We sleep and then we rise. We take naps or have quiet times amidst the flow of our busy days. The tides run high and then they run low. We always have this pattern of increased energy and then a time of rest or less and it is natural and normal and good.
Here it is, now spring again, coming up out of the cold and slowed growth of winter. The grasses and plants are reaching for the sun once more. The warming days are resulting in an abundance of photosynthesis and growth is abounding everywhere. Later in the fall, the annual plants will shrivel, fade and die; along with the leaves from the trees, they will fall, returning to the ground from whence they came.
Similar patterns can be seen in the movements of the
moon through the various constellations in the heavens above, or the
larger patterns of the sun and other planets dancing more slowly across the sky full of
stars. They arise, pass on by and then later they return again.
Like the sine and cosine waves, curving up and then rounding down, we have the natural cycles of our daily body clocks. These underlie the larger intervals
of our bio-rhythms rising and then fading every few days or so In the grander scheme, birth and childhood give rise to puberty which rises up further into adulthood rounding into maturity and followed by old age and death.
Similarly, the monthly cycles of women begin with the quiet clearing of the womb progressing into an interest in a more social time as the egg matures. This can be followed by conception and a rising up into the cycle of new life or it can move once more into quieter times as the body prepares for and then begins it's cleansing time again.
Patterns like these don't usually stop. After menopause, if we pay attention to our body's subtle cues, we can notice our own etheric period. This is not a twenty-eight day cycle like a woman experiences for forty years or so after her menarche. The etheric period is more like a three month cycle, slowly coming up out of a more quiet time for a few weeks, then moving into a companionable way of being, followed by a further rising up into a gregarious way of being for several weeks and then rounding the curve into a month or so spent going deeper and deeper within. And though it is not commonly acknowledged in our culture, men have these same sorts of cycles as well. Male menopause is increasingly being accepted as a real phenomenon. And it is all good.
So, let's stop resisting and start giving ourselves over to these natural rhythms and cycles. We are not meant to continuously crank out productive hours like machines, day after day, year after year, in some sort of corporate ideal. We are naturally much less efficient then that. Isn't it time we let ourselves be who we truly are and stop riding ourselves so hard, cranking up the caffeine, trying so desperately to stay afloat? How about if we let ourselves admit that we'd really rather go out and play, or take a nap, depending on the time of day or month or year? Doesn't that sound like a refreshing change? We are the ones who are creating these sorts of work-a-day patterns after all. So, perhaps the time has come for us to try on the idea of joining the rest of nature and freeing ourselves to stand up for who were designed to be.
© Josephine Laing 2018
Breath is life for us oxygen breathers. And breathe we must. Some of us are shallow breathers, some of us are deep breathers. Whether we breathe too much or too little has an effect on the quality of our life, especially if it is too little.
Many of us remember our mother's saying, "Stand up straight," or "Tuck your tummy in," or "Put your shoulders back." These commands plus ideas that blossomed out of ubiquitous thoughts of teen aged self-consciousness like, "My butt is too big," or "I don't want anyone looking at my bust," can all result in holding patterns that adversely affect our breath. They rob us of room to breathe and when we pinch our breath, we pinch our lives.
There is a very fancy medical term called, "The Zone of Apposition." (ZOA) Very mysterious sounding isn't it? But the definition of Apposition is "close together" or "side by side." And the zone of apposition in the body is the area just below our diaphragm, the large plate-like muscle below our lungs, that contracts when we suck air into our lungs. As it relaxes, with the exhale, the muscle fibers lengthen and the diaphragm rounds and rises up into the area just below the emptied lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes in the ZOA, it forms a dome.
The ZOA or zone is thus an area inside our bodies where all of our internal organs sitting close, move up and down, with our breath. As we inhale they all drop down with the contraction and shortening of the diaphragm muscle into it's plate-like shape. And when we exhale, they all rise up into the dome area of our lengthened and relaxed diaphragm area, tucking in sweetly, up below our emptied lungs.
Not only is our breath our life, but our movement is our life too. So, when we pinch and push and hold, sticking our butts out or tucking them under, we lessen the amount of area available in our bodies for our organs to move. The is especially true when it comes to holding patterns in our upper bodies, like pinched, cast back or elevated shoulders or a pushed up and out chest. Typically when we do this, we are holding tight. And chronically tight muscles not only restrict the movement of our organs and our life, they also result in chronic pain.
Just getting regular exercise can do a lot to help free all of this. Swimming, dancing and playing tennis all involve lots of different balance and body movement patterns. Really great athletes are often very free to move in their bodies. Many athletic endeavors create lots of freedom of movement. But there are some that might not. Weight lifting, football, and boxing come to mind. Whereas wrestling, skiing and fencing leave us more free to move.
Massage is great for releasing stuck and hyper-vigilant muscle groups. Stretching is good too. When we keep ourselves limber, we keep all the rib muscles moving and we stretch the diaphragm too. Various body work techniques can help us to recognize and then free our holding patterns when we have them. I like the Alexander Technique best of all. It is based in the subtle sensing of which muscles are chronically and unnecessarily tight, and then once they are identified, it teaches us to gently free them and let them go. Yoga is good too, but if you are not aware of where you are holding, you can tear. So becoming aware is a good first step. And we can do this in part by observing the breath to see if it is free.
So I invite you to give this some time. Sit in a chair in front of a mirror. Watch your chest move. Let the breath fill the rib cage. See if it fills as it should, like a balloon, all at once. Do your lungs fill equally in volume? Do they fill simultaneously? There was a time when mine didn't. I had to re-learn how to breathe. Just like blinking our eyes, we can bring this under our conscious control.
