Author Archives: Susan McNamara

True Self-Care

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Last weekend I co-facilitated a restorative retreat at my farm where the focus was on self-care. While I had prepared a lot around what would be the obvious candidates for caring for ourselves, as the afternoon went on, it was amazing to hear how much nuance showed up around what self-care truly is.

We live in interesting and often confusing times. On the one hand, we are encouraged by a multi-billion dollar wellness industry to take better care of ourselves. To buy more things, get more services, do more around our self-care. On the other hand, we have a machine-driven culture that not only does not make time for what we actually need, it doesn’t even recognize it. We see this demonstrated in the unremitting schedules we are attempting to keep and in the rewards bestowed upon those who seem to be able to work without pausing or attending to their needs.

Both are terribly out of whack. False. Misleading. Destructive. And ultimately, very, very harmful to actually caring for ourselves in a way that is real and true.

Self-care is not something to be bought, acquired or negotiated over. Instead, it is built right into you. As a mammal, it is part of your survival response and is your relational glue. It serves as the foundation for your self-worth and is the gas that runs your life. And it is the homage you pay to the Creator for the gift of Life.

It shows up in your natural capacity to set a boundary and to use the word “No.” It is present in your ability to know when you are hungry, tired and need to move, and then to go on to actually satisfy what is being called for. As a matter of fact, self-care, the capacity to know how to take care of ourselves, is inborn and natural. Otherwise, how as a species would we be able to exist?

The trouble is, of course, we have allowed ourselves to be pulled away from what is natural and so when it comes to what we need. We have allowed ourselves to be bought, misled and medicated. I realize this sounds harsh, but without owning up to the part we play in the care that we need, we will never get out of the mess we find ourselves in; the one characterized by more illness, dis-ease, unrest and dissatisfaction than likely our species has ever experienced.

Self-care is not complicated. But it does require some things. Like paying better attention to yourself and to the messages you’re getting around when and where your life is out of balance. It requires being in your body and developing a respectful relationship to it (no matter what your mind or the culture demands). It means turning away from the habits and screen messaging that confuses your capacity to start inside your own self to determine what you need.

Your self-care is a reflection of how you feel about yourself and what it means to be alive. What would it be like to begin today to care for yourself as if you actually mattered? As if you actually knew what to do? No gadgets, apps, programs, books, advice required.

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Remembering & Forgetting

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I was away last weekend co-facilitating a retreat in the mountains for women. There is just something so gratifying about being with people who have chosen to step out of their lives in the service of caring for themselves. So inspiring to watch what a small amount of time with ourselves can do for our perspective. So life-changing when we give ourselves the time to see ourselves in a different light.

And that’s why retreating from the day to day matters so much. With the space we need, we’re able to tap into what it is we never want to forget, but do. Given just a little time on our own though, free from the demands and the constant noise of it all, we can realign to who we are and to who we most want to be.

For me, it always boils down to forgetting or remembering. Forgetting or remembering what we need, why we’re here, what we value and what matters most in Life.

Which is why we need lots and lots of reminders every single day. Otherwise, it’s too easy to get pulled off course. Too easy to believe that the wrong things are the right things. Too easy to believe that someone else has the answer. Too easy to believe that what we feel doesn’t matter. Too easy to get lulled into the comfort and the distractions of all our modern day “conveniences.”

So like a true North Star, when we allow ourselves some time for ourselves, we create the opportunity to see things as they really are. From this reality-based place, the little course corrections we need to make each and every day to stay on track become more obvious. And doable. It’s so much more difficult (and scary) to make your way back to remembering when you have strayed a long distance from yourself and what it is you most need.

So why not make a point of spending time with yourself each day to help you remember what you never want to forget? It’s not difficult. It’s truly as easy as pausing in your day to notice if things are working for you or not. As easy as going to your breath to create a little more space within to know what to say or decide. As easy as saying the heartfelt prayer, Help me this day to remember, before you get out of bed in the morning.

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A Vision For Your Life

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In a training I’m taking, the teacher talked about how when we create any kind of a vision, we must include both what we can influence, as well as what we cannot. That it is a sacred and courageous endeavor to include the whole picture whenever you are imagining what you would like to have or to create. Otherwise, the vision will be too timid. It will be too removed from the realities of what it actually takes to dream something into existence.

