In the midst of life's chaos, finding moments of stillness to connect with ourselves can be challenging. We live in a society that glorifies busyness, making it difficult to prioritize self-reflection and mindfulness. Yet, it's during these moments of quiet introspection that we can truly tap into our inner strength and wisdom, especially in times of stress or trauma.

Someone asked me this week whether I had a regular practice that really allows me to be completely present, something where my mind becomes an open channel and my muscles dissolve, so I can be in a state of being versus doing, which is an open and expansive state.

Often, achieving a state of inner peace through practices like meditation can seem elusive amid a myriad of daily responsibilities and societal pressures. The modern world bombards us with stimuli, leaving little room for quiet contemplation.

However, even brief moments of mindfulness can have a profound impact on our well-being. Taking just fifteen minutes to sit still and focus on the present moment—whether it's the rhythm of our breath or the ticking of a clock—can help us tune into our guiding voice and cultivate a sense of calm amidst the chaos.

But what happens when we find ourselves engulfed in the grip of stress or trauma? There are degrees of helpfulness I suspect, when practices that work well in the ordinary pressures of day to day life, may not be quite so helpful under times of prolonged stress or trauma.

Renowned somatic therapist and author Dr. Peter Levine offers invaluable insights into the profound connection between mind and body in his work on trauma healing. He emphasizes that even if we don't consciously remember traumatic events, our bodies often hold onto the residual effects, manifesting as tension, chronic symptoms, or fears. Just as de-stressing does, healing from trauma involves more than just addressing the psychological aspects; it requires reconnecting with our bodies.

I remember my chiropractor once said that, while my body might not be in an optimal state at all times, even if I just notice once in the day how tense my shoulders are and silently give them permission to “let go”, my body will be in better shape than it was.

Each “noticing” has a cumulative effect. Over time we create new neural pathways that support a more relaxed version of ourselves than we would otherwise be. When we are able to listen, observe and remain still for just a moment, we can comprehend things about ourselves and the world around us that we would otherwise have missed.

Listening to Dr Levine being interviewed about his latest book An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey, he was talking for the first time about his own traumatic events. He said we don’t need to go into the traumatic event/s themselves in order to heal the trauma blocking us in some way, but we do need to learn to resource ourselves in ways that are counter to the ways we are feeling from the trauma.

One example he gave was the powerlessness, overwhelm and terror he felt from the experience of being raped, and how those feelings would engulf him on occasion in situations that seemed unrelated. It has helped enormously to work through that trauma by resourcing himself with felt memories (the somatic experience) that counter the horrific experience, from times in his life where he had felt empowered, excited about life and full of vitality.

I was also listening to philosopher and writer Nate Klemp being interviewed this week about his new book Open in which he explores possible solutions to help us shift into a life of expansiveness, creativity and wonder.

Nate had been drawn to the topic after suffering from panic attacks and, after a period where he hadn’t been able to leave his house in months. He then had an opportunity to fly across the country to visit his wife’s parents. He knew if he didn’t go it would put his marriage in jeopardy, but he was scared stiff of taking that flight.

I related to this having experienced panic attacks back in my early twenties. For anyone who hasn’t experienced panic attacks, the physical symptoms are very real, it can feel like you are having a heart attack or a stroke, and are going to pass out.  Despite his fear, Nate took the trip. As he was about midway across the country, his pain and anxiety were at their peak. But there was nowhere to go. He couldn’t just step outside the plane, or go to the hospital for an ECG and get some help.

In that moment he sort of gave in, surrendering to come what may. What happened was that he moved through the episode into a state of expansiveness, oneness and release.

It was interesting, having been asked whether I had a regular practice that achieves this, I was relieved to hear Nate refer to same struggles and arrive at similar conclusions. These moments of complete oneness are born of regular practice, but they are not necessarily regular in themselves.
When we are going through stressful times in our lives, or prolonged stress or traumatic events, it’s particularly beneficial to learn how to be with ourselves and our mind.

Writer Belinda Alexandra reflects on how a traumatic experience and the subsequent legal proceedings led to her developing complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). Feeling trapped in a nightmarish existence, she sought solace in flamenco dancing, which demanded total immersion of both body and soul.

She describes flamenco as a dance that requires genuine expression from deep within, embodying pride and resilience. Through her flamenco lessons, Belinda realized that adopting the posture and mindset of a confident dancer was incompatible with her feelings of victimhood. She found that conditioning the mind and body through confident poses and rhythmic music over time had a transformative effect on her emotions and reactions. Each stomp of her flamenco shoes became a defiant act against the powerlessness that had consumed her, forcing her to be fully present in the moment.

While Flamenco got her moving forward in life it was meditation that was the path out of her CPTSD. Belinda discovered her claim that she couldn’t meditate was a bit like saying she can’t speak French, or can’t crochet. Of course we can’t if we haven’t learned or practiced those skills. For her it was Dr Joe Dispenza’s meditations, which involve a vigorous type of breath work and deep concentration, that proved to not only increase her productivity, but calmed the hyper vigilance and triggers caused by trauma, and mild anxiety she’d experienced since childhood. She said “To have a peaceful, calm and observant mind for the first time was a revelation. The sense of connection with myself, and life and also something greater was so profound I would not have swapped it for anything in exchange”.

Sometimes sitting still for fifteen minutes to meditate and focus on something in the present moment – whether my breath or the ticking of a clock – is enough to keep my focus on the now and put me in touch with that guiding voice. Sometimes it isn’t.

While practices like meditation and flamenco dancing offer valuable tools for navigating stress and trauma, they are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Each individual's journey towards healing is unique, and it's essential to find practices that resonate with our own experiences and needs. For some, meditation may feel inaccessible or ineffective, but alternative approaches like breath work or visualization exercises may offer similar benefits. The key is to experiment with different techniques and find what works best for you.

I’m grateful for the frequent reminders in my life to cultivate presence, because – well – life can be busy. And at times it can be stressful, I have known burn out and I know what it is to suffer from post traumatic symptoms. But ahead there is a path I can carve that is one made from my authentic core, one  not made from the stress and reliving of old trauma, but built upon the healing of it, the moving past it.

What about you? We tell ourselves all sorts of things about what it means to fit in, to be part of society or to be accepted. Most of these narratives are planted in our subconscious and have roots in our youngest years and ancestry. In times of stress or trauma, it's natural to feel overwhelmed or disconnected from ourselves, but it's also an opportunity to lean into practices that help us reconnect with our inner wisdom and resilience.

As we navigate life's challenges, let us remember that healing is not a linear process. It's okay to stumble along the way, to feel lost or unsure of our next steps. What matters is that we continue to show up for ourselves, to cultivate compassion and self-awareness, and to seek out the support and resources we need to thrive. In the words of poet Rumi, "The wound is the place where the Light enters you." May we find solace in the depths of our own healing journey, knowing that even in our darkest moments, there is always the possibility of transformation and renewal.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Overwhelm? Worry? Lack of Confidence? Parts Work and Its Importance to Your Growth, Presence Your True Needs, Talents and Desires to Step Into the State of Fullness, A Useful Hack to Gain Clarity From the Things That Capture Your Attention and It’s Time to Get Savvy With That Thing Called Love. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

While working on a new website, I read something this week that gave me pause. It was an impactful reminder that clarity of thought sets the stage for what shows up in my life, to be transparent with my desires and focused in my pursuits – “Clear vision will guide you towards realizing your goals”.

Sometimes I get so embroiled in trying to make something happen, I forget this little golden nugget. I tend to pay heed when I read something that really resonates, so I parked my endeavors and reflected on some of the other words that had been popping out at me lately.

