Are you a grimm? 11/16/2011
 
The first time I heard about the new tv show Grimm was when they shut down my Portland street to shoot it.  I didn't plan to watch it.  I don't watch things that are designed to scare me.  

But I'll  make an exception for fairy tales, those archetypal stories that are so powerful and have such wisdom embedded in them.  So I peered through my fingers, clutched my copy of Women Who Run With The Wolves, and watched Grimm.  

My manicure suffered, but I understood why it's such a sensation. 

It's because so many of us know that we see things that other people don't see.  We resonate with the young detective who can see through the masks of pretense and glimpse what is underneath.  

Now, just so we're clear, I don't see my neighbors' faces transform into snarls and wolfish teeth (thank heaven).  But I do pick up...stuff.  I get feelings.  I have dreams.  I sense subtext.  I smell bullshit.  Call it intuition, empathy, sensitivity-- whatever.  

For years I thought that being intuitive and empathic meant that I was at the mercy of whatever was coming my way.  Bad moods, depression, anger, sadness, scary images--if I encountered it, I took it in.  

I don't recommend this approach.  It was intensely painful and draining.  It kept me from doing my deepest work, because I could never feel bad enough to make anyone else feel any better.   

So why are some of us so sensitive to these levels of communication that scientists are just now beginning to measure?  

The reason that the protagonist of this tv show can see the true nature of those around him is because he's here with a special mission.  As a Grimm, his job is to protect the innocent and do battle with those who would hurt them.  We see this storyline again and again in our cultural myths, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Harry Potter; I believe it reflects our deep longing for the brave soul within us who can stand up to shadowy elements that scare us.  

I don't have cupboards of knives in my house.  But I do have a powerful toolbox to help me do my work.  Most of my tools are invisible.  They are habits, practices, beliefs, and the ability to create and hold energy.  (Also some flat-out woo-woo techniques, I'm not going to lie.)  I have learned to create a place of safety and clear vision within myself.  Listen.  You can too.  

I'm teaching a class on the phone on December 1st.  It's free.  I'm sharing five potent ways to strengthen your energetic boundaries.  You don't have to be a grimm to have a mission, and you don't have to see visions to know that there is more to this world that we can see.  You can declare dominion over your own energy.  And I hope that you will.  Because the world needs you to see what you see and do what you're here to do.  

You can sign up here.  

Love and magic, 

Anna 


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Calling empaths, sensitives, and secret mystics. 

Let's get honest. 

Do you pick up other peoples' energy?  

Can you read the subtext of a meeting accurately?  

Do your friends feel better after they tell you their troubles...but you feel worse?  

Can one hateful comment or awful image ruin your day? 

Do you squelch all this because you're intelligent, not woo-woo?


If it sometimes feels like you're taking on other people's bad moods, negativity, or angst, it's probably not your imagination.  Some of us really are more sensitive to all that stuff broadcasting on channels that science doesn't have words for yet--and it doesn't mean you're crazy!  

I'm coming out of the closet about this stuff.  I remember years ago whimpering on a phone call with a master coach.  I was all, 'This stuff is so embaaaa~rassing,' and 'I know I'm not craaaaa~zy but people will thii~ink I am.'  In other words, I was whining.  I had a big victim-y story about how I'm so se~nsitive and it's so ha~ard and I just need to get over it so I can be like other people and never be mistaken for a crystal-wearing aura-clearing kool-aid drinking airhead.  

The coach, bless her heart, had no sympathy.  She said, 

"Anna, stop hiding.  STOP HIDING." 

And something in me sprang to attention. 

So this is me, not hiding. 

Here is something true about me.  I pick up on stuff.  I get the subtext in meetings.  I can sometimes tell when people are lying.  (Not always.)  I sense things.  I get intuitive hunches when I'm coaching.  I have dreams that give me important messages, and when they work with me, my clients do too.  Call it intuition, call it sensitivity, call it an overactive imagination or a dramatic streak if you like.  I've been a little embarrassed about it most of my life. 

But the biggest way that this empathy factor showed itself was with a kind of energy transference.  People have always told me their secrets, long before I had any training about what to do with them.  And when people would tell me their stories, I would feel their pain.  I don't mean that I would feel sad that they were feeling pain-- I mean I would literally feel something in me like a resonance, almost like I was taking on something of theirs.  And then they would seem to feel better.  And I would feel worse.  

