energy Archives - Francine Kelley, LCPC, SEP, RYT500

Breathing to Live

Hope that you are well and enjoying this moment of Life!

I’ve been fascinated with the breath lately. It’s pretty amazing that the thing we need most to survive (air) is abundant and free! We walk around in it! Your breath can have a calming effect on your nervous system, and yet constrictive breathing patterns can be agitating to the mind. That’s one of the reasons yoga is so focused on breath. Free your breath and you free your spirit!

Our bodies are such fascinating instruments, and so wonderfully interconnected. Amazing, really. Did you know that tension in your jaw can affect the health of your pelvis? And that chronic tension in your shoulders can be an indication of constrictive breathing habits?

I do breath awareness work in my Yoga for Pelvic Health classes and with many of my psychotherapy clients, simply because the breath influences so much about the body and mind. Read on below for more tips about breathing. And don’t worry! If you’re alive and reading this, then there’s a good change your body is breathing well enough right now! And with compassionate curiosity you can develop awareness of how you could free your breath even more!

Quick Facts about Breath and Breathing

I’ve become really fascinated by the breath and the mechanisms of breathing lately, and I’m especially interested in the ways that the breath affects our nervous systems, and therefore our state of anxiety or relaxation. Here are some facts that might surprise you, or might be enlightening!

When you’re relaxed your breath is usually slower & deeper, but not forced or strained
When you’re agitated or afraid, your breath is faster and usually higher in your chest
Your breath should change depending on the context – if you’re running, you need to be breathing faster and deeper than if you’re sitting and reading this email
More oxygen is not necessarily a good thing. You need a balance of oxygen to carbon dioxide in order for your body to function well (yes, you need carbon dioxide!) Too much oxygen can be as problematic as not enough, and breathing too hard or too fast all the time can alter your balance of oxygen to carbon dioxide actually causing anxiety & other problematic symptoms
Your lungs span the area from just below your collar bones to your lower ribs (there are no lungs in your belly/abdomen).
Think of breathing in through your nose and down into your lower ribs
The belly moves out as a result of the downward movement of your diaphragm – a muscle that connects to your lower ribs & spine – when you inhale. Forcing the belly out isn’t a good idea and doesn’t help you breathe better.
Your lower ribs should move when you breathe. When you’re exerting yourself, your upper chest should also move to allow more space for your lungs to fill. Your shoulder muscles generally shouldn’t be used for breathing
Allowing ribs and belly to move when you breathe provides for a freer breath and a more balanced & content nervous system.
Tucking your pelvis under (squeezing buttocks in) and holding your belly in wreaks havoc with your breathing and isn’t good for your spine (or your pelvis). Whether sitting or standing, the pelvis should optimally be in a neutral position with a curve at your lower (lumbar) spine
A “deep” breath doesn’t mean forcing the breath into your belly or taking a big, loud breath. It’s best for the breath to move quietly, freely & deeply into the body at a relatively relaxed rate – depending, of course, on what your body is doing.
The average number of breaths per minute is 15-20 for adults.

Any of this sound new or contrary to what you learned in yoga class? It’s been an education for me to study the breath more deeply too & I’ve had to relearn some things! It’s also been wonderful to observe how psychotherapy clients and yoga students have benefited from learning more about how their breath works.

Please feel free to leave a comment to this post and let me know what you think…

We already have Peace on Earth

In my yoga classes and with therapy clients and meditation students, I often lead a mindfulness exercise where we notice discomfort or tension in the body and then also notice where there is ease, relaxation or comfort. It usually comes as a surprise that both tension and ease can exist in the body at the same time – what you experience is determined by where you place your focus. This works the same with emotions – we can have multiple seemingly opposite and often conflicting emotions happening at the same time. What you experience is determined by where you choose to focus.

This all might come as news to some of us. Yes, we have multiple emotions and sensory experiences happening at once, but we usually only focus on one – and usually it’s the more challenging or unpleasant one. The idea that I could change my experience based on what I focus on actually irritated me when I first heard it because it seemed to be saying that I should ignore the feelings I was having. Actually, rather than ignoring what you’re feeling, the ability to notice what else you’re feeling can open up a wider range of experiences and possibilities. The more we notice, the more the experience expands. For example, noticing that there is also comfort or ease in the body often has the effect of alleviating some of the tension!

