“I want to be LOVED!”

“I want to see my family!”

“I WANT to be healthy again!!”

I WANT is a powerful statement. Full stop. Nothing else needs to be added. You dont need to know the future, what happens to the desire after you state it, .. or anything! Claiming your desires is powerful and complete unto itself.

We shut down our clarity when we start gettin all up in Life’s business – acting like we know what’s gonna happen next. Trying to avoid pain by telling ourselves things aren’t possible or it’s-never-happened-before-so-why-would-it-now.

It’s not up to you to make stuff happen or choose the “appropriate and reasonable” desires from the “impossible” ones.

Its your job to be more totally IN your heart and body and welcome the lust for life that wants to move through.

In my experience (and through witnessing clients) claiming your desires without adding anything onto them feels empowering, enlivening, fun! And True!

And then.. funnily enough, you are much more relaxed and open to the ways your desire is trying to show up for you, much more open to receiveing them!

Last week I was playing with some old worrying issues and doing a good job of “suffering” with them. As often happens when I’m in need, I felt a familiar tug to go and pick up a pen and paper. That tug is like feeling a parcel of words wanting to be heard, or a particular energy wanting to be felt .. And this is what came out. Hopefully, it will soothe and settle your worrisome places too 🙂

Preamble: I want to invite you to bring your worrisome thoughts here, now.

Just bring them as if you could offer them to something caring, and wise outside of yourself. Maybe something bigger than you that knows you as well or better than you know yourself. Now bring those worrisome thoughts and feelings (if you have any!) .. cause these are my INSTRUCTIONS from the Big Boss:

Dear one…

Give it all over to God

All of it

All the iddy biddy thinking bits

The worrying bits

the longings and … that big one you’ve been chewing on since you were a little tot

Give it all over to Life

Give your “getting it right” over

Give your “fucked it up”,

Give your “how will I ever?!”

Give it up.. it’s not yours to carry anyway

Give your hopes like cherished little birds, give them over

Give up your “next moment it’ll be better”

Give it All up.

And feel the Spaciousness that is you

And.. Pray

Ask to be shown

Ask to be guided

Let go of the ropes and see where the stream will carry you

Chances are it’ll be into something more soft and relaxing

Chances are it’ll be into something closer to that sense of You (not the “person” you, but the Being you)

It’s not personal, none of it, Life wants you to Relax.. ok??

So give it over. And enjoy the gift of This moment, right here

…

Do you have a nutty concern niggling at your insides? Would you like to have a go at getting your own Instructions from the Big Boss-Flavoured-like-You?

Here’s how:

1. Formulate a question about your concern or worry. Write it down

2. Take your pen and, using your non-dominant hand, let the pen (and your Big Boss/inner gudiance) answer. Let it stream and flow out.. it may sound like goobligook at first, just trust.

3. Act as if. Act as if you have access to an incredibly wise and benevolent being who has Exactly the answers and energy you need for your life right now. Act as if and let the pen and your hand show you how …

4. Let me know how you go!!

What’s happening in Wisdom Body World?

A Whole Lotta Self Care

You may have noticed that it’s been Super busy around here. A house move with a new clinic space in Ocean Shores, new fortnightly clinic opening in Paddington/Brisbane (I’m there again this weekend) and a 5 day trip to Melbourne just recently. Mama Gena, a woman whose work I deeply love and admire says that when the pressure is on with more work and more demands, you’ve gotta increase the self-care and pleasurable practices in equal measure.. the opposite of what we tend to do when there’s lots to “do”!

So last Tuesday, at the end of a full and beautiful day of sessions, I happy-sad-ly said goodbye to my Northcote/Melbourne clinic for a while so I can focus my energies up North.

I spent 2 nights down on the Mornington Penninsula with dear friends and went for a walk/jog up and down its sandy coastal tracks. I put my head on trees and my bum on sand. I listened.

I had my first ever float tank. Universes of silence ForEver. It wasnt all comfortable!

I slept a lot.

In the sun.

With a blanket – on my head!

Here’s some pics from my walk:

So, today this email is just a hello in your inbox, an update from me and a curiosity.. how are you doing, riding the waves of life?

I’m wishing you many good things and the strength and capacity to hold all that life brings. May the stream carry you somewhere delicious and restful

x with love, Amanda

Psst.. want to know whats happening in Wisdom Body world of offerings? You can keep in touch in social media land here

Today I want to share a love note. A bow to the humility and humanness in us all, as, perhaps you look back in reflection on your year.

At the end of every the year for the past 8+ years I have a spiritual teacher visit my hometown, and over the years she, and her teachings, have touched me very deeply and “taught me” a lot about love, about the mind and about True nature.  

