"Raise your vibration"

“Girl, you better raise your vibration fast!”

That’s the voice I heard interrupt the heart-racing-can’t breathe-feel-like-a-caged-animal desperation I was feeling. I was in the middle of what I'd later realize was a panic attack.

In the moment I heard that voice, I happened to be standing in front of my piano. So I just sat down and started playing, praying all the while for some kind of salvation.

And I boy did I get it.

As I played my favourite song from my childhood - Mendelssohn's Song Without Words - something miraculous happened. Things started shifting. I could actually feel the thick fog of anxiety that had been gripping me for weeks begin to dissolve.

I felt this beautiful stillness emerge. Ahhhhh.....

The next day, I sat down again at the piano, but this time from a place of curiosity. What would happen this time? The music just poured out of me. There was a song emerging that wanted to be sung. More shifting. More release. More calm.

The next evening I decided to do something I haven't really done before: make intuitive art while chatting with a friend. I allowed the picture to emerge. More lightness. More freedom. More joy.

This is what "raising our vibration" looks like. Engaging in activities we enjoy actually raises the vibration frequency of our energetic state. It also helps us break free from the emotional patterns run by our negative egos and connect to who we truly are.

I've long kept a list of what I like to call "Magical Marna breaks" - activities that have heart and meaning for me. Over the years, I've been learning how to give myself permission to pause from all the responsibilities (the Doing) and embrace the experience of connecting to myself (the Being) that comes when I engage in those activities. Expressing myself through art and music are on that list. Sitting in stillness is definitely on it too.

What about you? When you feel constricted - overwhelmed, stuck, trapped, or like your wheels are spinning - what do you do to move yourself into a more expansive state?

If you find it challenging to get yourself out of anxiety or overwhelm, I invite you to create your own "magic break list". Here are some ideas to get you started:

What activities currently have heart and meaning for you?
What activities did you love to do as a child?
What energizes you?
What would you do if time and money weren't a concern?

I choo-choo-choose me!

One night last year, I was lying awake at 2 am, painfully aware of the discomfort in my body, fed up with all the random symptoms, and frustrated at myself.

For so many years I've been caught in a cycle of distracting myself from my emotions with food and then feeling shame for treating my body that way.

And now my body had this important message it wanted me to wake up and listen to! It was calling out for help. It wanted me to stop ignoring it and start LOVING IT.

And then out of nowhere, Ralph Wiggum’s voice from The Simpsons suddenly popped into my mind.

I choo-choo-choose me!

I smiled, delighted at the playful way this message had chosen to come to me. And I revelled in the child-like simplicity of it all. I just had to decide I was worth treating with respect.

The decision to love ourselves is likely the most important decision we'll ever make in our lives.

When we decide to treat ourselves with respect and prioritize our needs, we're happier and able to show up better for the people in our lives. We also have way more mental & emotional energy freed up to fulfill the purpose we're here to carry out during our time on earth.

But, while the decision to love ourselves is simple, it’s not easy to do. We have decades of messages that there’s something wrong with us to undo.

After that night at 2 am, I wish I could say I started treating myself like gold and haven't looked back since. I certainly put in a good effort for awhile, and I've come a LONG way in improving the way I see my body.

But, as you know, we can have the best of intentions...and life will throw things at us, as if to say: Are you sure you’re sure? How committed are you to this, really? When I found myself in a similar body-crying-out-for-attention situation last week, I once again renewed my deep commitment to choo-choo-choosing myself. 😋

Self Love is top of mind once more.

Today, I’m wondering if you’ll join me in leaning more deeply into self love?

Here’s what I’m proposing: let’s give ourselves permission for 10 minutes of ME time right now to unwind, get centered, and fill ourselves with the energy of self love and healing. Doesn't that sound wonderful?

So I invite you to come into your Being Place, get comfortable, and try on a few of the affirmations below. As you say each one a few times, simply notice what comes up for you, and journal about it when you're all done.

Here they are:

• I am worthy of love and joy. 

• I love and accept myself exactly as I am.

• I choose to feel good about myself every day.

• I am worth loving.

• I love every cell of my body.

Here's to reclaiming LOVE. ❤️

Becoming better humans

“The work of anti-racism is the work of becoming a better human to other humans.”

— Austin Channing Brown

Recently I was listening to Brené Brown’s podcast Unlocking Us (which is amazing - I highly recommend it!!) when her guest, Austin Channing Brown, shared this beautiful statement.