I led this exercise for a group yesterday, and then this morning in my meditation I had a thought: Maybe what we need to do is not keep working for Peace on Earth as some future ideal that seems only vaguely possible. Maybe what we actually need to do is to open to the Peace that is actually already on Earth. Noticing the softness of your breath, the gentleness of the wind, the smile and coos of a baby, the stillness or soft movement of the lake, the softness of a loved-one’s embrace, the gentle falling of the snow or grass swaying in the breeze, the moments of quiet. Accessing the feeling of peace in your body – the felt experience of peace – you can perhaps also begin to experience this even in the midst of chaos. You can begin to notice the peace of the Earth underneath us and the peace in the air all around us – even when there is also anxiety and hurry and fear. The more we can notice the Peace that is already here, the more it can expand.

This holiday season, may you experience the Peace that is already here on Earth.

Namste!

Unlimited potential

Are there limits to your perception? How big do you imagine the Universe to be? How far does your energy field go? Where do you end and the space around you begin?

My husband and I have an ongoing discussion/debate about the limits of human potential. I don’t think that there are any limits. He thinks there are things humans just weren’t designed to ever be able to do. Maybe I’m just opinionated (an existential hazard of being born with 4+ planets in Aries) but I really believe that as humans we are only limited by our perceptions of what is possible.

Think of all the inventions of the last century. I was explaining to my 5-year-old daughter tonight that my grandmother Mary, born in 1900, didn’t have television as a child – and read books by lamp light. And when I was my daughter’s age, TV (in Jamaica) was in black and white! She could hardly imagine such a horror! Technology has shifted what we believe to be possible. And I would argue that our belief in what is possible has accelerated the phenomenal technological and consciousness shifts of the last century. Because of technology my dad survived a heart attack 8 years ago that would certainly have killed him 50 years ago. Because of technology we also know immediately when tragedy has occurred anywhere in the world and we can rush to help relieve suffering.

As technology has supported our belief in what is possible we have dared to dream bigger dreams. And because we are human these dreams of course have been fueled not just by our altruism and generosity, but also by our fear and our greed. And so even as some people dream big dreams, others are afraid that these dreams will destroy us. We live in fragile human bodies – the identification with which leads us to be afraid of death. This fear of death, the yogis say, is one of the things that binds us to suffering. (It also keeps the majority of us from jumping in front of moving trucks!) This fear of death (or of annihilation – or non-being) also seems to underlie much of our resistance to life – what I would describe as contraction.

One of my first experiences with Reconnective Healing was through a process called The Reconnection. This axiatonal realignment process is designed to reconnect us with our true potential. During this 2-day process I had the realization that I was participating in something much larger than myself that was happening all across the planet and directly impacting human evolution. It was amazing to me – mind-opening in fact. It was so amazing that it scared me silly. I felt that I was on the edge of a precipice – that I had been brought to the edge of the Void and my next step was to jump in – to something I didn’t and would never fully understand – at least not with my mind. In the Reconnective Healing training I asked Eric Pearl about it and he said “Isn’t it exciting?!” Exciting? Heck no! It was terrifying!

In the years since my Reconnection I’ve come to some realizations that my mind still has some trouble wrapping its mind around. I’ve come to accept that the Void is everything. There wasn’t anywhere for me to jump because I was already here. What was missing was my perception. The Void is awareness and awareness is all that we are. Some of us have amazing experiences of it, others more subtle realizations. But whether we are aware of awareness or not, it is the ‘substance’ of which we are made. Each of us is all that is – “the world in a grain of sand.” This is why I believe in the immense potential of humankind – if we choose to embrace it. It’s not an imperative in my mind – it won’t make us better humans than we are now – but I think it would be really, really fun! I also think our expansion into this understanding is happening whether we like it or not. We can be immensely joyful and compassionate, or we can be immensely selfish and greedy. Through it all we are being – whichever choices we make, wherever we go, whatever we do. We are the Void – nothing and everything. Immense, unlimited potential.