To get started, try bending over and let your lungs rise up into your back. Then bend to the right and fill your lungs to the left. Do the same on the other side. Think of the dome, and the ZOA. Relax. It feels good. And then give yourself plenty of room to breathe with a nice big sigh. My love to you and to your next breath, may it help to free your movement and your life.
© Josephine Laing, 2015
Years ago, when I was a child, I used to like to sneak onto the golf course that was near my home after the course had closed and no more golfers were around. My friends and I would roll down the hills and frolic in the sprinklers. Often I would go alone, just to spend some time amongst the trees, the grasses and the open sky overhead. It was wonderful and I enjoyed it deeply.
To get onto the golf course, we had to scramble under the chain link fence that bordered the course on one side. We had dug a hole using some sticks and it was just large enough for us to slip through. Since we didn't want our entrance to be discovered by the greens keepers, we located it underneath a large shrub that was growing along the fence. This bush had it's boughs on both sides of the fence, hiding our hole from view. Each time, after we used it, we scattered some fallen leaves and a few sticks over it to disguise it. It worked like a charm. And it actually was charmed.
That little spot helped me to discover something quite fascinating. I had long known as a child that I could hide quite easily if I was deep inside of a little stand of shrubs. But what I hadn't known was that I could actually nearly disappear if I shifted my attention right into the shrub. This came about when I was a little older. I had taken some classes in plant physiology in college. I became familiar with the inner workings of the cambial layer, or the vascular system, which is like the arteries and veins of the plant.
In an overly simplified description, the cambium moves water from the roots up to the leaves. There, the water interacts with sunlight and carbon from CO2 in a process known as photosynthesis to create sugars. Then the cambial layer transports those sugars down from the leaves to the roots for storage and as food for the plant.
Sometimes late at night, when I was needing some time to be alone out in the beauties of nature, I would go to my secret little entrance under the fence and slip on through, so that I could be with the trees and the open sky full of stars overhead. Usually, my little hidey hole would need some freshening up, as my childhood friends and I had all moved away from home. I would find a stick and clean and re-dig it a little so I could slip under again.
This was almost like a shamanic experience, entering through a largely unknown doorway. Occasionally folks, out for an evening stroll would walk by, some of them with their dogs. My shrub wasn't very densely foliated and from the right angle, you could see under it quite easily from the street which was immediately adjacent to my little entrance. Since I didn't want to be discovered in my clandestine activities, I needed to become invisible. So, instead of focusing on the people and the dog which would always reveal my presence to them, I learned how to slip inside the body of the plant, casting my full attention into the cambial layer and streaming with my mind and the water up into the leaves, which were resting from all of their daytime activities. I would slide back down to the roots and feel the moisture deep in the soil and get busy exchanging nutrients there. People could come and go, a mere three or four feet from me, and no one, not even the dogs would know I was there.
Years later when I learned of the concept of shape shifting, I realized that I was already familiar with the principles and had experienced a beginners version of what is needed to move into that best of all possible means of camouflage by using just my attention and the focus of my mind.
This coming weekend, on Saturday, in Morro Bay, at the Ruby Dragon, I will be teaching a day-long class on plant communication. With permission from the plants, we will be doing a similar exercise to the one I have described here, traveling in our awareness into the internal environment of the plant's bodies in order to commune with them and receive communications from them. I'm hoping that you will be free to join us. To sign up call the Ruby Dragon at (805) 772-1100. Blessings to you and see you there.
© Josephine Laing, 2015
I've heard it said that there are only three answers to prayer. The first is, "Yes, of course." The second is, "Yes, but later." And the third is, "No, I have something better for you.
The Country Western singer, Garth Brooks, titled one of his most famous songs, "Thank God for Unanswered Prayers." In it he describes his younger self's passionate plea to be able to marry a woman whom he thought would satisfy his life's desires. But years later, he sees her and realizes how grateful he is that his prayer went unanswered and how happy he is with his own wife and the life they lead together. I think his story was not about an unanswered prayer, but rather was about the third answer to prayer, "No, I have something better for you."
For my own part, in my early adult years, I settled into the life that other people had in mind for me. I achieved the required level of education, got the degree and began an acceptable career. But spirit had other ideas in mind and arranged for a course correction in the form of a major back injury that would not only change my life's direction, but would also give me the necessary tools to prepare me for what lay ahead.
Having to spend a year in bed mending my back opened the door that allowed me to fully develop my psychic ability. Knowing how important positive thoughts are in healing, I began with self-love. I also spent time meditating and interpreting my dreams in the sanctuary of my home.
I was nearly healed from the first injury when another big injury landed me in bed again. This one was so serious that I got down on my knees and prayed, to a God that I really didn't know, asking to be spared. I said that in exchange for granting me my life, I would do anything, whatever the Divine had in mind for me.
This is a very powerful experience. When we give ourselves over to Divine Will, we surrender our lives and subsequently find our true purpose. As Gandhi poetically said, "God demands nothing less than complete self surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having. And when a person thus loses their self, that person immediately finds their self in the service of all that lives. Such service becomes their delight and recreation. They are now a new person, never weary of spending themselves in the service of God's creation."
Committing myself to God's will not only gave me a new and different life which was much more true to who I am, but it also taught me about the transformational power of prayer. This was the final ingredient that allowed me to truly step into the magic of my own life. It created for me my life's work as a Clairvoyant Healer. It has allowed me to thrive with joy. And it taught me the answers to all of our prayers: "Yes," "No," and, Surrender.
© Josephine Laing, 2014
