Crisis. Is that too much?
You know, arguably my favorite line in Hamlet is this tiny nothing little scene when Hamlet says “Words, words, words.”
Taken completely out of context I’ve been thinking quite a bit about words lately. Yes, words, words, words. (Look how quickly I actually came around to my point this time…sharp today I am.)
For instance my therapist likes to throw words around like Vulnerability, and Victim, and Abandonment…and all those words have a trigger that gets pulled and hits me hard in the chest…but I’m not sure it’s ever the right word. And I’m not sure I’m feeling what she’s trying to elicit.
Words elicit emotion.
Emotions bring on feelings.
Feelings move us to change (or for some to stay put.)
Feeling often leads to desire, to movement, to shift.
Now Shift. That’s a word I’d like to spend a second on.
But first, let’s drop the Crisis bomb. Wow…doesn’t that make you want to pull your hair out?
Crisis.
We all have them . Some are monsters and some pass with a breath. But it’s this moment in time when you are so overwhelmed you can’t make heads or tails of the situation.
Some people feel stuck. Some feel depressed and angry. Some don’t know what to feel and end up in the purgatory of shock.
It has come to my attention that what I love more than anything in my work, more than all the words is the energy that surrounds crisis. I’m not talking war or famine or the big one’s here…this is a different word…but I’m talking that place where life has thrown you a giant middle finger and you are sitting there wondering what you are supposed to do next.
Ok fair thought…why do I love crisis? Because what YOU feel as Crisis looks to me energetically like a perfect story just needing to be unwound…and on the other side of crisis, is…to use another big word…brilliance. And folks, when I see someone in crisis, I can always see the brilliant ending…It’s my superpower.
So now we get back to that other word I threw around, Shift.
Shift is what I do.
I clean up crisis and help you shift into the giant space that is trying to open up for you.
I’m the crisis cleaner. How pulp fiction meets new age am I?
How do I know this? I my friends just got through my own “crisis” and the giant space that has opened up for me includes understanding at an even deeper level what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.
Healer is a huge nebulous word. But it seems this is where I fit into that giant jigsaw puzzle.
So folks…stay tuned. More on these words…words…words…
Ayaffa is changing. I’m the Madonna of health care providers. Things never get boring over here.
March is a month for Philosophizing!
Hello March!
I have noticed two things. This year, since we entered the Water Dragon, folks are either coming in with everything going their way, wanting to tune up the edges and be in perfect harmony with the way their life is flowing.
Or, everything that is a challenge is rising like a beast and looking you dead in the eyes saying….”Try your best to beat me, weakling!”
OK, I added the weakling bit. Clearly I am in the process of learning some lessons about softness….
You may have guessed, I’m in the second camp.
Everything is going my way, sort of, but with much more effort than I’m used to, and moving in channels that I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen. Resonate with anyone?
But I hesitate to call it bad, in fact…just like the those who have everything going their way now have the time to attend to picking up the grass clippings….I am finding this reserve that used to be lovingly called “wimpish-ness,” transforming into a beast that can stare at that dragon and stand like Neo in the Matrix and wave it forward. Yes…it’s kicking my butt, but to my surprise, I keep getting up. Trying a new move.
Here is what I’m learning. Though I think I know this on many levels, I’m being forced to really know on EVERY level that I am enough.
Let me say this again, and maybe you could say it aloud with me.
“I am Enough.”
I was watching this video and she said, “I fully embrace my vulnerability” and I was hit over the head by how icky that felt in my body. So I immediately set up an internal task force to get to the bottom of that!
How am I doing? Ask me in September. But I’m on it. Like lint to whatever you don’t want lint sticking to.
So the theme of this newsletter is three fold.
1) I feel your pain/frustration/agitation (if you’re in the second camp).
2) You are Enough
3) And while you’re there, I mean looking around on the inside, look in on how comfortable you are sitting in your vulnerability. And if it feels icky…find out why. Because that, my friends, is where the universe wants us to heal right now.
So with much respect for all of those plodding away to do the work. Who fearlessly look inside over and over and over again. For those who are just starting to look. And those who have just begun to think about it…
I salute you.
To the tireless journey of self exploration….and all who travel her shores.
