I thought I would round out Peaceful Woman week with a post by one of the amazing women who experienced the transformative effects of the Maui Passage for the first time last month, Betsy Muller from The Indigo Connection:
As I return from 7 days in Maui with The Peaceful Woman organization, I am filled with a sense of gratitude for what visionary CEO Cher Bertrand has created. The Maui Passage is a retreat experience that opens, shapes and enhances the soul in ways that a series of healing sessions or day workshops could never attempt to match. This retreat places each participant into a concentrated healing space where experiences, nature, the land, the ancient culture and other women guide you into a state of peaceful authenticity. It is mystical and beyond words.
Rachel Flower is one of my colleagues who facilitates Peaceful Woman Maui Passages. She so eloquently describes the indescribable experiences of Maui Passage in her blog post, Herding Butterflies:
Imagine those deep loving friendships that only grow when you share adventures, take risks together; when you laugh so hard your sides hurt; when you support each other over uneven ground; when you share tears of grief; when you sit together with the hot volcanic stones and burn away the burdens, witnessing and holding each other; when together you walk the labyrinth of consciousness and open to new possibilities; when collectively you swim in the waves of emotion, knowing it is safe to do so, without judgement. Knowing you are loved. You are seen. And doing all this in one of the most beautiful places on the planet!
I can’t believe it’s already been two weeks since I returned home from assisting with the most recent Maui Facilitator’s Passage. Since it’s officially March, I can even say it was last month! How quickly the time passes.
As always when I return home from a retreat or course, or really any time I have been away on my own, I am faced with the opportunity of integrating what I’ve learned into my daily life. Sometimes it is easier than others!
It was very interesting to experience the Maui Passage through new eyes – having gone through it once already six months ago. Here’s a video of me on the last day of the Passage last August:
Aside from getting to meet 10 incredible new women and deepening my connection with four women I met last time, going through the Passage for a second time helped to anchor a lot of the things I had learned on my initial Passage. For example, in August I had some challenges with “Flow Day”. When the day didn’t go as I thought it should, I became upset. I’ve been working on that over the past six months (my youngest son is a wonderful teacher who goes with the flow all the time), and I felt a lot more ease this time around.
And I learned some new things as well. On “Volcano Day”, I went and visited a heiau, a sacred place, up a hill that I had missed visiting in August. On the way back down to the beach, I had an aha message: “Stop searching for the significance of every moment, and allow each moment to be significant.” I saw that many times I work really hard to figure out why something is special, or push for the message I am supposed to receive. I don’t always get one. But when I am able to be truly present in an experience, rather than observing myself in it, I find much more profound meaning and insight.
On “Waterfall Day”, the experiences and the women in the February Passage reflected back to me that I am strong and a good leader. I saw that while my body may not look or feel much different, the work I have been doing to take better care of my physical body is making a difference. I was able to run up a hill at one point, something that would have winded me even six months ago. And when I planted myself in order to assist other women, I was stable and unshakable.
Going back to Maui completely reaffirmed for me that this work is what I want to be doing, and this company is totally in alignment with my purpose and values. I am excited to announce that I will be starting a Peaceful Woman Meet Up group this month, and I will be facilitating Maui Passages August 15th-21st, and September 12th-18th, 2010. I would love to have you join me! You will be expanded, enlightened, and peaceful, in your own way and through your own experience.
I was going to start this post with a clever quote about how my life was like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, but being a good researcher, I looked it up first. And got confused about how exactly I would make the comparison, so I’ll forgo the quantum mechanics analogy.
I feel like there is a lot of uncertainty in my life right now. The exciting part of that is there is a lot of possibility. There are many different paths before me, mostly having to do with my work and financial life.
Illustration by Krieg Barrie
But which one is the right one for me? And which ones are only figments of my imagination?
Some of them I have very little control over, as they depend on other people’s decisions. If it is a yes, the path firms up. If it’s a no…poof! That path vanishes. Other paths I have much more control over, but for one reason or another, I do not choose that path. It may look the most stable and secure, but my heart just shrivels up when I envision myself five years down that road.
I’m on the edge of something big…I can feel it. (Incidentally, several other friends of mine have expressed the exact same sentiment in their own lives.) The something big is still shrouded in the mists, though. I feel like I am hovering in limbo, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or the light to suddenly turn on and the mist to clear. But what if the mist is waiting for me to make up my mind? What if it is up to me to make a definitive choice, to speak the words of commitment before the mists will clear?
There is one direction my heart calls me towards. From my current vantage point, that direction leads to a huge abyss. I tell myself that if I didn’t have a family, I would take the leap. Would I really? With my children, I don’t feel that choice is really in alignment for me right now.
And so I hover in anticipation. I flow with each moment as it comes, and I take time to vision where it is that I DO want to end up six months from now. Because if all possibilities are before me, I feel I’m better off making up a story that I like rather than worry about the options I don’t like. If nothing else, this time in my life is teaching me to worry less.
I’m curious. What would you do? Would you jump off the cliff into the complete unknown? Or would you bide your time on the safer path?
In the theme of Busy Work and Procrastination, (it’s quite a running theme…) here’s a post to help you identify your methods of resistance, and break through your blocks from my friend, Trilby Jeeves.