For to carry a vision is to carry both sides of the equation; without allowing yourself to be deluded as to what is yours to do and what is not.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. Especially the part about including what I have absolutely no influence over. I’ve been avoiding this part of the equation. And I certainly haven’t been paying homage to the importance of including what I have no control over. Instead, I often skip right over the scary reality that there is so much I cannot influence.

Especially when it comes to other people. What it is they will do. Or won’t do. What it is they will say. Most unsettling of all, what their response might be to something I would love to do or express, but that might be unfamiliar to them. Or more to the point, contrary to what they believe is possible.

I’ve been realizing this is why so many of us let go of our childhood dreams. Why so many of us feel something inside of us that wants to be born, but that we thwart because of “what they will say.” With “what they will say” mostly amounting to thinking that what we would dare to dream is stupid. Naive. Not possible.

Not one of us wants to be on the receiving end of such dismissal and diminishment. That’s why it can feel far too risky to go for something when you are imagining it will not be received with the support you could use.

To dream something into existence is not for the faint of heart. And yet, I believe it is one of the things we all most yearn for. It doesn’t have to be grand and on the world stage. It can be as simple as trying your hand at the creative arts just because it brings you pleasure. It can be deciding that your vision of peace for the world is something you will maintain in your own home. It can be be dancing, writing and creating where what is visioned into existence stays within the walls of your own home.

It can also be something on a larger scale as well. But the point is, the size, and even the outcome, matters not. What matters most is giving attention to something you envision for yourself or the world. What matters most is to look at what it is you can influence and then bring everything you’ve got to that knowing.

Perhaps what matters most here is you look squarely in the eye at everything you have no control over, and you do it anyway. Despite your fears. Despite “what they will say.” Despite your own uncertainties. For to bring a vision into the world is to allow the will of the gods to come through you.

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Authenticity

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Where I live, we have all kinds of wild animals; bears, bobcats, porcupines, hawks, foxes, deer and more. When my kids were older, and I would stop the car to get a better look at an animal before it went into the woods, they would always joke about what a big deal I was making of it all. I didn’t care. There was just something so special about getting to see wild creatures in their own home.

It always feels like such an honor and such a blessing to catch even a glimpse of them.

I think one of the reasons I’m so called to these moments is because of the unwavering authenticity of the animals. It feels like something I can trust. Something I can learn from. Something that reminds me of who I am. And what I can be.

An animal in the wild is never anything less than fully who and what it is. No matter what I might want. No matter what the world might be doing. The hawk will always want to pick off one of my chickens. The porcupine will always want to decimate my fruit trees. And though I may want the majestic ones like the moose, bears and the bobcats to pause a little longer so I can just be with them, they do not answer to me. Ever.

They do not adjust themselves to me. They are always, single-mindedly going to be and do whatever they are and whatever they need to do. Therein lies the secret of their integrity, as well as sacred instructions for how to live.

For to fully and authentically inhabit ourselves each and every moment creates a life based in integrity and makes us a trustworthy source for both ourselves and others. On the other hand, when we shift and negotiate ourselves based on our fears, insecurities, conditioning, wounds, what others expect of us, the demands of the modern world, we are not trustworthy. Nor are we happy, fulfilled or fully expressed.

That’s why it’s such a big deal to choose to find your way into your authentic self.

Unfortunately, we have been schooled to not be ourselves. To not feel what we are feeling. To not know what we are knowing. And because this false sense of who we are has become so familiar to us, so deeply embedded in how we think about ourselves and interact with others, it can feel impossible to get away from what has been created in this regard.

Too dangerous to challenge or look at all the ways we are not ourselves.

Then there are all the “rewards” for not being authentic. For not saying what is really on our mind because of how others get to feel more comfortable with what they are doing. There are no awkward moments when we leave something unchallenged. No need to work something out. No strength to be acquired to go against the grain of what the culture demands. No need to develop courage to say “No” to all the life-depleting choices we are being offered.

There are so many ways we are “rewarded” for not rocking the boat, for agreeing with the status quo, for going along to get along.

But the real and arduous road to authenticity means rooting out all the ways you are not your authentic self. And because we are so accustomed to not being fully ourselves, we have lots of opportunities to practice each and every day. It’s in the smile or the laugh you give when you feel otherwise. It’s in your silence when you disagree. It’s in your decision to do something, not because it feels right to you, but because everyone else is doing it.

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Following Your Own Inner Rhythms To Balance

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One of the things we can all see when we look around is a widespread lack of balance. Whether in our own lives or the ways of the world, we live in times of extremes where we flip flop between too much and too little. Where intensity is followed by collapse and where overdoing and underdoing are the name of the game.

