol, and other distractions to avoid feeling the pain. By the time I was in my mid-30s I had chronic pelvic pain, including chronic vaginal soreness, digestion issues, and various other symptoms. My unconscious habits of dealing with stress, specifically emotional stress, was to avoid, not feel, go numb, distract myself, be disconnected from my body and emotions, and very much in my mind about everything.

Finding Comfort in Chaos

I had my first inspiration to be comfortable in chaos when I was in my late 30s, married with two small children, working a full-time temporary job where each year it was in jeopardy of being cut. It took many more years to finally get the help I needed to heal physical and emotional pain and to truly be comfortable with chaos. I’m now more skillful at navigating any kind of stress and come back to well-being much quicker.

When Shift Happens Practice This:

1. Recognize where you are – When it feels confusing, unsettling, emotional, insecure, foggy and ungrounded you’re in the place of not knowing. It’s not so scary when you can recognize it.
2. Accept where you are – Let go of having to control the situation. Resist the urge to make the discomfort stop right away. There’s a tendency to want to get out right away, fix it, make everything better and get back to normal, comfort, and knowing as soon as possible. When you skip to the finish to try to get out or get rid of discomfort instead of moving through the process of change and chaos, you suppress emotions, avoid the significance of the situation, miss out on wisdom, add stress to your system and often end up sick or in physical pain. This avoiding maintains the spin cycle of disconnection while holding the emotional stress energy in the body and the fight or flight response in overdrive. Instead, accept where you are. Get curious about what it feels like. Let yourself feel it with an open heart. Be kind to yourself. Soften around it. Trust the process. Have faith that you’ll get to the other side of it and be even more connected with your true and wise self.
3. Be patient – Miraculously, if you stay with being in the place of not knowing, you’ll progress to the place of knowing the next best step to take. Once the fog clears the path forward is obvious. If you get impatient and try to move forward too fast you’ll stay lost because you’re moving blindly instead of waiting for the conditions for moving forward to be clear.
4. Open to feeling emotions – Make time to physically feel any emotions that come up. Trust the process of inner inquiry, being with and allowing emotions to be present to take their time moving through. This is part of the path of coming back to balance. Be willing to feel lost, confused, sad, grieved, scared, angry, ashamed, or small.
5. Ask for help – You don’t have to navigate your shifts all by yourself. Seek supportive family, friends, and professionals to help you navigate back to contentment and guide you through your confusion and darkness.
6. Reconnect with your true self – Seek reassurance and support from your inner wisdom, your true self, who isn’t triggered by the changes in your life, who has faith and confidence in you and who is your best and wisest self.
7. Be as present as you can in each moment – Notice the good in each moment, right here, right now You can navigate the right now much easier than the future or the past because you aren’t in the future or the past right now. You’re right here.

Endorsed Coach – Gail Kenny

When I found Abigail I had been struggling with chronic pelvic pain (including pain in my lower abdomen, IC symptoms, yeast infections and myofascial pain) for over 20 years. Mind-body coaching was the last thing I needed to truly get my life back. I know first-hand the challenges of healing chronic pelvic pain and I’m well prepared to help you with your healing. I’m also a certified Martha Beck life coach and trained psychic.

I work with people in physical pain who have already tried all the normal solutions. I help them heal old dysfunctional habits of thinking and feeling. I teach them to relate to their body, emotions, mind, and soul in new ways, creating relief from underlying tension, healing pain from the inside out and getting back to living the life they want. Start with your free pain relief practice here.

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Don’t miss the Anamsong Community Call next week!  There’s a wonderful community call coming up that you don’t want to miss!  Next Tuesday, January 21st at 10am MT is the time, and Abigail wants you to be there with your ideas.   Find out more about what Abigail is thinking and register for the call in this blog post from last week!  Or you can register here.

Photo Credit:  Idea go Freedigitalphotos.net

My body, mind, and emotions had a tumultuous two years. I remember one day, when I was at the bottom of the pit, feeling despondent, I used the Core Anamsong Practice to tune in to my soul. My soul said:

Everything has to burn down to the ground right now, because you are being rebuilt. Your emotional well-being is being reborn. Your mind is being re-tooled. Your body is being upgraded to hold a stronger energy and vibration. You will see that in the end of this, you will be happier, healthier, and better in every way. Your marriage will be better. Your life will be better. Your work will be better. Your ass will be better. Trust. Keep listening. Follow your heart.

Well, ok, my soul didn’t really say the word “ass.” It said, “bottom.” As I was receiving this message, I saw images of my future life. I saw my improved relationship with my hubby. I saw myself strong, confident, and trusting myself as a mother. I saw my body working better than ever before. I saw my coaching practice expanding and evolving into something even bigger and more aligned with my heart.

