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Anxiety and happiness

Today when I was driving Jacob to the library I suddenly got hit by a huge wave of anxiety. I think these are the ones that I despise the most – the ones that just hit out of the blue for no good reason. It had been a decent morning, nice and slow as there was no school. I’d had breakfast and walked on the elliptical for a bit. Then just *whamo* out of nowhere this damn anxiety hits. I stayed quiet, tried to focus on my breathing, tried to just work through it.

I was still feeling kind of anxious and *off* when I got home after dropping him off so I made myself go right upstairs and do some yoga and meditation. I didn’t mind the yoga, it took a lot of convincing to do the meditation. Which is interesting because I know that the meditation really helps settle my mind, but when there’s anxiety running in it my mind yells ‘don’t leave me here in the quiet where I have to be with myself’. So there’s that battle.

But, I did it. I meditated. I hated it. It was good. Interestingly there weren’t anxious thoughts running in my head. You’d think after a huge episode with anxiety I’d be thinking about all those little things that snowball into a big thing to make me anxious. But no. What my brain kept running to was this: ‘I’m hungry (it was 10am), maybe I should stop and go make an early lunch. I wonder what I should eat. Go back to the mantra. Gawd, I’m starving. Maybe I should take Jenna out to Panera for lunch. But then I’d have to shower, and well.. I’m hungry. Go back to the mantra. I’m getting hangry (hungry/angry). How long have I been at this? Should I open my eyes and look? I’m starving, what should I eat.’ Seriously, I had 20 minutes of that. I wasn’t even all that hungry when I was done.

But the big deal is that when I was done I was no longer anxious. All those yucky feelings were gone. So worth it. Obviously something else was happening while I was sitting there beside my mind trying to tell me I was going to die of starvation in those 20 minutes.

Tonight Jacob asked if he could make supper. He wanted burritos and wanted me to show him how to make them. He did everything himself while I supervised. And he was so happy. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside just watching him enjoy creating so thoroughly, and then to be so proud of what he’d created.

I realized as I was laughing with him that for me anyway – happiness and anxiety can’t coexist. I can’t be both authentically, blissfully happy and also have feelings of anxiety. What if I hadn’t made myself settle into my meditation and yoga practice this morning? I would have missed all of this fun.

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Jenna suffers from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and had to make dessert for everyone. As much love and enjoyment went into this as went into the supper preparation. IMG_4935My happiness moment today for day 25 of my 44 days of happiness was laughing with and being with my kids as they created meals. My gratitude is that I was able to be truly in the moment and enjoy this small moment with them.

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Living From the Heart… My Path of Least Resistance

Although yesterday began with a heavy heart as I said goodbye to family and headed to the airport with the kids to begin our long journey back to Virginia, the Universe provided for me as it always does when we are open to accepting.

We got to the airport knowing that one flight was delayed making a connection impossible but not knowing what that meant for our trip. What it meant was that we could get to Chicago but no further until Tuesday as all flights were fully booked. The other option was to stay in Calgary until Tuesday and fly then. Oh the happy dances the kids did right in the middle of the airport were pretty awesome. The poor girl was expecting frustrated and angry travelers and the change in her when we started laughing and dancing was pretty amazing as well.

So, we are happily still here in -30C weather and loving every minute of it.

Well before the New Year I had set my intention for 2015 – although to be more precise as my birthday is the end of January I change my yearly intention on my birthday. My intention for my 44th year is to follow the path of least resistance. Which for me also includes getting out of my head and following my heart.

Saturday I went and saw a dear childhood friend whom I haven’t seen in 15 years. Not only did I have a wonderful reunion and the chance to catch up on each other’s lives a little bit, but I also got to have my aura read. She had just opened up her shop in Cochrane – Spirit of Oneness Inc.

Among many of the things I learned from her reading was that I had a line disconnecting my head from the rest of my body. I guess I didn’t “learn” this as I am well aware of the ongoing battle between my head and the rest of my body for control – but it was interesting to actually see this division.

She guided me through a brief meditation which included asking me to open and breathe through my heart. Although this is something I used to do in my meditations it’s something I had apparently fallen out of the habit of doing without even realizing it. Probably lost focus in the ongoing battle between that head and heart (body).

