The Living Wisdom Blog

Announcing Changes

October 16, 2010 in Inner Listening, On The Path | 4 comments

What Does Change Look Like?

When I launched my blog in early June, I had big plans.

I wanted to start up conversations with you about what it really means to surrender to the wisdom that is always here and now.

I wanted to talk about what it means to let Life live us, rather than imagining that it’s the other way around.

Well, instead of talking or writing about all of this, I now have the opportunity to live it.

Imagine one of those twists in a mountain trail where you can’t see around the bend and there’s an optical illusion that the trail simply disappears into the ether. That’s kind of what Life is presenting me with right now.

The main thing that is clear is that I want to follow the trail. In order to do this fully, I am making some changes in my work.

First, my posts to The Living Wisdom Blog will be anywhere from sporadic to nonexistent. And second, I won’t be taking on new clients until further notice.

I don’t know exactly how long this status will last, but my best guess is that it will be in effect until about May of 2011. I will continue to send out updates via the Living Wisdom Newsletter (you can sign up for it on my website) and this blog.

Life Is A Constant Surprise

When all the major components of our lives — job, home, relationships, health — stay in place more or less, we lose sight of life’s ability to surprise us. Oh, but it can!

Staying open to these surprises, to the subtle and constant flow of change that influences even the most humdrum aspects of repetitive daily habits and routines, is staying open to life itself.

It is precisely in the changes themselves that we witness the vibrant and unconditioned flow of Life. Will you join me in taking this moment to recognize the vitality of That Which Enlivens Everything? It is inside this breath, your recognition of these words, this very moment.

With love,
Tori

“No Barriers In The Heart”: My Wish For You

August 27, 2010 in On The Path, Opening To Love, Poetry | 2 comments

How lovely it is to open an email from a friend and receive a song!

My dear friend, Sara Nesson, sent me a link to a beautiful little poem set to music. The poem was written by Buddhist monk, author and activist, Thich Nhat Hanh.

Here’s the “no barriers in the heart” song I want to share with you today:

“Joy”

And here’s a page with a lot of other songs, also with lyrics by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Enjoy!

May you have no barriers in your heart.

May all that flows your way bathe you in loving kindness.

May all that flows through you nourish others with loving kindness.

May you know the gift of the open heart.

Tags: meta prayer, music, open heart, Poetry, Thich Nhat Hanh

Opening To Love, Part III: The Un-Confusement Relationship Game

August 18, 2010 in Inner Listening, Listening Games, Opening To Love | 6 comments

This is the final segment in a three-part series on Opening to Love After Loss, Betrayal and Heartbreak. Part I is here, and Part II is here!

It’s amazing how hard the mind can work on a problem. That’s one of the gifts of the mind: it can figure things out through reason. Sometimes its conclusions are even correct.

Unless we’re dealing with physics, global warming, or the electoral college, most problems the mind is certified to handle should be resolved within a reasonable amount of time. It’s when the mind is working outside of its jurisdiction that we run into trouble. The mind chews over the facts endlessly and we wind up in an obsessive cul-de-sac of fruitless conjecturing.

Here’s the good news: a lot of great solutions are only accessible from beyond the mind. That’s why it’s helpful to have ways to access these different realms. But not to worry — we don’t need to enroll at Hogwarts just yet. I’m going to give you a super simple way to go beyond the mind to access practical, applicable solutions for a myriad of problems.

Enter: The Listening Game

Wisdom is beyond the mind’s capacity to understand. Wisdom communicates through symbolism and felt-sense intelligence. It reveals itself through the body, the emotional heart, via dreams, insights and hunches. It’s there when we suddenly and inexplicably know the right course of action without any hard evidence.

As you open to it, wisdom responds by becoming more accessible and clear. Your willingness to hear your own truth is the key. One way to turn up the volume on your inner wisdom is through what I call “Listening Games.”

Listening Games are playful activities that jostle us out of habitual thoughts and behaviors. They bypass the analytical mind and open up the world of metaphor, imagery and poetry. Consequently, Listening Games give us access to our deep knowingness.

The Listening Game I’m going to teach you here is good for anyone, anytime. I’ve used it to help clients address not only relationship issues, but also creative blocks, “What should I do?” questions, and money difficulties. Today, I offer it for those who are venturing into the world of dating after their last relationship ended with extreme loss or heartbreak.