A few Friday’s ago it was the first public meeting of her visit in the Shire, and I witnessed the size of her love and the way people became beautiful, authentic versions of themselves when they talked with her. My heart opened wide, I laughed till my cheeks hurt, and I remembered the incredible love I have found in her presence before, and forgotten. Again and again as I dive back into daily living and doing.

When I left that night, the laughter and love that had opened me wide again, brought up a big welling of grief. Grief for the way I’ve honoured my mind over what I know to be true, for the way I’ve chased and fed my fears, rather than the truth I found when sitting with her. A kind of desperate sadness to have lost something so precious in the flood of focus on living and survival.

And this is what I heard from inside my heart that I want to offer you.

Life will wait for you.

Your true nature, the love that is the base of you, and that is bigger than your “Amanda” or “Shane” or “Mary”… doesn’t mind if you spend 100 years chasing your tail in fear, anger or sadness.

It doesn’t mind if you give your thoughts, time and energy to your selfishness, your jealousy, your anger, your pettiness.

These things don’t touch who you are at all.

True nature is intelligent and deeply lovingly wise. You can’t get it wrong, can’t waste time. (That’s just a trick of the mind). But you can choose love and your true nature sooner. But only because something in you wants it.

Not because you should.

Be your Amanda, Mary or Shane.

Walk your walk and listen for the wise hum below and in it all.

You can’t get it wrong and love wants you as much as you want it.

And how glorious is That 🙂

Be well dear human!

with love

Amanda

In the last few weeks I’ve been doing some gentle (but consistent) energy & chi building practices and, as I feel more rested, resourced and happy in my heart, and as my life starts to reflect that inner well-being back to me via friendly, loving people & synchronistic events, a very clear realization has come to me (with some help.. let me explain below).

When energy is flowing well, it moves throughout the body freely and draws energy

… Up from the earth, from the natural environment, and from harmonious people, places, things. When it’s flowing well, it’s obvious when something ISN’T harmonious and enhancing, so we naturally will gravitate away from that thing, keeping our energy flowing and healthy.

The problem with trauma, shock or stored negativity is that they are like a block in your funnel.

A frozen place where energy gets stuck, and you therefore need to revert to “the past” to know how to respond to your environment. This is a good “survival” strategy, but not necessarily a good Thriving strategy. And being stuck in survival can feel very stressful if done over time (believe me, baby, I know)!

Trauma, shock or stored negativity can essentially keep us in a loop within our own energy system, and as Joe Dispenza says, we stay in the lower energy centers (realted to bodily survival) & we start to use our own resources of energy to run our life, rather than the energy of our own connection to source/life-force/chi (the bigger field around and inside us).

What I see in my work with trauma is that when we start touching on a trauma (with slow and present awareness), energy begins to mobilize. We are unlocking the frozen places, and this is good (it doesn’t often feel good at first, but that shifts a lot once the stored energy is mobilised/expressed).

THIS is what I want to share with you on the VALUE of getting your energy moving, and feeding your system with positive life force and self connection.

Because…

>> We can’t create (back up) what we want if we come from a depleted life force <<

We might say we have a dream, a new business idea, a plan for an awesome holiday.. but if we are stuck in survival, many of these “new” things” will turn out like the “old things”… because the system that is creating them is not able to allow new, fresh chi and the unknown IN.

It doesn’t matter what you’re drawn to here (money, love, health, inner peace) if you are depleted, it is harder to feel your natural life-force energy (and the natural joy that it is) and it’s like you dont have “credit” in your bank account.

*Cue big Italian guy at a fruit stall* “eh! Mate, what are you gonna pay for that Expansion with?!! No credit, no Expansion, Eh!!”

…

So, yes, the trouble with trauma is that it limits the amount of life-force that is able to flow through a body. But when energy is Gently mobilised with kind and soft awareness, those blockages in the funnel will soften and dissolve and you will be free from negative loops. I have seen this over and over again.

And then, and even during that, you can Really focus on chi cultivation, on breathing your energy up to your heart (a daily gratiude journal can help this), up into your throat, and brain and more expanded/connected consciousness.

So in the spirit of all of that… Here’s a little ditty of a dit. A boogey of a boog. Energy moving and chi making a giggle on a face and in some hands. (It’s a dance video.. of me.. being silly. Here)

Well, on a personal note, I see that most everything I have wished for has come to be.. eventually.

That particular quality of wild fun love, or that amount of money or even that shiny red car!

And I see this in my clients lives too. That whether we are in dire situations or feeling a quiet deep calling in the heart, life Does respond. And the main thing I want to share with you is that it ISNT your EFFORTS (or your ego) that makes it so. It’s the Nature of life itself.

… So let me be clear… Your efforts Can make stuff happen, but I reckon it doesn’t feel so good when it comes, cause often you’ve lost contact with the reason for it (feeling you wanted), or you’re so exhausted from the effort, you don’t enjoy it!