This can look like having too intense of a work week followed by a sedentary weekend in front of a screen. It can look like our bodies being burned up by stress, only to have to get sick to balance out the intensity. It can look like depression and anxiety, dieting and binging or starting up a bunch of the latest activities du jour, only to let them fall by the wayside. And it can look like the vitriol expressed on the world stage and the apathy that follows when we feel there is nothing we can do.

Many of us feel trapped in this pendulum swing between too much and too little; believing this is just the way it is now. That we are victim to something beyond our control. So though we may yearn for a sense of balance in our lives, it can feel out of reach. Or like it is some failing on our part that we just can’t seem to get there. Or maybe that it is some one or some things fault that balance cannot be experienced.

But like all things worth having, a sense of balance is an inside job, has nothing ultimately to do with the externals and is actually innate to us.

Best of all, we have a constant reminder every single day of what balance looks like in the form of the natural world. And right now, as we enter the time of The Fall Equinox, where light and dark, for a moment in time, are balanced, we are being offered a visceral reminder of what we already know and possess.

That being, that when we are attuned to our own natural rhythms, balance is the result.

When looked at from this perspective, the externals become secondary to our capacity to tune into ourselves and what it is we are knowing and needing. The ways of the world, life and other people becoming an opportunity to sink more solidly within our own personal rhythms. To that place deep inside that knows how to ride the ups and downs of existence.

This is different than getting bashed around according to the latest crisis or challenge of the moment. But it requires both a shift in your perspective when it comes to what is happening, as well as a running practice to keep you close to your own experience.

To claim your reactions and responses are your responsibility is an enormous undertaking. This perspective shift means your reactions are yours and do not emanate from some external source. Not only is this the work of a lifetime, it will bless you with the greatest empowerment you can imagine when you learn to stop blaming what is outside of you for how you feel.

When it comes to a running practice to help you remember, your breath and your capacity to bring yourself back to the moment you are in, is the directest route to helping you connect with your own natural rhythms. The very same ones that will guide you into the next choice that needs to be made to help you live in a continual flow of inner adjustments; all circling around that often elusive experience of balance.

This all looks like staying very close to yourself, no matter what is going on. You get very intentional about checking in with your experience as you move across your day. So even when there is a difficult conversation or too much on your plate, you own your response to that intensity and you make a conscious choice to feel yourself breathing. Maybe you even ask yourself a question like, What is making this so difficult for me right now?

This is not about fixing yourself, judging yourself, or even trying to create balance. Instead, it is merely a moment in time where you tune into yourself. It is in this turning towards yourself, coupled with an open wondering about your experience, that allows you to tap back into your own innate rhythm. From there, balance is the natural outcome. No matter what is happening on the outside.

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Closing The Door

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I’m back from being away on vacation, so there’s lots to be done this week. The emails that need answering, loads of laundry, phone calls, weeding, harvesting, work-related projects and more.

As I’m setting up for my morning practice on the first day back, though it’s early, I already have a load of laundry going. So as I start to settle into meditation, I can hear the spin cycle on the washer humming away. The sound presses in on me; reminding me of all that needs doing. With this reminder comes a kind of tension to hurry up and “get things done.”

It makes it hard to settle in and to give myself this time. But then something occurs to me. The fix is obvious. All I have to do is to close the door between the spaces so that it’s easier to turn towards myself. Easier to settle into a time I count on to set myself straight. So simple.

But simple is not always easy. Especially in a world that loves to obfuscate and complicate what is most essential to us and to our lives here. Not to mention a mind that loves to list out all the reasons why we cannot possibly carve out time for ourselves and the deeper experiences of Life.

All of this is noise. Pure and simple. Life-depleting, soul-sucking noise. If it weren’t so devastating, it might be funny how absolutely ineffectual we can be when it comes to carving out time for ourselves. But it’s not funny because of how many of us don’t have a clue about what is being lost.

Without time on our own, without the space to have a thought free of what’s coming across a screen, without the room to get clear about whether or not your life is working for you, you will be taken down the wrong road. Every single time. This will leave you with no other option than to agree to and settle for all the wrong things. A kind of saying “Yes” by default to those things in Life without meaning or substance.