I’ve been picking up on words that encourage me to spend more time in nature, to nurture my inner world, to foster my feminine qualities and take some space to reflect.

There is a challenge that Chloe Couisins is offering with daily meditations that dwell upon cultivating qualities like creativity, nurturance, self love, our deep connection to mother Earth, abundance over flow and holding space for others. As soon as I looked at it, I knew that I’m feeling called to spend more time with my thoughts, or my not-thoughts, just my observance of the miracles of nature, and my deep gratitude for where I live and the life I am able to lead here with my kids growing up.

I also felt called by Chloe’s words around creating more than enough though our passions and our creativity, fostering that deep desire of wanting to rather than having to. I recognised that the ability to nurture those seeds, that haven’t yet taken form, stems from the ability to nurture myself.

As I was looking at the website as it is; it feels that it’s missing something vital. What I’ve developed, using the website as a canvas, represents the me that I am to an extent, it doesn’t quite fully capture that someone else I have become in recent years.

Years ago I wrote Coming Out – Psychically Speaking and yet I haven’t really fully embraced and embodied many of the abilities that opened up in me back then. I use them intuitively all the time, but I lack the language to describe them in a way that feels me.

I’m a real hybrid of the credible corporate people change and transformation, mixed in with a deep understanding of human psychology as we widely know and accept it, sitting alongside some intuitive skills that allow me to see things and knit things together for people that they had previously only sensed but couldn’t articulate.

It’s interesting that bringing things to light for others is part of my talent, and yet it’s the very thing I’m struggling with for myself.

So taking some time to cultivate those more intuitive aspects of myself, embracing the feminine, is what much of my journey these last few years points to.

It’s about going with the path of least resistance, allowing feminine energy to flow through any situation without the need for force. This in turn then allows my creativity to move through when I am relaxed and present.

I also took out my folder for a course I started a few years ago with Dr Jean Houston on Unlocking Your Quantum Powers, because deciding to press pause for a time on my website is far easier when I have something else with some structure – that is related to fostering my creativity - to focus on.

One client last year had an epiphany when we were working together; he said he needed to spend more time in the quantum field contemplating what he wanted before taking action, rather than throwing lots against the wall and hoping something stuck.

This is very much like the work I heard Dr Denis Waitley talk about years ago when recounting his time with the Olympic athletes, he got them to practice their performances over and over in their head, so by the time the starter’s whistle blew, they had lived that moment hundreds of times. But before that, there was a moment in each of those athletes’ lives – a moment that they knew, with absolute certainty – that they wanted to compete in the Olympics at the top of their sport.

That clarity, certainty and conviction isn’t necessary to begin something. I can – and have – tried much from the smorgasbord of life. But there comes a time to step back, and contemplate which my favourite elements were, and how I might weave those together in a way that fosters my deep desire of wanting to rather than having to.

Will you take the leap with me into the quantum field of possibilities? Are you ready to nurture your inner world and realise your desires and intentions? Let’s embrace our intuitive selves and weave a tapestry of authenticity, creativity and fulfillment.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Overcome Insecurities and Fears to Transform Your Life, How to Switch Between Your Life Roles With Grace and Ease, Presence Your True Needs, Talents and Desires to Step Into the State of Fullness, What Will It Take for You to Choose Happy? and Embracing the Feminine within All of Us. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog. 

A while back I started some intensive chiropractic work in a bid to see if I could unwind some of the chronic pain I experience in my right shoulder, having tried a few other avenues unsuccessfully.

While I can appreciate its effectiveness in unblocking my nervous system (every session is filled with satisfying releases of tension along my spine and in other parts of my body), I’ve also become aware that the pain I experience cannot be attributed to a single event so it’s not so easy to let go of, it’s more like peeling away the layers of an onion.

If I had had an accident that had created pain, treatment like this could ease it relatively quickly. But when the cause is more a series of events that could be physical, mental and/or emotional, the path is less clear. Worse, I have a suspicion that the events are not necessarily relegated to past experiences, they may well be current day thoughts, actions or feelings that I’m (as yet) unaware of as being related.

To this end I asked the chiropractor whether she knew anyone locally who does somatic therapy/retraining. Somatic therapies are ones in which the body (the soma) is the guide, and the key is connecting the physical symptoms with a conscious narrative and feelings.

This led to an interesting observation on her part about common patterns she sees in bodies and the biggest issue she observes in the pursuit of getting back to a fully reset/healthy state (for want of a better expression). That is that people don’t make time to fully process their feelings, she says, so they get stored like another layer on the metaphorical onion.

As a person who has tended to be very in my head as opposed to my body, I have only recently begun to appreciate what she means. Until a few years ago, feeling what was happening in my body was generally secondary to me, and very unconscious, my body needed to be talking very loudly indeed to hear it.

But as I’ve begun to regularly meditate I’ve definitely become more aware of the connections between my mind, body and emotions. A key piece of advice I’ve heard from many quarters is, when I’m triggered about something, focus on where I’m feeling it in my body.

This has a couple of benefits, one is I start to become aware of patterns within me, the second is it brings my attention back into my body and calms my nervous system.

There are some great visuals out there that show what’s happening in a body when particular emotions are felt. In this Bright Side article it shows how emotions like happiness, love, anger, anxiety, depression, fear, disgust, shame, pride, contempt and jealousy show up in our systems in terms of blood flow and the effects.

For example, it says “when we are frightened, the blood literally drains from our face, making us pale. This happens thanks to the autonomic nervous system, the flight-or-fight control system. When we face a trigger, blood vessels pinch off the flow to our face and extremities, sending blood to our muscles and body so we are ready for either flight or fight”.

As someone who internalises a lot of my emotions, I’m aware that my nervous system has been in flight or fight mode for much of my life. And instead of taking the time to actually feel that, as the chiropractor pointed to, it was more that the baseline feeling within my body was a state of anxiety.

But to give a specific example, just the other day I read a negative personal comment condemning my perspective. The first thing I was aware of was a feeling akin to a general anaesthetic being pumped into me. The feeling started in my tummy and washed up and around my chest, and my thinking brain shut down. I felt startled, frozen.

Without attaching too much of a story to it, because every emotion comes with a story, I was aware on the edges of my consciousness that there was a familiarity to this feeling, but I just wanted to be present to what was actually happening in my body. My mind wanted to jump in and solve this; in short it wanted to keep me safe.

But what was obvious was that the well worn path for my norm in this kind of situation was to either push it down and get on with something more productive, or to start getting indignant and angry about it to propel me into action.

At this point, despite the allure, I resisted taking that well worn path, the chiro’s words still freshly ringing in my ears, and I just sat with the feeling and let it intensify while remembering to breath into where I was feeling it the most. It was uncomfortable, painful even, I can understand why I wanted to avoid feeling this feeling.

But after a few minutes of just leaning into it, like being hit by a wave, it started to subside. I could feel the ebb as feeling returned to the rest of my body and my brain started to come back online. I knew instantly that this reaction was an echo of unfair criticism directed at me as a child.

But as Glennon Doyle said “When we give ourselves permission to stop being the obedient daughter, we become the responsible adult”. I did not need to respond from the wounded child. This was not a person who was genuinely seeking to understand my personal conclusions, there was nothing to answer to, and so I let it go. For once, my body need not add another layer, weighing me down further.

As I was sharing this observation with my partner, we reflected on the many times in each day when we each might each feel discomfort or pain, and we push it to the side out of habit, not allowing ourselves to actually feel what is going on.

Traffic, that is something that pushes my partner’s buttons, and he spends a lot of time driving in it. Learning where that tension comes from (the narrative in his head), and how to healthily disperse it, is the optimal way forward.  

