I think it’s because they let us know, through a feeling, that there’s another way—many ways, a multitude of ways!—to experience life. There are an infinite number of ways someone can do, have, be, overcome, rise above to live an intentional life… or not. Either one is that person’s choice, consciously or subconsciously, and ends up being the story of their life. We can learn from all of these stories.

A story widens our lens and broadens our vision to possibility and, with that, comes an open heart.

A story in which someone chooses to rise from the trenches of abuse or poverty or neglect and decides to do things differently than what had been done to them—becoming philanthropic, motivational, brave, forgiving.

Or maybe someone who grew up privileged and gives it all up to experience simplicity and to serve others.

Or maybe someone became blind, moved past the intensity of self-pity, and uses their experience to go on and teach others who were blind.

Or maybe someone identified as a victim of some kind for decades and then finally moves to the other side of that, becoming selfless, grateful, gentle, happy, more productive than consumptive.

Or stories in which people didn’t make it out of the trenches, who stayed stuck like quicksand, who couldn’t quite find a way to turn the light on in the dark to expose what they thought was the boogie man but was really just their own shadow.

We are attracted to stories that make us feel something. We are drawn to stories and songs of triumph, beating all odds, turn ing it all around… stories of the heart. And aren’t we also drawn to stories where people are suffering, downtrodden, at the bottom, on the edge?

Either way, someone else’s story is an opportunity to learn, to expand, to grow as if it were yours. Whether in tragedy or triumph, in bitterness or inspiration, in a nightmare or a dream come true, we can ask ourselves, “What if that were me? What would I do? How do I want to live? What do I want my story to be?”

People come into my clinic all the time and bless me with their stories. And I observe them. I learn from them. I listen to them. And I get to tell mine, too. Both sides listen and learn, tucking away useful little snippets for consideration.

I see my little 200 square foot cinder-block office space as a place of alchemy where stories of despair, heartache, grief, tragedy, and pain can transform into stories of attained goals, breakthroughs, and healings witnessed and celebrated. Joy and gratitude felt and embodied. Validation, support, understanding. Relief. Softening.

But at times there is also, confusion, anxiety, and restlessness about taking responsibility for life and what that looks like, what that means, what’s next.

Einstein said, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.” I see this change in my little studio every day I go to work.

I see it in the vitality of the plants. I hear it in the ravens outside, and I see it in the red rock portal to the mighty Colorado River as it’s carried downstream. I see it on people’s faces and in the difference in how they carry themselves from when they walked in to when they walk out.

A few years ago, I had a woman in her 80s come in for a massage. She was borderline interrogating me about my approach and what I would do, her brow furrowed, her lips pursed, her demeanor gruff. Ninety minutes later she looked at me with a relaxed but studious face and sparkly eyes and said, “You look different.”

And with a smile I said, “You look different. Might it be that you feel differently and so you’re seeing differently?”

I love that story.

Something really cool happens when we take the witnessing of a story one step further. Instead of being content with just the insights, we can utilize and apply the energy gained from those insights to become more intentional with who we want to be and how we want to live. Letting the who be the driver for what we do.

When we initiate what we’ve learned from other’s mistakes/hardships/victories/triumphs and we apply it to our own lives by living intentionally, we’re all hands-on-deck in our own life adventure. Every action, thought, and behavior stem from that decision and intention.

Stories are powerful; they stir something in us. They expand us, stretch us, guide us, shape us, turning us onto and tapping us into what’s possible.

Remember that you are the main character. You have the power of being led, inspired, guided and then you get to use that energy to live with a clear intention. Let the gift of a story fuel your inner fire, lighting the way for your own adventure, otherwise known as your life.

The post Story: A Powerful Tool for Living Intentionally appeared first on TUT.

One day I was giving a client a massage. Sometimes we talk; sometimes we’re quiet. This session she was asking me questions and my history with drug use addiction came up quite nonchalantly. She was surprised, and I was too—not because I was talking about it but by how neutral it all felt.

I’m so far from the shame and embarrassment of it all, now all I can see is the gift in it. If I didn’t have those experiences, I wouldn’t be me and be so understanding and compassionate of how others might be feeling, depending on where they are on their path and journey.

I wouldn’t have the awe and gratitude for what it feels like to have 10,000 angels as my guide, helping me and carrying me out of awful situations and into safety. I wouldn’t know deep in my being that I am loved, and it’s all on purpose for my greatest and highest good.

If I hadn’t worn a molded back brace for 2 years, had a spinal fusion at 16, missed out on my dream of being a college athlete, I wouldn’t be as empathetic to others who are feeling stuck and lost at that age.

