When meditation brings up what hurts

October 11, 2016

The media abound with stories of how meditation will cure everything from high crime and low grades in challenged school districts to the common fear and anxiety we all struggle with. It's proven to improve your ability to concentrate and even aid in the healing of physical ailments. You have likely seen cute pictures of inner city elementary school kids in lotus pose in lieu of time-outs and images of beautiful people with blissful yoga expressions might well lead you to believe that if only you could meditate, you too would experience instant bliss and higher awareness.

It's easy to understand why it is thoroughly disappointing and downright disconcerting when all you experience when sitting in meditation is a nervous shortness of breath and a significant rise in anxiety. 

If that's happening to you when you practice meditation, you are not alone. As a trainer of aspiring yoga teachers, I am a stickler about having them implement a meditation practice throughout the training and the reports I am getting back from a number of students, are not as rosy and excited as you might think. In some cases, my students experienced such severe increase in anxiety that they have to temporarily quit their practice and they struggle to understand how a 20 minutes practice can be so challenging.

Indeed, the single most difficult yoga teacher training program requirement for my students to implement is not the acrobatic poses like forearm stand or handstand -- no, it is sitting down to do their daily meditation. It takes much less time than the average asana practice and with the right support it's not all that physically challenging (they are even told they can use a chair if necessary) -- so why does the touted yogic meditation bliss elude a fair amount of students when they first embark on a meditation path?

My best answer is that meditation is in part the art of becoming quiet and attuned to what is truly happening in the inner environment and in a culture where being extroverted and busy in the world is celebrated from an early age, chances are there has not been a lot of quiet introspection happening along the way. So, whatever feelings and experiences have been stuffed into the back of the closet so to speak, often for years, and years, and years, will suddenly become visible. Or in my teacher, William Prottengeier's words, when the water of the mind becomes still, you will suddenly see the old gunky tires and all the other junk that you have stored at the bottom of the lake. 

When the surface of the mind becomes still and the inner landscape becomes visible, it might well cause some sadness or even fear, 'what is wrong with me that I am not experiencing deep happiness from meditation?' -- and then it's understandable that you might hurry up and try to ruffle the surface of the mind with a distraction of some kind. In my teacher training program, we call it your 'netflix'ing' -- which can indeed be Netflix and ice-cream but might also be anything from drugs and alcohol, to shopping and social media to something as innocent as engaging in outer chatter and busyness with other people instead of sitting in stillness with yourself. Netflix'ing works, then you no longer have to deal with the awareness of what shadowy objects, experiences, habits and emotions lay at the bottom of your mind lake -- and all is seemingly well again. 

Of course, the yogic path is to stay the course. Dive in. Inspect the old tire and address it instead of ignoring that it's there because ignoring the presence of pain that is crying out for healing is ultimately a lot of work and presents its own set of problems. Any kind of 'netflixing' designed to distract yourself from the presence of inner pain and discomfort will ultimately have its own detrimental effects on body and mind.

What you can do when meditation is anything but blissful:

1. SEEK HELP. If the anxiety that arises is overwhelming you, the wisest course of action is to seek professional help. I don't think I know a single serious meditator that hasn't gone through a significant amount of counseling. One student experienced such serious anxiety and nightmares after a sincere attempt at developing a meditation practice that she nearly dropped out of the program. At that point, we have to realize that whatever 'old tires' have become visible, they are just too big and scary for one little person to deal with. So get help but stay the course of clearing out the lake of your mind. Because once you know what's down there, it will become all the harder and take all the more netflixing to keep it covered up. 
2. SHARE YOUR FEELINGS. If the anxiety is mild but definitely there, know that it's normal. Speak up. Share your pain. You are not alone. All serious yogis have to go through this declutter work. It's not comfortable but once you have taken the first steps, it's a lot more work to stay stagnant than to move forward. 
3. MEDITATE IN GROUPS. Many meditation centers offer meditation sessions paired with sharing and discussions and other community building activities. Here you might find more experienced meditators that will be happy to mentor your through the initial phases of finding your meditation groove. 
4. PRAY. This is a loaded word so let me just suggest that you try it out for size; find inner trust that Spirit, The Divine, God is with you and that Divine Grace will help you through the rough patches. Surrender to The Divine process of becoming free from the inner obstacles that are operating beyond your conscious awareness. Ishvara Pranidhana is sanskrit for complete surrender to the Divine Will. When Meditation becomes painful for me, I shift my intention from sitting with what is, to praying to transform what hurts. I pray for help. Just like that, Help me! Please help me! I feel small and inadequate and what I am feeling is overwhelming and sad. Please help me....
5. NETFLIX. Whatever that means for you. Step away from the meditation cushion. Soothe yourself. It's OK. You are hurting and it's too much. Go to bed with Netflix or go out to a party. You have the choice not to feel this anymore today. But come back to it again when you feel a bit stronger. 

In my early days with Tibetan Buddhist meditation in the late 80's, I remember hearing something to this effect: 'Before enlightenment, meditate to find out who you are.  After enlightenment, meditate because you know what you are.' If I had known 26 years ago that at age 45 I would still be in the process of finding out who I am, I might have given up. But here I am, still at it. Some days, meditation is a truly blissful experience of oneness, every cell in my body sings with joy and aliveness and beauty radiates back at me  everywhere I look. I rest in the sea of pure awareness and my body seems completely porous and the world around me is inside of me. Other days, I tremble and suffer. My gut is fraught with anxiety. My loneliness is profound and emotional pain nearly chokes me. I want to scream and run away. Sometimes I do. I do my version of netflixing; I eat sweets and I immerse myself in other people's problems so I don't have to feel my own;  then I see a somatic experience practitioner who makes me feel my pain even more deeply so I can release it and then I meditate again.

Sinking into the silence of the pause...

September 13, 2016

Today, I will courageously stay a little longer in the pauses. I will just linger and be. I will let my gaze be held and held some more by the tree that catches my eye, and I will stop and really pay attention to the way the Light is playing with the shadows on the path before me. I will slow way down even if it's just another Twin Cities Tuesday, and I will drink in the moment through all my senses.

What sounds surround me, what smells, how does the autumn air feel on my skin, how does my breath move in my body, what is really going on inside right now? Where in my body are all my feelings felt, could I name these feelings, can I hear what I really need? Can I ask for it? Who do I ask for it?  Why is my tongue so tight against the roof of my mouth and what makes me pull my left shoulder forward just a touch? 

I was born and raised in Copenhagen, a city that is highly residential, with an abundance of majestic apartment buildings from the 18th and 19th century, mostly with out elevators but with beautiful landings between the floors. Landings with intricately carved little benches and stools, and stain glass windows that project juicy colors on the walls and open just a crack to let fresh air in to the stairwell -- and often well cared for plants in heavy pots.

