One of the greatest freedoms we can discover is that we are not responsible for other people's experience of us.

That doesn't mean we stop being kind.

It doesn't mean we stop caring.

It doesn't mean we become inconsiderate or dismissive.

Fear has a purpose.

It's part of being human.

It helps us notice danger. It asks us to pay attention. It has, in many ways, helped keep us alive.

The difficulty isn't that we experience fear.

The difficulty is when fear becomes the only voice we're listening to.

There are ways we learn to protect ourselves that make perfect sense.

Perhaps we become quiet.

Perhaps we become overly responsible.

Perhaps we try to make everyone happy.

Perhaps we pull away before someone has the chance to hurt us.

These aren't flaws.

They're responses.

Quite often, what I find in the work that I do is that we spend a lot of time looking backwards.

Trying to understand ourselves.

Trying to make sense of what happened.

Trying to figure out why we are the way we are.

And while I think there's value in that, I certainly have discovered that it isn't the whole story.

Some days I seem to have less endurance than others.  I try, I give everything my all, but it truly does seem to be less effective or with less strength that other times when I apply myself to the same activity.  

Wrote a poem a few months ago, finally feel brave enough to share it.

Living the life I have, surviving confusion, isolation, and suffering, it took a long time to learn to trust again.

My greatest struggle was learning to trust love, the most vital and tender thing I always longed for.  

A dear friend proposed I speak a little about taking care of yourself emotionally.  This had me thinking of all the ways in which we can feel uncomfortable or painful emotions and put forth great efforts to kill, push away, or ignore them.  I too was guilty of this for much of my life, hating all the things that I felt and feeling completely lost in getting them to turn off or stop.

"The martial artist manipulates the chi of the body and the hypnotherapist manipulates the chi of the mind." -James Tripp

In affecting the chi of the mind, I work directly with your soul self and how you perceive it from your human self, or ego…

Looking back on my journey, I learned I was a universal vessel when sitting in a sweat lodge singing a lodge song, operatic style, while a brother cried out his pain and grief.  That’s when I knew for sure I was in service of something much more in tune, clear, and connected than I have ever known myself to be. A small secret here, I can’t sing or hold a note to save my life. Another small note, I have never known this brother to express his emotions so innocently and purely.  

The infinity symbol has always held special meaning for me. Recently, it revealed a new expression: one side is form, the other is formless. As I traverse from side to side in my conscious awareness, I made a discovery: I go into the formless to gather universal conscious awareness, and come to the formed side to apply the truth and meaning of what I just learned.

Each moment I arrive to a new choice.  Do I do/say this, or not, or that instead?  When I used to try to keep it all straight in my head, who the person I was with wanted me to be, who did I want to be, I began to get scared, worry, and panic.  It was too much to be everything for everyone else, and to find myself still dissatisfied.   I began the journey to give up pleasing, proving, and providing for other people a mirror image of who they wanted or needed me to be.

This is a letter I wrote to myself after a year of dating... me.  When it became clear divorce, dating men, hanging out with girlfriends, and my habits were no longer meeting my needs. I made me, and only me, a priority.  After about a year, this is what I understood to be true.  My hope, in the work I do with my clients, is that they too, can learn to know themselves this purely.

All the identities you hold.

All the images of who you imagine you are.

Release them.

Watch as they circle the drain.

That narrow path from illusion to reality.

What is reality, anyway?

Being married to a medicine man was a true test of my spiritual awakening in balance with this modern reality. The more I grew and understood the spiritual nature of energy, the less I understood about this place of duality. I struggled to keep up with the 9-5 job while offering deep spiritual guidance and healing to those that came for help.

Vulnerability seems to be the one thing we avoid and resist. Yet, each time we notice another being vulnerable, we are so caring and tender towards them. We respect and honor their state, extending generous intention that there be hope and strength to pull them through. What would happen if you were to allow yourself to be vulnerable with the same respect and support we extend to others?

I was someone who was always reaching, stretching, striving to be more than I already was. I was always scrambling to be three, or maybe ten, steps ahead. I was rushing to catch up to myself. Mostly this was a feeling of not being good enough where I was, I was pushing to be where I thought I was going to be something be better.

I can tell you I never caught up. More often than not, I broke down. I exhausted myself in…

You are not alone, not in truth anyway. That feeling of separation, of isolated distance, is created as you resist who you naturally are. That distance, or gap, is the space within yourself from your ego to your source.

That separateness is unnecessary, but your ego has good reason to try and prove otherwise. I can guarantee that your ego …

Hypnosis is about belief systems. -Doug O’Brien

How do you get in touch with your beliefs?

Take a look at your behaviors.

Take a listen to that self talk that you have going on in the back of your mind.

Observe the ways in which you defend things in your life.

As a hypnotherapist and shaman, I have found that gentle exploration is ideal when arriving to your pain. With grace and compassion, the pace is slow enough to make room for resources to heal, nourish, and integrate your pain. This shows up in the aspects or parts of yourself that you previously had dismissed, denied, or damaged through avoidance and criticism.