Leap Day Thoughts
It’s a funny thing…leap day. I feel like I have this opportunity for thought that I wouldn’t have at any other time in the past four years. Like some grand daddy epiphany is going to sit me down and have a long chat with me, pipe burning slowly, light cascading around him. The smell of cookies baking in the oven, wait maybe it’s blueberry pancakes griddling in the kitchen with the hand picked blueberries I painstakingly picked last summer and froze for a mid-winter morning delight.
But here I sit, feeling definitely four years older…and wiser…actually both of those points are arguable depending who you ask.
What I actually feel is the desire to be more human. To connect in a more grounded way with folks around me. To experience things with a slightly different tilt to my head, a different set of taste buds, a different filter of experiences.
Is this a leap day phenom?
Is there a clarity like a shallow pond and a clear sky? Like a freshly opened fair trade organic coffee bag? Or am I just giving into the buzz? To google’s crazy wonderful leap day homepage banner? To 30 Rock’s most excellent use of the holiday in sit-com form? To hearing that someone is getting married today because they want their marriage to age slowly like a fine wine….marinating over the years and celebrating the union every four years with much merriment?
Have we become a culture so focused on making something into a holiday that we will just take any excuse to make a day special?
And really….is there anything wrong with that?
Why not look for the divine in every day? Why not find that something special if not in every moment, than at least in every day? Is there really a problem with celebrating that moment for making us happy or for feeling loved and share that with the universal consciousness?
And we have Leap Year to tantalize us with that memory, like a soft feather to the skin or your lovers breath on your neck. Thank you leap year. Thank you.
I had a friend when I was a kid whose family used to start dinner that way. Everyone had to share their favorite thing that happened during the day. What a way to celebrate the little things!
I am hereby instituting that at my dinner table. A focus on the divine. Simple. Elegant. Present. Alive. That’s what makes us human. Our ability to delight in the small things. That, and of course our opposable thumbs.
Happy leap day. May your mind wander and wander and wander…and in the end, find your truth.
War of Art
I am reading this book. It is rocking my world. I thought I’d share.
It’s all about resistance. And not your garden variety resistance, but the deep seedy kind that I picture wearing a dirty trench coat and smoking a horrible smelling cigar, always looking over his shoulder. That kind of resistance.
What am I talking about? Who knows really…all this curly hair sometimes makes me write loopy.
What is it in your life that you keep telling yourself you can’t do?
I have lists of things.
What would happen if you picked one? Randomly or even better, pick the one you have loved for so long it’s like that perfect pair of sweat pants…warm and soft and comfortable and stained with memories of chocolate. Oh, is that just me?
So pick one…and then…don’t let anything stop you from achieving it. Not death or hunger or illness or exhaustion or self sabotage. Every day…you move further towards that goal.
No…?
Tomorrow maybe?
THAT’s what I’m talking about! Tomorrow is the resistance.
I’m not making sense.
Here’s an example. Something small. There is this section of my floor that is dirty. It’s at the top of my stairs. It’s no where near where I keep my broom. Every time I come upstairs I see it and think, “I need to sweep that.” And then I don’t.
Two days ago I walked upstairs and thought, “I need to sweep that.” and then sat on the sofa. I was about to play a round of word with friends and then I shook my head and said out loud to no one “F*ck it!”
I walked into the kitchen, grabbed the broom and swept. I kept going and swept the entire floor. And then I mopped. It took 15 minutes.
Every time I walk upstairs now, I just smile.
I just saved myself the constant nagging Jewish Mother voice who, let’s face it, no one wants in their head 24/7 and replaced it with this deep calm.
So easy.
PROCRASTINATION is not your friend.
It’s not mine.
It’s not anyone’s.
The only way to beat it is pick a goal and work on it EVERY day, if only for ten minutes…..every day.
I started my new novel last night. I have been meaning to do this for six months.
When I finally cracked my notebook out POURED my prologue and the outline of the first 8 chapters. My hand was burning which is the only reason I stopped.
How did I know that I had to sweep that freaking patch of floor to make space for finally starting my novel?
And I am going to write every day.
And If I don’t feel like writing I’m gonna anyway.