Of course, consistent effort/energy put in is necessary in many situations to get you to your goal…

But, what I have found, is that the more you think You are the one making it happen, the further you get from the experience you’re truly wanting to have (I’m taking a lot of liberties here describing your siutation.. but please bear with me.. you know I’m just talking about myself?! As always, take it all with a bar of soap and I hope its useful to the pusher in all of us!)

I believe there is a greater wisdom at work here. It’s an intelligence that orders the stars and gravity, grows the trees and moves the oceans. It is the thing that connects us all to each other and to itself. We are a part of it and we don’t need to do anything to “deserve” or create our separate pocket of goodness.

So, I’ll go a little more specific in Where I get this from

Over many years I have worked with and befriended many beautiful humans with childhood trauma. A common theme I see is that in their lack of safety in childhood, they have reached out to something else. Often in out of body states they become very good at conversing with the spirit realm, and build whole networks of connection with something outside of the body; with spirit, with non-physical guidance.

I see, even in the horrible truth of childhood abuse, a way that life comes in to create some kind of comfort. These friends and clients often work as psychics or energy workers, their sensitivities create a strong bridge to other realms that helps more earth-bound folk expand our perceptions.

What this shows me is that when the longing/need is strong, life responds and brings it rushing in. Sometimes not straight away or in the way we wish it. But it does come.

(It’s also in Diamond Essence work in the theory of holes .. when we feel and meet and get curious about a wound in the psyche (a “hole”), it will turn and often become the holes’ opposite. So sadness becomes peace and comfort

……
So, in the email a few weeks back, I said that I’d be sending an email about when we’re really Not able to relax with the way things are, or into trusting that life is going to respond.

And the keys to this are the same keys I use in all my work:

INVITE

LISTEN

ALLOW

and

INVITE again

If you are longing for more money or a new partner or more harmony in your home.. invite and call it in, ask or state that it’s here,

Listen to your inner response,

Allow the joy or tears or anger to move. Accept where you are with this… “Hold” your little one’s (old) feelings about it if they come up. Or if you’re very open to this thing you are calling for, enjoy the feeling of it running through your body! This is the feeling of life responding to your call!

And Invite the feeling of more money/love/harmony in again.

……………..

When we feel like life Suck bats b#lls, it’s a good time to have a cry, yell into a pillow, find a compassionate ear to listen to your un/reasonable feelings and let it all flow OUT. Inquire into the meat and grits of your experience, the light or the heavy, the spacious or the tight.

Cause, lovely one. Life, in my opinion, wants to love us. It wants to have harmonious flow and aliveness .. and where it’s not flowing and alive, it will welcome some sweet compassion and holding, not more pushing and should-ing.

All those intentions and things you openly or secretly long for.. it’s at its root, your souls longing for itself

It is trying to pull you Home.
Just exactly what’s in this moment,

Just exactly all of yourself,

So I invite you.. in your process of inviting, listening, allowing and inviting again.. to soften your hold on the timeline of things.

What would it be like if you had all the time in the world.. ?

What if there was never any rush and nowhere to get to? Just the process of enjoying your own soul’s call and response for itself?

In my experience, when there’s no rush, the gentle deep satisfaction of life can pour in. We can feel ourselves and what we’ve always been longing for.

I’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this!

With much warm and goodly love,

xx Amanda

These are powerful things to do (and they often work!), but they can also distract us from the fullness and beauty of This moment, and can sometimes create tension .. as a teacher of mine says “too much intention causes tension”.

So, I’d like to offer something to the “intention-setting”pot.. that

Life is a call and response thing.

Life is Always responding. It can’t help it.. and you don’t have to Do anything or Be anything different for life to respond to your call. It’s actually all happening in the effortlessness.

And Effort (trying and “doing it right”) is sometimes the thing that gets in the way of things showing up with ease?!

Over the next few days I’m going to be sharing a bit about letting go and prayer to inspire your effortless welcoming of your desires in 2018, and also, what to do when you’re feeling effortful and stuck (aka, attached, emotional or doubting.. aka.. moving into effort or collapse).

Why might I be someone you’d listen to on this stuff? Well.. I’ve spent YEARS chasing and getting all het-up about my intentions! Put Lots of energy into making myself “better” so my longings (a better relationship, more money, more security etc etc) would come to me. I’m someone to listen to because of all the ways I’ve made it so hard for myself .. when it Really didn’t need to be!

I’m also someone who has spent years in an Essence school training learning to listen to the flow of god-force/life/essence and letting the non-physical essence of things guide me, and then years working with others to help them listen to and be guided by that gentle inner voice.

I’ve seen a lot of the glory and the underbelly of intention setting-land. A lot of the ways the personality comes in and tries to Do it. And I’ve experienced my own personality getting out of the way in my life and effortlessness taking root (SUCH a relief!).