I remember walking up these endless steep stairs as a small child, right foot first on every step, and often finding a little old lady with a scarf around her head, just sitting there on one of these landings. Taking a tangible pause from the climb up to the 5th floor, grocery bags on the floor beside her.

There was a peacefulness and gentle sense of her full being just being right there in that moment, on that landing, between the third and fourth floor. Breathing, sometimes sighing audibly, and patiently taking the time that it takes for the energy to arise within -- the energy to keep moving and doing and going up. 

As I move through my own story, trying to understand and trust this intricate tapestry of what? Self-created projections, destiny, unexpected twists and turns, my responsibility, my lessons, my repeated lessons, and my once more repeated lessons and then what to do about it all...I have found again and again that it is in the deliberately drawn out pauses that I understand just a little bit more...and only to the extent that I stop and really feel and acknowledge the feelings that are moving within -- especially the ones that are heavy and murky and that make me weep and sigh audibly...

Life in my childhood Europe was slower it seems, at least in hindsight, the cafes on the streets were crowded not with people isolated on laptops but with people being deeply engaged in each other, leaning in, touching arms, throwing back heads in laughter and sinking their heads into their hands, frowning foreheads and nodding in agreement...and then the silence, the not talking, the silence that you can only be comfortable with when you really trust each other and know that just being together in stillness is also something, lingering into the pause between words and actions....

So, today I will not do so much outer work -- I will be quiet and pensive and be really slow about it all. I will be with all of me. The sad longing. The losses and regrets. The bewildered not-understanding and the optimism that inevitably bubbles up around the grief. And then the beauty that surrounds it all, penetrates even the most head hanging moments. 

IF I LOVE YOUR BALONEY, WILL YOU LOVE MINE?

25 years ago I embarked on my spiritual journey by taking refuge in the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu lineage. I was 19 years old. If I had known then that I would still be going through such tremendous struggle to illuminate my baloney a quarter century later, I probably would have refused to believe it. Partly because I had yet to become even remotely acquainted with the extent to which my baloney would drive me in certain situations and partly because I believed so strongly that if only I would meditate and pray enough, all life long, then it would all turn out ok. It's cleverly designed, really, just how one's baloney is only revealed to the conscious mind in little, or sometimes not so little, drops. It's counter intuitive actually, the longer I have been at this inner-work-business, the more baloney I encounter within. Probably because it would be totally overwhelming, early on, to come face to face with the total picture of how unevolved we, well I, can be when the right person comes along and pushes the tender buttons that activate the hidden baloney.

What do I mean by baloney? Well, it's actually a word I just learned. I am not American and English is not my first language so I had to look it up when this word was used by someone very special to me to describe my way of handling myself, "your high consciousness is total baloney" -- and after looking up the word, 'baloney', and then sitting with that heavy message for a several painful hours of self-reflection, I had to surrender and just own the painful truth: My high consciousness is total baloney -- because my higher consciousness has so not penetrated all areas of my being. There are some really dark and bratty rooms left in my inner castle and, as promised 25 years ago, these really dark areas would be revealed (and healed, oh, please be healed)  one by one -- and it might well take many, many life times to do the work of transforming the darkness and the fear. And as long as there are still baloney rooms left, I will continue to attract just the people and situations who will lovingly, or shamingly, hold up a mirror so that I can see the error of my ways. Basically, there is no where to run and no where to hide. The inner work must be done and it is humiliating, scary and just really, really painful. 

We have a saying in Danish: "Aben flytter med" - it means, the monkey moves with you -- as in you can change all your outer circumstances, leave your lover, move to the other side of the world, fire all your friends and your entire family if you must but whatever your baloney is, it will show up again and again until you own it as just that: your baloney. And you will be magically drawn to the people and circumstances that will trigger it so you can become acquainted with it and then what? Heal it? Integrate it? Not be so quick to react outwardly? Realize in some deep way that these visceral reactions are pointing to where the work is? That the churning, anxious discomfort in the gut is the work? That numbing this almost intolerable discomfort short circuits the process of bringing Light into the darkness, Light into the pain, Light into the fear. 

It so easy to despise the baloney that arises, what's not to despise? In my case it shows up as extreme bodily and emotional discomfort  seemingly caused by someone else's actions and then there is the real baloney, that is, the almost irresistible urge to correct the baloney activator so that he or she won't cause discomfort in my inner being any longer. That's when the reaction comes and the drama begins because now I am no longer alone with my inner baloney. I have officially rung the bell and now we have stepped into the baloney boxing ring and the internal struggle has now become a full-on physical experience played out like a scripted play where everyone is sure to suffer because no one is able to identify whose baloney is whose but everyone is certain it's not theirs. 

Then comes the shame. The heavy, debilitating shame that deflates my energy from the inside out. And all that is left is an empty boxing ring and anxious certainty that until all this baloney has been cleared out, lasting love isn't really possible. That's when the question and the hope arise. Can we love ourselves and even each other while we move through the slow and arduous process of downloading more Light into more darkness? Can we love our own and each other's high minded selves while also loving and even honoring our own and each other's total baloney? Is baloney little more than a fear ridden and immature child who needs holding more than shaming, who needs attention more than rejection? Truthfully, I have no clue. What I do know is that blessed be the friends who love me in spite of my baloney. Here is to them on this Labor Day of 2015. 

THE BATTLE OF MY SELVES

August 28, 2015

If I thought that ten days of Vipassana (silent Buddhist meditation retreat) would alleviate the craziness that arises within when my lower self meets my higher self then at least I am a tiny bit wiser, because I now know that it didn't and doesn't. At least not for me or any of my beloved, dharma sisters and brothers to whom I cling because they understand how hard it is to be present to the awfulness that is uncovered in the process of becoming fully alive and present.

What it did do,  I would say, is make it glaringly obvious when my lower self is operating and my higher self is effectively being drowned out -- which is all the more painful. At least, before, I could comfortably, and with great inner conviction, accuse the person who triggered my lower self into action, of 'making me' anxious, angry, sad  -- or whatever the nasty, uncomfortable emotion might be. Then all I had to do was get the hell away from said person and then do something, anything, to alleviate the unwelcome inner state. 