And that is what appeals to me about somatic therapy as it connects the psyche with the body, looking at cause and effect and how to approach things differently. Despite pioneers like the Peter Levine working in this field for decades now, it is still a relatively uncommon discipline among therapists.

But that is not to say that I can’t make progress. Just as I did the other day, if I use my body’s signals to tune into what else I have stored there in a bid not to feel the pain in the moment, there is much to be learned.

It occurs to me that our bodies’ carry a wealth of information, far more than our minds can consciously process. As such, learning to read our body’s signals can make an excellent doorway into our personal and collective growth.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Take Your Broken Pieces and Make a Beautiful Life, Learn to See What Is in Plain Sight, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress, What is Your Body Telling You? and Why You Should Consciously Engage in Body Talk. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

This is a question that came up for me this week, and I will tell you how. But I also thought it was an interesting question to ask given how topical giving and receiving is for many people around the world at this time of year across various cultures.

Of course I am not talking about those horrid itchy socks Auntie sends every year. This is about examining my beliefs so I am open to receive all that is helpful to me on this journey of life.

The question came up when I went to an appointment with a chiropractor I hadn’t seen before. I thought I’d try something new to see if I could get any relief for the tension in my right shoulder that is often there.

I figure that at some point, along my inner journey back to authentic me, I will address the layers that are keeping my shoulder bound. Since there is nothing structurally wrong, it’s more likely related to an unhelpful thought pattern or belief (or multiple layers of unhelpful beliefs).

The chiropractor took one look at me and described what she was seeing: locked up at the pelvis, twisted on my left hand side, and that crosses over in a common pattern of tension up through my right shoulder and neck.

I explained some inner work I had done around my shoulder which revealed some emotional trauma as a baby (having to suck up or rein in my feelings when being weaned onto a rubber teat at two weeks old) and there is some past life memories there that I am aware of relating to being badly beaten for the knowledge I possessed.

This, I guess, made her feel comfortable talking to me on a metaphysical level. She explained her own understanding of the pattern she was seeing. What she told me was that we often receive an imprint of our mother’s nervous system from our time in the womb, and then when we are born our will is usually shaped by the role models around us, so our ideas about masculine and feminine often come from our mother and father, for example.

Metaphysically the left side of the body relates to the feminine and the right side to the masculine. So as she saw my left hip twisted inwards (in a defensive/protective type posture) it’s a physical representation of the feminine blocking the masculine.

The question to ask myself, therefore, is “what do I currently believe about receiving support from the masculine?” and “where am I blocking myself from receiving support?” Knowing, of course that I have aspects of both masculine and feminine within me, and I may be blocking myself from internal support and/or external support that would naturally come to me if I was open to receiving it.

Because I am a writer, I just starting writing out the response. It was fascinating to look at how my beliefs have been shaped through my experiences with my own parents, siblings, partners and other important males like coaches and grandparents.

As I sifted through memories of mum relating to me her opinions and experiences of men, the story of overhearing my uncle’s teenage friends talking about girls, for example, I was aware of little alerts getting flagged in my system. Perhaps I haven’t been as trusting of aspects of masculinity as I would otherwise have been.

I also took a look at the most enlightened and encompassing definition of masculine that I could find, I wanted to know what a fully embodied expression of masculine could look like. Devine masculine represents action, direction, movement, responsibility, strength, focus, fatherhood, the sun, generosity, encouragement, material abundance, clarity, intellect, transformation and growth.

I can certainly see, for example, being the eldest living child in my family, responsibility is something I do well, maybe too well. Maybe I even have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and don’t always let others take responsibility for themselves. This is especially important for me as my kids grow and I let go.

While there is undoubtedly more support I am blocking myself from receiving, becoming aware of where I’m blocking it is the first step to unblocking it. There are a myriad of way to change the emotional signature of my beliefs by revisiting these early memories, as I talk about in Want More Energy, Clarity and Time? but it all starts of awareness.   

In diving deeper into my associations with the masculine, I also became aware of some of the wonderful support I’ve received from men over the years.

I don’t have many memories of my grandad, he died when I was fourteen, but I do remember him taking my brother and me to feed horses at a local estate. He didn’t have a lot to say, my grandad, but there was a quiet solidity about him, like a space in which I could just safely stand as who I was without judgment of any kind. And his gentle example of feeding the giant horses helped overcome fears I had inherited from my parents’ who were not animal lovers.

There were also my swim coaches, my diving coach and the lovely gentleman who worked with me in the travel centre in one of my student’s jobs. Those guys were in my corner, and my dedication and success was their reward. They were there to show me how to give others a hand up in life, to pass on what I know.

While I feel like I have only just begun my journey of uncovering the helpful and unhelpful beliefs I have around receiving support from the masculine, it also feels like an important perspective to share. In what areas are you blocking yourself from receiving?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What Value Are You Adding to the Currencies in Your Life? How to Live in Conscious Self Awareness in the World and You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

“The wound is the place the light enters you.” Rumi

I saw this flash up in one of the Transcendence 2 episodes about emotional healing, which I had been watching fresh from the heat of an argument.  I’m not going to pretend that I let the light in and had an epiphany at this point, the feelings of the trauma recreated in the argument were still flowing through me and I was basically distracting my mind by watching.

It’s important to point out the word re-created here. I’ve moved past the phase in my life where I’m completely identified with any self limiting thought patterns for any length of time, I’ve stopped labouring on points of principle and right and wrong. But on a bad day, and in the heat of an argument, yes siree, I report for rewind and repeat duty.

Thankfully it doesn’t take long for conscious awareness to kick in, and I realise the details of the argument are not important. What is important to me is to recognise the pattern, and uncover what about the whole interaction poked at an old wound and caused the flare up into automatic pilot.  I try to use each opportunity as a chance to at least let the light in retrospectively.

In that moment, however, I was just too exhausted to do anything more than recognise that this was exactly what had happened. The self righteous voices in my head disappeared and I vowed to look at it afresh when I had the energy, clearly there was some work to be done.

I do wonder sometimes if I will ever be free enough of the encumbering patterns to live life as my kintsugi-ed essential self. Kintsugi is a traditional Japanese art that uses a precious metal (liquid gold or silver dusted with powdered gold) to bring together the pieces of a broken pottery item and at the same time enhance the breaks.

As I’ve said many times, those unhealthy thought patterns really came about from my early childhood, in the process of my making meaning about how to be loved and to survive. I know I came into this life with an expectation of growth and expansion, so I look at the process of taking on those thoughts (which started out as helpful forty years ago), recognising they are no longer helpful, then healing and integrating them, in a similar way to kintsugi.

In a bid to quantify this in some way, earlier today I drew out what I called the pain body. The inspiration came to me after watching an energy healer do work on moving stuck energy in a couple of peoples’ biofield. As she worked through their fields, identifying and clearing traumas, it was very clear that both people viewed trauma differently.

Unlike the healer, I know both these people well. One, who I know to be highly sensitive, empathic and more likely to assign meaning to events, had a significantly larger amount of stuck energy in their field. The other, who tends to be more present in their body, had relatively little stuck energy.

There were also no real surprises in their fields, as both had previously talked about the issues that came up. The surprise was that those issues were stuck in there because of the depth of emotion that had been felt and meaning assigned to them by the individual.

I created a picture in my head of my own biofield projecting out around me with the significant events in my life reflected in it. Within my body I saw the beliefs, the repeated thought patterns, which I had developed as a result of making meaning of these events and their potential to cause disease. While many of my beliefs will have had their origins in the time before conscious thought or memory, the stuck patterns will have reflected themselves in later life events anyway and are likely quite visible.