In the “theme” of just doing it, I’d like to share another book with you called “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Creative Inner Battles” by Steven Pressfield. In his book, Pressfield discusses all the ways we resist practicing our art, and what to do about it. I squirmed as I recognized myself in many of the varieties of resistance (from procrastination to fantasies to assorted vices to plain old fear).
PS. The new meditation is written, watch for the free download available February 22nd! In the meantime, if you haven’t listened to it yet, download Creating Sacred Space for free here…
It’s about 2:30 PM, and my alarm telling me it’s time to write my blog post went off at 11 AM. What kept me from writing?
To answer that, I have to go back to grade school. I was a good student (read: nerd). I almost always finished my assignments in class, understood what the teacher explained the first time through, and later ended up explaining assignments or concepts to my fellow students. But I remember times when the teacher would give us worksheets to keep us busy while she graded papers or filled out reports. For some students this was a genuine opportunity to get more practice with multiplication skills or identifying parts of speech, but for me, it was just something to keep me busy – busy work.
Fast forward to today, and I’m still doing busy work. Instead of doing things that will earn me money, I’m checking emails, and following my twitter followers. These are things that need to be done, but they are not my highest priorities. They are the low priority items that keep me busy, and make me feel like I’m accomplishing something. At the end of the day, though, they will have kept me from checking the bigger tasks off my to-do list.
While I do have bursts of efficiency from time to time, more of my life seems taken up by tasks that “shouldn’t” take me that long to do. Part of this is because I procrasinate, and little jobs turn into really big jobs. Like the box of papers sitting next to my desk. If I just filed each bill and paper as it came in and was dealt with, it would be a series of little jobs that only take a little time. Instead, I now have a monster job that I continue to avoid because tackling it now means taking most of an afternoon, and most days I have a whole lot of other busy work to do.
I haven’t yet found an organization system that works for me. Or, to be totally honest, I haven’t found one that I am willing to stick with. I’ll be good for a while, and then I give myself a “little break”, and sure enough, I fall out of the habit. Whenever I’m doing repetitive, organizational tasks, I start thinking about all the other things that need to get done. Like the sewing projects I have on the go, or putting away the laundry, or reading more of the books on my stack, or writing blog posts for while I’m away. I end up leaving a trail of half-finished jobs behind me as I flit from one to another.
So I ask your input. How do you stay organized? How do you keep the busy work from building up? What method do you use to prioritze your tasks?
In my research about meditation, I keep bumping into something called “brainwave entrainment”. Proponents say it has phenomenal benefits, and it greatly aids in meditation. But what is it, exactly?
Wikipedia says:
Brainwave entrainment or “brainwave synchronization,” is any practice that aims to cause brainwavefrequency to fall into step with a periodic stimulus having a frequency corresponding to the intended brain-state (for example, to induce sleep), usually performed with the use of specialized medical software. It depends upon a “frequency following” response, a naturally occurring phenomenon where the human brain has a tendency to change its dominant EEG frequency towards the frequency of a dominant external stimulus.[citation needed] Such a stimulus may be aural, as in the case of binaural or monaural beats and isochronic tones, or else visual, as with a dreamachine, a combination of the two with a mind machine, or even electromagnetic radiation.[citation needed]
And what does that mean in English?
Essentially, most brainwave entrainment programs help you to move into a different state of consciousness by using the brain’s natural tendency to align with another brainwave pattern, allowing you to gain the benefits of that particular state.
So what are the different states of consciousness? There are four categories, ranging from alert to asleep and they vary by how fast the electrical waves of your brain are. The faster the waves, the higher the frequency, and the more alert you are. (Remember the sine wave from high school?)
Beta is when you are awake and actively engaging your mind. This would be when you are having a conversation with someone, writing, reading or creating.
Alpha is when you are awake, but relaxed. This is generally when you have taken a break from something you’ve been focusing on, or when you start to meditate.
Theta is when you are dreaming, deeply meditating or starting to fall asleep.
Delta is when you are asleep.
Brainwave entrainment programs generelly help move your brain frequency into the theta state. What does this do for you?
The reported benefits of lowering your brainwave include:
Increased relaxation and reduced stress
Improved memory and creativity
Greater ability to focus and concentrate
Stronger intuition
Higher energy level
Fewer illnesses
Better sleep
A quick Google search finds lots of products out there at various price points. There are even some you can download for free.
Looks like my next project is to find some entrainment tracks to put under my guided meditations….
Blessings,
Mary
PS. A quick way to lower your brainwave to Alpha state is to close your eyes and “look” up about 30º. Focusing on a spot above and between your eyes helps to activate your third eye chakra, while lowering your brainwave frequency. Cool, huh?
Posted by Julie Griffin in Hypnosis on January 17th, 2010
Scores of books and articles have been written on the benefits of physical relaxation. There are many things that you can do to prompt your body to relax, including spending time outside in nature.
If you enjoy self-hypnosis and guided meditation, the following steps will help you get the most out of any time that you spend in nature. You can add your own thoughts and imagery to these steps, to make the process more personally meaningful.
