Stress

A New Year and a New Bridge…

January 11, 2012 by Carol Leave a Comment

I am so pleased and relieved to be beginning the new year with a new bridge connecting my home and office to the outside world. Enjoying the simple pleasures of pulling into my driveway to unload groceries instead of carting them over the footbridge and though the mud in a wheelbarrow, the security of getting a fuel delivery at last, and being able to turn on the heat…

Since Hurricane Irene destroyed our bridge, I have been pondering the metaphoric significance of bridges in my life. Bridges as connection, as links, as the pathway from one place or state to another… What does it mean when connections are suddenly severed? How do we adapt to unexpected events that change how we live our lives? How we feel safe when the structures that we rely upon are taken away?

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Water, Change and Hurricane Irene

November 13, 2011 by Carol 1 Comment

It’s been months since I sent out a newsletter, months since I felt like life was sort of normal. When Hurricane Irene blew through the Northeast it changed my life. In a matter of hours, the rising, chaotic waters washed out the bridge that connects my home and office to the rest of civilization.

Living near a creek has always felt like a blessing. I wake up and fall asleep to the ever present sounds of water, flowing, tumbling, rushing, murmuring. In warm weather I work with the sliding glass doors open in my office and the sounds of water add another level of healing to my work.

But in the hurricane, the water became frightening. Rising higher than I had ever seen it, it rushed by at 40 miles an hour – whole up-rooted trees flying by like twigs. And when the rain stopped, where our sturdy steel and concrete bridge had connected us to the main road, there was only swirling white water and a rising helplessness in the face of that much power.

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Giving It Over – Do I Really Have To Do It All Myself?

July 4, 2011 by Carol Leave a Comment

I just found a computer program that creates a fancy To Do list for me and I felt an immediate sense of relief. How much mental energy do we use just trying to remember all the myriad details of life? And how relaxing it is to stop keeping track and give it over to someone or something else?

Giving it over is a powerful concept; acknowledging that we can’t and don’t have to do it all, that something else is there to the burden off of our shoulders. Any process of connecting to our higher self, to spirit, God, a higher power – whether in meditation, contemplation, prayer, dance, chanting, Yoga, or your favorite mode is a way of giving over, and letting go of the illusion that we are in this alone and have to do everything ourselves.

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Imagery, Visualization and Kindness…

June 8, 2011 by Carol Leave a Comment

Often clients have told me that they can’t do guided imagery because they “can’t visualize.” I find it ironic, because the truth is, we are all absolutely expert at what I call ‘negative imagery.’ Sending our bodies messages that they obediently respond to; “I’m clumsy, I’m fat (and I’ll always be fat!), I have a bad back, a sensitive stomach, that medicine will make me nauseous, I’ll never heal…” the litany of negative thoughts and negative imagery goes on all day.

So what if we could harness this ability we all seem to have and creatively use it for health and healing? What if the messages were positive and health-promoting, instead of critical and judgmental? What if we were actually kind to ourselves? Somewhere, most of us got the message that criticizing and judging ourselves would somehow make us better. It’s worth asking yourself these very important questions: What aspects of yourself do you judge most harshly? Who else in your life (parents, teachers, etc.) judged you for these things in your past? Do you really think they were right? Has the judgement and criticism ever helped you?

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How Do I Fit Meditation Into My Busy Life?

May 31, 2011 by Carol 1 Comment

The question I hear most frequently is “how do I find time to meditate? I’m stressed enough already, trying to find time to meditate is even more stressful!” Life seems busier, more rushed, more full of stuff to do every year. So how do we find extra time to do the things that will, theoretically, make us feel calmer, more relaxed, more centered?

It used to be with meditation, the longer the better. Now, in the age of tweeting, texting and shortening attention spans, people want something short and sweet. And actually, I think that’s just fine…

We are no longer in the days of retiring to a mountaintop to contemplate the Universe.

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Releasing Stress, Finding Peace…

May 25, 2011 by Carol Leave a Comment

The CDs of my new guided imagery meditation Releasing Stress, Finding Peace just arrived! I am so thrilled to have this concrete product of months of work finally in my hands. It has been a vision of mine for a long time to create a guided imagery meditation on letting go of stress, and finding that elusive connection with the deep place of peace that dwells within us.