Being that I don't use intoxicants, I really considered myself a person who is willing to 'be with what arises' - I am using quotation marks because this is such yoga lingo. But not really so. I don't want to feel what arises when it feels like shit; I squirm like a bottom feeder in the net when these emotional states arise within -- and run. Somewhere. Anywhere. To a friend mostly. Because as soon as we are talking about how terrible I feel, then it's not so terrible anymore because the terribleness has been moved from that awful, visceral feeling in the gut or elsewhere in the body -- to the intellect where he and I, or she and I, get to process it using all of our yogic wisdom and pretty soon, it's all so clear. Until it's not. And until next time the same uncontrollable feelings are triggered.

Today I am starting a new job at yet another treatment center for drug and alcohol -- it's the third center I work at. In getting ready for that, the guy who hired me asked me to read a book about yoga for trauma and it didn't take a whole lot of reading to realize that that we are all on that spectrum. Of carrying trauma, wounds, experiences that were too painful to process properly so they are lodged like little landmines inside, ready to go off when an unsuspecting individual (or a very suspecting trickster sent from the Divine) trespasses and steps on them. Then a sophisticated process of biochemical reactions are unleashed and real life panic sets in. And who is that? Reacting and feeling so self-righteous about the reaction? It's also me. The unevolved me. The me that we are not greeting in yoga when we say namaste (may the Light in me see the Light in you) -- the me, that needs transformation. The me full of samskaras -- which is the Buddhist term for negative impressions or imprints that we carry and from which these undesirable reactive emotions arise. 

What we learn in vipasanna is to stay. Feel it all. Every last, nasty bit of the awful anxious, angry, sad state and try, as best we can, not to have it out with the messenger who came into our lives with the explicit purpose of shining a harsh light on these samskaras. That the drama we create when we battle with the messenger from God, the trickster, is effectively diffusing the process of allowing Higher Consciousness to penetrate the knots in our Being that tie us to our ego and abort that process of giving birth to more of the Higher Self into our earthly vessel. 

What we learn is to stay and watch, like an eagle from above, how we run way. And we all have our ways of running away from feeling awful. We can't stop the running until we recognize the sneaky ways in which we do it. And then we just stay and feel it and feel it and feel it and accept that it may be a hundred years before we can even make sense of it and we just feel it and stay with it and we build a tolerance for feeling it all. Being with it all. And then, maybe, we can become so good at being with it all that we also don't run away from each other anymore. That we stay when the other is in that place of pain and has nothing to give, when their Higher Self channel seems all but shut down and all that's visible is an unattractive ego display or downright tantrum. 

Maybe we no longer just greet the Highest Light in ourselves and one another. Maybe we also greet the bullshit, the suffering ego, the impossible child, the shadow who kicks and runs and squirms. Maybe we can make friends with this process that we are all in and use our Highest Light to forgive and even hold and embrace the patients we are, as we subject ourselves to the painful surgery of surrendering the ego and peeling away the layers that cloud our vision from understanding our True Nature. Here's to hoping. Off I go to my new job. 

SLEEP, SWEET SLEEP

I can't get through the day with out a nap -- or caffeine. It's not normal! I told my Chinese doctor in desperation a few months back. Well, she said, actually it is. What if I told you that most of the world naps, every day. That the doctors in the large, busy hospital in Beijing where I worked before coming here, they napped, every afternoon. 15-20 minutes. Some just laid there heads right down on a table and slept. 

Ah, so maybe the cure for my 'chronic afternoon fatigue' is not yet another expensive supplement or exotic powder from the co-op for 'maxed out adrenals' but simply, to sleep, sweet sleep. 

So, I did. I have let myself take time out to simply rest. For a while now, I have just given into this overwhelming urge to rest in the afternoon. Mama's doing yoga nidra for the next 30 minutes - the kids know to be quiet - the cats don't get to come in. My thick, no-light-can-get-through drapes from Ikea are drawn, eye pillow - and then, yoga nidra. Yogic Sleep. Because that makes me nap almost instantly. It's a guided meditation, rotating my consciousness around my body and the funny thing is, it's very much like the guided meditation my grandmother would use to make my sister and me sleep when we were kids and would sleep over in her awesome feather beds. Relax your big toe, she would say, then your second toe, your third toe, your...your...zzzzzzz - and somewhere on the journey through our bodies, we'd be out. I don't know where she got this idea but it worked like a charm every time.

It's become even more important that I take the time to nap after I have added several evening classes to my teaching schedule, it gives me that second wind and when I avoid the caffeine/chocolate temptation then I still fall asleep like a baby by 10 or 10:30PM. 

I realize that my particular schedule allows for napping, many of my students are working in office settings where taking a snooze at 3:30PM is a definite non-option, so instead they resort to caffeine or just spacing out - checking out mentally and not getting much done anyway while managing to look reasonably productive. I know, I have been there. 

Maybe I won't always need to incorporate naps, maybe my adrenals really are depleted or my heart and body just strung out from post-divorce-making-it-on-my-own-in-a-foreign-country-stress. But for now, I nap, as often as I need to and just count on my body to tell me when it isn't tired anymore, at 3:30PM - speaking of which, it's now 3:45PM and sure enough, I am just wanting to conclude this little blog entry so I can go snooze and be ready and rested for a little evening thing at 7PM. 

If you are like me, and need a bit of help dozing off in the afternoon, then this Yoga Nidra CD is guaranteed to help you. Just don't have caffeine right before you 'nidra'. 

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THE LEAST OF MY BRETHREN

"Can I buy your apple. I will give you a Dollar for it. I haven't had anything to eat. I am really hungry." The man who wanted my apple appeared out of nowhere and spoke very fast to me.

I was walking in my own little world, between classes today, munching on this apple before teaching another class in the dodgy end of South Minneapolis.  I had already made my way almost half way through this apple. The man looked disheveled. "Are you serious," I said, "you want to eat my half-eaten apple?" He assured me that he really did. I gave it to him, wishing so bad that I'd had another, a fresh un-bitten apple in my purse, but I didn't.

I walked away, leaving the man with my apple. He was already busy eating what was left of it.

Personally, I'd say that I might eat a half-eaten apple left by one of my children. But that's it. I wouldn't even eat my mom's half eaten apple let alone the half-eaten apple of a random stranger. Or maybe I would. If I were hungry enough. Downtrodden enough. Believing enough that begging for a half-eaten apple is what it takes to get an apple.

After class I got in my car to drive home, sweet home, in my safe neighborhood where my kids were waiting for me to cook them burgers but as I sat in a bit of traffic by the Franklin entrance to E94, I noticed an older man next to a shopping cart that held a couple of dirty, ragged blankets. He was wearing a prominent cross around his neck and looked completely resigned. No card board sign asking for money, stating the obvious: homeless, poor, forgotten by society. Just sitting there alone by his shopping cart.