So I first listed out all the significant events I could think of year by year. This ran to three pages. I thought about the two people whose biofield I’d witnessed being cleared and imagined if I were like the second person, and did not feel so much around me, I’d likely have less than a page.

The usefulness in this thought was really only in appreciating how different we all are. We all carry unwanted baggage around with us, but I have high sensory sensitivity, am an empath and meaning maker by nature so my baggage cart was so full I could not even see myself behind it when I started becoming aware of all this on the journey to me.

“The worst predator is our thoughts” says Dawson Church. If you feel any sort of discomfort that is a sure sign you have emotional baggage. Then one of the other presenters in Transcendence 2 asked “Is there someone you haven’t forgiven?” and I know the answer to that in most cases is me. I am very good at forgiving others, but seem to have unreasonably high standards for myself.

This week, after a nostalgic conversation with an old friend, it took me back to a time in my childhood when I was less encumbered, it was nice to feel into that and get a good look at the girl pushing the baggage cart. It’s a useful technique to imagine a conversation between present day me and child me, because I find it a lot easier to forgive myself in hindsight.

My friend was encouraging my writing and it got me to thinking about some of the other people in my life that have really cheered me on and believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. As I result I decided to get in touch with my first swim coach and share with him what his belief in me had meant through the years, only to discover that he had sadly died back in July of 2018.

I lost touch with him in my twenties, and had kicked myself for not getting in touch with him in 2016 when I wrote Magic Happens When You Believe in People. Bill Tinney was the kind of man everyone only had good things to say about, and he took time out his busy schedule to break things down for me so I could perfect my technique.

After I had exchanged a couple of emails with his son, I walked out onto our deck to take a look at the night sky and, would you believe it, I saw a shooting star. I like to think that was Bill acknowledging he had heard and understood, and was still cheering me on.

I figure if I am going to look at what is encumbering me, I should also look at the good stuff: the things that went well in my life, the helpful beliefs I held, the happy moments and the people who believed in me, those are the parts that are worth dwelling on. In fact, these are the very things I need to expand on to get in a better feeling place more of the time

I’ll finish up with a quote from BrightVibes “Stop being ashamed of how many times you have fallen, and start being proud of how many times you have got up.” No matter how broken, the willingness to take ownership of and examine our broken pieces allows the light to enter and the wound to be healed and integrated into a stronger, less encumbered and more expanded you.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, Do You Really Know the Different Parts of You?, Change Unhealthy Reactions and Get in Touch With What You Want for Your Future – Recognise Your Brain Is Dwelling in the Past. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Let me introduce you to the sentry, my protector. He is super strong and superhuman and thinks his job is to clear the path ahead for me. He says “Shona does not want to be dissuaded from her path, nor have her authority over herself questioned.” if he gets a mere sniff of an attack, he will defend and persist on my behalf.

The sentry is not a person or personality separate from me in the mental health sense; it is simply me becoming conscious of, and naming, one of the many ways of being in the world that I have adopted as part of the normal process of growing up.

That was useful when I was a child surrounded by others who did not always support my way of thinking, but as an adult who no longer wants or needs others’ approval, the sentry is a bit too heavy handed and I’ve dealt with a lot of path-clearing carnage over the years.

In fact, I only met the sentry this week, yet I’d been aware of the existence of this part of me in a more vague way for many years. I had been becoming increasingly frustrated and confused by, what appeared to be, an inner confidence in my own authority, and an ingrained habit of going into defence mode when questioned.

Focusing on that part of me as an individual part of my consciousness was invaluable. I realised if the sentry wasn’t busy clearing my path, creating carnage that was then creating more anxiety and work for me, that energy could be put into something new. The only thing standing in my way was an inner protection that had long since outlasted its use.

Parts work is a form of psychological work, often called shadow work, which looks directly at the things about us that have become subconscious. There are lots of ways to do this, but this week I’ve been using Teal Swan’s self guided process. It’s a bit like method acting parts of you as if they were another person.

In Reflections of the Soul – What Today Reveals About Tomorrow I talk about how I use whatever is actively triggering me in my life to dive into my subconscious and recognise old patterns and traumas. This latest process is one of the best I’ve used so far, as it is allowing me to look at myself through a much clearer lens even at some ordinary everyday things.

For example, other than the sentry, meet my head. When I stepped into my head as an individual part of my consciousness, I met a ground down, wizened old man. He was too lacking in energy to keep up the lifetime habit of keeping me safe by staying ten steps ahead; another outdated protection mechanism that could redivert and refresh its energy by working more symbiotically with my heart.

In contrast, my heart was like a vibrant youth, still running across garage rooftops to find a great hiding spot in the game. It felt expansive, present and in connection with everything around it. Polarities are common in parts work, where one part of us is sacrificed for another. Here you can probably see my head took over from my heart somewhere back in my childhood.

I’ve even taken a look at literal parts of myself, asking my right shoulder what it had to reveal as it seems to be in a constant state of tension and restriction. It told me that it needs my lower left hand side to be given attention, an area of my back that is often weak, so that it can work in symphony with the other parts of my body to maintain balance.

When I looked at that lower left side it wanted me to embrace the more feminine, gentle, kind and compassionate parts of myself so that it could be strong. There are so many facets to look at and, when I see myself though these lenses, it is a lot easier to see where old habits are no longer serving me and where there are opportunities for growth and more ease in my life.

Freshly equipped with the knowledge of my sentry, I went into a meeting yesterday that is part of a process with the kids’ school to inform them of any planned absences. The person who takes responsibility for this process generally uses it as an opportunity to voice disapproval at any unauthorized absence (anything except sickness and death of an immediate family member) regardless of reason.

In the past this has created turmoil within; see Evolving Education – Where Booking a Family Holiday during Term Time Took Me. But equipped now with my knowledge of the sentry, when I felt the anxiety building within me I was able to consciously recognise where that was coming from and used some tapping to calm my nervous system. I was in and out of the meeting in less than five minutes feeling balanced and happy in my choices.

Given these examples, you might have started to think of some others who could do with parts work. But do you really know the different parts of yourself? If we each take responsibility for the parts of us that are no longer serving us, we can leave yesterday’s version of us in the past where it belongs and be free to fulfill our potential in the now.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart, The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, Learn to See What Is in Plain Sight and Leverage Your Feelings to Find Your Authentic Self. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

Lately I’ve been focused on healing my body of the traumas it has endured over my life and it’s really brought home to me what it means to embody my spirituality. I think of it like peeling an onion layer by layer, slowly uncovering all the things that – over the years – I’ve either suppressed or repressed.

I discovered that suppression refers to denial of impulses on a conscious level (for example, if I was deliberately holding back from expressing my true feelings during a conversation), whereas repression involves denying impulses at a subconscious level (for example, if I was born into a family where expressing my anger was not allowed, I may have long since numbed myself to even feeling anger arise in me).

Of course, what has been suppressed or repressed will find a way to be expressed. There are many ways this can happen and life is always presenting me with clues. A quick read of any good book on metaphysical causes of disease, or a chat with any healer that works with the energy in our bodies, will usually point to the thought patterns and emotions that need to come to light in order to be healed.

Continued denial, conscious or unconscious, just seems to manifest in more and more debilitating accidents, events and diseases. This, I believe, is why there are so many people who develop terminal illnesses after many years of locking away their true feelings, and most of the time they are completely oblivious to the links.

When dying of bowel cancer, my mum was much happier just chalking it up to fate rather than reexamining the relationship with her abusive alcoholic father who died very early in her life. Not that it would have reversed what was happening in her body necessarily, but it may have created some healing and slowed things down.

