I talked to my teacher yesterday. She was incredibly firm with me. She came straight out of the gate with some tough love and it snapped me right out of my own misery. Thank God! Lately I have been letting my anxiety run the show. A constant compulsion to worry about every little detail. I have a lot on the horizon with upcoming retreats, trainings and travel and the fine print of each have been keeping me up at night. Will I have enough scholarship money for Girlvana? Will that student fight back on our air tight refund policy, do we need another slide about the science of breath retentions in the breathwork training, is there an Uber service in Pisa that will bring a retreat guest to Lucca, Italy?
I tell my teacher, it is simply way too much for one person to handle. I can’t do it. She says:
WANT WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW.
Excuse me? Want this anxiety?
ANXIETY IS NOT A TASK.
Okayyyy, but…..
SAY YES TO EVERY MOMENT.
Ugh, but…
USE YOUR DISCIPLINE. FULFILL THE PROMISES YOU’VE MADE. IT IS ALREADY DONE AND THESE EXPERIENCES WILL EXCEED ALL EXPECTATIONS ON ALL ACCOUNTS.
What if they don’t?
QUIT BEING A BABY.
Ahh, the spiritual path is not for the faint of heart. There is no coddling here. My teacher tells me I must look at my compulsion to make a fuss. She’s got me there. I come from a long line of fussers. In fact, women are conditioned this way, to make a fuss. To worry. It is in our DNA. She tells me, this is how you keep a witch distracted. Her definition of a witch is “a person who moves energy on purpose.”
Who are we when we aren’t worried? Who are we without our fear? Can we see how staying distracted with fussing keeps us from our power? She tells me to DECIDE that worry will not run the show anymore because, quantumly it is already done. All those details I am worried about? They get worked out. That thing you stressed about for weeks? Never ended up being that bad. The scary thoughts that kept us up at night? Never came to fruition.
TRAIN THE WILD HORSE OF YOUR MIND. CHOOSE NEW THOUGHTS.
She tells me. Choose original thought. Break the conditioning of worry. I realize these thoughts aren’t mine. They are my mother’s and my mother’s mother an so on. They are the conditioning of all women. Stay worried! It’s less of a threat to society as a whole when women stay busy with worry instead of being present with power.
GO MEDITATE. BECOME A REDWOOD.
She tells me my first chakra is twitching. Makes sense. I am ungrounded and all my energy has been spinning in my chest like a tornado of anxiety. Become a redwood, ground your roots into the rich soil, feel your strong and tall trunk stretch up to the open sky. Feel your branches bask in the light of the sun. Feel the presence of the other strong trees around you. It really helps.
WE’VE BEEN PROGRAMMED TO BE AFRAID.
Now it is time to reprogram, she says. I leave our call feeling much, much better. I do my meditation and become a redwood. I begin to plan out this week’s new moon circle and I feel really inspired to share the grounded wisdom of my teacher.
Eclipse season is over, and with it it’s fiery intensity. Mercury retrograde is done and with it, it’s confusion and frustrations. The grounded new moon in Taurus is here to give a much needed deep exhale. It is time to ground…to become a tree.
Join me tomorrow (Thursday, May 18th) at 6pm pst or catch the recording. Together we will do the redwood meditation together, followed by some balancing breathwork. Then we will move into journal prompts that will ground us deeper into releasing our fear programming and inspire us to choose new thoughts.
The link is here to register. Hope to see you there!
Ally