Pain as a Path to Insight

Anyone who has ever suffered knows the challenge of finding meaning in the pain. Initially we seek a cause - we blame others - we blame ourselves - we blame inanimate objects or God. It must be someone's fault. Ow!! Once we get tired of that, we resign, man up, bear with it, or get going trying to alleviate the pain without ever recognizing the gift of it's presence - and there is a gift...always a gift underneath.

There is a way to relate to the energy of pain that is far more effective - one that increases our abilities and gives clear meaning to our experience. This interactive workshop will explore the yogic path of the nature of pain as a path to insight.

“Once one has committed to wholeness, all that is not that will step forward to be healed” says the Mystic.

Whether your own experience is with physical, emotional or psychic pain, you can learn new skills and open to insights that offer a clear framework for transformation. If that sounds too esoteric, just think of an ice cube melting into a puddle of water. It is not a mystery because we can observe and understand it.

All energy that is frozen in time and space can be refreshed with the warmth of new light, and that includes pain.

The gift of pain is insight, and we will shift the paradigm of mindless pain relief to one of keeping the baby while throwing out the bath water. You will come away with new and powerful insights for yourself and the world around you.

This is the essence of trauma therapy no matter how big or how small the event. No one is left out of the grace of relief - it's built into the framework as part of your energetic anatomy.

Welcome!

For more information and to register for the day at Yoga Polarity Center in Malverne Long Island, contact Lizzie Ferrara at mzliz@aol.com or call 917-288-6162.

Author and Yoga Therapist Gael Chiarella Alba ERYT is founder of The Yokibics Way and blogs on the topic throughout these posts and at www.yokibics.com.

Please tell your New York friends about this opportunity...Give yourself or a friend this gift of freedom and join us.
 
Namaste with love...
Gael

Are you dealing with negativity much?

Do you have many joy killers in your life? You know, the kind of folks who just can't get with the program that life IS a gift even when they have to make up the fun parts?

What emotion do you think runs their circuits so that in the end these people wind up moaning that every solution has a problem...that happiness looks bleak...that your helpful insight is faulty, or that your parade is headed in the wrong direction? What maddening energy makes them tick?

They might routinely reflect the pain of living. Perhaps they have a perplexing need to focus on the shadow side of everything.  Maybe "whateva" is their old favorite catchphrase.  Perhaps it's worse than that, and you have become sick and tired of putting up with them.

Some say they are sad - others apathetic, but to me rather than blaming pain, grief, fear or apathy, negativity occurs in the anger band of emotion. 

Here we have a variation on a theme:
"I'm pissed and I'm gonna show it by acting out or not-acting...."

"The world is unfair. I have a right to be negative." 

"I'm so done here but I have to stay...and that's why I'm so miserable."
"The world is full of donutholes."

Same difference. 

It is all ANGER causing a person to create a boundary against the "unfairness" or whatever other term they like to use, and it is the best they know how to be, with little emotional recourse to be otherwise. Anger can either cause boundaries against the flow of life, or get you to make a change - and you get to choose which it will be when you become conscious of what is needed.

What Would a Mystic Do??

Each emotion is stimulated in a different area of the human bodymind.  Although all emotion can seem to be a mystery that arises from within, each is quite distinct and quite systematic in the way it stimulates a whole series of very specific energetic responses. You can pinpoint areas of the body, internal functions, descriptive words and phrases we use, and balancing strategies when addressing each one. The energetic anatomy of anger tells us that strategies are to be found in the fifth chakra territory of the throat. 

The energetic challenge embraces willpower, boundaries, truth, and voice.

Aside from what you can do for yourself to transform your own negativity, here are a few pointers on how to handle your pesky friends, co-workers and relatives, wherever they may be. They are energy sappers and they will wear you out unless you create some clear boundaries of your own.

Use the color blue, physically in your surroundings, mentally in your visualizations of them, and energetically to protect yourself, then try several of the following techniques:

o   Stop trying to fix them. Stop.

o   Make super strong boundaries around this situation and yourself.

o   Create sacred space away from this person - even a crystal or flower on your desk.

o   Separate your mental space from them with a clear distinction of what is yours and what belongs to them.

o   Do not engage the negativity.

o   Be true to your own word with this person.

o   Be crystal clear with this person.

o   No backsies with this person - if you say you are going to do something, do it.

o   Keep kindness in your tone, with a slight edge of boredom. This will help diffuse the emotional energy itself by eliminating additional emotional fuel.

o   Do not try to change this person - the focus is on changing YOU in relation to the person. They will perk up - or they won't.

o   Keep communications short and sweet.

o   Document communication as much as possible.

o   "No" is a complete sentence.

o   Clear your throat.

o   Open your breath.

o   Yawn.

o   Hum. 

Keep the love - sometimes folks will see the light and get with the program. They will choose to open up, get help, or re-educate their own perspective about the usefulness of negativity. If not, and you cannot control yourself with all of the above, tough love is in order. It is time to leave and make a new plan with people who will not make you sick.  

I know that sounds strong - it is.  

You are the one who is entrapped if you are saying how miserable something is and you can't get out.  Keep your heart open but your choices clear - you can care for negative people from afar. Plan your work and work your plan as you move toward a better tomorrow.

Chin up! Let me know how it goes.

Namaste,

Gael

#4 Fear of The Unknown

Today I was musing on our long history with the emotion of fear - how taken we humans are with it - and I swiped some old quotes to give you food for thought...

"Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark."
---- Francis Bacon

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear."
--- H.P. Lovecraft

"In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly."
---- Coleridge

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
--- Frank Herbert, Dune - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

"A man who has been in danger,
When he comes out of it forgets his fears,
And sometimes he forgets his promises."
---- Euripides - Iphigenia in Tauris (414-12 BC)

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That puts it not unto the touch
To win or lose it all"
---- James Graham - Marquis of Montrose

"I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night shriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in't. I have supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me."
---- Will - Macbeth

"Being frightened is an experience you can't buy."
---- Anthony Price - Sion Crossing (1984)

"What we fear comes to pass more speedily than what we hope."
---- Publilius Syrus - Moral Sayings (1st C B.C.)

"Solitude scares me. It makes me think about love, death, and war. I need distraction from anxious, black thoughts."
---- Brigitte Bardot

"Why are we scared to die? Do any of us remember being scared when we were born?"
---- Trevor Kay

"A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice."
---- Edgar Watson Howe - Country Town Sayings (1911)

Courage is not the lack of fear but the ability to face it."
---- Lt. John B. Putnam Jr. (1921-1944)

Whatever fear is for you, and however it shows up, for the Mystic fear is a doorway into the question of faith.  Big one that is. Governed by the 4th chakra of the heart, the quest is alive for each of us.  Do not get stuck in the details of your fear of things unknown, as if finding the answer to spiders, and death and all things dark will provide the answer. 

What deserves your faith is the larger question.

What -

deserves -

your -

faith?

Fear and faith...they ride the see-saw of energy anatomy together, and once recognized you have a process for addressing fear that will continue to be gold for life.

Just for today, get away from the scary stuff.  Stop looking for the answer to the thing you fear and write yourself a list of five principles you can put your faith in instead.  It is a worthy exercise, and one that speaks to your own truth rather than some form answer from someone else. 

Find what it is that you can put your faith IN, and you are well on your way to taking mental, emotional and spiritual energy OUT of fear based worries and concerns.

Let us know how it goes.

Namaste,
Gael