But since I started living life more consciously, the feelings, thought patterns and behaviours that stem from traumatic events are usually quite obvious now I know what I’m looking for. As I mentioned in a previous blog, some of my favourite go-to reference books for this are Lise Boubeau’s Your Body’s Telling You: Love Yourself and Annette Noontil’s The Body is the Barometer of the Soul,

Traumatic events are not just about abuse though, or the horrors of war, there is also a whole raft of developmental and more commonplace traumas that we each experience. These amount to anything that cause us to go against our true nature, for example:

• Early life parent-child attachment issues
• The culture within the family home, community or country that places more value on certain behaviours than others (for example, extroverted behaviour is valued more in Western society which is not so great for sensitive types like me)
• Normal childhood diseases or immunizations
• Accidents, illnesses, surgeries, medications etc
• Other emotionally significant events like parents getting divorced, or me getting divorced, made redundant or the death of someone significant in my life

In essence, anything of significance creates an emotional signature in the cells of my body whether I lock them out of my conscious thinking or not. The body, in a bid to create healing and equilibrium, will continue to attempt to get my attention for as long as I am in it.

When I set my sights on leading a soul-led life, I knew there was a bit of work to do to unpeel the layers of my own metaphorical onion. But, I’ll be honest, I really wasn’t fully thinking through that each layer is also multi layered (in terms of mind, body, spirit) and discovering what is locked away in the cells of my body didn’t cross my mind.

Yet I have lived through each trauma moment by moment, time and again I have had experiences that jolt my nervous system and do unseen damage within organs. I’m discovering that a broad recognition of, say, a troubled relationship with a parent, and sweeping forgiveness doesn’t really cut it.

So committing to unpeeling the layers of trauma is a bit more involved than I imagined, not unlike parenting. It requires dedication, patience and its own time and space to unfold.

I’m particularly enjoying a sequential honouring of my timeline (starting at the present day and working backwards) using a mix of homeopathy and emotional work. This has been surprising and downright painful at times as I said in Learn to See What Is in Plain Sight, but, in reality it’s quite benign compared to the years of trauma now being expressed.

Left squashed down, my body will try to express what is locked in there in a way that gets louder and louder, so by starting to work through the most recent traumas it simultaneously works through the older, related ones.

For example, I have just had root canal work, a dead nerve being the cause of an excruciating facial neuralgia and a subsequent painful abscess; this is a further expression of dental work that took place a year ago. More importantly, it’s an expression of the pain I felt in being taunted as a child as I described in Play Big in Life, Stand Up and Be Seen and the related anger and sadness that I had never really addressed.

Physically clearing out the dead debris is the same as dealing with the underlying thought patterns and emotions, they are just the physical, intellectual and emotional expressions of the same thing and it allows the issue to dissipate.

One of the techniques I like to use to address my emotions is a visualization where I sit with younger me and hear what she has to say about the issues, and then I invite in (in my imagination) someone wise to give their views, and then I let present day me express how I am now feeling and how it has changed my thinking. This allows me to let go of the old feelings that – having now been heard and understood - are no longer serving a purpose in my life.

For years a mentor of mine has talked about change beginning first at a soul level, then – once I have got up my nerve (to do something) - it filters though to the nervous system , then the electrics come online as little sparks go around my body and fire up my sensory system. Once my body is fully online, my heart begins to feel the change, and finally – lastly – my intellect understands it.

Now that my authentic self has managed to get all systems online, in a good few areas, I can really appreciate intellectually the multi faceted way I was sabotaging my own authenticity for much of my life. I also have a greater respect for my body, which is clearly wiser than my mind, and listen to it far more.

I was told a story today of a little boy who had such a troubled start to his life. When he was first able to talk he would get all agitated and kept repeating “I said no” (to coming into this life). His mother, with loving patience and persistence, has taken the time to spend with him in nature and focus him on the beauty of being here, and now he is far more at peace.

I’m sharing this little story as a parting thought on this topic, because recently when asked what the purpose of life is, this (still) little boy said “to experience true love coming back to you”.

That, in essence, is the purpose of embodying our authentic, spiritual self; to experience true love coming back to you. Now isn’t that a worthy goal?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling and Do You Need to Cherish Yourself? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Aside of the glaringly obvious and well documented health benefits of sleep, this week I’ve been delving deeper into the dreamscape as a way to get me out of my own way; let me explain.

I am here, like each of you, for the joy of the journey and the growth that occurs as a result. As you might know, I’ve spent the last four years specifically focusing on foraging out the fragments of authentic me; the one that lies beneath the decades of experiences that entrenched beliefs I had no choice but to adopt in childhood.

The journey to me will no doubt unfold over my whole lifetime, which is the best part. Without anything to work on, where would the challenge be? But I do like to think of myself as a balloon ready to bob about in the air, contemplating life as one big smorgasbord, so I am on a mission to lighten the load as much as I can.

Having become more consciously aware of the thoughts and feelings within me, regularly meditating and contemplating, and focusing on wheedling out any recurring thought patterns that really aren’t serving me, I’ve come a long way. And yet there are still areas of my life that I know could get a lot lighter, for example, I still have chronic muscle tension in my right shoulder.

There are lots of ways to alleviate muscle tension, but I want to unlock it. And there are so many tools out there that can help, looking at the metaphysical causes of pain and tension or using Applied Kinesiology can provide some big clues, I can also get a deeper understanding from meditative or hypnotic states or using techniques such as Family Constellations, among many others I am sure.

But when I heard Charlie Morley talking about Lucid Dreaming recently, I was reminded about the untapped potential that lies within the time I’m already sleeping each night. In that unconscious state, that we spend around a third of our lives in, our mind is processing through all the interactions of the day. It is completely unhindered by any constraints we place upon our reality in waking life, so there is huge potential to get to the heart of any issues or ongoing themes.

I started keeping a dream diary. If you are a person who rarely remembers their dreams, it’s more about deliberately focusing on their recall. Dreams happen at the end of each sleep cycle throughout the night (typically we have four or five cycles per night, about 90-120 minutes long) at the end of which we are closest to a waking state.  

A friend of mine was asking how I record the dreams, since they happen when I’m asleep. I literally put some paper and a pen next to my bed each night and, having set an intention to capture some details, in a semi-conscious state at the end of the dream I remember to reach out and scribble (with my eyes closed) a brief summary before submerging back into the next cycle.

It then takes me about ten minutes each day to translate these spider-scribbles and record them. Some dreams I remember others I have zero recall of. 

There are a few different components to our dreams that are worth capturing: the plot/actions, feelings, symbols and word play. This helps in the translation. I usually use my intuition when it comes to interpreting them, the key is not to get anxious about it, some I might not be able to make any sense of, others are useful.

Some examples might be: if I was feeling panicked in a dream, I’d look at what was making me anxious in waking life; if there was a distinctive item, character or colour standing out (like the blue velvet shoes I saw in my dream last night), does it have any symbolic significance to me? What about double meanings, if I was being pursued, is there anything in life I’m currently pursuing? Or the overall theme of the dream might represent something I’m working through, like a loss or a failure.

Our dreams are like a virtual reality that depicts what is really going on with our inner life, they don’t lie to us the way we can lie to ourselves when we are awake. If I am unhappy about something, I can deny it and gloss over it when I’m going about my day, but the feelings will haunt me in my dreams.

My best tools for dream interpretation seem to be Google search plus intuition. For example, I keep having recurring dreams that feature lifts/elevators in them. If I Google “Meaning of lifts in dreams” it gives me a variety of options and I just scroll through a few until I find one that fits.