Have I fired you up yet?
Have you decided on the thing you have been putting off and said F-YOU to resistance?
If not..I’m going to keep making you jealous by posting how I have kicked resistance in the ASS….until you start doing it. (OH my…I’m going to become that Jewish Mother voice in your head 24/7, and let’s face it… no one wants that….actually, I know someone who does, but that’s a dirty little story.)
So them’s my thoughts this beautiful gray Friday in Seattle.
Happy Picking a Project and Sticking WIth It because you are Worth IT!
The Results are In! And they are FREAKING amazing!
Ok. 40 treatments later and I’m starting to be convinced that I’m more than onto something.
Do you know I got rid of someone’s neck pain with 2 needles? What the what?
I am a fair woman. And this is just too good to keep bottled up in my beautiful space cooing after and wrapping warm blankets around…no…this is the stuff revolutions begin with!
OK, I might be getting a little off topic, but someone recently reminded me that one of the most fun parts of Acupuncture is taking away someone’s pain.
And….they are right. It is.
So. While I’m still in my scientific dissecting stage…treatments specifically for pain are $50 for the first one, and then a sliding scale of $40-$50 after that. If you need to come in more than twice a week, the treatments will be a sliding scale of $35-50.
These treatments will most likely be performed in the comfort of a chair or sofa, but no one has minded yet! And you may have someone in acu-haze very near you, but I doubt you will even notice…no one has yet.
Of course my earth shatteringly-amazing treatments are still available as well…and in my opinion, pain or not, worth a lie down on the amazing table with the lamps and other yumminess once a month…but for pain, come as often as you like and let’s get ‘er gone.
So.
Have Pain?
Want it gone?
Get ‘yer butt in here! I can take care of that for ya!
Posted in Acupuncture Gems
Tagged acupuncture, community acupuncture, pain relief, treatments
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Want CHEAP and CRAZY effective Acupuncture?
What a lead in, right? It’s like I just said do you want Bud Light or something. No…this is cheap, but also a perfectly aged vintage of the best wine your mind can imagine.
Here’s the deal. I have been in class all weekend having my mind expanded and my ideas about acupuncture turned inside out and then backwards and then de-particalized and then reassembled into a new system that basically is mind blowing.
What am I talking about?
Do you have pain?
Do you want it gone?
Would you like a $50 treatment?
Call me. Email me. Facebook me. And get your but in here….because this week while I am in my mind expansion I want my hands on as much pain bodies as possible to test the validity of all I learned.
I gave a treatment to my ex-husband this morning. I have been treating his hip pain for a decade, and sadly, had never helped him to feel any better.
Today…he left the treatment room with a grin (not like that…geesh) but for the first time in a decade he had NO PAIN in his HIP or BACK!
Do you want your pain gone and want to save HALF….call me this week…spaces are gone when spaces are gone!
OH, I should mention, this uses way fewer needles and only one side of the body….for those who are needle phobic. And it works.
Pain. Gone. Call.
I don’t mean to sound like a used car salesman…but I really want to get you in here!
Acupuncture + Cranial Sacral = Happy Healthy Jaw
That’s right. I said it. It’s a myth. You don’t need crazy plastic mouth thingys. You don’t need surgery.
Acupuncture + Cranial Sacral = Happy, Healthy Jaw.
And can I just say…that it’s one of my most favorite things to treat! Of course it was more fun back when I used latex gloves and I got that great Snap! sound when I gloved up….
But all the same…we are all called to different things, and this month I am called to extoll the virtues of a pain-free jaw.
You can smile, eat, chew gum and suck on virtually anything without the annoyance of pain. That is a big check in my book.
Don’t believe me? Well…I hazard to say, it’s worth one appointment to see if I’m telling the truth. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed!
See you soon….
Posted in Tasty Tidbits dreamt up by Elisha, just for you....
Tagged acupuncture, ayaffa, cranial sacral, jaw pain, TMJ
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Gearing up for the Dragon!
It’s near…I can feel it. Can you?
We are shaking out our bunny tails and stepping out of the deep inner confines of the rabbit. Letting loose the deep introspection of the past year.