The Yucky Dating Scenario

Let’s revisit my client, “Janice,” from Part I of this series. (Just a reminder, all the clients I talk about in this blog are composite, fictionalized characters I create to protect the anonymity of my actual clients.)

When Janice began to date again after her traumatic divorce, she met Paul. She described him in a way common to people who are entering a new romance. He was intelligent, considerate, funny and “hot on wheels.” They went out five or six times and Janice was thrilled…until she found herself shutting down.

She told me, “Mostly I’m really excited to be with Paul. I think about him all the time — more than I’d like, in fact. But at the same time, when I think about our next date, I want to run away.”

Janice was at a loss. She’d tried to rationalize, analyze and ignore-a-cize the problem away, without success. So we turned to the Un-Confusement Game.

The Un-Confusement Game

In order to do this game you’ll need a piece of paper (preferably unlined) and a pen or pencil. After making the marks on the paper as described below, there are three questions, plus a bonus question at the end.

Here’s how the session with Janice went. I’ll list the instructions alongside Janice’s responses.

Make a circle on a piece of paper. It should be about four to six inches across, and can be placed anywhere on the page. This circle represents the relationship. Janice’s looked like this:

Add something on the page that represents yourself. It could be a stick figure, a face, a geometric shape, a symbol or anything else. Place it on the page anywhere that feels like it accurately represents where you are in relation to the circle you just drew.

QUESTION # 1: When you look at what you’ve just drawn, what do you see?

Janice stared at the images and said, “I see that I’m far away from the relationship. I also see that I’m really scared.” She gestured at the squiggle representing herself. “It makes me feel sad to see that.”

QUESTION #2: Seeing this, what do you know?

(Listen for the answer from your belly and heart)

Janice sat quietly for a bit, contemplating her picture. “I know I’m doing the right thing in this picture. Like having this distance between me and the relationship is really appropriate. I don’t know why, I can just see that it’s right.”

QUESTION #3: Knowing this, what do you want or need?

Again, Janice was quiet. She absorbed the image while dropping into herself more deeply. Then she answered, “I need to love myself the way I am — nerves and all.” She paused and then added, “And I might need to postpone the date if that’s what it takes to help me calm down.”

Is there anything that needs to change in the picture now?

At this point, Janice added this:

Janice sat up straighter and her face relaxed. She said, “It’s like I’m holding myself now and I’m on firm ground. It feels really good.”

Add something to the picture that represents the other person in the relationship.

Janice added this:

At this point, we simply repeat the questions as above.

Q# 1: When you look at what you’ve just drawn, what do you see?

Janice said, “I can see that Paul is sensing my ambivalence and he’s kind of backing away. But he’s still in the relationship, which is more than I can say for myself!”

(It’s important to note here, that whatever we see about the other person is still our interpretation.)

At this point, Janice suddenly became more energized. She leaned over and changed the picture like this,

and said, “Okay, I’m considering re-entering the relationship now. This feels good. I’m still on the ground but I’m not as nervous. And I’m not totally committed either.”

Q#2: Seeing this, what do you know?

“I know that I can take care of myself. I know that staying grounded and holding myself is my job. And I know that I don’t want to step completely inside the circle yet.”

Q#3: Knowing this, what do you want or need?

Here, Janice revealed that she and Paul had become sexual sooner than she would have liked. “I feel like I need a redo,” she said. “I want a chance to enter the sexual circle on my own time, in my own way.” At this point, Janice began to cry softly. After the emotions subsided, she spontaneously took a fresh sheet of paper and drew this:

She announced, “I want to have a conversation with Paul about our relationship. I want to feel grounded and to stay connected to myself and my heart when we’re talking. I want to know where he stands and what he thinks and feels about what’s going on, and I want to tell him the same about me.”

She took a deep breath, reconsidered the image and then added a line:

“And I want our relationship, whatever it is, to be grounded and in the real world.”

BONUS Question: Is there anything else you want to tell yourself about all of this right now?”

Again, Janice sat for awhile in silence, contemplating everything she’d drawn. At last she spoke.

“I really get that it’s okay…that I’m okay. I can see there really isn’t a problem. It’s just like growing pains. It feels uncomfortable, but it’s not the final conclusion.”