So, my lovely, I have a gentle invitation for you…

Love your longings.. cuddle up with them, let there be space in the feeling of them

Listen in to the ones you have in your quiet times
Those gentle longings to rest more
To live more freely with more abandon
To do that thing that makes your heart sing

Allow yourself to dream
Let all the ideas and longings just bubble up without filter
Everything is ok
Everything is offered for a reason

You came here with a particular leaning
A particular skill set
A particular shape

Let it blossom and Be
(You’ll feel so much better for it)

To continue this exploration, I want to name an important factor from brain science that can influence this body Knowing, and then give you a tool for how to work with this.

Fundamentally, when given the time and space for it, life will innately move towards health and well-being. Your body and Being gravitate towards life, vitality and harmonious, healthy connections. We are literally built (in the brain, the nervous system, the biology) for connection and love. This is why we listen deeply to the body’s cues. But, there is also something called “implicit” programming in the brain that can come into play and over-ride healthy impulses towards connection or life-giving choices in order to have us do what the body knows how to do.

This “implicit” memory, (essentially unconscious brain programming) can override appropriate responses in the moment. So, we can find ourselves feeling clear, powerful and strongly guided from within, and then suddenly, an old trigger comes up (a relationship pattern, a life situation) and we are habitually responding in a way that Doesn’t serve our health and well-being. We are essentially responding from past programming that worked Before but is no longer relevant to this present moment.

Implicit memory arises from the “older” parts of the brain, the limbic system, and the instinctual/animal brain. The behaviors that arise out of this unconscious part of the brain are designed to be immediate and pre-programmed, so we don’t need to *think* through all our responses. These pre-programmed responses were mostly laid down in the unconscious at an early age to help us survive and thrive in our family of origin. These are often very fast and unconscious responses to particular situations.

Basically, our body holds memories and programming that tells us how to respond to the world in a particular way. If we are looking to our Knowing around a topic that was fraught in our early life, the feelings and emotional cues we get can be laden with the old story, which is often also linked to long held beliefs like “I’m not loveable” or “they always leave”, or “all big animals are dangerous”.

So let me give you an example of this is:

If you had a bad encounter with a big dog as a kid, your body may have a big fear and retreat response anytime you see a big dog, regardless of how friendly it actually is.

Or if you had a dismissive mother who couldn’t tune into and meet your needs, you may automatically move towards caring for others when you yourself have a need. This is when your implicit memory is taking over from present moment awareness and correct attunement/response.

So how do we work with implicit memory?

We make the unconscious conscious.

We work with implicit memory by creating safety, space and time to make these responses conscious, and to feel those old emotions and sensations in the body, so that they can begin to move out of the unconscious and into your conscious awareness.

Once these implicit memories are more known and met in the consciousness, if/when they do come up again, they don’t hold as much sway over your decision making and you can more authentically feel into the present moment truth for yourself. Into your Knowing.

Please note: we are talking about powerful biological survival drives here.. so I’m not inferring this is a quick fix strategy! This is an ongoing, deepening, empowering relationship with yourself and your animal programming.

So, for example:

This can look like recognizing the fear response in your body as you see a big dog, taking a moment to notice the other things on the scene, like a friendly owner holding the dog on a leash, and soothing yourself by checking for the exit. It can look like being able to choose to hold your fear and notice the dogs eyes are soft and it’s tail is wagging, and move towards it as a safe animal. Or it can look like noticing this dog is a little shifty, so choosing to move away. The point of this is that you are able to take in more of what is actually here, rather than just responding based on your body memories.

Or in the case of relationship, it can look like noticing yourself “over-giving” to another and feeling disconnected from your own experience. You may take a moment to listen in to yourself and notice some sadness and step back to give yourself some empathetic listening. You may even speak your needs to the other person.

The point of this is that you are able to take in more of what is actually here, rather than just your body memories, and respond more authentically in the moment.

………………….

Action step:

To explore one of the areas where implicit memory over-rides your appropriate present-moment responses, I invite you to take a moment to write down what happens for you.

What thoughts do you have, what body sensations,

And then how do you speak or behave when this is active in you?

Please give yourself some good space and time to explore this and allow feelings to arise.

If you want to explore some deep or strong body memories I highly recommend doing so with a safe other.

Implicit memory can be particularly strong for people with early trauma (unsafe environment in childhood) or people who have experienced threatening situations in life.  Working with implicit memory can be done in gentle self-inquiry or ideally with a trained therapist in a modality like Somatic Experiencing or the Hakome method. You can see how you can work with me if you feel drawn below.

If you are interested in bringing more awareness and choice to your unconscious responses, you can find out about the sessions here

with love and warm wishes,

x Amanda