I rolled down my window and I reached into my purse and told my fingers to pick the right bill. I knew I had 1's, 5's, 10's and 20's in there. My fingers picked a $10 - I was a bit relieved it wasn't a $20 because $20 felt like a lot - he hobbled over and I gave him the bill. He just stood there and looked and held my gaze in a way that made me want to cry my heart out for the state of the United States where people live like this, right under our noses, where we are debating whether minimum wage should be a living wage or not or whether people like this man should receive food stamps or not.

Then he sat back down by his cart and pulled out a pill bottle, opened it up and took out a slim roll of bills, 1's from what I could see, and he added the $10 bill to the roll. I wanted to change my mind and do it over. I wanted to give him a $20 or more, or make him some food, or find him a place to live. But then the car behind me honked and I rolled onto the freeway and I drove back to my home where I cooked burgers for my kids.

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FROM SURVIVAL TO SURRENDER

I am learning, and teaching to the best of my abilities, the shift from survival to surrender. I guess I would say I am always moving actively from survival to surrender. The doorway to surrender is presence; presence to the magnitude and wonder of the expansive Spirit that breathes life into my limited perception of myself.

To be that present I must cultivate, over and over and over again, a mindset of meditation, of inner quiet, of identifying with the steady breath that moves in and out of my physical body. In truth, I am not sure I would have been able to perceive of such an act as surrender, had I not found meditation when I was 19 years old at a Tibetan Buddhist Center in my hometown, Copenhagen -- and had I not kept coming back to meditation - and prayer - again and again and again. 

The benefits of meditation and prayer reach far and wide for both my body and my mind. It is taking an important step in assisting my Divine Spirit in weaving itself more deeply and intelligently into my physical vessel.

As my Spirit is allowed ever more presence in my physical life, I notice a deeper sense of inner guidance and wisdom that begins to shine more consistently into my life through my thoughts, emotions, actions and words.

And yes, gradually my body and mind move out of survival mode and into surrender mode. I relax and my Spirit moves more deeply into my physical tissue bringing with it healing and peace.

I see a greater sense of connection to all things, to nature to my fellow human beings. My natural, inborn capacity for empathy and compassion seem to grow ever stronger and clearer.

A fluid state of gratitude infuses me wherever I go. I don't just  believe that I am deeply blessed; I know it with every fiber of my being. My intuitive capacities grow stronger with meditation and I listen more to my inner wise and loving voice.

As my Spirit Light shines more brightly in my heart and unto other people, I grow in my capacity to heal and console other people.

I feel less cut off from friends and family who have passed on to the other side. I just know and feel deep in my heart that while I miss those who have died, their Spirits are as alive as ever and we can connect in deep love and appreciation.

With all my love I wish you a wonderful journey into a Spirit guided life. If you need a daily nudge, get my new Breath of Life Morning and Evening meditation CD. Right here www.mariatoso.com

Poems from writing retreat

My Light:
You were my light
Shining in 5 directions,
Extending outward
All the time,
Engaged,
To life and friends, an open door
Where memories weaved
With tradition and form
And wine and wine, and wine
When did you curl up your dreams and your voice?
Like an old extension cord that no one needs
When did you put an arm chair in their place?
Where he now sits and reads at night
While you turn out most lights
Leaving an empty glass on the wooden floor.

Afterwards:
She was a good soul, a Nordic soul,
She arrived in this country on a cool April breeze
On the dawn of her saturn return,
Bringing little along except her inbred elegance and sadness.
And she came to love over 10,000 lakes and trees

But she was a salt water fish in a fresh water lake
A child of the North, she lived a life in the absence of her family and her country
In their place she forged different kinds of relationships
And an unceasing connection to the Divine Reality of the Human Being.

The life she came to live didn't last long; she lost her marriage, and her home and herself.
But weakened and betrayed she kept leafing through the book of her life.
And out of the hot smoldering ashes of her broken story arose new conditions
And a different kind of wisdom.

She found God and his beloved Son - the guru in her heart.
She surrendered her heritage but she never surrendered her children.

Armchair to a yoga block:
Who are you? Why are you here?
What architect do you claim to your name?
My wood was carved with skill and tradition,
You! What nameless country in the east spewed out your funny shape?
Do you really suppose that you can offer rest and introspection?
No, my little square, no human can sit comfortably on you
Indeed no dog, no cat, hah, not even a hat!
Useless for sitting and such is clearly what you are
Now, move away I implore you.
Lest I shall call you a foot rest!

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YOGA WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

This morning i took a real, old-fashioned yoga class.  the kind i used to take long before vinyasa came to town. back where it all started for me. with iyengar yoga. my body nearly forgot how that goes. how you stay long enough in each pose to truly take your seat in it.  to asana. just sit and breathe with what is.  no direction to the breath even; simply letting the breath be what it is in that particular pose.  just allow the props to hold and cradle, push and lift.

I am hanging upside down on the wall like a bat and I release fully into the weight of me; I let every exhale sink me deeper into my own innerness.  I give in and release and I let go to what is.  There is no music to float away upon.  The teacher is still. There is no incessant dharma talk to soothe what arises from within.  I am just present to the current state of affairs in my life; I feel a big, quiet space open up inside.

I am arched back and inverted; my brain is below my heart; giving the heart the upper hand perhaps. Bathing my brain in the blood from my heart perhaps. Now I allow the Spirit of my breath to find its way into all the places where it doesn't get to go much because it's too much.   

Now I am fully present to the current conditions of my life and it really is too much; and perhaps I took to using yoga as the escape; the reprieve from it all; a place to numb the pain through physical expertise.

But here I am with my legs in the air and my back arched upon a chair; I am in it. I am in the divorce proceedings that won't end; that drain too much of my life force into a black, greedy hole. I am also the strong dog walking through unknown, dark territories with my pups. I am the hair standing up along my spine when a branch breaks behind me and another appeal is filed and I lick my sweeties reassuringly: Mama's got this. No fear, dear. I'm here. Holding a shield of calm, fierce love in place. 

As I take my seat in these poses, long enough, the magnitude of it all is just here with me; and the pain is deep and dangerous. I know it will not last; I know it will be here now and it will also go away one day; eventually.  But right now this is what I am dealing with. In this morning's yoga class, I was lead to a deep place of feeling the reality of that.

In savasana, I am nestled underneath a wool blanket; the tears of fear and grief and just plain overwhelm, flow, warm and salty. Silently from the silent space within; they run in a steady, stream into my ears. In this savasana I am given the time and the space and the quiet that I need for this.

For that I am grateful. From that place I will put one foot in front of the other - even if the territory is unknown and many breaking branches and legal maneuvers may yet scare me cold. 

