Tag: soul

Chapters of freedom: The Art of Listening to Yourself

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Freedom comes in many shapes and forms. It can be found in colors of the sunset, smell of the forest after the rain or sound of child’s laughter. It can be felt with your bare feet touching the Earth or while gazing at the stars. It can be pursued outside, however, it can only be found inside.

Freedom is a state of mind – a mind that is liberated from the grip of its conditioning. To arrive there means to understand there is nowhere to arrive. It takes many lifetimes, yet it happens in the split of a second. Several paths lead to freedom – the path of yoga, Buddhism, grace, devotion, loss and restoration…

Today I want to write about loss and restoration – and not just any, but those typical to “modern” woman – loss and restoration of her intuition and instinct.

Although the definitions of intuition vs instinct differ, both are deeply interconnected. Intuition is a deep, intrinsic knowledge without obvious deliberation. Instinct is a natural tendency to behave in a particular way. Both arise from the same place and both are languages through which the soul speaks to the mind.

If not nourished enough, both intuition and instinct can subside into deeper layers of our being, widening the gap between the ego (identity) and the self (essence). The wider the gap, the less are were in alignment with life. We may experience a series of unfortunate events, missteps or failures, all seemingly out of our control. On the other hand, if the ego is a vehicle of the self, we will be in alignment with the universe, effortlessly navigating this reality according to the soul input. Our ventures will flourish, as we will create and live with ease.

Two factors precede withdrawal of intuition and instinct – culture and conditioning. Our western culture is especially repressive to these intrinsic abilities. Analytical thinking is clearly favored to intuitive feeling, humans (and especially women) are required to adapt to linear measurement of time, contrary to their cyclical nature, and we are exposed daily to externalities harmful for our optimal mind-body balance. The mainstream life of “modern woman” is taking her further and further away from her wild, intrinsic nature, as it requires adaptation to predominantly masculine ways, in exchange for societal approval and acknowledgment. However, the main hardship to overcoming both cultural as well as personal obstacles to restoration of one’s intuition and instinct comes through our conditioning and subsequent refusal to face our fears.

Let me tell you a story of a young girl in her mid-20s. Still in her maiden archetype, she was still quite inexperienced and somewhat oblivious to the “dangers” of the real world. On top of that, she never received proper guidance nor had the opportunity to hear the wisdom of older, more experienced women – the system around her was just not set up that way. Her mother, as too many mothers today, was also oblivious to the same dangers – and she was never educated to understand her role in guiding her young. The sisterhood around her was still under a spell of rivalry, with women advised to perceive other women as their adversaries, rather then embrace them as sisters.

One day the girl was walking down the street and bumped into a tall, dark stranger. She thought nothing special of him, so she briefly mumbled the apology and continued her way. Next day, she was walking down the same street and bumped into the same guy again. This time she looked up, smiled to the coincidence but still continued her way, her mind being preoccupied with so many other things. The day after, she was again walking down the same street, except this time the stranger bumped into her. She stopped, looked up and felt a slight, trembling contraction in her gut. Before having time to acknowledge the feeling in her body, she got distracted by his hypnotizing words penetrating her mind. Third time is a charm. Can I buy you coffee?

Before she new it, they were already on a third date. She couldn’t quite read him yet, however, she thought it made him even more mysterious and attractive. That slight contraction in her gut was trembling faster, however, she mistakenly took it for excitement. He was persistent in courting her – showering her with attention, buying her presents and taking her to exciting weekend getaways. He was quite handsome and even more charming, and the sex was A-mazing. So with the first signs that something was off, she willingly decided to look into another direction – the direction of her hopeful expectations and the fairytale she always longed for. So what if he is a bit controlling? That just makes him more “manly”. So what if he is a bit coldish? I am sure I can help him open up to love.

Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. Slowly but surely, she was sinking deeper and before she knew it – she was in deep over her head. What started as “a bit controlling” and “a bit coldish” unraveled into total dominance and complete emotional detachment. He was taking over her life, feeding on her energy and preying on her low self-worth. She was stuck in the victim mentality, completely unable to escape his mind games. She deliberately decided to repress the feeling in her gut, over and over again, convincing herself things are going to get better, only if…

But only ifs never happen. Things never change – men like this never change. They are manipulators and predators, for whatever sad reasons. The reasons don’t matter – as our job is not to save but to evade them. The reasons don’t matter – as women find themselves in abusive relationships not because of the men, but because of their conditionings and ignorance of their intuitive guidance.

