Honestly, I don’t dwell much anymore on the challenging, unpleasant parts of my life.
I’ve learned to shift my attention to what helps me smile. Thrive. Shine.
It’s
like all the studies say: when you feel a bit down, the best medicine is to imagine the face of a loved one. That simple shift uplifts your heart, gets your whole physiology moving in a different direction, and changes your energy.
I resisted this simple practice for a long time. I felt like I was really alive only when I was worrying about the state of the world (yeah, I’m
an idealist) or people's suffering.
Family-of-origin attitudes have a big impact on us all; I pretty much inherited these perceptions.
So what happened? How did I throw over habits, stories, attitudes, and a lifetime of carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders? How did I
transform?
There wasn’t a single event. There was a perfect storm of stress and grief. I was desperate. I was afraid I’d drown if I didn’t do something. When my life was threatening to overwhelm me, it was energy practices that helped me survive.
But let’s back
up.
First, I was blessed with some amazing teachers: the Q’ero and Quechua-speaking people I met in the Andes who live in joy and reciprocity…Américo Yábar, a “master of moving energy” who first taught me how to connect with the cosmos and with everything alive… Sandra Ingerman, who taught me transfiguration and healing with light…my shamanic allies and guides who walk with
me every step of the way...and a qi gong practice that gave me another way of integrating qi, movement, and visualization.
For half my life I’ve been playing with energy and exploring mystical worlds. This is what made me happy. Yet my life—like yours probably—was compartmentalized. Work, mothering, hiking, and
gardening were separate from shamanic journeying, meditation, and ceremony. My ecstatic travel adventures faded quickly in the face of laundry at home.