For more writings go to: http://mariatoso.com/writings/

yoga every day, keeps the doctor away

When I first started doing yoga, in the early 90's - it was a pretty nerdy thing to do. The studios were not fancy and the teachers were not dressed in $150 spandex outfits. The only requirement of their pants was that you could see their legs. Most of them wore very short pants that showed all the muscles and bones. They would get impatient, or downright angry, with you if you wore pants that were loose around the knees. How could they check if you were actually 'lifting your kneecaps" if you wore baggy pants? (So you'd pull your pants up and look extra-nerdy to expose your knees). 

A pose would be worked on for what sometimes seemed like an eternity (you try being in trikonasana (triangle pose) for 5 minutes) and in the beginning of class you had to raise your hand if you were on your period. Then you'd be relaxing in subdabadakonasna (bound angle pose) while everyone else did inversions. If you told your friends that you were doing yoga then they weren't quite sure what that meant and if you told them; they'd likely think it was a bit odd. 

We all know how that has all changed. Yoga has become as mainstream as organic potatoes and that can only be a good thing. Even the established medical community has embraced the tremendous health benefits of yoga. I have just been invited to teach Yoga Nidra at the U of M and the Mayo Clinic is promoting yoga as a means to 'fight stress, get fit and stay healthy'. The barriers between what was once considered 'New Age' and western based medicine are crumbling and it's no longer either or. 

My family doctor, Dr. Kara Parker, is a Naturopath/MD who works at HCMC (Hennepin County Medical Center) and she has everything from bladderwrack and meditation to antibiotics and acupuncture up per sleeve. The one time that she has ever prescribed antibiotics, I feel confident that it was after exhausting every alternative method at her disposal. 

All though the meaning and practice of yoga has become mighty diluted, it's still a good thing that yoga has been endorsed as a means to greater health. Even students that never dive into the Yoga Sutras and beyond, will experience amazing changes in their body and mind from doing yoga on a daily basis. 

Here's words straight out of a Mayo article on the matter: 

• Stress reduction. A number of studies have shown that yoga can help reduce stress and anxiety. It can also enhance your mood and overall sense of well-being.
• Improved fitness. Practicing yoga can lead to improved balance, flexibility, range of motion and strength. And this means you're less likely to injure yourself in other physical endeavors or in your daily activities.
• Management of chronic conditions. Yoga can help reduce risk factors for chronic diseases, such as heart disease and high blood pressure. Yoga might also help alleviate chronic conditions, such as depression, pain, anxiety and insomnia.
• More here: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/yoga/CM00004 

Visit www.mariatoso.com

the human task of finding the Light in the darkness...

I am surrounded by yogis and yoginis, and also great friends who don't subscribe to yoga, but to some other path of spiritual and personal growth. Friends and students and, of course, me; who do things like meditate, exercise, garden and compost, eat organic foods - and who drink little to never. Who know the power of connecting to the earth and connecting to the Light -- in equal measure. 

 Friends who 'walk the path consciously' and look for how they create their own circumstances, 'co-create' is the word these days, who take responsibility for their choices and who truly wish to find their voice and serve in whatever capacity God, The Universe, The Greater Good would have them do. 

Trying very hard and persistently - and succeeding as well, some of the time - in finding that Higher Self voice, the place where it's all cool; and every experience is part of the picture, the voice that elevates us out of feeling small and contracted, alone and inadequate, 

Why is it so hard for us to maintain that perspective?

Why must we dip into the icy, dark waters of forgetting our Mighty Light? Of believing even for a moment that we are not loved and guided and that there isn't Great Big Meaning behind the hurt and the pain that get invoked time and again by circumstances that, yes, we attract into our lives to figure out a better way to deal with them than we did when we were 5 years old. 

I don't know the ultimate answer of course (what earthling does?) but I know that for me, being flung into darkness and doubt on a semi-regular basis is how I have developed my now fairly dependable "see-the-Light-shine-in-the-darkness' capacity. It is how I can stay grounded enough in my 'Observer' to recognize what is going on with the part of me that identifies completely with the 'soft animal of my body' and my present circumstances (better known as my ego, I suppose). 

I also know deeply, from personal experience, that community is crucial. That the friend I dragged out of a dark perspective yesterday is ready to do the same for me today.

That I wouldn't learn to swim toward to Light when I feel that I am drowning unless I got plunged into the Dark waters enough to practice, practice, practice. That coming back to my own Light again and again, is how I have come to trust that the Light does indeed Shine in the Darkness, and that the Darkness, indeed, has not overcome it. 

15 years ago, my now ex-husband told me, and I have no idea where he got this idea, that reciting the first 14 verses of St John's Gospel daily could not, not transform a person completely. That's how he said it; not, not. So I memorized it at the time, we both did. It's interesting that we have grown so far apart and yet, he is another person in town who has that memorized. 

Reciting John has become a remedy, a pathway out of the Darkness for me. It's powerful stuff. Sometimes these verses just pour through me when anxiety and fear creeps in. Before I am even consciously aware of it, these words just spread within like Golden Light. 

There are many versions, here is the one I memorized. Maybe you want to try it sometimes when you feel lost and lonely and all small and contracted into dualism.

Maybe it will help you remember that the Light shines in the Darkness and that the darkness has not over come it. Here it is. 

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God

He was in the beginning with God and through Him were all things made

Without Him was not anything made that was made

In Him was Light and His Light was the Light of men

The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.  

There came a man sent from God his name was John

He came as a Witness to bear Witness to the Light that all might believe though Him

He himself was not the Light but came to bear Witness to the Light.  

The True Light that enlightens every man was coming into the world

He was already in the World but the World knew Him not

He came to His own people but his own people received Him not

But to all who received Him and believed in His Name

He gave power to become children of God

Not born of the blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man but of God

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His Glory

Such Glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father full of Grace and Truth

Pushing through the laziness

I have developed a method. A method for cleaning my kitchen. When I look at a messy kitchen I get so weary in my soul, I really just want to, not clean it. Go to bed. Do it later. But what's worse than coming back to a messy kitchen, getting up in the morning to a messy kitchen? So, the method is this: I split myself into two personalities. Yep, sounds a bit scary but it works. 

Lazy Me, who really can't deal with it right now. Who's too busy, got too many other things that just must be tended to. Wise Me, who knows that the energy drain of not getting that something done is massive, almost incapacitating. Totally out of proportion to the actual task of getting that thing done, be it that messy kitchen or something else on the list of to-do's. 