We co-create such situations as they force us to face our fears and release limited conditionings. If we are willing to do so, we set ourselves free. However, if we are unwilling to face our shadows, we might stay entrapped or repeat same bad choices over and over again – until we finally decide to let go.

The role of intuition and instinct in regaining our freedom from our deepest conditioning is essential. That is why I call it The Art of Listening to Yourself. If we vow to follow that subtle voice, always and forever, we can rest assured our actions are in line with our highest selves. This is the voice of the soul (essence) and it always there to guide us, no matter how loud the voice of the ego (identity). Unfortunately, most people run as automatons, making unconscious choices based on their conditionings. However, if we nurture The Art of Listening to Ourselves, we will bring more awareness to our life decisions, consciously directing our lives towards our highest realities.

And this is how the story ends – in a lesson on restoration of a women’s intuition and instincts. No matter how deep you sank, no matter how weak you are – it is always possible to restore our intuition and restore our lives. The instructions are simple – just listen to yourselves. Just do how you feel – how you really feel, deep inside. In order to discern between the voice of the ego (loud mind chatter around desires and aversions) and the voice of the soul (subtle, persistent feeling), remember this – intuition most often speaks through your body. It is that feeling in your gut, that knot in your throat, that pain in your hips. It is subtle but persistent. Sometimes it can come from outside of the body, but the rule is simple. If we go for it, it feels good. If we ignore it, it doesn’t feel good.

I have never met a woman who doesn’t hear the voice of the intuition. No matter how subtle, it is there. It is deeply engraved in your being from the moment you were born and will continue to be there long after you die. You can hear it, you just need to decide to follow it – and your intuition will grow stronger. However, to make that decision, even when the whole world seems against it, you need to trust. Trust yourself. Or more precisely – trust the divine guidance of your soul. The universe has your back. In the end, we are nothing but the universe experiencing itself. And through intuition we can tap into that alignment, we can tap into that space. We can tap into Freedom.

Householder yoga: 3# Dance, dance, dance

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Householder yoga series is a set of practical tools rooted in yogic tradition to help moms build up their daily practice amidst their new role, busy schedules and limited time for themselves. Each tool is integrated in the regular daily activities you are already doing with your baby, in a way that it builds on and expands the mom-baby relationship to directly serve your growth and development. The aim of this practice is to cultivate more awareness, enhance your wellbeing and integrate the power of motherhood; as well as to collect precious moments and have some fun with your baby.

If you hit a wall, climb over it, crawl under it, or dance on top of it.

Being a mom is great. It empowers women as we finally realize the magic we are capable of. It refines our intuition and develops superpowers to raise and nurture our babies, create and express ourselves, as well as deepen the connection with worlds both outside and inside of us.

One of the superpowers I especially love is the drive to reinvent things on a daily basis, striving towards simplicity, practicality and meaning. In other words, for a mom (or for any other human, really) – there is no more capacity for bs. What we spend time and energy on should only serve and nourish our souls.

In light of the aforementioned – one of my favorite things to do with my baby is to dance. She loves the music and she loves to move. I enjoy performing for her and she enjoys being entertained. Besides being super fun, introducing dancing in your daily mom-baby activities can:

  • Promote bonding through a super fun way
  • Support your fitness, in light of the limited time you can dedicate to yourself
  • Help move the energy throughout the body and release any stored emotions or even trauma
  • Help your self-expression, creativity and processing emotions
  • Support motoric development and movement coordination of your baby

As I was a professional dancer for many years, my body craves dancing. Hence to introduce dancing in our daily mom-baby routine came rather naturally. However, if you need some help how to get your body moving, here is how:

Prepare: It helps to set a specific time for dancing that fits in your daily mom-baby routine, in order to build the habit. Then commit that today at xx:xx hours you will show up for yourself and let it flow.

Bring awareness to the body: Put your favorite music on and start by slowly moving the body. You can follow the simple exercise below in order to wake up the body, as often practiced in creative movement and improvisation sessions.

Start by observing and becoming aware of your right arm. Look at your fingers, palm, forearm, upper arm and the shoulder. Start to slowly move all those different parts of the arm, exploring the range of movement in your joints. Play with all the different directions of movement, as well as with isolating a certain part of your arm vs moving the whole arm together. Ask your arm what does it feel like doing today, how does it feel like moving?