Training with Martha Beck and her master coaches about how to change that dynamic was perhaps THE most valuable skill I've ever learned.  Because as long as I was taking on other people's emotions, I couldn't really help them.  I could just feel bad WITH them.  That kind of empathy has very little staying power.  You can't sustain it, and it's hard on your body, your mind, and your emotions.  It's even hard on your compassion, because you quickly find yourself burning out.  

News stories, emails from Unicef, a call from a friend in tears-- they ignited a curious kind of pained kinship, a bond that I didn't necessarily like but didn't want to break, either.  All I had to offer was empathy, so I offered it.  I took on the whole world's pain.  One angry person could ruin my day.  One nasty comment could derail a beautiful plan.  I seemed to pick up whatever was around me.  I hated it.  

Martha Beck calls this 'spongey' energy, and once I learned that there was another way to be, I put myself into energy boot camp for two years.  I worked with coaches, healers, teachers.  I read 8700 books.  I learned everything that I could, rolled my eyes at all the shallow gunk out there, and found what worked for me.  And when it works...it really works.  

I've been teaching this stuff to my clients, but sort of under the radar.  And now I'm ready to talk about it in a more public way.  I feel braver.  I feel stronger.  And I can feel those things because I finally feel SAFE in my own space.  

After so many years of feeling fragile and besieged, at long last I have learned to create a safe place inside myself where I can live calmly. 

Just to be clear, I'm not saying I live in a constant blissed-out state of enlightenment.  I'm pretty sure they don't let you watch America's Next Top Model once you're enlightened.  

But things are different in a way that I can hardly put into words.  I feel safer, more grounded, and more powerful--but that doesn't really even express the richness I've found within.  I know where I end and other people start.  In fact, now I have a job where people tell me their stories all day long, and I don't take on ANY of it.  I love them, I hear them, and I can help them from a place of real compassion because I don't take any of it into myself.  I feel light and clean.  This is serious energetic magic.  It took me a long time to practice this stuff, but I'd like to shorten the learning curve for you. 

So I'm doing a free phone call to teach you the techniques I use to set strong energetic boundaries in my own life.  Especially as creators, parents, visionaries, artists, healers--whatever you call yourself--we want to stay open to the world's beauty and flutters.  But you also need to tend your own energy so that you can stay centered, grounded, and create from a place of safety and empowerment.  

I hope you'll join me for this call; this very pragmatic magic is seriously juicy and surprisingly fun.  Click here now to watch a video I made about what all this 'energy' stuff is, and sign up now for How To Be Open To The World Without Being Washed Away.  

Our wisest teachers tell us that we can't feel bad enough to make the world feel better.  When we learn to take care of ourselves in this fundamental way, we are able to embrace our true capacity to help and heal and build.  

Ready to come out into the open with me? 

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Bricks and Ether 10/17/2011
 

I've been thinking about lighthouses.   

Steve Jobs was one of the bright lights in my cosmos--a pioneer who loved beauty, someone who wanted the quantum leaps in technology to nourish our intuition and aesthetic sense.  (If you think he was a horrible elitist snob, that's okay, you can keep reading anyway.)   

It's easy to look at our heroes and think that we could never possibly shine like they do.  And it is certainly true that I will never, ever, no never push the technology of the world forward like Steve did. 

Close your eyes and duck if you hate cliches, because this is the part where I tell you that I think you should shine anyway.  

Me, my favorite way to shine is to run up on a hillside and wave my flashlight in a spontaneous twirly dance.  Or light candles any day of the week.  

In my class The Flying Leap, we're working on projects that take a little more sustained commitment.  I'll be honest, this isn't my strong suit.  I've had to struggle so hard to learn to follow through on things that I feel really confident teaching other people to do it.

One of the women* in The Flying Leap was working with her 6-year-old son on a huge Lego project, and she realized that it was a perfect metaphor for the website that she's also working to create.  

She posted to the forum about how overwhelming it seemed, and how her son was so discouraged at the enormous pile of 518 Legos on the floor when they began.  

This is how it can feel when you have a big idea that feels impossibly complicated--like a bunch of jumbled colors that will bruise your feet with their sharp edges if you're not careful.    

She told us that she and her son took a deep breath, looked at the instructions, and began to pick through the pieces one by one.  ONE BY ONE, people--this is the part where I get itchy and start to hyperventilate.  