In this Universe, as we experience it, is the potential for contraction or expansion. So as we approach the dawn of a new year, the question arises – how expansive can you allow your perception to be? As you imagine the vastness of our human potential, does contraction eventually kick in? What form does it take? Is it fear, is it a belief system or an adopted “truth?” Is it a sense of how things can’t be or should be? Is it sadness for the way things are? So, what if you could open to let even your contraction be expansive? In other words, what if you could just allow it to be okay to have all those thoughts and welcome them into this sense of expansion or possibility? Then how much could you allow your heart or your joy to expand? And in the midst of all of this, how much could you love yourself, just as you are – contraction, expansion, resistance and all?

To quote Blake (don’t be impressed, this was my first time actually reading the poem! These lines actually stopped my breath for a second):

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

You are the world in a grain of sand – all the Universes in one human body. What could be impossible?

Have a blessed, expansive, loving, joyful, perfect-as-you-are New Year!!

See you on the other side…

Making friends with yourself

What would you do if a friend confessed to you that she felt really badly about something she had recently done, or really didn’t like something about herself? You would probably feel some compassion for your friend and try to think of something to say to help her feel better, right? And yet what do you do to yourself when you feel badly about something you’ve done? What thoughts come about when you think of the things about yourself that you don’t like? For most of us those thoughts aren’t about being compassionate!

It’s not a secret that we tend to treat others better than we treat ourselves, often to the point where we can offer compassion to others, but have difficulty offering it to ourselves, or even receiving it from others. How much we are able to love ourselves, I think, is directly related to how much we can allow others to love us. If we beat up on ourselves, on some level we begin to think of ourselves as inherently flawed and unlovable. This breeds suspicion and disbelief when others see us differently. We might even back away from people or relationships because we aren’t used to allowing the light of love and compassion into our hearts. To be loved or lovable is unfamiliar.

A few months ago I told someone that I felt I had made friends with my mind. The person responded first with surprise and then with disappointment. “I wish I could do that,” she said. In our culture we tend to think it unlikely that this could ever be possible. Instead we believe that we need to control, cover up, pretend, medicate and distract. And yet, it is possible. In Buddhism, this acceptance of self is called ‘maitri.’ Pema Chodron, a wonderful Buddhist teacher describes maitri on this youtube video as “unconditional friendliness toward oneself.” She describes maitri as “the basis of compassion.”

Think of it, what if you were able to just think of yourself as being okay? What would your life be like if you were able to cut yourself some slack and just love yourself as you are without trying to be more perfect, more knowledgeable, more attractive… How much stress do we put on ourselves trying to be more or ‘better’ because we are so dissatisfied, so averse to what we are now? And yet, have we even looked to see what is actually here or is it just an assumption that what we are couldn’t possibly be enough?

So, how to go about cultivating this self-compassion? I think the first step is really to welcome the possibility that you could be unconditionally friendly towards yourself, that you could be worthy of loving. From there, I’ve found that the universe is only too happy to lead you into more and more lessons and revelations. Sometimes the lessons are easy and sometimes not. It is not that life suddenly becomes a bed of roses, but that you begin to see the difficulties as more ways of deepening in relationship with yourself and with others. Any relationship takes effort and most relationships work better if the focus is on the other person’s positive qualities vs. judging their flaws.

In my experience, a simple way to begin to cultivate self-compassion is to spend some time acknowledging the aspects of yourself that you actually do appreciate. Since we have such a tendency to judge things as good or bad, let me be clear that the other aspects aren’t bad per se. It is just easier at first to love ourselves based on those things we perceive as ‘positive’ qualities. It might take some time (it took me days the first time I tried to come up with one thing), but just finding one thing you appreciate about yourself is like clearing a little hole on the grimy window of our past perception so that the light can begin to shine through.

Make a phrase with your one ‘positive’ quality (or more if you have more than one). For me it was “I am compassionate.” Notice how your body feels when you say this phrase. And when you find your mind going into the place of self-judgment or self-criticism, let this phrase be your ray of light. Once that tiny ray of light is experienced, the shadows become less dense and the darkness begins to give way. Repeat your phrase whenever you think of it. Eventually you might find it pops up on its own!

In the next few blog entries I’ll be offering more tools that have helped me to bring light into my shadows. If you have other tips, comments or experiences to offer, please feel free to share those as well by clicking on the Comments link below.