I wouldn’t have sought out so many alternative therapies to help myself and others know that there’s another way. I wouldn’t be as encouraging and happy for people who are recovering quicker, faster, stronger. I wouldn’t be a bodyworker, homeopath, and health coach.

There are so many experiences of hardship, loss, gain, and triumph that I’ve had that have made me… me. And as I woke up on a river beach last weekend, celebrating my birthday and reflecting on all the rotations around the sun up until now, I decided with great love and appreciation that I quite like being me. I’m thankful for all of my experiences in life.

When I see people come in with their problems or hear of tragedies, I first honor their grief, pain, confusion, and frustration, but I also can’t help but to also see their hearts grow 10 sizes right in that moment. I can see the gift already because I believe all experiences are lessons for us to learn how to return to love in this human incarnation.

How might the diagnosis you identify yourself with be serving you in some way? Can you listen more astutely to the messages your body is sending you? Life is a game, not a battle. Your body is your friend and teammate and loves you.

How is that discord with your co-worker/partner/family member showing up to help your heart grow? Is the lesson to be more patient or more powerful? To draw a boundary or to be more forgiving?

How is that breakup, job loss, eviction, addiction, death, natural disaster bringing with it a silver lining of something greater? Can you expand your senses beyond the form into the formless?

Even receiving good fortune can have its own challenges. How good can you let things be? Do you feel worthy enough to receive when you don’t have problems or need anything? Do you need to create problems and dramas to learn your lessons from a place of pain and suffering? Or can you learn from a place of joy and inspiration?

The only constant in your life is you. It’s all happening for you. It’s all for you. Everything is you.

The more you begin to see the Divine in yourself, the more you begin to see the Divine in all things.

With a little (or a lot) of perspective we can see that life is happening for us, not to us. This is easier when we’re removed from the emotional charge of being in it. At first,it took a decade to get my aha moments of my problems and challenges being opportunities. It took years to gain the wisdom that only came after I realized how neutral it all was. Now, it doesn’t take as long to see the light in the dark.

When you become the observer of your life, watching it like a movie, like a fly on the wall, without emotional charge, it’s impossible not to see how our challenges are our greatest gifts, no exceptions. Everything happening in our outer experience is an amazing opportunity to learn more of who we are, to remember that we chose to be here and that we’re here to be who we came here to be.

The gifts in all things allow us to experience miracles in our life and in turn help others experience miracles in theirs just by being ourselves. The gifts are how we’re relate to others. They’re how we resonate as a mirror for someone else to see themselves from a place of safety, belonging, and non-judgment. They’re how we can be more understanding, more sympathetic, more encouraging.

They’re how we gain insights and wisdom. They’re how we get to be an example of what’s possible. They’re how we serve and help just by being ourselves and owning with great appreciation everything that has come to pass, scars and all.

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Because I can’t get this other thing out of my head and that is… that change and time and growth and sprouts and all of it just takes as long as it takes.

So often we want to rush it along or slow it down. We want to hurry up or we want more time. We can’t wait until it’s over, or we don’t want it to end. And the “it” just takes as long as it takes.

As I was planting all of my garden seeds this year I was looking at the germination rates: 14 days for peppers, 3 days for lettuce, 21 days for beets. It seemed like the zinnias popped up in one night—a quantum leap! But everything else? It’s just taking as long as it takes for those seeds to sprout.

My husband and I were talking recently about how well the kids were playing together lately, on their own, lost in their own little worlds with hilarious tiny human conversations.

We remembered going on a camping trip, driving the Baja peninsula when they were 1 and 3, thinking that when we got to the beach they’d just go play together. To our disappointment, they didn’t. Today they’re 4 and 6 and they’re finally doing what I thought they were going to do 3 years ago. And this is how long it took.

We are such an instant gratification society. We expect miracle cures in 1 or 2 sessions; we give up when we don’t see immediate results after 1 week of exercising or dieting; we hear of someone else’s spontaneous remission and then lose motivation when it hasn’t happened for us after 2 weeks of deciding we’re going to heal ourselves.

I have always been one of those people who wants things now, anxious about when I’m going to get “there.” But with life experiences adding up, I’m acquiring a bit more grace and a lot more space for things to take as long as they take. I’m 40 now and this is how long it has taken.

Another thing is that you can’t go by appearances. Because all that you’re working towards or waiting for is happening all along beneath the surface in the matrix of the soil web. It appears as though nothing is happening or that it’s taking forever and then something sprouts and you declare it an overnight miracle. But it’s not.