But bit by bit, piece by piece, their enormous project began to take shape.  

And then one day, there it was--their very own lighthouse. 

Now, I can do a pretty nifty dance with my flashlight and matches.  But the truth is, if I want to shine out into the dark fog in a way that will lead people safely home even on stormy nights and dangerous journeys, I'm going to need more power than a flashlight.  

This is why we start with bricks, even though bricks are kind of boring.  This is why we make plans, even though I love the planning process exactly this much: (insert photo of me making hideous face) 

This is also why we make sure we're really sure we're in the right place before we start to build, because it's a tad tricky to move a lighthouse a couple of feet to the left.  

This has become a powerful guiding metaphor for the women in The Flying Leap, because in one way or another, these women are shining their light out in the world.  The beams of a lighthouse can seem so magical-- they're so regular and consistent, they pierce the night, they save peoples' lives, they're way up in the sky.  

And that's what our dreams are like--these big bright beautiful things in our imagination, these magical possibilities hovering out in the ether.  It seems like they should be happening away up high somewhere.  But the fact is, somebody clears the underbrush, digs into the dirt, and lays pipes and ductwork and a foundation, and that's how we have lighthouses. 

Maybe like me you just want to just leap up into the air and shine out into the sky.  But to have the kind of impact I'm guessing you want to have, we need to start down on the ground.  You have to clear away the underbrush and the trash so that you can start with a clear space.  Even if what you're building will morph and evolve, it helps to start with a clear picture of what you're creating.  And then you pick up one single brick and get started.     

So let's honor the brick-laying you are doing right now.  Maybe it's the five minutes you're putting into your journal every morning.  Maybe it's the endless succession of meals and messes that make up motherhood.  Maybe it's the tentative google searches you're doing on the new business that only exists in your head right now.  

Brick by brick, darling.  That's how it's done.  

I'll see you in the ether. 

*client story and photos shared with permission. To see the photos that go with this article, go to my ezine, rich juicy starry beauty. 
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The other day I looked around at my apartment and froze.  I literally stopped walking mid-stride, like someone in a movie.  Then I folded my arms, rested my chin in my hand, and said, "Hmmmm."  

I was not practicing for my role in a local production of Clichéd Things Actors Do. Nope, this was just me in my home, all alone, having one of those tiny breakthroughs.  

Here's what I saw: a squooshy couch with big pink cabbage roses on it.  A shopping bag with a deep fuchsia sweater in it.  And my iphone in its swirly indigo-and-pink cover. An unremarkable scene, to be sure. 

Except for one thing.  I never used to like pink.  

Maybe it's the Portland local ale, or the subtle dementia that creeps in when our children try to talk to us about their new favorite movie, but I sort of hadn't noticed how much pink I'd brought into my life.  Or how much I adore these bright blips of rose, fuchsia, coral, and that heavenly shade that combines them.  

There it was in my living room: incontrovertible evidence of a sea change.

There is a strange magic to the spaces we create.  They reflect what's happening inside us long before our conscious minds can put words to it.  

Even though the past months have been full of chaotic change, major upheaval, and plenty of tears, they've also been full of great blooming joy.  And although I'm seeing the same dire economic forecasts you're seeing, in my deep heart I feel a resilient optimism shaking itself off and squinting up at the sun, grinning madly.  

And even though the days are still hot and the air is thick with pollen, my animal self is readying for the coming winter by picking up a giant blanket of a sweater, in the brightest possible color, to wrap around myself to ward off the dark days of depression and lethargy.  

In all these tiny yet tangible ways, I'm setting my course.  

The part of me that is suddenly drawn to this outlandish shade of pink isn't verbal, or logical.  She doesn't give a hoot about schedules or bank accounts or what Bazaar magazine says is stylish for the fall.  If you put words to her, they would sound like this:  "Oh!  Greeeennn!!! Oh, lummy golden greeny mmmm, and Oh!! Pink!  Oh popping brightly mwah!  Pink!"  

Our dreamy selves have a great deal of wisdom to give us.  When we can get them to talk to the parts of us that pay the bills and make the meals, they form an immensely powerful alliance.  Too often we pit these parts of ourselves against ach other.

Many of my clients come to me because they feel out of whack in a way they can't define.  They are pushing but something isn't happening, or they reached their goals but it didn't feel like they expected it to, or they simply feel a deep wordless yearning. 