Answers Are Not Endings

What surprises most people about this exercise are two things: First, its utter simplicity. And second, the fact that such a tiny shift can make such a big difference. For Janice, it was the difference between putting off a date and having a really important conversation.

This simple game was a turning point for Janice. It showed her clearly — in black and white — that she had what it took to move toward a romantic relationship again. She saw that she was able to risk opening and being vulnerable. And she now knew that she could access her wisdom even when she felt like a little squiggly blob of anxiety.

The Un-Confusement game is very versatile. You can use it with different situations, reword or add questions, and play with different “artistic” media as inspired. Or throw out the media altogether and use the room and your body as canvas and paint.

I encourage you to use it — and the others on the Listening Games page of this blog — with all kinds of situations. Let me know how it works for you (and your clients, if you’re in a helping profession).

Tags: Dating, Healing, Relationiships

Opening to Love, Part II: The Power of Wanting Without Getting

August 12, 2010 in Inner Listening, Opening To Love | 17 comments

This is the second article in a three-part series on Opening To Love After Loss, Betrayal and Heartache. You can read Part I here.

“There is some kiss we want

our whole lives…”

Rumi

(translation, Coleman Barks)

Two years after the sudden death of his longtime girlfriend, Michael was in a catch-22. Having started dating about eight months prior, he was now ready for an intimate relationship. But as he explained in our first session, things weren’t going well.

“Even if I like her, I keep her at a distance,” he explained. “I can have sex, but I’m not really there — not the way I used to be. I end up feeling like I’m using her.”

Michael’s eyes were sad. “It’s like I don’t know how to love anymore.” He was clearly at a loss. “Maybe I have intimacy issues.”

I watched Michael as I absorbed what he’d said. Although I didn’t know him well yet, somehow “intimacy issues” didn’t ring true. I was pretty sure that the person he needed to be intimate with wasn’t someone else.

I took a deep breath. “I get it that you want a partner.”

Michael looked up. “Yes, I do,” he replied.

I continued gently, “And I also hear how painful it is to want to be intimate, but instead to feel as if you’re using someone else.”

Michael’s eyes flickered and then saddened again. He nodded for me to go on.

“Let me ask you this,” I ventured. “How does it feel — this longing for a relationship without having one?”

He frowned and almost shrugged. “Well…not good.” His tone implied that I might not be as bright as he’d hoped.

I agreed, “Yes, that makes sense. Even so, would you be willing to explore your desire a little more before we try to help you fulfill it?”

The Landscape of Unfulfilled Desire

Michael had gone through a profound grieving process already. So when I proposed that the only way out of his catch-22 was through it, he knew what I was talking about.

In the sessions that followed, Michael practiced feeling his desire for a partner without trying to fulfill or suppress it. In doing so, he found a rich and poignant inner landscape.

His experience can be used as a roadmap for those curious about making the same journey. It looked something like this:

1) Resistance to what is

Resistance is usually the first layer as we venture into unfulfilled wanting. Michael’s desire to open his heart again was colored by his defense against feeling how shut down he actually was. Like a lot of people, he felt this struggle as an acute discomfort. By not resisting the resistance, it began to melt and he found himself moving naturally into the next phase.

2) Grief over past unmet wants and needs

As the resistance faded, Michael discovered a deep well of sadness over the unmet needs of his past. This was not just about his late girlfriend. He spontaneously recalled a number of scenes from his youth in which he’d felt bereft of the nurturing, attention and support he’d naturally needed from his parents.

3) More needs, wants, and desires

Sometimes this exploration leads one through a forest of unfulfilled wants, and that was the case with Michael. As with his initial longing for partnership, he learned to allow these new desires to be recognized and welcomed.

4) Existential lack

Sometimes referred to as a “God-shaped hole,” this felt-sense of a bottomless emptiness is the cause of our desperate grasping. We hope that people, experiences and objects will fill it.

As you may know, opening up to this bottomless lack isn’t exactly a vacation. It can evoke hopelessness, anxiety, rage, and loneliness. More than any other time, Michael needed to remember here that “the way out is through.”