Time on your own, free from what the world demands of you is not a luxury. It is foundational and non-negotiable if you have any hope of hearing what your body is telling you, along with the call of your own soul. It is an inner demand if you have any chance of making daily choices that line up with what you value most.

Making time for yourself regularly is the antidote to succumbing to the madness and the falsehoods of a world intent on distracting you from yourself. Ready for something else? Learn to close some door every single day to give yourself the chance to hear how things are going and you just might find yourself spending some of the most satisfying and course-correcting time you will spend all day.

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Warrior Courage

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My yoga teacher would often talk of the spiritual path as a great battle, and how there was a far greater peace to be had on the other side of that battle. What he meant of course, was the value in meeting our challenges head on. That rather then collapsing in defeat, or trying to sidestep whatever was in front of us, we instead go heads up and bravely towards that battle. That we go right through the center of it, until we come out on the other side.

The image of a battle is frightening. It’s bloody. There’s collateral damage. It is unlike the civility of every day life. Though you want a particular outcome, there is no guarantee. And you never know what will be asked of you.

No wonder so many of us could never imagine going straight through anything that intense or unpredictable. More to the point, that potentially deadly. No wonder we would want to fall down. Or slink away. The problem being, if we do that, the battle still rages on. Only now we are at the mercy of something that will have its way with us whether we participate or not.

The battle to which I refer is the call of your own soul and the fight for your own sovereignty and authenticity. This formidable call from within is hard to answer in a world that pushes for the inauthentic where we are taught to people-please, diminish our own light and medicate ourselves into oblivion. The greatness that resides within being kept from the very difficult challenges it requires to emerge intact.

When we refuse the call of meeting our lives head on, we never develop the skills to be with what is difficult. This sets up a domino effect of more avoidance on our part of what is hard, which then means we actually cannot meet the next hardness that comes our way with anything but fear and anxiety. This sets up more exaggerated beliefs that it’s all too difficult, and that we just don’t have it in us; leaving us alienated from the very thing we most yearn for.

The good news is, this is precisely where we begin. Right at that place in our life that feels like a battleground we are not capable of meeting. Only, this time, instead of turning away, we run towards it. We say to ourselves, “I see you and I honor you as the honing I require to emerge fully myself.”

Maybe this means sitting for one minute, or even ten seconds, with an uncomfortable feeling before you distract yourself or project it onto another. And then, you build from there. Before you know it, after many, many moments like this, you have taught yourself how to be brave and how to stand in your place when the going gets tough. Before you know it, what used to feel like more than you could do, is now something that strengthens you.

This is where the courage of the warrior is born. The one who can be with what is frightening. The one who can step out of their comfort zone, by allowing what needs to die to go in order to re-imagine their life outside of the limited view of themselves they have been given. The one who asks for nothing other than to know the truth of who they are and why they are here.

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“Nothing & Everything”

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“This is nothing I ever wanted, and everything I ever needed.”

This phrase drops in recently in the midst of a roller coaster ride inside my own mind in response to the outer circumstances happening in my life. In case you haven’t already gathered, I didn’t want what was happening to be happening. But it was. Hearing these words softened the experience though; reminding me I do not always know what is best for me. But that the Universe does.

On this particular day, I had the grace to see the blessing that was being offered to me, despite experiencing something I did not want. Of course, it hasn’t been like that every day. Some days, I am like a fish on a line; fighting against “what is” with every ounce of strength I have.

And therein lies the suffering. The misery. The struggle. And the blame. All centered around the fact that things are not other than what they are. That life and other people are not doing what I want them to do. Or to be.

We all know this place. We all know the internal battle that gets waged when we do not want what is happening to be happening. Maybe it’s an illness. Or the ways of the world. Or a relationship not working out. It can be any manner of things. And if we’re paying attention, we can find examples in our lives large and small, of all the things we do not want to be happening, but that are. Of the nearly continuous stream of suffering we experience daily over all the things we want to be other than as they are.

Like the weather. Or the traffic. Or what someone else is doing, believing or saying. On and on it goes. We make the mistake that our suffering will end when that thing or that person outside of us is different. Or goes away. Or just somehow lines up with our version. We can spend our lives like this. Victimized by what is outside of us. Hoping, praying, pushing, cajoling, fighting. All in an effort to get Life to line up with our very own narrative.

But if we were willing to wise up, we would see that it has never worked out. That even when we feel as though it has worked in one situation, another will arise in its place that will not respond to our efforts. It stands to reason then, that we need another way. Another approach to being in a world that will always being doing something other than what we want it to be doing.