Keep the focus on the right arm for couple of minutes and then proceed to the left arm. Do the same with your left arm, engage it through reviving different parts of the arm and exploring different ranges, directions and combinations of movement. Then do both arms together for a couple of moments and play with how they dance together – do they follow each other, dance at the same time or can they do completely opposite things?

After couple of minutes, proceed to the trunk: start from shoulders, through your chest, belly, back and pelvis. Apply the same logic – explore different ranges of movements in each of these parts that together form your trunk. Pay specific focus to the chest to open your heart, as well as to your pelvis to awaken the life force. Imagine you are in tribal mode and just shake your trunk. Stay here as long as you like.

Now proceed to the hips and explore the range of movements in your hip joint. Hips are where our bodies like to store different unprocessed emotions, so be gentle and do not be afraid to go deep. Then follow the movement down your right leg first: from the left hip, through the thigh, knee, shin, ankle and foot. Do the same through you right leg and eventually, move both legs together. Ask the same questions: how are my legs feeling today, how do they want to move, how they play together? Then focus on the feet and your connection to the ground. Feel the floor, feel the Earth underneath you and imagine as if you are tree and your roots go deeply into the ground through your feet.

Last but not least – move your head. Start by moving the neck very gently, in circular movements in both directions. Then let your head dance a bit, engaging all parts – hair, scalp, forehead, eyes, nose, jaw, chin, tongue, ears. After you have awaken your head and your face, it is time to move your whole body together. Keep the attention throughout your body, trying not to let any part out. Then slowly, as you catch the rhythm, let the intelligence of your body take over and just dance, dance, dance!

Be silly: No one is watching! I encourage you to dance like a child, with your child. Don’t think about how you look – you look beautiful. Being able to let go of the body image and just let the body express itself is so liberating. Laugh, jump, turn, do chicken dance – whatever you feel like. Once you bring forward your inner child, you will feel a deeper bond with your baby – as the presence takes over, immersing both of you in a playful dialogue.

Chapters of Freedom: Embrace your uniqueness

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Memories of my childhood are mixed. While I was brought up in a loving home, I was always somehow rejected by the wider surroundings. I could never fit in – I was always the weird, new kid (we used to move a lot), who didn’t go to church and who’s mom was from a “wrong” country (in a post-war ex Yugoslavia). I had very few friends who were scattered around my hometown, however, at school I was mostly bullied – it went as far as almost being deliberately drowned by the “cool kid” during school vacation or beaten up by another “cool kid” in the town center at midday.

At home I wasn’t lacking love. My parents did the best job they could, however they were also subject to their conditioning, and had biased understanding of what my soul needs in order to thrive, or how to nurture my uniqueness and support my creative expression. For example, as a Manifestor child (see Human Design), I would wander off on my own since very early age. I wouldn’t come home for hours and my parents couldn’t find me. It is understandable that my mother used to freak out from worrying, however, the consequences of repeatedly punishing such behavior, which, although in line with my intrinsic nature, was deemed as unacceptable and irresponsible by my parents, resulted in the oppression to the soul.

Growing up feeling misunderstood and unaccepted, I started to reject my outsider material – and by doing that, I also rejected my uniqueness. I was slowly molding this unique, wild nature into the most appropriate, culturally acceptable form – all in order to fit in. But I never really did. No matter how good I played the role of the “good girl”, it never felt real. Not to me, not to anyone. And I was again the outsider, only this time severely unhappier as it felt like I was rejecting and letting down my soul.

But the soul is indestructible. It patiently awaits until we wake up and call on to her. Reconnecting and reuniting with our soul, with our unique wild nature, with our being – is in line with the natural flow. All we need to do is to accept who we are – accept our uniqueness and slowly nurture it back to life. Then it will be easy for us to catch the river of creation and ride her back to the source.

Below is the excerpt from one of the my “awakening” books, Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. As is happens with such things – I have had this book in my possession for several years before I was finally ready to pick it up and receive its blessing. It happened after I gave birth to my daughter, confirming I was back on the soul track and strengthening all the flavors of the power of motherhood.