It so powerfully demonstrates what this time in history is asking of us, demanding of us, calling us to do. Become better humans.

On so many levels.

I know for me, as I began the work of unpacking my backpack of Privilege, I had to recognize that I'd been turning away from stories of pain and suffering a lot more in recent years, because after dealing with everything happening in my own life, I didn't have the mental and emotional bandwidth left to "deal with them right now."

I’ve had the Privilege of "getting to" tune others’ stories of suffering out if they were too painful and didn't affect me personally. Yikes.

But turning away is an act of separation - even if it’s done in the name of self-preservation. The fact is, I separated myself from the humans on the other end of those injustices and tragedies. I feel tremendous remorse for having closed my heart off in this way.

So, I'm committing to take in more of the painful history, news and stories so I can fill my heart full of compassion...and so I can feel more connected to my brothers and sisters. 

This is the work that you and I - all of us - are being called to do:

Turn toward the pain, suffering, injustices...
Allow ourselves to be deeply moved...
Find forgiveness for ourselves and others...
Be inspired and ignited into Right Action.

This is what I help my clients do as they look at the wounded places in their own lives. And this is what we all must do now: face the wounded parts of our society head on so we can actually begin the work of healing them.

It's not easy work or comfortable work, but it's absolutely critical work if we are to survive on this planet together as a species. It's part of our Great Story as humans to discover a way to live in connection rather than in separation.

We’re meant to journey through this life hand in hand.

Foot note: I highly recommend reading Austin Channing Brown's book, I'm Still Here. It's incredibly enlightening, full of powerful examples of ways white people marginalize our Black brothers and sisters, often without meaning to. It was truly eye-opening.

Exploding with emotions?

The other day, my oldest child and I happened to come across a short video about emotions, and I wanted to share it with you.

In it, a cartoon character "gets" an emotion from the outside world, and the emotion begins bouncing around inside him. Then he gets another emotion, which joins the first bouncing around. Another emotion comes in. And another.

The narrator explains that when we don't deal with an emotion, it doesn't go away, it just keeps bouncing around inside us. So when we keep adding emotions and not dealing with them, we eventually have so many emotions inside us that we explode. (In the video, the exploding was quite literal!)

After watching this, my child turned to me and said, "I think this is the best video I've ever seen about emotions." I agreed that it was very to the point.

We've all experienced this pattern first hand. Right now, in particular, we are taking in huge numbers of emotions as our world is in upheaval. And in our daily lives and beyond, we witness many "explosions" as each one of us seeks some way - any way - to release it all so it doesn't feel so unbearable. Short tempers, impatience, blaming, saying hurtful things, stonewalling, etc. abound.

The fact is, emotions are simply "energy in motion". We're meant to let this energy flow: in, and right out again. But we try so hard to ignore, reject or deny certain ones...and they build up. And then we explode. It's not having the emotions that are bad - it's how we mishandle their energy.

What comes up for you as you consider all this?

What's your relationship with some of the more uncomfortable emotions - anger and loneliness, for example?

How do you typically react when you notice yourself feeling them?

What would it give you to let them go right away?

Crying over calendars?

Last week as the month came to a close, I sat on my office floor with my large dry-erase calendar and psyched myself up to wipe it off and fill in the next four months.

I recognized there was a lot of emotion waiting in this task, so I decided to make it into a ritual and let myself be with it all.

As I erased each month's appointments, I allowed memories to resurface, along with the thoughts and feelings that came with them... The anticipated plans cancelled, forward momentum halted, sense of comfort & control evaporated, capacity to serve limited, best of intentions dissolved, and so much more...

As I erased, I released. I grieved the losses, let go of the disappointments, made peace with what is.

Then, I re-dated my calendar and let myself sit with the discomfort of feeling lost and anxious about the uncertainty of my schedule.

And finally, I took a deep breath and slowly began filling in the few commitments I did have confirmed. As I did so, I felt a sense of calm and hope return.

This is apparently what planning during a pandemic looks like.

If you've been feeling anxious, frustrated and overwhelmed as you navigate a way forward during these crazy times, there are three steps I want to offer to help you cope with the uncertainty:

1. Give yourself time & space to feel all the feelings, without judging them.
2. Take a tiny first step forward.
3. Trust that the next steps will be revealed as you go.

And please know, I'm right here beside you on this journey.