Some of them have zipped the dreamy parts of themselves into a garment bag and gotten a lot of work done.  Some of them are creatives who have sold away parts of their dreamer until they feel wispy and insubstantial.  They have worked hard, put their ideas into action, and been brave, wise, insightful, and clever.  But they don't feel satisfied, because that dreamy part of them is starving.  They might be happy with 97% their lives, but they don't know the language of delight.

Let me tell you a secret.  That dreamer in you is the cheapest date in the world. All she requires is your amused attention, and she'll give up the goods.  

So take five minutes right now, and get out a piece of paper.  Don't find your pretty journal or a proper notebook; use a crumpled envelope or the back of a receipt.  That's how you get your striving brain to sit back and take a little nap so you can play and dream without censorship.  

Now, close your eyes and take ten deep breaths.  Imagine your breath whisking away any tightness in your body and clearing the way for inspiration.   

Imagine the kind of place that your best self would live if money and practicality were no object.  If there were no hunger or violence in the world, if you and everyone else already had everything they could possibly need, and your only task was to delight in your life, what would that look like?  Go ahead and be ridiculous; no one is watching.  Is it a castle?  A treehouse?  A Frank Lloyd Wright?  A canyon?  A cottage?  A brand new high rise?  Imagine walking through it, touching things gently.  How do you feel?  Let the image be bright and rich with detail.  

Now see if you can come up with three to five words that capture the essence of that space.  

Is it light and airy?  Crisp and edgy?  Is it full of color and taste and sound, or is it silent and tranquil?  What colors do you see?  Go ahead and jot down a few words.  Cross some out.  Write down some more.  Play with it until you come up with five words that make you laugh, they're so frivolous and decadent and...delicious.  Now stick that little scrap of paper in your wallet and don't give it a further thought. 

And send me an email and tell me what happens next.  Because this, my dears, is how you make magic.  


PS.  This is exactly the kind of spell we cast each week of The Queen Sweep.  Thursday September 8th is the last day you can register until some theoretical time in 2012.  Go ahead.  Call in some beauty this year.  It's not too late.  


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I'm going to confess something to you.  

I love beauty.  

I love it in all incarnations.  

I love the soft curve of my daughter's cheek, the churn of a coastline, the notched edge of a maple leaf.  I love the magnificence of great cathedrals and the sleek curve of a well-designed fork.

I love the butterfly stickers that I stick on my daily priority sheet.  I love printing it out each day with its swirly script and pretty colors.  I love my red toenails.  I love the flowers on my table.  I love my black strappy sandals with a love that is deep and pure.  


For a long time, I believed that this was a terrible flaw in me.  I tried to hide it as best as I could.  (I failed.)  I was sure that my swooning adoration of all things lovely and graceful was proof that I was a heartless, greedy, materialistic, indulgent, lustful, shallow person.

Here were my rules: 

You can't care about starving children and also crave satin high-heeled shoes.  

You can't be deep and soulful and also delight in the perfect pleat in a sculptured linen dress. 

You can't be wise and savvy and also dream of owning a $9000 ottoman one day just because it has the most cunning little buttons. 

You can't be an intellectual and also want pink flowered curtains.  

I so wanted to be good and do good, to help and not to hurt.  For a long time, I thought that meant hair shirts, or at least Birkenstocks.  Many of the enlightened souls I met had eschewed one form or another of 'worldly vanity,' whether that meant that they ate lots of tempeh and always recycled, or they sold their empires and gave the money to charity.   

So I believed my rules, even though every time I told myself that I shouldn't love lovely things, I felt a deep stab of sadness.  My rules hurt.  They bound me in a situation where no matter how hard I worked, I just could not win.  

Because oh, I love beauty. 

I love beautiful clothes.  Exquisite shoes.  Subtle champagnes.  Bloomy blossoms.  Outrageous art.  Luscious lipsticks.  Velvet couches.  Shiny sailboats.  

And as long as I used that love as a yardstick to measure myself and find myself wanting, I'd turn around and use it to whack myself in my own mind.  Whack, whack.  

It was awful. 

And it was even more awful because every time I thought about it, I'd writhe in embarrassment at having such pampered, privileged worries.  What about the god-damn starving children?!??   