Best I have come up with is something I once heard. “This is not being done against you, it’s being done for you.” What if we took that attitude? Of course, it would mean we would have to own up to the fact we do not always know what is best for us. That we cannot see the larger picture to know how what is happening is somehow perfect for us.

Meaning? A whole lot of surrender. A deep and abiding trust that we are are part of Something Greater. And a willingness to shift our perception away from fighting “what is,” and instead, learn to say “Yes” to What Is.

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The Sacred Thread Of Our Lives

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I was in a yoga class this week and we were talking about the full moon. It seems in the Vedic tradition, this moon symbolizes a recommitment to that which you hold dear. The teacher spoke of this time as a “Re-tying of the sacred thread.” The thread referring to what is tied around the waist of young initiates with the re-tying referring to a reconsecration of your vows.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the phrase re-tying the sacred thread all throughout class. Even though I didn’t have a lot of words for it in the moment, it felt powerful and sacred. It felt necessary, honest and true. Truly, it felt to me like the greatest thing any one of us could ever choose to do.

That being, to visit over and over and over again what it is we are committing our lives to.

What a True North this would be in a world increasingly less sacred, honest and true. In a world that encourages us to not have a compass by which to navigate, but instead, to be like a leaf in the wind, getting blown all over the place by whatever the prevailing winds are.

But to engage instead with the sacred thread is to choose what it is you stand for, and who and what you will be in the world. No matter what. Can you imagine it? What it would be like if more of us made a commitment to what is most important to us, and then lived by that?

This is not about party politics or forcing your views on another. Instead, this is about a deeply personal vow you make to the sacredness of your own life. One where you begin to walk the path of courage and discernment that says I will pay attention to what pulls my life out of balance. I will get a handle on what my mind is doing and how it is taking me in the wrong directions. I will become accountable for every single action I take with others; foregoing the victim and the need to blame another.

Our lives are like a great tapestry composed of so many threads. So many of which we have left ignored and untended though they be the most essential.

To even be in the position of re-tying your sacred thread is first and foremost to know what it is you have bound yourself to in this lifetime. For this, you need look no further than how you spend your time, money and energy while you wonder to yourself if your daily choices line up with the preciousness of your most sacred threads.

 

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Living For Today

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Last weekend I ran in a road race with a notoriously steep mile long climb. As I passed one of the volunteers, as a way to assuage the intense experience I was about to partake in, she said to me quite enthusiastically, “It’s not yesterday!” To which I responded as enthusiastically, “No it’s not!”

She was referring to the fact that the day before the weather had been intense. Huge downpours. High winds. Lightening. But as soon as the exchange was over, I realized what was spoken between us was so much more; serving as a profound reminder to get out of living and dwelling in the past as quickly and as often as I can.

To let yesterday be yesterday as I opened to, and lived fully in, today.

It was easy to see this during the race. Easy to recognize I could dwell on the poor night’s sleep I had experienced, or I could be on the road running and recognizing that I was doing quite well actually. I could focus on a couple of people displaying some poor social behavior at the start of the race, or I could be with what was actually occurring in any given moment. Opting to let go of what had already come and gone, and instead choosing to be with what was right now. And what was right now was filled with some truly wonderful, supportive and energetic people.

If you have ever learned to watch your mind and what it is thinking about, you know how often your mind dwells in the past. How often you live today colored by what was said and done “yesterday.” What that person did or didn’t do for you. How you were overlooked or embarrassed. How your heart was broken. How you were called something that hurt. How something was taken from you.

While we could all argue that something harmful or unfair did indeed happen “yesterday,” it is us who is keeping it alive in the “today.” It is us who keeps going over and over it. It is us who has allowed it to limit us now. It is us who can’t stop thinking about it or living by it.

If this makes sense to you, and you want the freedom and the possibility that exists in a “today” less colored by “yesterday,” get in the habit of checking in with yourself throughout the day by asking “Where am I right now?” Use this question to gauge whether you are in “today” or “yesterday.”

And whenever you catch yourself in “yesterday,” say to yourself “It’s not that time anymore.” 

It takes practice to get out of the habit of dwelling in the past. It takes courage to let go of the identity you have created based on that past. But if you stick with it, you will be rewarded with greater ease, clarity and a much more sane and realistic view of yourself and the world. One that is not rooted in “yesterday,” but in “today” with all of its limitless possibilities.

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