Radical Self-Care~Conversations of the Heart.

You know what's good for you but the voices get in the way. Then finally, in a single solitary moment after all of the other moments, you honor what you know you need to do. No matter how hard it may seem in that moment, you get up and out of something broken, you create something new; something beautiful.

I am committed to living an inspirational and limitless life; setting an example through dusting myself off, overcoming life's adversities and  doing so with dignity, grace and strength. Nothing is impossible in my world and everything that seems to be missing, absent or void; it's all in it's own state of flow and I will work diligently to strengthen my belief and trust in this. Every person and every experience I am meant to connect with in my life will arrive in the order intended by the Universe that conspires to support and reveal it's love to me. Because I am committed to learning and being open, I recognize them as such. So far you have come, so far you have yet to go. Keep your gaze forward, your heart open; continue picking yourself back up when you fall and never ever let anything turn the switch off of your ability to forge ahead with an always open and loving heart.

Train your body and your mind alike.

Train Olympic style.

Everyday is a new event; Your Best Life; Your opportunity to be the woman you are meant to become who lives the life she was meant to live fulfilling the promises and purpose she was put here to fulfill all while sharing it with the people she was meant to know, love and be loved by.

Feed and treat both your body and your mind as sacred. 

Monitor what goes in to both and demonstrate the highest, most optimum means to succeed, perform and build endurance because as you've already learned, this ride can be bumpy. You will be jolted from time to time. You must be able to sustain your faith when your foundation seems to have been rocked and you find yourself in question. You are strong, girl...you are SO strong. 

Stay open... no matter how much it stings

Look ahead...there's so much yet to be seen... be excited

Be graceful...so soft you are in some ways, so hard you can be in others... it's OK, none of it matters now... you can soften

Forgive yourself...we are all growing and learning.What is meant to be will be. 

And when you need it, remember the way is in knowing how to harness one's warrior energy; be strong yet graceful moving and communicating from your calm and fullness instead of confusion or fear. Harness the strength and use it as needed; in defense...not defensiveness. And always, always lead, leave and complete each experience with grace and honesty. No need to leave scars in anyone else's story.

In every choice you make, be it what you put in your body, who you choose to open yourself to, what you share, what offers you oblige and what you choose to pass on...remember to ask yourself

"What choice am I making with this decision right now?".

You will work harder on your personal and spiritual growth, your academics, your livelihood, and all relations than you have ever worked in your life, ever.

You must commit to this and trust the process of your life's unfolding.

You choose this way because this is your road map to the success and abundance of all things beautiful in your life. This is the way to the redemption of your perceived "failures" and to creating expansion for everything you want in your life while recognizing; REMEMBERING; the wholeness present within the woman you already are.

I will not fight myself.

Not today. Not again.

Today you SHINE. Today you FLY. Today you demonstrate radical acceptance...because in your acceptance, is also your trust that everything you need will find its way to you.  

You may find the need to go off on your own for a bit but only long enough to 

lick your own wounds, Sanieh. 

Depend on no one else for this. 

Then get up again, and bring yourself back into the world because you have a responsibility to it....you have a responsibility and an agreement you made that is the existence of your LIFE to share yourself with the world. You are the Universe's only opportunity for all of time to experience YOU in this lifetime. Don't disappoint and do not rob others of the gifts, blessings, love and insights they were meant to know through knowing YOU.

Honor your needs in their many forms.

A run or a hike in nature, a cry, a belly laugh, conversations with strangers, stepping on the mat when it seems to be the least of your needs or through a glass of wine with a good or new friend. We're all here to nurture and love another but you must first know when/how to call on your inner lover and your inner mother... You must know how to self sooth.

In the void...

Practice Patience. Radical self care requires patience.

And Patients requires Trust.

Trust, ahh trust...

And Trust requires Faith.

Faith, requires a bone chilling, knee knocking belief in the unseen; in the understanding that it's all happening just as it's meant to.

Every pain, disappointment and hurt...

Every success, gain, and joy...

all necessary for the unseen blessings that await you. Some of the familiar will come back around in new form as you (and they) grow and learn more about yourself while other's footprints will be a part of the pages in the story that continue to shape you.. Every day is necessary for your journey. Vow to see all things and people as teachers in one form or another. Did you get the lesson?

WHAT you are VS the belief of WHO you are...a practice of compassion, never self deprecation. 

You

are

ready.

See it all for what it is.

Trust.

Pray.

Meditate.

Focus.

Love.

Love harder.

Be open.

Be graceful.

Be patient.

Be mindful.

