Tag: #yoga #findyourtruth #breathingtechniques #pranayama #meditation #stillness #relaxation

Know this…

I am a pretty tough chick. I can change my oil and brake pads, plug a tire, change air filters, climb ladders. Fix, repair, tighten and cut (yes I have three kinds of electric saws and I am not scared to use them). 

But …

Let a spider cross my path and I am climbing furniture, screaming for someone to rescue me. 

I’m not sure how this began for me …

Maybe my mother hated them and seeing her fear conditioned me to be ever so vigilant. Even creeped out to the point of abandoning the premises until someone much braver that she (or I) resolved this horrifying issue. 

A student recently shared a picture of a child doing a very challenging yoga pose with such ease and grace that it amazed us both, yet as I reflected on his pose and his even bliss within this posture, it suddenly struck me that he had no fear. So what if he fell. No one had told him it was scary or he should be hesitant. So … he dove right in. 

That is the same for all the fearless acts I have done … that I am proud of. Climbing 12 foot ladders. Moving furniture 10 times my size.  Trying new things that will expand my mind and my thinking (and my muscles too). 

I don’t fear until I see others scared. I don’t gently glean the edges of experiences because others incredulously tell me how stupid it is to try. But sometimes, if I am not mindful, their self speak becomes my own. I don’t attribute this to a weakness in my character, more so a reverence others experiences. But their experiences are their own based on their prior conditioning. (That is a huge ball of yarn for you to unravel) …

or

we can take a different approach. 

(Insert my amazing young child, fearless and soaking up every experience around her). 

Enter the fuzzy-legged spider IN my bath WHILE I am in it! 

Dramatic scene to say the least which may have involved streaking through the house naked pleading with her to come to my aide. 

After the fiasco and water spillage was resolved, like a mother to child she insisted I sit beside her and we have “a talk.” She began by telling me I was the bravest person she knows, then the litany of reasons followed. 

Yep … waterworks then humiliation. 

She consoled me (oh these wise babes we have raised) pulled me towards her and whipped out her phone. She said she wanted me to watch Lucas. And watch it over and over until the edges dulled and I could see these little harmless critters with more compassion. 

This was three years ago. The conditioning often creeps back in but now I am more mindful of my perceptions and my reactions. 

Today I went to the beach. Unpacking my chair and towels I had retrieved from their winter hibernation in the storage room. 

As I shook my towel to lay across my chair, out crawled my little Lucas. Instead of flipping my chair or tossing things about (as I may have years ago) I freed him to the sand and thought…

Oh, how glad he must be to be freed from that dark storage cavern to enjoy the sand and breeze and sea…

Just like me…

So here we sit. 

Micki Beach, owner and lead instructor at Tree of Life Yoga Studio in Oak Island, NC, is the author of 10 Little Rules for Finding Your Truth. Her book is available at www.10littlerules.com, on Amazon, and at select retail stores and in her studio.

Remember a time when you actually had to pick up the phone and dial someone’s number and ask for them on the other end of the line and wait patiently. Maybe you wanted to share a story with them, something you saw or heard on your drive home from work.

Our access to technology and social media has made everyone impatient, aggressive and an instant reporter.

You know this story ….

As soon as we see some tragic, sad event we feel the need to grab our phones (and I say grab with a slight eye roll because most people have them in their hand all the time anyway these days) to share this witnessed event with everyone.

Is it for recognition? (The alternative is much more heartbreaking.)

I’m not quite sure but as I’m riding home from work today I noticed a terrible accident in front of one our local delis. These two cars collided so hard that they both ended up in the front yard of the establishment.

Yep, then the horrendous traffic ensues. You know these events. There isn’t actually a car in the road disturbing the flow of traffic yet people begin slowing down in their cars and taking pictures …

of other people’s desperation.

And I just got to thinking …

Years ago we would’ve looked at that scene of an accident and been heartbroken for the tragedy. We may have even said a prayer or sent a blessing out that everyone was ok. We would have driven home, shaken and slowly processed what we witnessed …

My parents may have even used it as an opportunity to teach us kids how important it was to pay attention. Drive slowly. Let the other car go first. Smile and wave them into traffic.

We would have had a discussion about what those people must be going through … how sad it must be for them.

And with all this, we spent time processing, encouraging and self checking.

By the time we felt the need to talk someone about it (if ever), the heart mind had taken the place of the logical mind.

How have we lost our compassion?

I refuse to believe that we have turned into a world of one uppers, soap box preaching, nit-picking people. This is not who we are at our true essence and until we realize what may be the driving force behind such behavior, we can never correct it. The fact that someone references “Karen” in my daily Facebook feed just forces a shameful sigh and an avoidance of the platform altogether.

We don’t allow things to sit and settle within us before we exploit, share, degrade, or complain about the them.

I think the really big question is why do we feel the need to do this??

Maybe sometimes we need to find those “commercial breaks” again …

those pauses to step away and really process information.

They gave us time to decompress, think about things, and understand that our words have affects on others.

Choose wisely what you put out in the world.

Love,

A PSA from the empath author who soaks up all you are putting out there.

Micki Beach, owner and lead instructor at Tree of Life Yoga Studio in Oak Island, NC, is the author of 10 Little Rules for Finding Your Truth. Her book is available at www.10littlerules.com, on Amazon, and at select retail stores and in her studio.

Mach speed.

I move at no other pace and often get impatient when others aren’t keeping up with me.