What I found most interesting when I started doing this was the reality check of my overall thought patterns. While awake, it’s easy to address the things that really trigger me and delve into those more, but when I’m asleep the more chronic – less observed – patterns emerge in the dreamscape.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the keywords I’d captured over a five-night period: striving, out of time, worried, being ignored, out of control, failure, unappreciated, outraged, pleasing others, survival, isolated, stressful, up against time, frustrated, harrowing, drowning, and can’t get a grip.

Wow. If I’d have done this exercise five years ago, this would have come as no surprise. Yet the same thought patterns are obviously still playing, albeit at less intensity. They are the white noise of the day, the thoughts in between the ones I’m more conscious of.

After a bit of contemplating and diving into what some of my favourite teachers (Teal Swan, Abraham Hicks and Eckhart Tolle) have to say about dreams, what stuck was something Teal said about being a person who ruminates on the negative aspects of my day.

This is true, I’m a perfectionist in many respects so I’m pretty hard on myself and always striving to do better and be better (particularly when it comes to parenting).

Her advice was to compensate by starting to focus consciously on the positive aspects of the day and how those felt. Now that I’ve started doing this, and writing them down each night, I can see the dreamscape changing from something that felt stressful to something that feels a lot better. As Charlie Morley points out, the more positive our dreamscape the more likely we are to wake up feeling refreshed and revitalized.

This brings me back to the lucid dreams, ones in which we are aware we are dreaming and may even change the dream outcomes; these are the ones we often remember when we wake up without even trying to.

It hadn’t occurred to me the huge opportunity to talk to myself in these dreams. If the dreamscape is our unconscious mind unraveling everything in our psychology and emotions, that means I can get stuck in and ask my unconscious self for answers to questions like “why is my shoulder chronically in pain?” and I’m more likely to get an accurate answer than in a waking state with all my bias and limitations.

The possibilities are endless.  Charlie gives an example of a guy who, while dreaming, became aware he was in a dream. So he asked one of the characters “who are you?” and she replied “your brain”.
He asked his brain about his health and the character said “you’re in perfect health but do us all a favour and stop smoking”. So he asked her to help by making him think of something else every time he felt like a cigarette and she said “Sure, that’s easy”. Since that day he has not smoked another cigarette.

In his book Lucid Dreaming Made Easy, which I’ve just started, Charlie goes on to teach how to have a lucid dream and how to interact with it. I was quite thrilled when his advice to do a reality check worked.

One of the techniques to check you are actually dreaming is to look at your hands then flip them over and back again. The dreaming brain doesn’t have the processing speed to reproduce an identical projection of your hand twice in a row, so you can get some funny variations.

So there I was, in my dream, speeding into a harbor on a boat and I looked down at my hands, then flipped them over and back and the fingers were all misshapen and blurry; I recall feeling pretty pleased in the dream that it worked but was having so much fun I forgot to ask my unconscious mind about my shoulder. Another sleep, another chance will arise.

With a third of our lives spent in slumber, there is so much opportunity to tap in and leverage the wisdom that takes its form in the strange and bizarre landscapes of our dreams, it just take focus. Take out a pad and pen and pop it on your nightstand now, give it a go and see what comes up. Let the dream realm point you in the direction of your best life.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy The Most Honest Feedback You Will Ever Get - Dream Messages. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

“The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.” Lao Tzu

This morning I showed up. I know you need a bit more context than that, but I am starting at the most important place.

Like many of you I’ve been on a spiritual journey for a while now and am past debating about what there is or isn’t out there; each of us has our own understanding of that. I’m also past wondering whether I’m nuts or not when it comes to my own abilities.

Allowing the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into my awareness has opened me up to things I would never have dreamed of, far less believed. If you have never experienced your extra sensory capabilities beyond perhaps the socially acceptable intuitive sense, but would like to, perhaps it is time to ‘show up’. You will never know what you are capable of unless you try.

It’s not that I have always seen or heard things that others might think aren’t there. While I was always interested in the why of everything, the upbringing I had was pretty ‘normal’ and I didn’t hear, see or feel anything unusual so far as I was aware.

In my twenties I was all about exploring my personal potential, but that was limited to the realms of psychology and was more mainstream. My thirties were the beginning of exploring my spiritual beliefs and my forties appear to be defined by the exploration of more paranormal capabilities.

Our human potential fascinates me, opening up to the nature of reality I gape in wonder and awe at its limitless potential. What we call progress is more of a marker of how far from our true nature we are.

If we truly understood our potential, the internet would never have been necessary; the capability to connect and communicate with anyone and everyone at any time exists within us all. We would never have invented metal tubes that fly through the air taxing our bodies; the capability to move our consciousness through time and space also exists for everyone.

The first time I really experienced anything strange was in a guided meditation aimed at resolving old emotional wounds. It transported me back to times where these hurts began, I had to “look down at my feet” to get a sense of the age I was when whatever incident took place that had sparked the thoughts and feelings that were holding me back.

Once, when doing this, I looked down at my feet and just knew they weren’t my feet, neither was it within my lifetime. I got the sense the feet belonged to one of my grandparents back in the 1940’s. It was weird, but the message it came with was reassuring me about emigrating, so I accepted the reassurance and didn’t analyze it; I just put it down to my imagination.

To be fair, I often think any of the extrasensory experiences I have could be simply my imagination. Then I realise it doesn’t matter whether it is or isn’t, what matters is whether what I hear or see helps me or others in some way. I just take what resonates and tell others the same.

Years later, talking with a friend after the death of her sibling, I found myself spontaneously telling her what her dead sister was saying about the way she was feeling. It was a strange sensation, we were sitting in the middle of one of those noisy indoor play parks for kids (not the setting I would have envisaged) and I got this tingly feeling, then I remember saying “I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this but…”.

We both had Goosebumps, but it felt great. Then my next thought was “Who am I?”

Over the next few years these kinds of messages popped up more and more often when I was talking to people. In fact, at one point, it was a daily occurrence for people I hadn’t seen or connected with in years just appearing in my head and I’d have a message for them. I would always pass the message on with the caveat that it was being given in case it was of any help, and they should be sure to take only what resonated,

Then I started more deliberately exploring the different types of abilities people have and trying to figure out if there was a calling in there for me anywhere. After listening to many intuitives, psychics, channels and mediums, I got a much better feel for what I was interested in, and not interested in.

I couldn’t see myself developing a career as a psychic or medium, what interests me is accessing broader intelligence and learning and growing from the different viewpoints that exist beyond just those in people’s heads today.

Then I heard Teal Swan talk about her frequent participation in non-physical forums where various forms of focused consciousness simply share perspectives with each other. This instantly grabbed my attention; it felt like this was the kind of interesting and enriching way of spending my time I’d been looking for.

Now I conceptually understand this is pretty much exactly what we do each night when we are sleeping, but that is an unconscious state. I want to deliberately and consciously shift my awareness in my awakened state to other dimensions to converse with entities who can broaden my view of life within this existence.

I have regular experiences of channeling – some of the stuff that I’ve written sounds far wiser than anything I might say; in fact it is always what I need to hear!  I have no doubts that the ‘me’ I think I am, is much broader than the portion of that consciousness that is generally occupying my body.

While this is great, what I would really like to do is consciously separate (temporarily) from my body in order to experience that broader part of me.

There is no need to convince me that this type of out-of-body experience is possible, in fact it’s more common than I would have believed at the outset of my journey to explore our potential. What I had convinced myself of, was that I lacked the time and space to experience it.

