9 Ways to Rock Your Soul

Posted by Maia Duerr on 6:00 am in Spirit | 6 comments

When it’s dark enough, you can see the stars.
–Charles A. Beard

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It happens to all of us. We hit a dry period in our life, a place that feels devoid of inspiration. We find ourselves repeating the same patterns over and over, and as much as we want to shift something we just can’t seem to find the handle to do it.

We get stuck.

Life has cycles just as nature does, so it’s entirely normal to go through phases like that. Some seasons are full of ripening and fruition, while in other seasons the fields lay fallow and everything is dormant.

Being in a place of stuckness, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.

When we dwell in that stuck place for too long, though, it can be frustrating and disempowering. During those times, we can feel our life energy seeping away. To be honest with you, I’ve been in that space a fair amount lately so I’m writing this for myself as much as for you.

A friend recently wrote to me,

“Life is precious…
why leak our energy in places that don’t rock our souls?”

Yes.

Here are 9 easy ways to jumpstart low spirits, reclaim your energy, and find your way back to the place that rocks your soul:

1. Music
My first career was as a music therapist, so I know very well that music is powerful medicine for our emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. It’s funny because I often forget this for myself. But it never fails that when I get myself in a stuck place, listening to great music (or even better, creating it) is what moves me through it to the other side.

Try this one out from the ever-wonderful Michael Franti and see what happens. (And keep reading! There’s more beneath the video.)

 

2. Say “Yes!”
Take a whole day and make it a practice to say “Yes!” to whatever opportunity is offered to you. If someone you don’t know well invites you out to tea, say “yes.” If a friend asks for a favor, say “yes!” Your dog wants a walk in the middle of the afternoon? “Yes!” Your son asks for help with his homework even though you’re in the middle of something else? “Yes!”

Note that the exclamation point is important here! Do everything with that exclamation point spirit just for one day and see what happens. The energy of “Yes!” is a great lubricant for getting out of the stuck gear of resistance.

 

3. Take an adventure in your neighborhood
I’m a Sagittarian, so travel to an exotic location is one sure way to make a big shift in my perspective. Getting away is not always easy, though. And so I’ve learned that it’s possible to travel a long way without ever leaving home.

Take a walk through your own neighborhood with your eyes wide open. Pretend you’ve just landed in a little village in a far off land and everything is new to you. Notice who’s around you, what they’re doing, listen to the conversations they’re having with each other… notice the texture of the trees and the land… stop by a shop that you’ve never entered before and let yourself be surprised by what you find.

 

4. Move your body
Do something physical. If you belong to a gym, go to it! Take a bike ride or a long walk, head to the neighborhood pool for a swim, or go to a yoga or dance class. It doesn’t really matter what it is –just get your body moving!

 

5. Change your posture
Related to moving your body, notice how you are sitting or standing right now. If you’re like me, chances are you may be slouching over in some way, protecting your heart, constricting your energy. Take just a few seconds to breathe in deeply and plant your awareness in your spine. Let it straighten up naturally, guide it toward the sky like a flower seeking the sun. Feel the strength and resilience that your body gives you, and just rest for a few seconds in that place of alignment.

 

6. Be extremely friendly
Most of the time, we pass other people on the sidewalk and don’t even acknowledge they are there. This reinforces a sense of isolation, in both us and them. Watch what happens when you shake up this pattern.

As you pass by a stranger, give them a big smile and say “hello.” Some will ignore you. Some will be surprised and look up from their stupor. Some will beam right back at you and give you a greeting. I’ve found this to be a wonderful way of getting me out of my self-absorbed bubble and connecting with other humans in a basic way.

 

7. Re-arrange your furniture
Do you ever feel like you just need to get the hell out of where you are, move somewhere entirely different, and start over again? Even if it’s not practical to move to a new place, you can change things up in your current home so it feels brand new.

Move your furniture around so that everything is in a different place. Put new art up around your home. Paint the walls of your living room royal blue. Create an altar in your bedroom. Buy a tropical orchid for your bathroom. Shake up your surroundings to shift your inner state.

 

8. Cry
We live in challenging times; many of us are going through difficult personal times, our whole planet is in an environmental and social crisis. In ways we may not be aware of, this weighs on our soul. So often we don’t have time or space to feel the emotions related to all this, and our energy coagulates. By simply allowing ourselves to feel, to grieve all that is lost and broken, we release a floodgate of energy.

Give yourself that space… write in your journal about what you’re feeling sad or mad about, give yourself permission to feel it all. Put on some music to help the process, and let the tears flow if they are there.