Until next time, may you live with ease ☺

Is there such a thing as “negative energy?”

Realizing this topic can rub people the wrong way, I offer the disclaimer that this post, like any other I might write is simply meant to cast a few ripples and see where they settle. I’m not preaching or saying it is definitely so, just offering my ponderings on the subject and hoping to clarify as I learn from others.

That said, years ago I attended a lovely talk at Unity in Chicago with Katerina Pellegrino. She is a spirit medium who works with John of God in Brazil. Someone asked a question about how to deal with evil and she presented the notion that what we call evil is actually just a separation from God. As a Reiki practitioner for many years, I was taught to clear “negative” energy from the person I was working on before sending Reiki to them. It always seemed a little awkward to me, all this clearing and containing and disposing of other people’s negative energy. Then I heard Eric Pearl speak and read his book and he had the opposite view. He said all this avoidance of ‘negative energy’ was fear-based and unnecessary. I came to the conclusion that he thought there was no such thing.

So now that begs the question. What is it that you feel when you walk into a room where someone has just had an argument? What is it that people feel when they go to former sites of epic battles or mass human suffering? What is that icky vibe you get from people sometimes? Isn’t that negative energy? As humans we like to categorize and simplify. So light and dark become associated with good and bad, positive and negative. It’s also very convenient to label someone as being “negative” or having ‘negative energy.’ Then we can feel very positive and separate and good.

But what if we looked at it a different way? What if we thought of energy according to the principles of expansion and contraction, as the yogis have? When we are afraid, we tend to contract – physically, emotionally, energetically. The more fear, the more density and darkness. When we are feeling joyful, we feel expansive, connected, light and free. So what if all that ‘darkness’ and ‘negativity’ is really just fear that we are unwilling to face. We avoid the fear within ourselves, we are repulsed when it appears in others. Yet if we could connect with our own fear compassionately, maybe we could see that contraction in others with the same compassion, rather than with aversion. Then, instead of feeding the fear with more fear, we could allow the possibility of light and love.

Whaddya think?

Are you a karma buster?

I know its been a while since I’ve posted! 2010 has so far been a fascinating year of insights, observances, wonderful experiences and deep internal struggles. Sometimes I’m not even sure what part of the mix to write about. So, this possibility of “karma busters” peaked my curiosity recently and seemed just “light” enough that I won’t use too many words 🙂 Lemme know what you think…

It’s no secret that we’re influenced by generations past. Even on a purely scientific level, there’s the issue of hereditary transmission of genetic conditions and disease tendencies. So when I learned the concept of ‘family karma’ years ago, it had a ring of truth to it. I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea that many of us are on the planet right now to be karma busters – breaking the chain of reactivity that has characterized much of our individual family histories.

If you think of karma, not this “eye for an eye” concept that it has become in the popular culture, but as a simple system of cause and effect, generational transmission of behavioral or even disease tendencies is not so strange. One generation’s parenting affects the choices of the next and often leads to reactive swings in parenting strategies from one extreme to the next. A family with a history of trauma or addiction (or both) might be able to trace the manifestation of that traumatic effect through generations. Sometimes the original cause of the seeming disfunction is lost in time, and yet the effects remain.

I had a fascinating Reiki Therapy session last year where an ancestor from generations past spoke about the legacy of fear that she had unwittingly released into my maternal line. She said we were at a point in time when this legacy could be let go. During that time I felt energetic ‘chains’ being released from my spine. I realized after communicating with her that I had been working for years to break up that legacy – to “bust up” and transform that karma.

I am blessed to be surrounded by wonderfully mindful and present individuals. Talking to people, I’ve realized that many of us seem to be involved in this karma busting process. Not satisfied with just reacting to the family history, we are mindfully creating a different way – whether it be through parenting, spiritual work or ways of thinking about ourselves and the world. We seem to have come to the planet with a mission to make a change, not just “in society,” but in ourselves. It feels as if we are releasing those bonds so that we can move forward into a different type of future. There is a sense that going forward our children should not have to carry the burden of the past. This is all pretty exciting to me. I wonder, how will this affect the future of our planet?

Are you a karma buster?