Wise Me then sets my kitchen timer. 10 minutes. Yep, that's it: 10 minutes. Even Lazy me can deal with just about any task if it's only for, promise, just 10 minutes. Then Wise Me divides my kitchen into sections. That space to the left of the sink, the sink, the space to the right of the sink, the stove, and that space to the right of the stove. Eating nook, narrow counter, sweep the floor (mop if necessary). 

To make the whole situation more bearable, Wise Me also lights some incense and puts on some music, that really soothes Lazy Me and makes me more cooperative. Then the timer starts and Lazy Me gets anything but lazy, works really hard and fast. Fast because I've only got 10 minutes, and I must get all this done. Section one, done. Section two, done, three, done. Always catching a backwards glance at the completed sections because nothing is more satisfying than a completed section.

Ten minutes later, the kitchen is almost done, the timer on the stove goes off and Lazy Me is frantic, No, not yet, I am not done! Give me a few more minutes, I need to sweep too; and I also want to do a quick mopping to make it all extra fresh! Wise Me allows it. Yes, you can have 2 more minutes. I will set the timer though. 

Two minutes later, well a total of 12, the kitchen is done. For real. That's it. The dreaded task is just done and the whole kitchen, and my mood, is lifted and beaming.

And my other tasks are not so different. It takes very little to overwhelm me. Too feel completely weighed down by my own to-do's and must-do's - they so easily feel like can't-do's. 

The only thing that seems to do the trick is for Lazy Me and Wise Me to work together and that always seems to involve setting a time. A deadline. A 'you-won't-be-stuck-doing-the-kitchen-sink-forever-promise'.
 

I have expanded this method to the rest of the house and beyond. When it's all a big mess (usually got that way with generous help from children) - then I divide the house into sections. 10 minutes, Lazy Me, that's all, 10 minutes per room. Go! For half an hour. Then perhaps another half an hour.

And voila! The house is unbelievably, incredibly, amazingly transformed. It's borderline magic. 

Presence Process

I'm still here, not sure what happened there, just took a long, lazy blog break I suppose - or, ok, I got a bit scared of my own openness just like I said I wouldn't...even went in and deleted a few blogs that were particularly raw and just needed to go...

But since I just went to a job interview, I thought on my way home, hmmm..., I wonder if the people who interviewed me thought to 'google me' before I came in - as if anyone in this modern world doesn't google everybody in whom they have the slightest interest...argh, so with that in mind I 'googled me' and yes, this blogspot is like the top line in the google results; and I tried to read it like a potential employer might.

I thought I seemed OK nice and not too nuts -- well, the blog about hating my coach's time assignment might have been a wee bit unfortunate but you know what, sooner or later the truth about everyone always comes out anyway so there's something to be said for just having it out there. This has been a therapy theme in fact, the idea that being me is all I have to do. My therapist even 'EDM tapped' (Emotional Freedom Technique, do you know it?) - that fact into my body and brain and I am totally starting to believe that I just need to put me forth with as much honesty and me'ness as possible and then the chips will fall, mostly, nicely all around me - and the off-chips will have some Divine purpose that I may not be able to decipher but I will trust that they do.

I'm reading a book. A really interesting book, called the Presence Process by Michael Brown -- and it requires some serious work. Well, really it just requires that you breathe a certain way twice a day for 15 minutes - so for a seasoned meditator, like moi, that shouldn't be considered a momentous task -- but it's  hard and it's what comes up and out of the deep, dark, moist (or downright flooded) basement of the subconscious that is hard, hard, hard....

The notion is this; everything in this world that makes you emotionally upset or react, versus calmly respond, is a 'set up' by the Universe to get you to pay attention to some deep and ancient imprinting that happened when you were too little to make any sense of it...aside from the fact that you were somehow bad and basically deserved it when the world - or rather then most important people in your world - made you feel alone and rejected and abandoned and not loved and not safe.

The idea being that the guy that makes you feel controlled or unloved or unimportant or abandoned - he is just some guy you attracted quite deliberately; specifically because he had that very built-in talent for making you feel terrible just like you did when you were 5 or 4; or even so young that a memory of it can't even be accessed - through ordinary means anyway.

So rather than have it out in some dramatic fashion with the messengers that conveniently and predictably, and over and over again'ly trigger that old, awful feeling of not being loved and not being good enough for love - I am just supposed to sit and breathe into that feeling - not try to analyze it or understand it but just sit there with the knowledge that this feeling is old, this wound is old and the reaction that is coming up - and that embarrass me because it's terribly childish of me -- is exactly that -- it's just a child.

It's little me, sweet little 4-year old me, in a big white hospital bed. All alone. For weeks. It's cold and it's winter and everything is white and the ceilings are impossible high and white and cold and everything else is metal and cold and sharp - especially the needle that take my blood every day in doctor effort to find out what is wrong with me. Yes, there she is; feeling just like that, just the way I am feeling 38 years later and I look at her on the bed and I am not embarrassed that she is desperate to be held and loved and told that everything is going to be OK, that the pain will go away and that she has a right be scared shitless about going into some big, roaring machine after drinking radioactive, thick, white fluid in a glass that is so tall it's makes her gag to finish the scary, sweet liquid that isn't fit for human consumption.

I put her in my lap and I wrap blankets around her and I just tell her over and over that everything will be OK, that I will never leave her and that it's OK that she is mad at her parents and that she hates the doctors and that she is trying to be a good little girl that the nurses will like. I carry her out of the hospital where she has been stuck for 38 years and I take her home with me where she gets to be with me, in me, and I will listen to her and I will not allow anything but love to come near her ever again.

That's probably as much as I can do today. It's a good book. Amazing in fact...seeing every triggered emotion through that lens....and watching for the little kid in me and in all my fellow grown-ups around me. We all just want to be held and told that we are loved and that we are ok. Right...

The hard stuff: Show it or hide it?

I got two emails today that stood out from the rest. Both written in response to having read my blog-utterings as of late. Both from women. Both in their 60's. The first to arrive was from my mother in Denmark, the second from a dear friend here in the States. What's curious is that they arrived within moments of each other. But had the exact opposite message.

The one from my mother was one of deep concern that I'd be so emotionally open and raw. In public. Shouldn't I be keeping this kind of intimate information private and only share with a trusted friend or two. Might it not be used against me?

The other one, from a dear teacher friend, was encouraging me,  'I feel so appreciative to have a friend who wanders deeper into her life, and shares it...' she said.

It made me think for a while today about what we find appropriate to share; with whom and how. I have been getting a lot of reactions in the last weeks; and aside from my mother they have been mostly to the effect of, wow, you are just like me, we have parallel lives, we should get together soon, call me, I'm here. I know how you feel.