For years, women who carry the mythic life of the Wild Women archetype have silently cried. Wherever their lives wanted to burst forth, someone was there to set the ground so nothing could grow. They felt tortured by all the proscriptions against their natural desires. If they were nature children, they were kept under the roofs. If they were scientists, they were told to be mothers. If they wanted to be mothers, they were told to fit the mold entirely. If they wanted to invent something, they were told to be practical. If they wanted to create, they were told woman’s domestic work is never done. (…) Although the scenarios are endless, one thing remains constant: they were pointed out very early on as “different”, with a negative connotation. In actual fact, they were passionate, individual, inquiring, and in their right instinctive minds. (…)

While the needs of the child’s soul must be balanced with her need for safety and physical care and with carefully examined notions about “civilized behavior”, I always worry for those who are too well behaved: they often have that “faint soul” look in their eyes. Something is not right. A healthy soul shines through the persona on most days and blazes through on others. Where there is gross injury, the soul flees.

Sometimes it drifts or bolts so far away that it takes masterful propitiation to coax it back. A long time must pass before such a soul will trust enough to return, but it can be accomplished. This retrieval requires several ingredients: naked honesty, stamina, tenderness, sweetness, ventilation of rage and humor. Combined, these make a song that calls the soul back home.

Women Who Run With the Wolves

So what does your soul need? What are the basic nutrients that make the unique potion of your song to call the soul back home? They are unique to each women, but they all come from two realms: nature and creativity. The recipe of my potion goes somewhat like this:

  • A whole bundle of dancing
  • 3 measures of words, parchment and books each (preferably from the worlds beyond fantasy)
  • Large portion of good music
  • The song and the smell of moisty forest
  • A pinch of fresh ocean air
  • Pastel colors of the sunset with a touch of sparkly light reflected on the water surface
  • Monthly scoop of moonlight on the naked skin
  • A few drops of jasmine and lavender for aroma
  • My daughters laugh for the secret ingredient

All to be stirred clockwise or counter-clock wise (depending on the day) and allowed enough peace to brew at their own pace

I would like to conclude by a special plea to all my sisters in motherhood. Don’t let your child’s soul be oppressed by anything or anyone. Embrace their unique characters, no matter how quirky or unusual they are. Nurture their little souls and let them surprise you everyday with their creativity. Remember they have their own unique dreams, paths and opinions. Forget all the rules, all the expectations, all the should’ve, could’ve and would’ve. Reconsider what is deemed as “socially unacceptable”- always give your child whatever they need whenever they need it and ignore all the judgmental looks – in the end, all of those are just lost souls crying to get back home.

Essence

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Mechanism of motherhood is an elaborate of a refined system that activates intrinsic talents and abilities unique to feminine aspect (the power of motherhood), and also shows us the path back home (the essence, being, source). The home, the essence, is the place from which all creation emerges – be it babies, art, projects, ideas, innovations – or any other form of (self)expression.

Being connected to the essence is something we all are by default, however, this connection might be blurred or covered by layers and layers of mind made concepts (thoughts, fears, personalities) – hence it might be difficult to feel it.

I want to talk how this essence feels like. At the beginning, I could only access it in meditation – the feeling was of abundance, warmth, tenderness – and a little bit of shyness. The space was suddenly filled with self-love. Then I noticed how the absence of the connection feels – dry, barren, automated. Strictness and roughness instead of self-love. And this was the feeling I was used to, the feeling I perceived as “normal”, everyday state.

When I became pregnant, the feeling of essence became more and more profound on its own. I decided to deliberately pursue it and cultivate the connection, feeling it more intensely in my body – coming from my ovaries and feeding into every cell inside out. What I found at the other end of this connection is that my essence – my being – has been waiting all this time to break through, waiting to be fully expressed in all of its wildness, strangeness, beauty and intelligence.

This is where the mechanism of motherhood comes from and leads back to. This is the most important relationship and the most sacred calling of every human being – to just BE.

I would like to finish by quoting G. Gurdjieff, as transcribed in the book by one of his most notable students, PD Ouspensky (In search of the miraculous):

In actual situation of humanity, there is nothing that points to evolution proceeding. On the contrary, when we compare humanity with a man, we quite clearly see a growth of personality at the cost of essence, that is, a growth of the artificial, unreal, and what is foreign, at the cost of natural, the real and what is in one's own. ere
Together with this we see a growth of automatism.
Contemporary culture requires automatons. And people are undoubtedly loosing their acquired habits of independence and turning into automatons, into parts of machines. It is impossible to say where is the end of this and where is the way out - or whether there is an end and a way out. 
One thing alone is certain, that man's slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.