I don’t know about you…but I’m ready for something a little bit different then the non-stop inner work that just kept coming at me last year!
And I can feel the shift. I can feel the momentum building as we prepare to take flight. I do have to fight my inner instincts to ground and stand still and process….because I can tell this year is about letting go and seeing how much air i can get!
If you are reading this and haven’t been in for a treatment lately…there is a shift that has occured over the last moon cycle. It is a transition from grounding into the earth and the planet, to grounding from our heart center…it’s very very different.
Those who have recently felt like they just had a huge scare, or like things are moving faster then they feel comfortable with might want to consider coming in for a balancing treatment that energetically expands your heart chakra and re-seats it as your center of grounding.
That’s a lot of words that really mean…if things feel like they are moving a bit fast, or that you can’t find your rhythm….I can help.
Otherwise, for those who are integrating properly….my suggestion is to hang on the for the ride! It’s going to be a lot of fun…if you let it!
Out with the old…
So many charts left un-filed, and papers unsorted…that can’t be the right way to end the new year. I don’t know about you, but time seems to be speeding up so quickly that a month is over before it’s really even sunk in and marinated at all.
Even this post is scattered, like I want to have pearls of wisdom to impart here before we switch writing 11 and move to 12. But the truth is that it all seems so arbitrary. Solstice is past…and this moment at midnight on december 31st seems rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things…except that I will invariably write the wrong year on my checks and chartnotes for the next few months.
So why am I blogging today then? I guess because I’m not the only one feeling this way. This way that life has a mind of it’s own and I’m just along for the ride. And sometimes I feel like I have had my eyes closed for a really long time, but it’s only been a moment. A breath.
So from all this grounded confusion I do want to wish each and every one of you an amazing New Year…whenever it arguably began… I hope you spend it doing things you love, with people you admire, in surroundings that nourish you.
I hope that when you look back at this past calendar year you can see your achievements with clarity and your areas of growth with compassion.
I hope you have nurtured your relationships and let go of those that no longer serve you.
I hope that your health has fed you and you feel at peace in your body.
I hope that you have kind goals for yourself and this planet and the connections between us all.
And perhaps most importantly, I hope this year more than all other years you have learned to love yourself truly and completely. For only when we find that space in ourselves can we share and receive it from others.
So with that I offer my deepest thanks and gratitude to everyone who touched my heart and soul, who challenged me and supported me, and as a beautiful native prayer goes…to the great spirit of us all.
Namaste.
Posted in Tasty Tidbits dreamt up by Elisha, just for you....
Tagged 2012, manifesting, new year
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Communication…at it’s best.
Hello there lovely bloggers. I wanted to write a little about communication…since I seem to be having a lot of patients suffering from woes due to not “being heard.” And I am in a new relationship where we are delicately playing with the boundaries of how to communicate with each other. In other words…it’s everywhere…and I seem to have some good experiences to share, and thought they might be of value.
Simple Effective Communication Tips:
1) Before speaking to someone who you think doesn’t listen to you, touch them…either on the hand, arm, shoulder, or leg and ask them first, “Can I ask you a question?” or “Can I talk with you about something?” If you do this, they will be able to respond with a clear answer and will be ready to hear what you are going to say.
2) If you are in relationship with someone who needs to think about what they say, honor that. Instead of assuming you are being ignored, ask them something like “are you thinking about what I just asked you?” Then you will know what is going on inside their head, instead of assuming.
3) If you notice that a conversation is going the wrong way, and by that I mean there is frustration creeping in, you are allowed to acknowledge that and table the conversation for another time, perhaps after a walk or a cup of tea or even better…a good joke. For instance, after a long drive home from vacation, my partner asked me a question that is a hot button for me. I noticed my answer was not super clear and I said to him, “Can we talk about this after a good nights sleep?” He agreed, problem averted.
There are many more tips, but I think this is a good start. The key to excellent communication isn’t always about how you word things, sometimes it’s about acknowledging it’s not actually a good time to talk. Sometimes it’s about making sure you aren’t making up how someone feels.
Please feel free to add any comments or suggestions for clear communication if this sparks some need for you to share those.
In hopes for great, open, healthy communication this holiday season!