5) A deep longing for the Divine

To his surprise, surrendering into this existential lack brought Michael into an entirely different experience. The intense and uncomfortable images, emotions and thoughts began to dissipate. He found himself having a powerful longing that he characterized as “intensely spiritual.” He described a “primal need…to live what I’ve felt in my heart since I was a kid.”

This part of the journey is particularly mysterious and intimate. There is no right way to experience it, and it cannot be planned or summoned. One can only be open and surrender.

6) Playful, outrageous, attachment-free wanting

Michael was completely surprised when the intense longing he felt in the previous phase opened like a flower into joyful, unattached desire. This is a natural outcome of surrendering to our longing for the Divine.

To the mind, this is an oxymoron: desire without an attachment to outcome? Yet Michael found himself wanting all kinds of wild and unimaginable stuff, just for the playful joy of wanting. Most surprising of all, he discovered that he had a passionate desire for a partner and a deep sense of peace about being single. Bingo.

I call this the “Fulfillment Free Zone” in which we have liberty to frolic and dance with our desires. It is the turning point from angst ridden, unmet yearning to already-fulfilled, no preference delight in what is. It’s where we discover what we really want — and that we already have it.

Why Getting Isn’t Important and Wanting Is

Typically, we’re conditioned to either suppress or indulge our desires. It’s feast or famine. We max out the credit cards while at the same time denying the fact that we’d really like a different career.

But here’s the brutal truth: getting what we want doesn’t fix or change anything. When a desire is met, wanting stops for a split second and then reorients toward a new object and begins its hungry rants again.

On the other hand, welcoming our desires without resistance helps the mind gather evidence that wanting is harmless, human — and endless. This is necessary if we want a chance at a life that isn’t driven by the hungry ghosts of incessant desire.

More importantly, at the core of every desire is a holy longing for the Divine. If we dive into the pure experience of wanting, it will guide us into deeper and wider spaces in our hearts. Ultimately, we will discover that what we’ve always wanted most is already here and now.

But What About the Girlfriend?

All of this emphasis on wanting without getting doesn’t mean that Michael was supposed to give up on having a girlfriend.

What he discovered was that by exploring his unmet desire for a partner, his heart softened toward himself. As he welcomed his resistance and grieved past unmet needs, he stopped projecting them onto this imaginary woman.

By resting in the humility of his insatiable thirst for the Divine, Michael became clear that a girlfriend wasn’t going to meet that need. And as he discovered the playful Fulfillment Free Zone, he found an internal ground of peace, whether he was with a woman or not.

In the end, this story is about Boy Wants Girl, Boy Feels Desire Without Getting Girl, Boy Discovers He Wants Himself And God Even More Than Girl…and…Boy Is Able To Welcome Girl When She Appears.

Does this sound like something you’d want?

The final installment of this series will run next week: The Baffled Relationship Listening Game

A Great Resource: For a beautiful examination of the importance of unfulfilled wanting in relation to children and parenting, I highly recommend this article by Christopher White.

Tags: Desire, Healing, Longing, loss, wanting

Opening To Love After Loss, Betrayal and Heartbreak: Part I

August 3, 2010 in Healing Trauma, TAT (Tapas Acupressure Technique) | 10 comments

Janine’s 25-year marriage exploded in a very public display of deception and betrayal. When she found out her husband had been carrying on a long-term affair with his business partner, the life Janine knew came to a crashing halt.

She felt devastated, humiliated, and “skewered — as if there was a sword through my heart.” In the face of this pain she did “all the right things” – therapy, a divorce support group, creating a trustworthy support system, and releasing her rage, pain and grief.

Three years later she was better in a lot of ways. But in our initial session, she reported that the very thought of starting to date caused the old emotional pain to return “full blast.”

Janine wanted to be in a relationship again, but she now noticed something completely foreign in her interior world: she didn’t trust men. Not just her ex-husband. All men. She was terrified that she’d never get over the dramatic collapse of her marriage and life, never be able to love again, and would spend the rest of her life “closed up, shut down and lonely.”

When the Heart’s Door Won’t Open

When we hurt like hell, it makes sense that we don’t want to risk opening again right away. But like the hand that’s been clenched too long, the heart gets in the habit of being closed.

Even if we decide we want to open again, it may not be that easy. In particular, opening the heart after betrayal, tragic loss, or excruciating heartbreak takes an extra dose of compassion, support, and loving patience.