 

9. Relax and trust that you’re just where you need to be
This last point may seem to go against everything I have just written but remember — the ability to hold apparently contradictory ideas is the sign of a brilliant mind!

Know that all of this is okay. The stuck-ness, the feelings, the frustration… all of it is part of being human and you are perfect just as you are. You actually don’t need to change a thing, on the deepest level. This is such an important point that it was the subject of the very first post I wrote here on the Liberated Life Project. 

This is the quote that went with that first post, and it’s so good that it bears repeating here:

“It wasn’t until I accepted myself just as I was
in this moment that I was free to change.”
Carl Rogers

 

How about you? What helps you to move from a place of stuckness to expansion and liberation?

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The Liberated Life Guide: Hula as an Awareness Practice

Posted by Maia Duerr on 6:00 am in Spirit | 0 comments

One of the first times I can remember my heart being broken was when I was eight years old.

My mother, sister, and I were sitting on our porch on a warm Hawaiian afternoon. Something happened – I think that my mother scolded me. A deep sadness welled up in my heart and overflowed into large tears that slowly ran down my cheeks. I sat still, teardrops streaming. My mother laughed. She cupped her hands under my chin and said, “Oh look at the crocodile tears, I’m catching them.”

It seemed as though she was laughing at me. I felt frustrated and the tears kept flowing. For a long time after that I held a grudge against my mother.

About five years ago, I was at my parents’ home in beautiful Kukaiau helping care for my dying father. Cancer had metastasized to his bones and he was in a lot of pain. It was one of his bad days. My little 8-year old nephew Bruddah did something playful and unexpectedly startled my father. Dad yelled at him in a very harsh way.

Bruddah ran into the bedroom. I found him sobbing on the bed. His little heart was broken and he looked so vulnerable. I found myself wanting to laugh, though not at him. The impulse seemed so incongruous. I knew Bruddah was in pain but he also looked so adorable.

Suddenly I remembered when I was eight and how I felt when I thought my mother laughed at my tears. This recollection restrained my laughter. We sat together and I gently told him that Grampa didn’t mean to yell at him like that. It was only because Grampa was sick and in pain. I reassured him that Grampa loved him very much.

I also thought twice about that “grudge” I held against my mother.

Cultivating Courage

Learning the ways of the heart takes courage and tenacity. Standing your ground or staying and opening to pain is a challenge.

We think running away from physical or emotional pain will make it go away. We distract ourselves with our electronic devices. We develop habits that don’t help us like replaying the painful scenario ad infinitum and blaming others. This dead-end inner conversation only prolongs the pain.

Standing your ground with pain cultivates a fearless heart.
Meditation is one way to practice staying when the impulse is to run. And this courage builds over time. I find when strong feelings like anger arise, it’s useful to take time and feel it in your body. This helps short-circuit the story in your mind. Feel your heart pounding, your palms sweating, your head feeling thick, your eyes narrowing. And give yourself some empathy and  kindness. Acknowledge it’s a difficult situation and you’re having a hard time.

Take a break. Go for a walk. Be attentive and mindful about your feet walking on the great earth. For a few minutes, focus on your breathing. Focus especially on the out-breath. Come back to your body and check-in and see how it’s doing. All of this helps to ground you and gives you time to re-balance.

Meditation strengthens your courage to be open to pain and see clearer. Eighteen years ago I went to Auschwitz on the first Zen Peacemaker Bearing Witness Retreat. I never would have gone to such a terrifying place had I not started to meditate for a couple of years earlier. At Auschwitz I began to learn about forgiveness and letting go. In Poland people say that “a broken heart is a whole heart.” Feeling a broken heart is a way that we can discover resilience and compassion.

The Wisdom of the Body… and Hula

It’s about the wisdom of the body and of the heart and its relationship to the earth.  Perhaps that’s why I love hula so much.  We learn in hula to become embodied or aware of our body in space and time and our relationship with nature or our environment.  This is the outer work of hula.  Our bodies love to dance and move.  And pretty soon we find that if we want to keep dancing, we have to take care of our bodies through massage and rest.

Hula is about learning specific dances that has been passed down through a lineage and genealogy.  These dances are about life.  The more aware that we are of our bodies and how it moves, the easier it is to learn the movements.  Regular practice then grounds the dance in our muscle memory as well as improves coordination of mind and body.  By mastering the technique through practice, we can be free with our expression.

The inner work with our mind and heart are equally important.  Meditation is critical for this aspect.  Life is our practice ground for humility, patience, kokua (generosity of spirit), forgiveness, courage and respect – all important hula values.  Pervading this sacred dance of body, heart, and mind is an expansive aloha (love) that’s indivisible from who we are.