But one other friend, did just tell me, that she'd like to share more but then 'people will know I am not perfect.' Wow. Is anyone perfect? Do any of us really think that the others have it all together and if we do think that, how does that make us feel? Inadequate? Small? Lacking?

I have been in enough sharing groups to know that everyone is hurting about something. The lucky ones are able to transform the hurt into empathy and love and wisdom but everyone is hurting about something. If we all knew just a little more about each other's pain we'd be busy hugging and loving each other all day long.

At a recent coaching training in L.A. one of the trainers said, 'people, owning your shadow is the new sexy!" Ok, let's not get trendy about it but I get it and I think many of us are weary of the old school way of hiding it, and stuffing it and hoping that no one knows how uncool we are. How insecure we are. How much we just want to be loved and accepted by each other. How much we fear rejection and being alone.

I know I am pushing the boundaries of my own culture and the family line with my openness. Maybe I am even risking repercussions in court this summer. Maybe my ex or his team of two power attorneys will find my blog and say, See! She's all weak and feeble and unfit.

The truth is I have never felt stronger and more okay. Sad and small sometimes, you beat, but mostly okay with myself being human and even more okay with the never-ending supply of Divine Light and grace that pours over me and each of us when we scream for help, and often it happens through our dear friends.

Aren't we just here to help and love each other every step of the way on this earth. When I am in the pits my friends will remind me of love, and when my friends are in the pits, I will remind them of love. We just slip into darkness sometimes and forget about love.

Thank you to my mom, for her warm and motherly concern, I know the sweet heart from which is springs -- and thank you to my dear Viola friend for taking the time out of your day to write to me, for seeing me and appreciating me.

And I don't think I'm done being open and raw. I think I'm only just beginning.

To pedicure or not...

I got a pedicure today. The first of the season and I think the last. I don't really like the whole someone-sitting-at-my-feet situation. It's probably the socialist, or the Dane in me, we always did our own nails growing up. In fact, I don't remember ever hearing about a place where you could get a pedicure in Copenhagen back then. But I'm sure they exist now. It's gotten so worldly.

I went to a place at Har-mar run by Asians, I didn't recognize the language, not that I would, but I'm always just a bit offended when I walk in and you see a line of white women (just like me mind you) in big lazy-boy-type-pedi-thrones with small, brown people industriously working at their feet. I get colonialism vibes or something.

Nevertheless, I decided that with yesterday's insult to my peace of mind, I deserved pretty feet. I also have that wedding coming up in a couple of days. The person doing my pedicure was, to my surprise, a man. In his 40s I think. He was missing one finger on the left hand and his arms were full of tattoos. The most prominent on his left arm, it was a pair of hands joined in prayer. His left hand was missing half a finger.

Midway through the pedicure he did a foot and leg massage. He had nice strong, wiry hands and it felt great. Suddenly, I saw him flinch. He had to stop and adjust the joints of two of this fingers including the finger that was half size. I asked him if he was okay, he didn't speak much English but just said, I have problem. I said, please don't continue the massage if it hurts. He said, it's okay. I repeated, please just stop doing the massage part if you are hurting. He said, thank you. I watched him from behind my magazine and he continued quietly. Then it looked like he was about to cry. I was so filled with empathy I thought I was going to cry. What happened to this man. What or who hurt his hand? Did I offend him by addressing his pain?

I didn't get any polish. It's just too stinky. I kind of like my nails just clean and bare. I gave him a good tip and I was relieved to leave the chemical stench of the small shop. The place is in serious need of better ventilation. I think it's hazardous for the workers to be in those fumes all day.

Maybe I think too much and effectively ruined my own little treat to myself today. But I can't stop thinking about this man, his fingers, his prayer tattoo and his life spent in chemical fumes to make white women's nails pretty. What are we doing?

Retraining the braining...

I love this coaching business, I really do and I'm over my subtle, ok not so subtle since I did blast it to the world, resistance to my coach shining her sharp, little torch on my problem. The time thing. I completed the first part of my time assignment and it was basically an essay asking you to define your relationship to time.

One thing that became really clear to me was how out of sheer survival these past three, mostly dreadful, years, I figured out a way to live so completely in each moment with minimal planning and maximum just-maintaining-the-basics. There simply was no energy to plan beyond keeping it together, I was in complete survival-adrenal deficit mode most of the time. So, this unplanned living became a habit over a substantial period of time and now I have to rewire myself, my brain I think, to do it differently.

And it is so hard! Sitting down and making lists of what needs to be done, and what it would be lovely to get done, and what it would extra amazing to have done and then simply allocating time to get it done. One step at a time.

One of my number one avoid-what-needs-to-be-done methods is to pick up my recorder and play, yes, right in the middle of a project, I just want to be in my own little world. I don't know how to read music so I just play what wants to be played (mostly Danish hymns) by ear and it puts me in this wonderful Spirit-flowing-through-me space where I am safe and no worldly demands can penetrate; at least as long as I am playing. My kids know better than to interrupt me mid-song or, God help them, try to grab the recorder out of my mouth when I am playing (in an effort to get mom to listen to something they consider important at that time).

The whole point is, I can still play. Yep, I just have to schedule it into my little plan for the week. What a concept. I can still do all the things I love. Like tune out and be with God, go to yoga, be outside. I just need to put it into the PLAN and be super conscious about how much of my day, week, LIFE is spent doing these things and make sure that the big things are still getting done and I am doing my part in manifesting my dreams, being a clever little co-creator.

In spite of getting a good nights sleep (still on the balcony), I felt deeply and profoundly tired to the bone after my call with my coach. I basically passed out -- on the balcony. Just woke up, have NO desire to make anymore spreadsheets with goals and promises and daily plans today. But let me say this before I sign off -- about every single item on my list yesterday: THEY GOT DONE by the end of the day. I swear, there is something magical about writing it down.

Now I am going to the beach with my dear friend. She will take pictures of me doing yoga poses for my website and brochures. So that's kinda like work. Hee, hee!!

Time and how I need to manage it...

Ok, here's the thing. I am trying to do (Yoda says there is no try only do!) my time assignment. Yes, I am doing this coaching program and I think my coach rather quickly realized where my problems lie...time management. ACH! Even the phrase 'time management' conjures up images of uber sharp yuppies in the 80's with their fat, leather-bound time managers and their effective lives managed down to the last minute, exercise at 7, eat at 8, drive at 8:30, work at 9, snack at 11, meeting at noon, lunch at 1, snack and blah, blah, blah...I can't take it...my inner brat is screaming in self-defense. Don't make me look at my time managing skills. Because they are so lacking, I am going to feel so incompetent and I don't want to feel incompetent...!