Later, as I explored my own shame around this longing for beauty, I was shocked to see how long I'd held onto my rules even though were ludicrous... and painful.  I was afraid that if I didn't temper myself and tamp down this wild hunger in me, I'd go out and do something dangerous, something crazy.  (Something like, you know, go be an actress or a life coach or a writer.)  I've let go of that shame, thank heaven, with the benevolent crowbar of excellent coaching.   It was a revelation when my coaches would just start laughing uncontrollably as I told them my sad, sad beliefs about all the terrible things it meant that I so loved things of beauty.  

It's hilarious to me now too.  Because the truth is, this love for beauty came into the world with me.  It's woven into so many parts of who I am!  Being ashamed of it was a deep form of self-abuse.  

I'm the little girl who wept because the pink rosebud curtains were so beautiful, and who spent hours in utter bliss cutting out tiny, intricate designs out of paper.  I'm the adolescent who would pick up the simplest, plainest frock on the rack and see that it cost twice as much as anything else in the store.  I'm the young woman who wanted to go to the college with spires, fountains, and trails of glory.  

I judged myself so harshly for this. 

Shallow.  

Greedy.  

Spoiled. 

Never satisfied.  

Has to have the most expensive thing. 

Champagne tastes and a beer budget.  

Those judgments make me laugh now, but they hurt me cruelly back in the day.  More truthfully, I hurt myself in my own mind because I believed that they were true.  I lashed myself with these thoughts until I was raw and despairing.  Now that those beliefs seem so ludicrous to me, you could tell me I'm greedy and shallow right to my face and I'd think you had some issues, but it really wouldn't hurt me.  


Listen.  I'm still the woman who walks into stores and picks up the most expensive item, with an unerring and unwitting instinct.  I still groan at the price tags of the things that I am drawn to.  

But this same instinct also means that I can spot things: the item that will become the season favorite, the heirloom in the junk store, and the possibility in most unlikely materials.   I can take a hundred dollars and make it look like a thousand.  I can throw together outfits, rooms, and photographs that satisfy my own deepest hunger.  

And now I finally know that this aspect of me that I felt so much shame over is one of my great gifts.  My deep hunger for beauty pushed me to learn how to train my disorganization and innate messiness so that I could create orderly, graceful spaces for myself.  My deep delight in art leads me to create: blogs, poems, essays, coaching programs, and domestic tableaus.  My eye for diamonds in the rough helps me spot the beauty in my clients that no one else in their lives can see.  

I wouldn't give it up for anything. 

What about you?  What part of you are you ashamed of?  Hold it out to the light. See what gifts it has to give you.  Don't be afraid.  I'm here to tell you, the laughter is better than the beatings.  Put down your stick.  Look at yourself with soft eyes. What old shame is longing to hand you butterflies? 

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We arrived from Tokyo with one big suitcase.  It's been fascinating to create a household from scratch.  To not have a junk drawer.  To not own any nails, tacks, scissors, tape, or little metal twisty things.  To have only my most reliable clothes hanging in the closet.  For my daughter to be playing with her favorite dollies in a dollhouse made of paper towel rolls and cardboard boxes.  (She loves it.)  

After taking care of little things like beds to sleep in and a couch to sit on, I turned my attention to setting up an office.  I decided I'd get by with a little desk for my little laptop.  After all, I was trying to balance beauty with economy, not to mention speed.  Only the desk was so little, I had to sort of perch to write on it.  I could sit and type OR scribble on a notepad-- but not both at the same time.  There was no storage, and I was cramming files into little cardboard holders.  

I stepped back and took a look.  I decided it wasn't optimal, but I could make it work.  Still, I did at least need a file cabinet.  I guessed I'd make do with an old used metal one.  So I walked into my new favorite thrift store...and gasped.  

There it was, sitting in the back, an enormous behemoth of a desk.  Two desks, really, that fit together with cupboards and a file cabinet and shelves.  It was like an entire office made out of furniture.  It was also white.  And pretty. 

And yet I didn't think I could buy it. 

I already had a desk!  (More like a dressing table.)  This was so huge!  (In the most fabulous way.)  It was decadent!  (Not really.  The whole thing cost what a nice new file cabinet alone would have cost.)  

Something about this desk stopped me in tracks.  I couldn't believe how freaked out I was by it.  After circling the store anxiously a few times and picking up many china teapots, I sat down in a brocade chair and did some investigating. 