I imagined having to wait until the children were a bit older and going on a lengthy retreat somewhere to be able to really focus on it. A mentor of mine recalled her first experience of this as she taught a Merkaba breathing class many years ago, not that I knew what Merkaba breathing was, but I have since Googled it.  That is indeed the kind of practice I had envisaged doing on a retreat somewhere.

But then she suggested I just show up. Instead of waiting for this moment in the future, just make space for it and sit down at a certain point in the day and imagine myself sitting at the table awaiting to meet with those who are there to share perspectives. Call it my higher-school, and let spirit/life/guides direct me to towards it.

To just show up, that really resonated. I could wait for some point in the future and go on a retreat somewhere to learn about it, but that actually feels a bit contrived. With all that expectation on it, it would unlikely reap what I am looking for. Just showing up for 10 minutes each day felt better, more casual. I decided I’d just do it after my daily meditation.

So the first time I tried I’d gotten a bit caught up in the activity of the day and, by the time I did my meditation and then switched my focus to ‘show up’ for my higher-school, I fell asleep.

The next time, yesterday, I meditated early before any activity had gathered momentum, then I sat afterwards to show up for higher-school again. I did a short practice that I had learned from Alberto Villoldo’s Shamanic teachings to encase yourself in the light that resides in your eighth chakara/ higher heart just to set the intention.

What would this look like I wondered? I tried to decide whether I should be imagining myself in a lecture theatre or at a table, and had decided on a table as it is more interactive. Then, as I pictured myself sitting alone at the table, wondering if it would just be me on my own opening up to a new space, I heard a "hello".

I got this sense of talking to an older man and an image of someone with grey hair and a beard popped into my head. “Richard Bach!” I thought incredulously. Now it’s been a few years since I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull and, to the best of my recollection, it hasn’t come up in conversation lately. So this companion at the forum was rather a surprise.

Feeling awkward, I asked him what he was doing there above the clouds, and he chuckled and said “where else would I be?” This had all thrown me a bit as I don’t think I had actually been expecting anything to happen or any entities to appear, far less one I knew of. I became aware that the point of this whole exercise was about sharing perspectives to expand my views and felt suddenly ill prepared.

So I then asked him why he left the fourth part of his book out first time around, he replied that he didn’t think people were ready to hear it back then. Personally it was my favourite part. Then I asked whether he connected here with others often and he does. I asked who shows up to these things and he said sometimes people like us, sometimes entities from other dimensions; sometimes it's busy, sometimes not.

Then I got the sense he was becoming disinterested, it was – after all – the kind of conversation he could have at a book signing somewhere. I began to feel overly conscious that I wasn’t really contributing anything to this exchange and started to feel more awkward again, wondering what to say next. That is when I sensed things fading away and I felt myself drop back downwards into my body.

Whether what I experienced was in the realms of higher consciousness, or simply an over-active imagination, it less relevant to me than what I got out of it. It was a confidence booster that I can just start to show up in the small snatched moments I have, and see what answers arise to the questions I do have.

There are many questions, like what could the evolution of our monetary system look like? What could the evolution of any of our ‘systems’ (healthcare, education, governments, businesses etc) of society look like?

What does the evolution of our species look like with conscious awareness? Is our potential in human form limitless? What’s Earth’s significance in the Cosmos?

I’d like to understand the answers from an anthropological perspective, and what we have to learn from previous cultures that were more advanced in certain ways (not from books, but from the broader consciousness).

I’d like to understand from other forms of consciousness that reside in physical worlds that may be more advanced. I’d like to understand for those forms of non-physical consciousness that are there to guide and help.

These are all things that interest me, they add meaning to why I am here now, having this life experience. But that is just me. Each of us has our own interests, unique and important. And we each have limitless potential to explore these.

The question is whether you will show up? To show up just means making yourself available. Whether there is something specific you have in mind, or whether you just have this general sense of what you’d love to explore, start somewhere – anywhere. 

I once heard someone ask whether life can be defined more by its potential than its limitation. To show up is to believe in the possibility of your life being more than it is now. Believe in your potential and you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve.

If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective (and only that, it’s not advice you have to take or act upon) on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me or click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

It has taken me a while to pay attention to my dreams – 46 years to be precise. I’ve always felt there must be something useful in there, some point to them, but as they are generally symbolic rather than literal I hadn’t really taken much time to try and figure it out.

Given the momentary lingering of our dreams, mixed with the often harried start to the day and the lack of understanding of the symbolism, I just haven’t focused much on it until now. It seems to me, though, that dreams are a valid form of communication; a way for us to unpack (and make sense of) the experiences we’re having, if only we would pay attention.

Dreams are an unadulterated expression of how we are feeling and devoid of judgment, which makes them a particularly useful form of feedback.

Years back I remember buying a book on dreams in a vague attempt to understand them, but it felt wishy-washy and didn’t really capture the sorts of dreams I was having. At the time I was working in a career I found stressful, so it is no surprise that I used to have recurring dreams that were like various versions of The Hunger Games playing in my mind.

These were dreams of a death chase, with some form or forms of heinous creatures pursuing me in a relentless way. It is sad to say that was not unlike the wakened version of my life at the time, with corporate politics and egos at play. Of course, in my awakened state I’d tell myself all sorts of rubbish to play down the constant frustrations and feel better about my situation, but the dreams didn’t hide from the truth.

These days, thankfully, dreams like that are rare. Though with two young children to contend with, not all dreams are devoid of symbolic incarnations of something stressful!

Wide awake, in the throes of ‘life’, it is too easy to quash down how I am really feeling and just plough on from task to task. I have discovered this is no way to live though and wrote about it, most recently, in What Are Our Thought Patterns Really Doing for Us.

Ignoring how I feel about things comes at a cost, my health. From early warning signs like headaches, aches and pains, colds and chesty coughs, to full blown wake up calls like accidents and serious illness, it appears to me the way we feel about things in our life will keep percolating until we pay attention.

That’s what makes dreams useful; they give us another angle of awareness. With so many explanations for pretty much any and every kind of dream at our fingertips these days, I find there is great satisfaction in being able to quickly scan the results of a Google search to see what comes up and find something that feels right to me; message received.

There is another recurring dream I have had since childhood, though not so much these days, where I’m trying to dial a phone number and keep misdialing. An instant search on “misdialing dreams” and, voila, I have some sensible answers. It could mean I’m feeling:

• frustrated in communicating something
• isolated or cut off from others
• the need to reach out for help
• a fear of needing help and not being able to get it.

As someone who has often seemed to think a little differently to others, the top two definitely resonate with me. Though, while these dreams have stayed with me – emblazoned in my memory by the accompanying feelings of anxiety – the situations that elicited these dreams are long since forgotten.

Had I of being paying attention a bit more at the time, no doubt the self awareness would have helped to resolve issues a bit quicker.

Not all dreams are bad of course, the nicer ones are just as insightful and, even better, the good feelings they evoke stay with me long after waking up.

Last week, for example, I was dreaming that I was in my house (though it wasn’t my actual house I live in, just one I thought of as my house in the dream) and then I discovered a whole new room I’d never known was there before.

Symbolically house dreams relate to the place in which your spirit dwells (i.e. you) and new rooms indicate areas of ourselves we hadn’t noticed before; in short it’s about self-exploration and personal growth. This was interesting because – in the dream – the new room I happened upon was large and fairly empty, a drawing room that led down into a huge palatial dining room.

I recall fleetingly feeling overwhelmed as I looked into the dining room, since no end could be seen to it, so by the time I stepped into the drawing room to go and have a closer look, the entrance to the dining area was encased in glass as if to say “let’s deal with one thing at a time”.