I have a friend whose step-mom is a writer, a famous and prolific writer. Apparently she gets up every morning and writes for a set amount of hours and no one and nothing can interfere with that time. That's how she gets her work done. She could have been a brilliant writer and artist but with out the discipline to schedule her time and actually WRITE, she would not have published many, many highly acclaimed books. I know it, I know, I know it.

So here's the assignment. I have to plan, not just my day, but my whole fucking week! It can't be a to do list - which would already be a grand step in the right direction, no, no it has to be down to the event and the hour for everything, like eating, sleeping, checking email (WHAT!? You mean I can't frantically check my email whenever I am frustrated or bored, which is often), and more, showering, getting dressed, pet care, cooking, spiritual practice (I want that all day long whenever I want it), making contacts, checking in with so and so..., snacking, chores, delighting in my children. You get the picture. It's all of it and I am dying here.

I don't want to do this assignment. But I paid good money for this coach to fix my life. And she took her little flash light and pointed it straight where it hurts, right past all the 'good stuff about me' and shone this nasty little light right into my under-developed sense of, GRRRRR, time management. OK, I can say it nicely: Time Management. Smiling. With my teeth (gritting them) -- Ok, no gritting. Just developing healthy, enthusiasm for my assignment that should have been completed two weeks ago.

Anyway, there is not time like the present (ya, ya pun intended, I may not be a time manager wiz but at least I can write sorta funny). So, as soon as I get done complaining to the blog world about this task. Then I will, I really, really will. Go make a warm cup of tea and then, I will, I really, really will eat a roll with butter and then, I will, I really, really, really will sit down and write a schedule of the things I intend to accomplish today, and when I have finished the one for today, I will complete one for the whole week. I am not going to enjoy this. It's not how I want to live my life. But it is how I want to live a portion of my life. I do want the ability to plan and be focused and I know that this assignment will help me do it.

Uh, and did you notice how I didn't even have TIME to complain about my love life or loss of same.

Sleeping outside

I slept outside on my balcony again. It's becoming a need, I am thinking about getting a simple platform for a 'real' bed out there. For some mysterious reason mosquitos don't bite me so I am able to sleep in the open. I am on a second floor balcony at the exact height of the tree tops. I swear it's like sleeping in an adult sized tree-house; and I sleep like a baby even though I am sleeping on a pretty slim pad and side sleeping isn't an option. But I'm a back-sleeper anyway so it works. I did pick up a mosquito net yesterday at my favorite thrift store - the one on Rice and Larpenteur - now I have to figure out how to mount it. You know, with out a handy man in the house. How hard can it be, buying a hookie-screwie thing and getting a ladder up here.

Last night we went to Fraconia Sculpture Park with friends. We went for a Shakespeare in the park production. I didn't mean to do it but the moment I laid down on my (newly acquired also at thrift store) blanket, I fell into a deep sleep. There was something so safe and cozy about falling a sleep outside in the middle of a big group of people. Tribal or something. I don't know how long I slept but I woke up with the sun beaming straight into my face. I could feel the firm support of the earth beneath me and the encircling of young trees around us. As the play ended we all just wanted to stay and stay. One dear friend, then another and then another joined and we all snuggled on blankets on the ground as we talked about life and healing and Spirit and listened to the band that followed the play. We talked about wanting to camp together. Maybe in one friend's yard, soon. We all just want to be together, hang out, talk about life and love and how we understand the pain and the joy and how we are there for each other. It's so nice not to feel alone.

Today, we are going out to the Solstice celebration at Philadelphia Community Farm in Osceola. Join us! They have an actual, gorgeous waterfall on their property, woods, animals, barn. There will be a fire and there will be a potluck and there will be a play. Maybe I will bring my new blanket and lay down on the ground somewhere, allow our generous and ever giving Earth to imbue me with her healing powers, listening to the voices of other wonderful souls communing, children running and playing and exploring. And basically, just being outside. As much as possible. With friends and children.

Good morning World, how beautiful can you be! I'm on the second floor and all I see out every window is trees bathed in sunlight.

What a difference half a night can make. I was awoken at 2AM by my little guy who crept in next to me as I was sleeping out on the balcony to stay cool, "I'm so cold, mama, I'm so cold," he said as he snuggled in close. But his little body was burning hot and I stumbled out to the bathroom to find that darn, elusive thermometer that's never where it should be. Not in this bin, not in that.

Half asleep I called out, "runners help me find the thermometer!" (my runners are my little invisible friends who help me find stuff I can't find, they are really good at it too). I looked up at the bin I'd already put back on the topshelf and lo and behold there was the thermometer sticking out.

Sure enough, 102.6F and climbing. The fearful shadows of the night settled on me as I imagined the worst. He's not vaccinated what if he contracted something terrible that I could have prevented if I'd just  done what the MDs told me to do. I started praying, every memorized prayer in my repertoire. Then we both slept. He's still running a high fever, little sweetheart but he had a smoothie with out getting sick so that's good.

He won't be going to Colorado with his dad tomorrow as planned and he's upset. Knowing him, he thinks it's all his fault, in his little mind he's going, "I'm so stupid, I'm so dumb". Kids take it all on don't they? Especially this one. He's so quick to internalize anything less than great that goes on around him. My response is to shield and shelter but that's probably not have you develop a strong man. Oh, the woes of a being a single mom raising a boy.

I just googled Maria Toso to find some pictures of myself for a brochure about some upcoming workshops in Denmark, when I stumbled upon this very blog. Written and completely forgotten by me. The most ironic thing is, I just talked to someone about adding a blog to my website but thinking, "oh I don't really know how to set up a blog", well, turns out I did know how to set up a blog in the the middle of the night upon waking up from some bad dream over two years ago.

So, here I am, sitting on my balcony of the beautiful duplex, I would have been so delighted to know I'd end up in that haunted night in April 2010. Still don't have it all together but at least, I am moving in that direction...not just with determination but with some heartfelt enthusiasm -- and that enthusiasm has  been long in the coming. 

In fact, in a recent coaching workshop, I had to come up with my own personal antidote to my tendency to 'check out' and distract myself from the obvious tasks. The antidote that came to me was enthusiasm and you know what's funny about that? Even just naming a quality that is lacking and needed somehow brings it about. Which brings to mind another coaching tip that I was given, write down the numbers. I.e. if you have a number you want to reach, say as a monthly income stream. Write down the budget that would make that happen. In fact, write down three different ways in which that could happen. Sure it'll be a bit of a stretch and you'll need to throw some juicy dreaming in there alongside the facts and figures but how fun...it's supposed to work. I am going to try I will keep you posted or shall we say blogged.