What on earth was going on?  Why was I hyperventilating?  The desk seemed so....serious.  And yet it was calling to me!  The thought of buying it for myself was utterly delicious.  And utterly terrifying.  

I tried to think about it logically.  It wasn't the price tag; this was a thrift store, after all.  It had something to do with the size.  I couldn't stuff this in my car and trundle it home; it would need to be delivered.  Again, no real problem there.  It was big, but it would fit perfectly against the wall with the french windows.  I could sit there looking out at the green park.  

I walked up to the counter three times to tell them I'd buy it, and each time I chickened out. 

I finally realized what was going on.  As long as I had a little desk, with a little laptop, and a little stool, all the work I did there would somehow  be  diminished.  I could be something of a dilettante, a hobbyist, a dabbler.  I could be a frazzled temporary single parent who was just barely managing to keep her cute little business going over in a corner.   

This big desk, with its shelves, cupboards, space for files, and built-in surge protector and printer port, upped the ante.  It said that this was work that took up space.  It deserved to take up physical room in my home.  It deserved real tools that serve a real business.  

And so in that moment I got to choose.  Did I want to give myself a nice physical reason to keep my work and my business small, crowded, and chaotic?  Did I need some nice tangible excuses for why I couldn't meet deadlines, keep commitments, or be professional?  

Buying that desk scared the crap out of me, because it was such a tangible representation of my intentions for my business, my wealth, and the importance of my work.  

I love it very, very much. 

As I get ready to teach this next round of The Queen Sweep, I appreciate the beautiful irony of having to choose so clearly for myself to shape my own life from the outside in.   

This is exactly what we work on, over five weeks-- we shift our internal landscape by cleaning up our external one.  So for all the women who will join me on this next round, this is my declaration of intent: I'm not scrabbling, perching, or dabbling.  I sit at my big beautiful desk and do work that feels big and beautiful to me.  And I'm not even  embarrassed to say that out here in front of people and everybody.

What about you?  What are you ready to say?


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These days are anything but boring.  I am bombarded with decisions, tasks, uncertainty, and heartache.  It's intense, it's confusing, it's terrifying.  And here is the gift of that:    
 
I am wide awake.  Life with all its raw urgency is surging around me, and I am open to it in a way I haven't been since I was a teenager.   


There are plenty of moments when I want to crumple up in a ball and cry.  And many more moments when I want to fling my arms out and crow at the simple joy the days bring: 

Sunshine.  That dappled warmth on the skin is as seductive and melting as molten gold. 

Flowers.  Peeling back their petals so bravely and gushing beauty so potent it almost speaks. 

Clothes dryers.  Big American ones that toss the clothes so lightly that they actually dry unwrinkled.  This is a miracle, people.   

Rain.  Cold sudden splots of water startling us, pelting us alert and laughing. 

A car.  Of my own!  And red!  With keys that beep!  That I can wheel groceries up to!  Oh, it's delight. 

I'm reeling with the richness all around me. But the thing is, it's been there all along.  It isn't that the world suddenly grew more beautiful-- it's just that I started paying closer attention. And I could feel the hum underneath, as steady as a heartbeat, of my life whispering me to wake up, pay attention, be in my own skin.  So I tuned in.  And I wrote down what it was saying. It felt like I was getting love letters from my own life.   And your life is whispering to you, too.


Darling, I've missed you. Do something for me.

You dear, dear soul.  Will you please let up on yourself?  If only you would find your foibles and faults as amusing as I do--these are hilarious stories to laugh at, dearling, not to be worried over. You are just fine.  You are magnificent.  Stop trying to fix yourself! 

love,
your life



You can sign up for five free love letters from your life, and if you want 33 days of full-on wooing, get ready to swoon.  
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Portland Update 05/16/2011
 
I am having a love affair with Portland.  It's getting serious.  We're moving in together.   
 
Yes, folks, my big news is that I am staying in Portland.     
 
I'm still not sure how it's all going to play out.  I'm full of joy and excitement one minute, and dripping with grief the next.  I didn't say a proper goodbye to all the people I love in Japan.  My life and business in Tokyo are just dangling.  Things here are challenging as I scramble to set up a new life.  I'm trying to stay in the moment, breathe deeply, and let things unfold.  

I really hate letting things unfold.  

They unfold so darned slooooowly.   