But I do realize that my path of least resistance very much includes getting out of my head and living through my heart. When I truly want to know what the best thing for me to do my heart always has the answer while my head always justifies and makes excuses for why things should be a certain way.

My reading this morning (naturally) was a wonderful compliment to my intentions:

“When you have doubt, go into your heart space. Take a day and look inside yourself for the truth. No one but you knows your truth. Live from that truth and trust in it. If the way you’re pursuing your dharma is not working, then change direction. But I cannot emphasize enough that you must take the plunge.” (The Wheel of Healing, an Easy Guide to and Ayurvedic Lifestyle)

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My Source, My Balance, My Ayurveda…

I was doing some work for my Ayurveda class today and while daydreaming got to thinking about this blog and how it’s a blog about Ayurveda, but it may not always appear to be about Ayurveda. But in a very deep sense it is all about Ayurveda. One of the things that is stressed in my studies is connection to the Source. Without connecting yourself to Your True Self, and The Source; you will never be able to maintain a proper balance – which is vital for true health.

A lot of what I write about here is how I’m discovering my own connection to The Source. To awaking and opening My True Self, which lives inside me, and connecting to The Source which is everywhere. You can call The Source whatever you want (God, The Universe…) but I’m understanding that there is a urgent need within me to realign myself with The Source and with who-I-really-am. This alignment is the balance that we search for in our spiritual lives but also in our physical lives. This keeps us healthy in body, mind and soul. Ayurveda is a lifestyle of keeping your body and soul in balance for optimal health. Learning how to achieve that balance is quickly becoming my life’s work.

For most of my life I have believed that the only way to achieve things is to work hard. To get out there and *do* something to prove myself.  To suffer through things to get to the reward at the end. Lately I’ve been thinking…. what if that’s not the best way to go about things? Because all the hard work in the world isn’t going to bring freedom, happiness and peace if I haven’t followed my bliss, balanced my soul, connected to The Source.

What if, instead, the way to achieve the things I want in life is to stop and balance my soul?

Because I feel like I have spent years running like mad on a treadmill and not getting anywhere. Sweating, crying, swearing but not actually moving and missing a lot of the fun.

When I first started my studies I learned that pretty much any condition that a patient would come in for – anxiety, high blood pressure, blood clotting issues, weight gain/loss, you name it – one of the standard prescriptions is to include meditation twice daily into your lifestyle. I understood this on a basic level that it was a good thing to slow down and connect yourself to Source, but lately I’ve been understanding it on an entirely different level. If we aren’t connected and balanced we can’t enjoy good health. If we aren’t listening to that inner voice that guides us and tells us what our dharma, our bliss, our reason for being is then we aren’t in balance and can’t enjoy perfect health. Connecting to that Inner Self and aligning it with the Source, the Higher Power, is how we achieve balance, bliss, and health.

No amount of running around and fixing things on the outside is going to fix what’s broken on the inside.

My reading this morning pretty much summed up all of these thoughts that I’d been mulling over on my walk this morning (this is why my walks are so important). Here’s an excerpt:

The primary reason that people feel a shortage of time is because they are trying to get too much leverage out of their action. If you are unaware of the power of alignment and are making little or no effort at finding your personal alignment—if you are overwhelmed or angry or resentful or ornery, and from those emotional perspectives, you are then offering your action to try to accomplish things—you are very likely experiencing a severe shortage of time.

There simply is not enough action in the world to compensate for the misalignment of Energy, but when you care about how you feel and you tend to your vibrational balance first, then you experience what feels like a cooperative Universe that seems to open doors for you everywhere. The physical effort required of someone who is in alignment is a fraction of that required to someone who is not. The results experienced by someone who is in alignment are tremendous in comparison with the results experienced by someone who is not. If you are feeling a shortage of time or money, your best effort would be to focus upon better-feeling thoughts, to make long lists of positive aspects, to look for reasons to feel good, and to do more things that make you feel good when you do them. Taking the time to feel better, to find positive aspects, to align with who-you-really-are, will net you tremendous results and help you balance your time much more effectively.