It was such a strong image that I kind of even believed it. Even though my mind was so upset, so resistant, and so angry that it still railed against the experience, my wiser self settled into the experience and began to trust that all was, truly, ok. My soul knew it was all good.

In the worst moments, that message from my soul was the glimmer of light that kept me going. I had my tantrums, my enormous doubts, and my moments of sheer terror, but I also had that message to hold in my heart.

A few days ago, I realized that the soul message has come true. When I wasn’t looking, I arrived at the other side of the bridge, and have indeed crossed over into my new life. I feel as though the transition phase from pre-mother to mother is now complete. (I’m not saying I have the mothering thing down. I just have a deep sense of who I am as a mother now, and I trust myself in that.)

My life is nothing like it was before, and it is much, much, better. I had a pretty darn good life before I had Aela, my daughter, so you can imagine that now things are actually really, really, really good. I have a fabulous husband who is being the most amazing stay-at-home dad. I am better at communicating than ever before, and continue to learn more every day. I have an amazing daughter who teaches me about truth, strength, trust, emotions, joy, and zest for life, every single day. I get to do the work I love, with much more awareness, compassion, and humility than ever before. I have a better relationship with my mind and emotions and am better at riding the waves of the ups and downs of life. I feel creative energy flowing in much larger surges than I’ve ever experienced. And, interestingly enough, my body is actually stronger, healthier, and more full of life than ever before. Old issues that used to bug me now and then seem to have healed during the “Great Ass Debacle and Ensuing Healing.” The emotional work I did during the past year seems to have radically improved my pelvic region and cleared fears that I didn’t even know my body was still holding.

I’m still making some tweaks on the New Me and adjusting to all that happened during the transition to motherhood. Yet, I can feel that the re-build is over and I’m just learning how to live in my new home. I really do feel as though I was burned to the ground and re-built. I can also see that it needed to happen for me to fulfill my intentions around motherhood and what I wanted to give, model, and be for my daughter. I’ve long been on the spiritual awakening journey, but this experience has forced me to focus in a new way and open to more awareness, more spirit, more lessons, and more joy.

I write this post today to both honor and celebrate the journey I’ve been on and to hopefully encourage anyone who is feeling overwhelmed by transition and the sweeping changes it brings. Transition, being burned to the ground, and rebirth are all important parts of the growth process that happens as we awaken more and more to who we really are, to our inner truth, to our ability to trust ourselves, and to our awareness of our own limiting patterns. My soul was right. It really is all good, even when it seems all bad.

This year, I celebrate my birthday with deep gratitude for being alive, healthy again, and temporarily not in a transition. Because even though it is all good, it’s nice to rest a bit in the calm waters before the waves pick up again and move me forward into the next phase of the journey. I have a deep sense that it’s all about learning to float, whether the waters are calm or stormy. And trust. And love. And believe. And just be who I am, just like Aela is who she is. I am immensely grateful for her, my teacher, my daughter, and my soul-friend. She will always be the best birthday present I could have imagined.

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Behind the Scenes: Mind-Body Coach Training 2014

I just wanted to announce that there is a great deal of behind-the-scenes work happening for the 2014 Anamsong Mind-Body Coach Training!
 
If you’re a coach and you are interested in taking the training, get on the First to Know Email List for further updates on the 2014 Mind-Body Coach Training! 
 
Dates aren’t set yet, but we’re looking at late spring, early summer for the first class. We’ll be taking applications in the New Year. Meanwhile, here are some of the exciting updates!

• A simpler pre-requisite process
• MORE coaching practicum classes
• Even more in-depth and thorough mindbody tools and materials
• More support for you throughout the process (the Endorsed Coaches are going to be much more involved as supportive guides)
• A brand new learning site
• An improved post-training community platform and support

And, we’re keeping the favorite aspects of the training, which include:

• Abigail teaching the core materials and giving feedback
• A warm, compassionate learning environment
• An in-depth self awareness process with lots of support
• Clarity for yourself to help you hear your intuitive guidance from within
• Effective and efficient tools to help you and your clients improve the mind-body connection in all ways
• Post-training lifetime updates of all new materials (basically, every time I run the training, all former participants get the new classes)

We’re not ready to unveil the new Mind Body Coach University site just yet, but as soon as it’s finished, we’ll let you take the first peek at everything about the new training! (And don’t worry – if you already took the pre-requisite class last year, you won’t need to do anything this time. You can just sign up for the training.)
 
Don’t forget to sign up for the First to Know Email List to get early registration info before anyone else!
 
Happy Holidays!
 
Abigail