There were many other things going on in that same dream, before stepping into the new room, I was aware the kids were running amok and – simultaneously – this huge crocodile-like creature was also on the loose. I was afraid it was going to eat my youngest child but then realised it had flat rather than sharp teeth so would probably be more interested in the house plants.

Without even looking it up, it felt like a message to me to ease up on my fears (my youngest is very impulsive and I often notice the angst I feel in relation to that).

In the past I also used to have dreams about forgotten rooms – in fact there was a recurring dream about an entire wing of the house that I kept rediscovering, which was all locked up. There was a feeling of dread that the door, once unlocked, would unleash all sorts of unwanted terror in my life.

When I had the more welcome and much nicer version of the undiscovered rooms last week, I realised I must now have cleared any fear about who I am or what could be lurking in my depths, and have cleared the space to grow.

Sometimes dreams can be multi-faceted, and may require several lines of interpretation woven together. Just take each symbol, and the prevalent feelings that stick with you, and check what each means in a way that makes sense for you.

There is no right and wrong answers when it comes to dream interpretation, each of us places different meanings on different symbols, so while a Google search will bring a variety of answers, it’s important to go with an answer that feels right to you.

The important thing is to start noticing our dreams as one of the most valid and honest forms of feedback we have at our disposal.

Over time I have come to believe that dreams are my best litmus test for what is truly going on in my life. While I have a goal to find more happiness in a day than frustration, in a waking state I am often too distracted to pay much heed to what I’m thinking or feeling. But my dreams don’t lie; they often tell me that I’m still sweating the small stuff.  

It’s a bit like if I were on a diet, and I kept snacking on things I shouldn’t and telling myself it didn’t matter it was “only a few chips”, or a “bite of chocolate”; at the end of the day, the scales wouldn’t lie. Neither will my dreams. If I am frequently doing and thinking things that are not making me happy, my dreams reflect this whether I am consciously aware of my overall emotional state or not.

So it makes good sense to me to use my dreams as a way to check in on my goals and progress towards them. They are quick to tell me when I’m heading the wrong way, and when I’m on track.

If you are like me and on quest for growth, a truth seeker (your own truths), you might just find the answers are right under your eyes – literally - when you are sound asleep. Your dreams are waiting to guide you to your best life.

If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me. There’s no charge or strings attached, I truly enjoy helping where I can, click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

“Self is a sea boundless and measureless” Kahil Gibran

A spark ignited when my friend told me she’d spent two hours down at the beach yesterday contemplating this question. At first my mind whizzed with all the possibilities, and then I sat and contemplated the actual question and its inference.

“Who is this self that I don’t believe in?” I wondered. In the realms of our entire existence that felt like such a huge question. So I narrowed it down to two ‘selves’ to keep my head straight; let me introduce them.

There’s Mind-Me, the one that lives this life I’m having in this body and this place, the one everyone acknowledges is ‘me’; even my dad.  Then there’s Big-Me, the one who is eternal, multi-dimensional and omnipresent, the one some people struggle to even acknowledge might be there. That is okay, I don’t.

Yet Mind-Me struggles to trust Big-Me; maybe it’s the little ego Mind-Me is so fond of, or the multitude of experiences Mind-Me has had since birthing into this body, in this place. It’s taken Mind-Me over four decades to begin to understand Big-Me.

Mind-Me likely had the same sort of upbringing as you did. The details will be different, but the gist is the same: There were bad times and good times, struggles and challenges, peppered with moments of upliftment and joy.
​
Based on some of the wiring Mind-Me birthed into, and these experiences since arriving, Mind-Me now has a whole heap of tapes playing in my head that, quite frankly, don’t really serve me at all. Meeting Big-Me has helped Mind-Me become aware of those tapes in my head.

Big-Me is amazing, always upbeat, always moving forwards, always seeing the best in everything. But there is more, Big-Me rephrased the question that got me all jazzed up in writing this in the first place.

“How would life be different if Big-Me was in the driving seat?”

How would it be different for you? If that greater part of who you are was to take the wheel for a while?

Holy shmoly. Now we are talking, the playing field really opens up!

But before we go there, let’s give Mind-Me a bit of credit – go on, you do the same for yourself.

Here is the thing, Mind-Me has been pretty good at getting my big girl undies on when there are changes to be made. I’ve never been one to shy away from ‘doing the right thing’ for myself. If I’ve needed to move jobs, leave a relationship or otherwise change things in my life, regardless of how terrifying the prospect, I’ve always taken a deep breath and jumped.

I understand not everyone feels or acts that way, it just depends what wiring and experiences you came into. But don’t think for one second there aren’t a whole heap of tapes in my head that amount to a lack of self confidence and self worth, there are. I just push through despite them and am thankful for everything I have in my life as a result; good and bad.

I realise that to have acted in that way, and to feel that way, I must have always known Big-Me at some level. I had faith that life would ‘work out for the best’ - always – even if I couldn’t see it right then.

So part of me thinks, with Mind-Me running the show, I’m not sure how hugely different my life would be on the outside, perhaps there just would have been less angst and turmoil on the inside which would have resulted in less obstacles along the way.

But then I think about the Big-Me I’ve come to know and, well, that knocks my socks off.

Big-Me isn’t just about confidence. Big-Me has the power to create life as Mind-Me knows it, and far beyond.

​Big-Me lives in abundance and knows only wellbeing. Big-Me is not limited by my physical senses, Big-Me experiences all aspects of life in a multisensory way I only caught a glimpse of when my mum passed over. That is a whole other story in itself, but it was glorious.

Big-Me blows my mind!

How true that is, Mind-Me struggles to conceive of life with Big-Me in the driving seat. That is why Big-Me finds ways to put others’ experiences in front of Mind-Me to help me understand what my potential is.

Listening to and reading about the experiences of others has expanded Mind-Me’s view of human potential far beyond where it lay 10 years ago, even a year ago, and it continues to expand. It’s simply a matter of conscious awareness and applying what I become aware of to my life, so I can add it to my knowledge and experiences.

So how would my life be different if I believed in myself, in Big-Me?

I would have vibrant health rather than having some chronic mumbles and grumbles, along with the occasional acute wake up calls.  I would see the perfection in everything, compassion abounding rather than judgment arising. I would live in abundance, without concern for where I am living or what I am wearing or eating, it would simply all click together. 

I would be love, allowing myself to feel it rather than holding it in resistance as I am apt to do when I get stressed. In allowing myself to be and feel the love that is there, my potential in this body to navigate the wonders of the non-physical world would grow exponentially.

Telepathy, telekinesis, transmutation, astral projection, on and on, become possibilities. What’s more… is the realization that putting Big-Me in the driving seat of my life is simply an ongoing shift in conscious awareness. It is a practice.

Becoming consciously aware of all that I am, all that is possible, is a reflection of more and more of us awakening to the same.  That is nothing short of magnificent.

Imagine the changes in our societies, in the way we live with our planet and all its creatures, and the cosmos around us? We could be free of the chains of the economic system, and of all the other systems it has spurned. We would approach relationships, child rearing, health, education, science, leisure, creative activities, even nourishment, all in different ways. Thinking would be valued not for its limitations, but for its limitless potential in creation.

The world really could live in all its glory, and it is. That is my personal take out from all of this, is seeing just how perfectly all of this is unfolding around us.
​
For each of us, life is a journey. But how about we start to explore our dreams and capabilities? Kahil Gibran is right, self is a sea boundless and measureless. So, I ask again, how would your life be different if you believed in Big You?
 
If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, feel free to contact me. There’s no charge or strings attached, I truly enjoy helping where I can, click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
​