Hicks, Esther; Hicks, Jerry (2008-08-12). Money, and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness (Kindle Locations 3585-3591). Hay House. Kindle Edition.

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There simply is not enough action in the world to compensate for the misalignment of Energy. These were powerful words to me. Because I can guarantee that I spent a massive amount of energy on action trying to compensate for the misalignment of Energy. And paid for it dearly. The good thing is that my body and soul are forgiving. I can feel now that I am coming into a better balance that I have more energy, I’m happier, I am accomplishing more but *doing* less. I am so thankful for that shift.

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Listening for my honeypots

After ranting away here earlier, I did a bit of reading this morning from the book The Tao of Pooh which I have read years ago and kind of fell back into. Winnie The Pooh described perfectly my feelings about needing some silence so I can come back into myself.

“The fact is,” said Rabbit, “We’ve missed our way somehow.”

They were having a rest in a small sand-pit on the top of the Forest. Pooh was getting rather tired of the sand-pit, and suspected it of following them about, because whichever direction they started in, they always ended up at it, and each time, as it came through the mist at then, Rabbit said triumphantly, ‘Now I know where we are!” and Pooh said sadly, “So do I,” and Piglet said nothing. He had tried to think of something to say, but the only thing he could think of was, “Help, help!” and it seemed silly to say that, when he had Pooh and Rabbit with him.

“Well,” said Rabbit, after a long silence in which nobody thanked him for the nice walk they were having, “we’d better get on, I suppose. Which way shall we try?”

“How would it be,” said Pooh slowly, “if as soon as we’re out of sight of this Pit, we try to find it again?”

“What’s the good of that?” asked Rabbit.

“Well,” said Pooh, “we keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought if we looked for this Pit, we’d be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we weren’t looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really.”

“I don’t see much sense in that,” said Rabbit…

“If I walked away from this Pit, and then walked back to it, of course I should find it.”

“Well, I just thought perhaps you wouldn’t,” said Pooh. “I just thought.”

“Try,” said Piglet suddenly. “We’ll wait here for you.”

Rabbit gave a laugh to show how silly Piglet was, and walked into the mist. After he had gone a hundred yards, he turned and walked back again… and after Pooh and Piglet had waited twenty minutes for him, Pooh got up.

“I just thought,” said Pooh. “Now then, Piglet, let’s go home.”

“But Pooh,” cried Piglet all excited, “do you know the way?”

“No,” said Pooh. “But there are twelve pots of honey in my cupboard, and they’ve been calling to me for hours. I couldn’t hear them properly before, because Rabbit would talk, but if nobody says anything except those twelve pots, I think, Piglet, I shall know where they’re calling from. Come on.”

They walked off together; and for a long time Piglet said nothing, so as not to interrupt the pots; and then suddenly he made a squeaky noise… and an oo-noise… because now he began to know where he was; but he still didn’t dare to say so out loud, in case he wasn’t. And just when he was getting so sure of himself that it didn’t matter whether the pots went on calling or not, there was a shout in front of them, and out of the mist came Christopher Robin. 

(The Tao of Pooh, pp12-14)

Something I have truly learned for myself on my journey is that I can’t hear anything of any great importance unless I have allowed myself to settle into silence. It’s when my body, mind and soul are relaxed and quiet that I truly can truly hear and absorb what is important. If there is nonstop noise be it another person, the TV, or music I can’t settle into silence.

When I first started meditating and trying to embrace silence I found it really difficult. Then I had to listen to all the garbage that was running in my head and I had to figure out what to do with that. So, I understand why some people fill empty space with nonstop noise. However the new me has learned to not only embrace, but crave that time of stillness.

If I don’t have quiet I can’t hear my honeypots calling me so I know which direction to go.

By no means do I want or need quiet all day long, but this time of the morning seems to be an important one for me for setting up my day.

That being said, I took my Dotted Dog out a bit later and we did go for our walk. It was wonderful.