The miracles are in the mundane, day to day, 1% at a time, watering, tending, feeding, rehearsing, practicing, showing up with your eye on the prize of what you know can come to be, waiting to see it made manifest. There is so much going on in the unseen before you see it come to fruition. It just takes as long as it takes.

What a relief, right? The pressure is off! We can do our part to tend, but if we over-function, over-water, over-fuss, over-anything it’s not going to make anything happen any faster.

Part of our job includes letting go, surrendering it, offering it up to a greater intelligence for the timing to be what it is meant to be. Grief, dreams, seeds, kids, projects, mastery, winter, journeys, a day in a lifetime. They all just take as long as they take to experience, integrate, and gain wisdom from.

And go easy on yourself. Not all seeds will sprout. They’re not all meant to, like that article I was trying to write by over-doing. I let it go and watered the other one, and it was like a zinnia, popping up over night. Maybe the first article is more like a beet and will come to be in a future post. Life is like that.

I swear gardening is a metaphor for every lesson in life, isn’t it? We’ve got to nourish our roots, tend to what’s below the surface as well as let go and let things take their course, trusting the process and enjoying the space in between. And when you’re eventually enjoying the fruits of your labor, I hope you’ll smile and look back and say “Huh, so that’s how long it took.”

The post Learning to Let Things Be in Their Own Time appeared first on TUT.

During her visit last August she was growing clearer about her wish to live by her grandchildren. She always feels healthier and lighter when she’s around the children, who just smother her with love, attention, and adoration. Both my brother and I have been telling her that living close to them would add so much life to her years and love to her life.

You see, 10 years ago she bought her very own little house. She genuinely enjoyed fixing it up and putzing around her place, but then her grandchildren made an entrance into this big, beautiful world and as the distance grew greater, Mom’s health began to decline.

I think every time I talked to her she was going to another doctor’s appointment, being diagnosed with this or that, living on antibiotics, and unable to leave her house much of the time.

I worked with her long distance as much as I could. I would send her morning meditations by Marianne Williamson and random Notes from the Universe, along with some other meditations to listen to about the nature of reality.

I would talk to her on the phone about how we can create within the field of infinite possibilities when we get really clear on what we want; never mind the when or how, just the “what” and let the Universe take care of the rest.

I would encourage her that if she was clear that she wanted to move out here then she had to feel what that would be like already… to close her eyes and feel in her heart the feelings she would feel when she was out here, as if she were already here. And then what was one thing, a choice, an action she could make today if she really were to live here?

So she began to pack up one box a day. She began to go through her clothes and things she had stored away for years. She gave away her fancy China dishes that she’s been carrying around for fifty years. She began to move in the direction of someone who was in charge of her destiny.

As I would talk to her about what she should do, I realized that I, too, wanted this experience, and so I began to feel my mom here as well, living in our town, picking the kids up from soccer practice, and taking them out for ice cream. I would close my eyes and feel in my heart how enriching and natural it would feel for my children to have Gramma’s house to go to.

To my surprise, without any prompting or discussion from me, my six year old daughter picked up on the frequency and began to send my mom “hugs” in the mail, writing with misspelled words and lots of hearts and flowers how she wished “NeNe” lived here along with, of course, how much she loved her.

She would even put one of her $1 bills in the envelope, which then inspired my four-year-old son to do the same. I told them they didn’t need to send NeNe money, but they insisted that maybe it would help her to pay her way to move to our town.

In a couple of months, my mom will turn 70 years old. Last week she sold her house for more than her asking price. She listed the house on my dad’s birthday (he died suddenly from a heart attack 14 years ago), and one week later it was under contract to a soon-to-be married couple that she really connected with.

Out of the blue (wink wink), strangers began offering their services to help her move. She’s donating things left and right to the upcoming church sale and to the Salvation Army. She has always wanted to see New York City, so she has a trip planned for after her birthday to visit my cousins and see it for the first time, making another dream come true.

She says she feels light, free, healthy, relaxed, and with energy to wake up each day to see what else is going to unfold. She will be moving to our town this summer to live near her grandkids, and the first thing she’s going to do is take them out for ice cream.

It might look like this has happened all of a sudden from the outside, but I know that every day, for a long while now, she has been taking time to visualize herself in the scene of what she would like to be experiencing.

She got clear on what she wanted and divine intelligence arranged in perfect order, in perfect timing, for her wish to come true. She drew the experience to her because she knew what she wanted, and she felt it first, before it happened. She caused an effect!

Her story is another inspiring story that we’re here to love, to be loved, to enjoy, and to thrive. I can hardly wait to see what she creates next. I think her 70s are going to be her best decade yet.

The post It’s Never Too Late to Take Charge of Your Destiny appeared first on TUT.