I think it is my favorite piece of work – and working with the very gifted composer Dennis Yerry of the Hawk Project (who turns out to live right down the road from me!) brought it all together. So I am shamelessly saying “if you know anyone who is stressed, buy them a copy!” The toxic and damaging effects of stress are so detrimental to body, heart, mind and spirit. Take a quarter of an hour to let it go and re-balance your system. It is available on mp3 and CD on my website, and you can listen to a sample right here:

Click here to listen

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Loving what is – or how I learned to love and accept snow days

February 18, 2011 by Carol 2 Comments

One of my favorite teachers, Byron Katie, talks about ‘loving what is’ – letting go of our innate, knee-jerk reactions of “I don’t like this, this is not what I want, this situation, this person, life should be different,” and just being present and accepting what is. Living in the Northeast this winter has been an interesting exercise in acceptance, in learning to be with what is, in this case snow, snow and more snow!

In my EFT work, a common tapping phrase that I use is “even though I have (this problem,) I can accept myself, my life just as it is.” Even though it is not what I might have consciously chosen, I can accept it anyway, and accept myself and my skillful and not so skillful responses to life, just as they are.

I have always loved the seasons, the shifting changing colors and temperatures. While the transformative energies of spring and fall are my slight favorites, I do love them all. Winter to me, has always been a time to slow down, enjoy the warmth of a fire, and move a little more inward. This year, though, it has been week after week of storms and frigid temperatures, housebound by icy roads, canceling clients and activities.

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crisis and opportunity..

September 9, 2010 by Carol 1 Comment

A young friend of mine recently got involved with a young woman who lied to him about being over 18, and her father had him arrested for Statutory Rape. And in one moment, he was abruptly shifted from living his life, filled with hope and possibility and a future, to living in a frozen space of fear and uncertainty. Fear is like that – it can sneak up in an instant, flooding your veins with icy panic, and filling your energy field with a dark fog.

The fear is palpable around him now, and I watch him desperately trying to see his life as he knew it, through the fog that surrounds him. Pat, “spiritual” answers like “trust the Universe” and “change your vibration” are less than meaningless to him. In the midst of my fear and concern for him, can I hold that space of trust? Can I hold my vision of his future, hold the vibration of safety for him?

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safe space…

August 1, 2010 by Carol Leave a Comment

And what I find particularly interesting, is how do we create safe space for our bodies?

Lately I’ve been involved in a very interesting conversation about creating safe space. It came up in talking about working with clients, but it really applies to our lives as a whole. How do we create safe space for ourselves?

I don’t mean wearing a seatbelt, and picking up broken glass before you step in it! I mean how do we give our bodies the opportunity to relax, to feel the sense of safety that allows us to let go of the stress response that keeps us vigilant, ready for danger, ready for confrontation, or ready to run. How do we allow our bodies to be at peace?

So many of us walk around in a perpetual state of fight or flight readiness, with stress hormones coursing through our veins, muscles tense, sympathetic nervous system on alert. If your mother was severely tense or anxious when she was pregnant with you, you were bathed in her stress hormones, and born accustomed to a high level in your bloodstream.

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short attention span theatre…

July 17, 2010 by Carol 1 Comment

Twenty years ago, I loved the comedy show called Short Attention Span Theatre. Lately, I keep being reminded of it… what has happened to us? Our culture cultivates and rewards having the attention span of a gerbil (I never lived with one, but I am told they are very fickle with their focus!) We have to be in constant contact with our 183 closest friends, but we want to keep it to 140 characters or less. We text instead of talking, message instead of writing, tweet because the world as we know it will cease to exist if everyone doesn’t know what we’re doing at least 5 times a day!

I must confess, I am dipping my toes in the murky waters of facebook these days, and trying to understand the draw, and the meaning of it all. A few times, I have gotten involved in a very interesting conversation thread with some pretty cool folks. But so much of the chatter seems to be just that! Chatting for the sake of keeping up some strange, fragmented sense of contact and connection. I find myself yelling at the names on my computer screen “Don’t you have anything better to do? Just pick up the damn phone and have an actual conversation with an actual person!”

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