The happiest dog in the world:

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The beautiful scenery I enjoy on my walk:

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This is my favourite tree. It kind of looks like he’s dipping his toes in the water

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I am so thankful that I did manage to get out and enjoy this beauty. It DID in fact set me up for a wonderful day and I am incredibly thankful for that.

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Meditation noises

I was watching a really bad show yesterday. I’m almost ashamed to admit it it was so bad. I knew it was not my type of show and yet kept watching it anyway. It was Garfunkel and Oats – which may be some people’s cup of tea, but as I was watching it all I could think was “they cancelled The Crazy Ones yet decided this was acceptable, entertaining tv?” Yet I kept watching. In my defense I was folding laundry and had very little going on in the brain activity department at the time.

At some point in the show the two main characters decided to meditate. As they sat there you got a little glimpse into the horrors that were going on inside their brains. After a couple of minutes they both opened their eyes and looked at each other and said something like ‘meditating is terrible, it brings up all the truths about ourselves that we we try to hide from by watching tv’.

and I was like OMG, that is so true. In fact I was probably doing it right then. I could have had a quiet meditative moment, or listened to some relaxing music (Deval Primal makes my spirit sing), but instead I decided to drown whatever thoughts I had running in my brain with tv. Now, I’m not saying that all the noises that my brain need to be listened to. Nor is the purpose of meditation to listen to those noises. But sometimes when I’m meditating, these little irritating truths that I’ve been trying to hide from surface and I have to deal with them. Things that I didn’t know or thought I’d been able to hide from myself (ha!) come raging out into the open when I sit in my silence connecting to the Source. Sometimes I don’t want to. But I do have to say that my life has become better since I’ve been meditating. Since I’ve been able to learn how to sit in stillness. Since the quiet in my brain isn’t as scary as it used to be.

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Walking Unplugged

With the arrival of some spring-like weather I’ve been getting out for my morning river walks again. I got cold and wimpy through the long, cold winter (and then into the cold, rainy spring), but I’ve been back at it for the past few days and it feels fantastic. It’s such an important part of my morning in helping me get grounded and settled into myself for the day. I always make sure to stop and be grateful for a few moments that I am fortunate enough to be able to do these quiet morning walks.

One really important part of my walks is that I go *by myself*. I don’t walk with anyone, I don’t have any electronics going (I do take my phone with me just in case there’s an emergency or I see something cool I need to take a picture of), and I just try to empty my mind. Which sounds easy but is excruciatingly difficult for me. I spend the first half of my walk fretting away whatever chatter is going on up there and then usually am able to settle into enjoying the walk for the second half. Usually. Sometimes I’m either starving or have to go to the bathroom (a killer when you’re walking by running water) and am trying to rush through it.

I notice how many other people I see on the path who are engrossed in their phones. Texting or doing something like that. There are lots of people running and walking listening to music – I don’t have music on walking, but I totally understand the need to when jogging. It’s the only thing that would help keep me running. But, there’s also a lot of people either reading, texting or talking on their phones while walking. Which I don’t get at all because it means they totally miss all the cool things that are out there.

Such as this thingey I came across this morning:

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Thinking about how I *don’t get at all* how these people immerse themselves in their phones and miss out on the beauty of the walk made me think about how I sometimes fill my day with white noise. Sometimes I get upset at the kids for wandering around the house holding their laptops (headphones on thank goodness) watching a show, completely oblivious to what’s going on around them – usually what’s going on is me trying to get their attention. Then I reflect on my own behaviour. I both love and hate our portable devices. I think they’ve helped make it much easier to take the quiet out of the day. I’ll listen to music while I get ready. I have the iPad hooked up in the kitchen so I can watch a show on Hulu while I am cooking or doing dishes. I watch the iPad while I’m on the elliptical (otherwise I die of boredom), sometimes I even soil a yoga practice by having something playing in the background (a show that is, not music). Much too often when I’m bored or lonely I turn on a show instead of opening a book or heading outside.