It’s been labeled as “controlling” and “bitchy“ in the past … neither of which did I fondly adore!

I was dubbed squirrel because of the unnerving pace my mind switched gears.

A recent quote I just saw online (respectfully quoting unknown source) “Feeling the need to be busy all the time is a trauma response and fear-based distraction from what you’d be forced to acknowledge and feel if you slowed down.”

Yep…. Take a minute and reread that.

Does that hit you in the feels like it did me?

My ex husband used to ask me to just sit down. Be beside him and watch TV and just be still.

I could do that in the beginning of our relationship but as things started to detiorate my stillness was less and less. I was spiraling in a constant need to work, clean, garden … anything. I just had to keep moving. Because if I sat still, the full impact of the distress in my heart would land on top of me and bury me alive.

I told myself I was strong. I had been through worse and survived. I had rebuilt my life time and again from the mere hope buried in my heart. Somehow that seed that I felt had hardened over, time and again, kept receiving light and water and warmth from some pretty mysterious sources and would crack open once again.

The healing I needed this year after ending a marriage with a man I held dear in my heart for 30 years was nowhere to be found. I wanted to lay down and never take a breath again. All transpiring in the months immediately before the pandemic, this dissolution of a marriage that I thought was finally my forever, left me shell shocked and unrecognizable to myself. Cue the news unveiling the virus, stay at home orders, my beach closing … my friends withdrawn and my studio doors closing.

I have worked years to understand my empathic abilities through much pain and sadness. I have struggled to find the right combination of healing through poses, and salt baths, which stones steadied my shaking hand and which foods nourished my soul. I had my toolbox. Every little thing I needed. I would not fall into the abyss THIS time … although I wanted to.

And as the months passed and my studio doors stayed closed, my tribe all isolated away from me, those tools I pulled out one by one were no longer working. I found that although I have been able to take pain and sadness from others … help them carry their burden … they had also done the same for me all along.

I had not talked about my separation with anyone. The details or the pain. I smiled and continued to provide the support others needed until my dearest friend Carol came and sat with me one day on my porch and broke the dam. She allowed me to share my painful story and sat quietly as I cried and yelled and spewed the madness from the pit of my stomach that was my life.

As I settled, she took her leave with a loving embrace reassuring me I was a warrior. This too, I would rise from.

Carol, who is also an empath, reached out later saying she had taken her leave from my porch because she didn’t feel well and shortly after arriving home was sick to her stomach and regurgitated.  As saddened as it made me that I had released all that negative energy into my friend and it had made her so ill … I experienced the most profound gratitude for this woman who allowed me to do so … and not only let me release, she “took” the pain from me so I could finally rest my soul.

These are your tribesmen my friend. Ones who see you, your pain and take it as their own. They carry your banner when you cannot and then throw that blazing shaft into the sky to herald the call to all others out into the world reminding us to stand strong. Because we will not only survive but we will thrive as we lift each other up and sing their praises from a faithful heart.

Micki Beach, owner and lead instructor at Tree of Life Yoga Studio in Oak Island, NC, is the author of 10 Little Rules for Finding Your Truth. Her book is available at www.10littlerules.com, on Amazon, and at select retail stores and in her studio.

Are you one of those shy people like my child who likes to observe their surroundings before stepping out and into the chaos?

Or maybe you are more like me, a person that has no fear taking headlong leaps into the dark abyss?  For nearly  10 months we have lived in a constant state of fear, for ourselves, our families and friends. We have hidden away and locked ourselves up tight in hopes or preventing the spread of a virus that until recently held us gripped in panic.

As the vaccine begins to spreads and we carefully take a step back out into the world, I wonder with what type of outlook and open heart we are emerging. We have lived isolated, cut off from every single source that fills our cup. We have replaced social human contact with electronic devices that more so that not have spewed anger, frustrations and even accusations to a world that is filled with soulful human beings who are just as confused and saddened as the rest of us.

Our sighs have deepened and not for an energetic release and recuperation but more so of a deep-seated sadness that resides in the pit of our bellies. We have tried to replace the nurturing touch of other humans with electronic devices that have numbed our sensibilities and compassion for one another. I see the side stepping of people who once open heartedly embraced me. The scowls of people in stores when their safety is at risk by an incorrectly worn masks. The quick tempers, the irritations and validations of irrational opinions based on unproven facts. 

At what point do we embrace our emergence? Who or what are we allowing to dictate we have the all clear to live our lives?  We will all step back into the world completely different people, there is no doubt. But I ask you, how will you reemerge and share your gifts and grace with the world? With bitter temperaments, anger from loss  … or gratitude for the gift of life?

Every human soul is born with love and grace in their heart. Every. Living. Soul.

Step out and seek to find that seed that may be buried deep in your neighbors, your co-workers, even distanced relatives and try to look upon them with compassion as we all tentatively take in a deep breath. Emerge slowly if needed. Your conscience and heart need to be fully awakened as you step out. But my friends, it is time to release the anger, the sadness and impatience with one another and wrap our arms around each other and heal this incredible loss of life, family and freedom we have experienced this year. It is time to move forward and emerge with hearts blazing.

Micki Beach, owner and lead instructor at Tree of Life Yoga Studio in Oak Island, NC, is the author of 10 Little Rules for Finding Your Truth. Her book is available at www.10littlerules.com, on Amazon, and at select retail stores and her studio.