I’ve supported and witnessed a number of women and men through the aftermath of catastrophic break-ups. And while the details of each story are unique, there are a few healing tools I’ve found to be particularly helpful in moving a wounded heart forward toward the capacity to open, love and trust again. I want to share these with you.

Healing Tools

In this three-part series, I’ll discuss specific ways to help those recovering from a painful break-up:

(1) heal the past and come more fully into the present,

(2) utilize the power of wanting without getting as a way to reopen the heart, and

(3) access deep wisdom when faced with relationship fears and difficulties.

The stories I tell in this series are fictionalized composites of the men and women I’ve talked and worked with.

Grief + Unresolved Trauma = Endless Grief

There’s a big difference between grief with an associated trauma and grief without.

The latter goes along its normal course from raging river, to background trickle, to soothing silence. It may take weeks, months or even years, but there is a healing taking place which is both reportable by the one who is grieving, and observable by those around her.

The first kind of grief — one associated with a traumatic event — is like a wound that never heals. Instead, it goes underground, ready to bubble up again when triggered by events, memories, or bodily sensations.

If the traumatic event or events are not effectively addressed, this kind of grief can linger for years. All kinds of problematic behaviors can develop as a way of coping with the pain.

Remember Janine? She was exhibiting one of the symptoms of unresolved trauma. A present-time event (such as going out on a date with a man she liked) was triggering a past pain when her heart was open and then “skewered.”

Like Janine, most of my clients were surprised when I described their break-up as a “trauma.” We tend to think of a trauma on a really big scale (like 9/11) or associated with childhood wounding (like sexual abuse). But as I mentioned in a previous article, a traumatic event can be anything where part of us gets stuck in that event and isn’t able to move forward in current time.

So, What’s The Key?

There are many effective ways to work with trauma. I highly recommend Somatic Experiencing, for example. My favorite, though, is Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT).

TAT is a simple set of acupressure points activated on the face with one hand, while holding the back of the head with the other hand. The person receiving the treatment is then lead through a series of statements which, in my experience, hit the “reset” button on the nervous system, bringing it back into balance.

My full disclosure, of course, is that I’m a certified practitioner in TAT. But since you can actually do it on your own I feel free to rhapsodize about TAT for a bit. Here’s what I love about TAT:

It’s ridiculously fast. I’m not even going to talk numbers because it sounds like I’m making it up. Just try it and see for yourself.

The effect is holistic. TAT simultaneously heals at the levels of body, mind, emotions, and energy body.

The healing lasts. When I first started learning TAT, I really wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a temporary fix. So while I was getting certified as a TAT practitioner, I’d follow up with my clients one month, three months, and even a year after I’d worked with them. In every case, the healing had held firm.

TAT can easily be used to address “stoppers” — those negative beliefs or aspects of the psyche that will sabotage healing before it’s even started. Some common stoppers are, “This technique is too easy and won’t work,” “Nothing else I’ve tried helped and this isn’t going to help either,” and “I’m afraid to let go of this pain because I don’t know who I’ll be without it.”

You don’t have to relive painful experiences, explain what happened, or even fully remember the details of the trauma in order to TAT to be fully effective.

You can read all about how TAT works on the second half of this page, and download a free how-to booklet here.

Letting Grief Do Its Job

When it’s come to utilizing TAT with people who suffered traumatic break-ups, I’ve witnessed some pretty extraordinary results. I’ve seen the total forgiveness of all parties involved (including the person receiving the treatment) where forgiveness had been inconceivable previously.

Oftentimes, individuals who were ravaged by heartache at the start of a treatment, ended it in peals of laughter. And in all cases so far, each person found him or herself — surprisingly — entirely open to, and at peace with, the possibility of loving once again.

Of course, every healing journey has its own pacing. You can’t use TAT to take away healthy emotions (one of which is grief), and TAT doesn’t stop the normal grieving process. But I have repeatedly seen it take the excruciating edge off the grief by resolving the underlying trauma.

Unhindered by trauma, grief has a chance to move through your heart. Its job is to help you fully feel your sorrow, cleanse away all guilt and regret, and leave you with an open heart, ready to love again.

Tune in next week for “Part II: The Power Of Wanting Without Getting.”