Except when they move fast, like the last couple of weeks, when I signed a lease, bought a car, set up utilities, and bought an entire household's worth of furniture, dishes, and linens.  Then I moved into our new apartment and my daughter had the stomach flu.  (I'm a little tired.)     And somewhere in there I cooked up a seriously juicy class on fear and went to a horse whispering workshop, but more about that next month.  
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This month, instead of an essay on declaring dominion over your life, I'm sharing something I wrote last summer as the rains came down.  It's a love letter to a country I love.  
  
The Rain Spirits   
 
The rains are coming down.  We are deep into tsuyu, the rainy season.  There is an atmospheric shift, a heaviness in the air, a density to everything.  

In Tokyo, the green wages its yearly attack on the concrete.  Most of the time my little burg is a hostile zone of carbon dioxide where you can count the trees on your toes, and even the parks are forlorn patches of roped-off grass and swiss-cheese shrubbery.  But in June, the hydrangea burst out everywhere: behind the train tracks, in the town square, and out of the dilapidated buckets and styrofoam boxes standing sentry in front of every crotchety old house.  For this one month it seems that the earth's weeds, leaves, stems, and branches have a real fighting chance of overtaking its brittle concrete skin.  The people sag and wilt but other life-forms go into an orgy of reproduction.  Mold spores, mildew, little clumps of mushrooms, mosquitoes: they are on the gospel train, and they are winning.  In July the brutal heat will beat back these wild revolutionaries, but right now mother nature has the upper hand.  

We have been watching Tonari No Totoro (My Nieghbor Totoro) a lot at my house.  The wonder of Miyazaki's teeming, fertile worlds begins to make sense, because right now even our city streets are hopping with mad life.  My daughter is in heaven.  This week alone, the children at her preschool have seen otamajakushi (tadpoles), frogs, and enough bugs to give me the faints.  Last week on a walk they saw a snake.  

The pitiful strand of cypress trees along the train tracks turns into a sauna; you walk by and you are steeped in the fragrance, you are a muslin bag swirling in cypress tea.

Laundry goes sour before it can dry.  The tap water begins to smell of fish.  The umbrellas get bedsores.  

The air is so thick that it is almost impossible not to believe in ghosts.  It's like walking through soup, or cobwebs, swimming your way through, clearing a path through the thick seaweed of wraiths.  Everything lingers.

The moss on the stone lantern at the local Shinto shrine, that rough dry carpet, turns into a thick sponge, a slick raincoat of possibility, sheltering entire worlds of microbes, bugs, algae.  Anything might come oozing out of there. Totoro might drop by with a bundle of acorns at any moment.  

We go primordial.  People have affairs, get pregnant, lose their minds.  They sit in exhaustion and bewilderment.  There is only one thing to do, and that is to find a bit of cool woven tatami, whether it's a room, a mat, or just a pair of sandals.  Press yourself into it.  Roll around if you have room enough and no shame.  Let your eyes close a little, taste the thick air, let it settle on your tongue.  

These intense days are a cool misty prelude to August.  Before the heat sucks the life out of the air, go out and get a little wet.  Stare at a hydrangea until you feel raindrops on your neck, or until a wispy presence swims through the ether and taps you on the shoulder.  If you see Totoro, be sure to lend him your umbrella.  
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Fear vs Knowing 03/17/2011
 

The whole time I was training to be a life coach with Martha Beck and her master coaches, I puzzled over a conundrum.  As coaches, we learn to question our painful and frightening thoughts by asking "Is it true?" using Byron Katie's The Work and other methods of inquiry.  And we also learn to listen to our bodies, to tune into the vast network of information brought to us by our gut, our subtle antennae, and our spidey senses. 

So I could never get clear on one thing.  How could I know whether I was thinking a scary (and untrue) thought, or whether I was receiving a real warning from my instincts?  For example, if I had a strong feeling that I was in danger, should I sit down and question my thinking, or should I run? 

I asked all the wise teachers I knew.  They all said basically the same thing: that true information, whether it was a prickling of the skin or an intuitive hunch, would feel calm.  And that conversely, you have to be calm in order to hear your own intuition. 

 Frankly, I didn't believe them.  I couldn't imagine that I would feel anything but terrified if I were ever in real danger.  