Although I’m noticing now that I’m more aware that those moments are becoming less. When I’m bored and have some downtime I’ll try to head outside with my book – even sometimes just sit out there in silence and listen to nature and watch the birds and my fish. Living here has brought a lot of quiet into my life. Some welcomed, some not so much. But I think there’s a big lesson to be learned in it. To welcome and surrender to the quiet. Every moment doesn’t have to be filled with some mindless noise or mindless activity. I’ve found that those quiet moments bring up thoughts and feelings that sometimes aren’t so welcome and that the immediate instinct is to go fill those noises up with the white noise of TV or Facebook. But also those quiet moments bring real, pure, golden thoughts and feelings and emotions which I would have missed. I’m trying to bring more of those into my life and I’m pretty sure one of the best ways is to find more ways to unplug. Which is incredibly difficult for me a lot of the time.

Except on my walk. It’s the only place in my life right now I never have the desire to be plugged in. So, I will keep up the walking, the peace, the “unpluggedness” that comes with my morning walk.

Namaste

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Like Waves in the Ocean

We drove home from a most enjoyable, relaxing, exciting, laugh-filled few days at the beach yesterday. Yesterday morning after breakfast Jenna and I decided to walk to the King Neptune statue and back for our last beach walk. We forgot that just because the weather  can be sunny and look warm and inviting that cold water air can make things less than ideal. We made it almost to Neptune before turning around and running back to the hotel to warm up. Since our last walk had been not exactly what we had wanted we decided to take another stab at it a couple of hours later (a bonus of having got up so early – we had lots of time to enjoy there before having to drive home).

Jacob joined us and we started by throwing a ball at the shoreline. The kids got involved in a game of their own and I left to walk by myself along the water. Deep in thought I began to ponder what coming back home would mean. It was so nice for a few days to just leave all the daily blah behind, but now my mind turned to coming back, selling the house, moving on. I thought of how this would be the first place ever that I left where I never felt like I had settled in and how incredibly lonely the past few years had been. I began to feel quite sorry for myself even letting a few drops of my salty tears leak out the sides of my eyes. As this leaking happened I began to think of a passage in the book I’d been reading by Wayne Dyer. I had summarized it in my head while walking, but here I’ll put the passage in the way he wrote it:

“You are a divine creation of God. You can never be separate from that which created you. If you think of God as the ocean and yourself as a container you may find it helpful in moments of doubt, or when you feel lost or alone, to remember that you are a container of God. When you dip your glass into the ocean, what you have is a glass of God. It’s not as big or as strong, but it’s still God. As long as you refuse to believe otherwise you won’t feel separate from God.

Think of a drop of water from the ocean of abundance that’s separated from it’s source. Separated from it’s source, that droplet of water will ultimately evaporate and return to its source. The point is that while it’s in liquid form, disconnected from its source, it loses the power of its source. This is the essence of the secret of always treasuring your divinity.

When you’re separated in your mind from your source, you lose your divine power, the power of your source. Just like the drop of water, you too will change form and ultimately return to your source. as long as you feel disconnected from God, you lose the power of your source, which is the unlimited power to create, to be miraculous, and to experience the joy of being alive. The drop of water, disconnected from its divine source, symbolizes your ego.” (10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace by Wayne Dyer)

As I was walking and thinking about this I started looking at the footprints on the sand and I began to realize that even though I was walking on the beach alone, there were signs everywhere of other people (and dogs and horses) who had travelled the exact path I was on in the not so distant past, in fact I could see people who I had never met ahead of me:

 

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I turned to thinking about something I’d learned in my Ayurveda course called the Wave Concept. Basically this is that we are all like waves on the ocean. We may feel that we are all individual waves bobbing along in the ocean, but underneath that wave we are all bound together. Sometimes our awareness of the ocean beneath us has been cut off, so we see each wave as separate, unique, individual and isolated. However, beneath each and every wave is that same ocean holding us all together.

As I had the thought of how I’m not so separate and am just one of many waves bobbing along in the ocean tied to all the other waves I had the feeling that I needed to turn around and look back at where I’d been walking. When I did I saw this:

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Those two tiny “waves” running along the shoreline together giggling their heads off chasing to catch up with me to join me on my walk are the two waves that make my whole world light up. . There is no solo wave out there in the ocean, we are all bound together. I am so blessed to have these waves surfing along with me. They caught up with me and we took our first beach selfie:

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