Tags: betrayal, divorce, grief, Healing, heartbreak, loss, relationships, Trauma

Outrageous Requests For Help

July 18, 2010 in Asking for Help, Full Spectrum Listening, Inner Listening | 6 comments

The past five weeks have been an “E ticket” roller coaster ride for me. In short, there have been more emergencies than I’ve faced in the past decade.

The most recent one had me playing the supporting role as my sweetheart spent two days in a Northern California hospital while we waited for answers to the kinds of tests that should never involve any waiting.

Thankfully, all is well. I’m back in Southern California, a bit wobbly but grateful for this life, this breath, and the capacity to both give and receive love.

Don’t Be A Hero

Being faced with events that are so unsettling is the ultimate test in our capacity to ask for support. They’re a chance not to face the fears alone, not to be the super hero. A chance to let loved ones wrap their arms around us and breathe deeply as we shake, whine, and regain enough balance to go back into the fray.

Since my sweetie was out of his element — his friends and family were nearly 500 miles away — I was his sole in-person support. Fortunately, we were in my old stomping ground of Marin County, where I have a posse of loved ones. I knew that I had to call on my own support system so that I wouldn’t collapse under the weight of being his.

I made a couple phone calls and soon heard one of the most loving and perplexing questions one can hear at times like these:

“How can I help?”

It can be so difficult in times of duress to answer this question. “Make it all go away!” is what the small, scared child within wants to scream. But really, what is truly helpful? And do we have the courage and humility to ask for it? Here’s a short list of what I needed — and received, once I asked for it:

Spread the News

I needed my closest friends and family to know what was happening and I didn’t have the time or energy to call each one of them. I was already in charge of calling my sweetheart’s family, and that was enough. So I called a couple friends and asked them to disseminate the news to specific others. The result was that I soon had an incoming stream of loving phone messages and offers of support.

Physical Hugs and Time with My Girlfriends

The possibilities implied by the tests the doctors were running allowed my mind to conjure up all kinds of horrible scenarios. I was scared and part of me wanted to simply burst into tears. Instead, I had to interact with the medical staff, ask questions about medications, make sure my sweetie had what he needed… In other words, I had to be a grown-up.

What I needed was time to melt down a little bit. So I asked for hugs, for face time with my girlfriends. Once, I was able to get away from the hospital and have dinner with one friend. Twice, others came to the hospital to hold me and just listen. These times of physical contact and love were like soaking in a warm, candlelit bath in the midst of a terrible storm.

The Outrageous Request

If we judge and belittle our needs (“Are you kidding? You need that?”), it’s easier to ignore them. Doing so inevitably leads to more stress — and we can end up berating ourselves for not doing what we judged was unacceptable in the first place. But often a request that seems extreme to us doesn’t strike others in the same way.

What I’ve found is that the outrageous requests are often the ones that people respond to with the most heart. I recall a severely depressed friend once asking me to come over and sweep her kitchen floor. She was mortified by what she judged as weakness, but I was overcome with compassion, and we ended up having an amazing evening together. That wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been willing to be a little brazen in her own assessment.

From my point of view, the most outrageous request I made during this recent time was asking for help to maintain my Qigong practice. Qigong (pronounced chee-gong) is a meditative martial arts form I’ve recently started, and I’m still in the beginner stage where the option not to do daily practice is…still an option.

From an outsider’s perspective, this may not seem like a big deal. Who cares if I don’t do it for a day or two? Everyone will survive, right? But for me, it was a symbol of self-care and respect. To stick with it meant that I had not abandoned myself. It was like the advice you get on an airplane: Put the oxygen mask on yourself first.

So I made the request. Twenty-four hours later, a friend and I were practicing Qigong on the hospital lawn. It was 90 minutes of pure nourishment.

Asking for Help Early and Often

The fact that I was able to ask for and receive all this delicious support points to one simple thing I’ve been doing over the last couple of decades: practice, practice, practice.

How are you doing with asking for help these days? Does it take an emergency to get you moving in that direction? Are you willing to ask for help even with the “small” stuff?

What do you need help with right now? How could you form a request around that? Who comes to mind as someone you could make this request of — or who could help you figure out how to get this need met?

And how outrageous are you willing to be?

Tags: handling emergencies, Help, request, support system

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