Anyone can dance the hula.  In Hawaii you’ll find children, men, women and elders dancing.  If you are interested in hula, find someone who teaches it and try it out.  A kumu hula is a title for a master teacher of the hula.  There are many kumu hula in Hawaii, on the West Coast, less as you go east.  There are also many kumu hula in Japan and Mexico.  A kumu hula has gone through years of training and special ceremonies.

There are also hula teachers who have not gone through any ceremonies but had the training passed down to them from their family like their mothers or grandmothers.  Or there are teachers who have studied a long while with their teachers and have no formal credential.  In any case, see if you resonate with the teacher.  If you like their style and who they are as a person continue to study with them and practice regularly.

 

June Kaililani Tanoue is a Kumu Hula (hula teacher) as well as a Zen priest in Chicago, IL. Find out more about June on the ZLMC website: http://www.zlmc.org/about-us/who-we-are/teachers.html  as well as on her hula website: www.halauikapono.org

The amazing photo at the top of this post was taken by G. Brad Lewis.

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How to Have a More Liberated Relationship With Technology

Posted by Maia Duerr on 6:00 am in Livelihood+Financial Liberation | 6 comments

Is anyone else besides me feeling social media fatigue? How about general technology malaise?

Lately I’ve been noticing how excessive time on my laptop (and heck, some days that means any time) feels deleterious to my soul.

Since a good part of my livelihood depends on doing things on a computer, this is a conundrum.

This is not a new feeling. I’ve been aware of it for the past few years and have tried out different steps to come into a more balanced relationship with technology. I know of many other creative people who are grappling with the same issue. Maybe you’re one of them.

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to attend the first Wisdom 2.0 conference. Some of the excellent speakers included Roshi Joan Halifax, Soren Gordhamer, Chris Sacca, Chade-Meng Tan, and Lori Deschene.

My biggest takeaway from Wisdom 2.0 was the importance of skillful means — of bringing the same quality of attention and thoughtful consideration to our decisions regarding how we use technology as we do to other parts of our life.

As I’ve been dealing with this latest round of technology burnout, I asked some friends (yes, on Facebook, ironically!) how they find more balance in their relationship to social media and other aspects of technology. Here are their excellent suggestions:

I like to leave my cell at home when I am at work.
Manavjeet Kaur

I have edited my news feed, so I don’t get ‘anything’, but things I am interested in.  When I’m on holiday, I don’t connect. We don’t allow phones at meal times. We set the timer for work, and in that time social networks are not allowed to interfere.
Tiffany Jones

I turned off all notifications on my phone. Nothing that happens on social media is more important than what’s happening right in front of me. It’s important that I choose when to check in, not that I am *alerted* constantly.
Britt Reints

I deleted [an] app from my phone because it kept crashing. But after the initial phase of having to resist the habit of looking at it several times a day, I found it was good for me and I haven’t reloaded it. It’s been about 6 months now of only using it when I’m at home and I think I’ll stick with that. I have my news feed pretty trimmed and hide people if they start posting excessively. I also refuse to join any new social media networks – Facebook is enough.
Bronwyn Mitchell

1 sabbath day…no social media for a 24 hour period. [Maia’s note – I really love this idea and try to take a complete break from the computer on most Saturdays.]
Jane Steinberg

Structural limits – like no app on my mobile device + no cell phone. Also, try to only do Facebook in the a.m.
Jill Seidenstein

And I’ll add a few more ideas:

• I don’t have a smartphone. Just a very simple cell phone that makes and receives calls. Really, what more does a phone need to do?! I admit — sometimes I get iPhone envy… but I’m also really happy that I’m not tempted to be checking my email all the time and surfing online. And my pay-as-you-go bill is usually less than $20 a month.
• While I need to use Google calendar for one of my clients, I don’t use an online calendar for my own personal scheduling. I rely on an old-fashioned paper calendar. (My absolute favorite, after many years of testing, comes from Quo Vadis.) It just feels good to write things down by hand and I find I remember them better that way.
• On a similar note, when I am writing in a more creative vein, I break out my paper journal and favorite pen. I mostly don’t do that kind of writing on a computer. Writing by longhand triggers a very different part of my mind and heart, and I like the results much better.
• I’ve installed the “Prod Me” widget on my computer which I can set for various increments of time. If I set it to chime every hour, I take that as my reminder to stop whatever I’m doing, take a break and breathe and stretch. Works like a charm.

 

How about you? What ways have you found to stay in a wholesome relationship to technology? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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