Be present.

Be open to new things, perspectives, possibilities and changes.

It's All You. The light is flashing and the stage has been set for the leading lady of this life to take her spot.

It's Right Now.

Begin.

Create it.

Now.

Surrender, not Submission.

(Video: an overdue update to my youtube channel posted 1.11.11)

I believe that for all of us, there are crossroads and events in our lives that inevitably bring one closer to Spirit.

It's a visitation that's become a little more frequent in the last year and a half of my life. A form however, that's morphed into a way of being face planted in what seems to be an unwanted prostration of sorts, where the knots in the pit of my stomach seem like some sort of Navy Seal torture technique meant to pierce through the heart. The only difference is that it all takes place with a little less longing for whatever it is that I feel I'm lacking or void/empty of in the given moment.

I read something not to long ago I felt strongly connected to about the principal (and a very advanced element in one's yoga practice) referred to in yoga as "Ishvara Pranidhana". The writer expressed her interpretation of this principal as a very deep understanding; a trust, for divine order.

Ishvara Pranidhana ("the final act of surrender") has become an aspect I'm reminding myself to consider; one that I'm developing, as an ongoing practice. In doing this work, I'm seeing fruits in the form of *inner peace during the storms of life* that could never be matched through any position I could possibly condition my body to get into over any extended period of time...certainly not any that I've attained in close to a decade of practice. It's all means to take me deeper into what I am beneath all things tangible I could ever possibly begin to define myself as but even thats' not where I get off the bus. As I deepen this trust; this "knowing", I'm finding myself able to be with my experiences and calmly sit next to any inclination or hint of emptiness. Granted, I still want to feel or taste or smell the thing but i'm consciously committing, every day, to being a student to this deep aspect of my personal and spiritual evolution. I am learning to be with the longing or desire with an undertone of acceptance because I know it all serves a much larger purpose and is a part of the greater, Spirit driven sequence of my life.

This morning I received an email from a student-friend who was so open in sharing with me where he's finding himself in his own experiment with self-study. Much like myself, with a heart wide open, he shared of his going through an awakening in his life finding himself focused on things like kindness, love, health and expanding his capacity to learn. It took me quite some time to get that one. For quite a while my insecurities (and they take SO many forms... even that of outwardly seeming ever so confident for some) held me back from so much learning and so many lessons because somewhere along the way, I decided that if I didn't know something, it meant I lacked intelligence. Instead of walking away with more, I continued forward with less and less for YEARS because every time, I had to fill the space of what would have been LEARNING with nonsense, assumption, being "right", trying to convince...the list goes on.

So brave we have to be to sit in the seat of admitting that we don't know everything and being OK with that not turning it into a bad thing. It's really an "awakened" place to arrive in my opinion, when we can open and listen to our hearts (a feat in and of itself that I'm learning is not an "easy to use", built in "app" for all...although I remain CERTAIN, it is an *innate* one within all...our fear just covers it up) and when we have matured enough, in the spiritual sense, to know that every encounter with every human being is yet another opportunity to uncover our own light. In the spirit of Ishvara Pranidhana, it's about trusting the deepest voice within us, the sixth sense that connects us closer to our Truth than intellect ever could and even in the uncertainty, *trusting that sense. The work is in knowing that it's all a process. Very little in life is black and white and for what is, it's not always the biggest, most profound things.

I'm grateful for the passengers who have been on the same train. I'm grateful for the "passer-byers" even. Mostly, I'm grateful for the experiences and growth that have brought me to a place of having at least a partially open heart and set of eyes to be able to have recognized all of them as teachers of some sort; messengers of the greater sense; always leading me back to search myself.

In the bed I make

I will sleep in the bed I make

where passion arises and it's all at stake

in the waking hours of all that could be

in the cold chill of the night when it all seems bleak


We all sleep in the bed we make

when the fear takes over and the heart begins to shake

where the inner fire burns and there's no sense to be made

when the bonfire dies and our defeat turns to shame


Everyone sleeps in the bed they make

when the moment shines for all to see

the doer mistakes provocative fear for pain

and in the graceful moment when the one who hurts ceases to blame


You will sleep in the bed you make

in the screams of your terrifying witnessing

when the body turns to ash; where your spirit runs free

all the times love was hoarded so needlessly


In the bed we make at the the end of our day

it's where honestly, apology and yesterday

have no room for what he who withholds will say

"I left my light behind choosing fear to stay"


In the bed I make on my final day

all I did wrong, the angels say

won't be a thought or worry when I close my eyes that day

because I chose love every time, in every way.