But Gavin De Becker, who wrote The Gift Of Fear, says something similar.  He says that when we rev our 'fear engines' all the time, by being stressed out and anxious, we create a roar of static that blocks out our truest hunches.  He says that when we operate at a high pitch of frenzied activity all the time, then we can't tell when we are getting a true hit of instinctual survival information, which he believes is the gift of fear.  (If you haven't read this book yet, go out and get it immediately-- it's amazing.) 

And Belleruth Naparstak, in her book Invisible Heroes, puts yet another spin on it.  She explains that those who have experienced trauma, whether they're officially dealing with PTSD or just a history of fear, can have a hair-trigger reaction.  So when we get the slightest whiff of danger or anxiety, our nervous systems go into full-blown panic mode.  This may have made sense when we were children in dangerous situations, but it cripples us as adults who need to navigate the world. 

So all of this comes down to the fact that one of the best ways we can keep ourselves truly safe--from real physical danger as well from the fearful thoughts that can devastate us even when we're lying safe in our own bed--is to learn to calm ourselves down.  

I have been trying to learn this for years.  I'm still learning, which is why I have so much to say about it.  In my earlier post on turning my own fear around I shared some of the ways that work for me, but I want to share something even more basic.  This is adapted from a method called heart breathing, which I learned from my own coach Terry DeMeo.   

I place my hand upon my heart, and pay attention to my breath.  Usually what I'll notice is that it's shallow and fast and that my heart is pounding.  At first I just notice it without trying to change it, and--this is key--without beating myself up for being a wimp who panics all the time.  Then I gently, oh so gently, begin to slow my breath down and deliberately bring each breath deeper into my body.  Then I concentrate my attention on my heart.  I imagine that my heart is opening like a flower, and my breath is pouring in and out of my heart.  I imagine that each breath is full of liquid gold, and I am being filled up with gold light.  I fill myself up with this delicious warm yellow-gold breath until I am brimming with it, until it is spilling out of the top of my head and trickling down my fingers and through the bottom of my feet.  It only takes a minute, but it's the most effective way I know to bring myself back to calm and balance.  You might try it yourself.  It helps if you practice doing it even you're not afraid, so that you can return to a familiar rhythm in times of true fear.  

 Some people have asked why I left Japan; isn't that giving in to the very fear I was talking about fighting?  But as I wrote, having a very clear plan was part of how I was able to stay calm.  My partner and I agreed that if it looked like there was any possibility of radiation reaching Tokyo, or we were facing a serious food or supply shortage, I would take our daughter back to the US.  So when those threats became more likely (though certainly not inevitable), it was a clear decision. 

There was a texture to the decision, a quality to it, that was distinctive.  Ironically, I'd finally found my answer about how to distinguish between fear and just plain old information.  In the preceding days, I'd felt panic, I'd felt frantic, I'd felt my throat close up and my hands shake.  But I had also felt paralyzed.  I was clamping down on my own panic because there was nothing to do with it.  (That's why it was so important that I move my body, that I ground into my physical self, to help me process all the adrenaline and cortisol my body must have been producing.)  If I'd known how to channel my energy into actions to help those in distress, that would have been good too.  Other than giving money, there didn't seem to be much that I could immediately do. 

So on Tuesday morning, I got very quiet.  I did a session by phone with Melani Marx, which is one of the most powerful ways I know to quiet myself and line up with my truest knowing.  I held my daughter in my mind, and I held the reality of Japan in my mind as best as I knew.  I felt deep grief for the north.  I felt sadness.  And I felt a fierce maternal roaring, like the lioness in me making herself known.  There was no fear.  There was not even a sense of danger.  What I felt was a clear knowledge that in order to be at peace with myself, I needed to take my daughter somewhere else.  It was a decision that I knew others would consider foolish and panicked, it was a decision that disrupted all of the beautiful routines and support systems of our daily lives.  It also disrupted our financial stability and threw us into limbo.  In many ways, it was much more scary to go than it would have been to stay. 

But in that moment, there was no more paralysis.  There was something I can only describe as momentum.  There was a clear 'Yes' from my essential self.  It was a physical sensation just above my navel, almost like I was being hooked and pulled forward.  Within minutes, I was online buying a plane ticket.  

 
And I am at peace.  I am in Portland, Oregon, and the rains come down, the sun spikes through, and all over this green city, daffodils and crocus are blooming.  And I am full of gratitude. 

    

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