Author Archives: Susan McNamara

Which Role Will You Play In The World?

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This week I taught a yoga class based on the Sanskrit word “sama.” It translates into “same or equal,” and is experienced as the ability to emulate the Divine whose Presence is equal in all matters concerning the world. What it looks like for us is described in one of the central yogic texts that guides us to be “even” in our ways of dealing with life. To be the same through pleasure or pain, good fortune or misfortune, praise or blame.

There are no clearer, nor more liberating instructions, for the times we are living in, than this.

For to be at the mercy of the rise and fall of the ways of the world, is to suffer. It is to never know lasting peace because there will always be another tragedy, another horror, another injustice. And it is to play out one of the three big dominant roles we choose in our interactions with others. That of the victim, the persecutor and the savior.

The victim is the energy of being harmed, overpowered and without agency in the face of greater forces. The energy of the persecutor is that of dominance, aggression and oppression. And finally, the energy of the savior is that of the rescuer, the fixer, the one that everyone comes to to solve their problems.

Depending on the day and the circumstances, we can play any and all of the three depending on what’s being triggered in us. You are in victim whenever you are in the role of the overwhelmed and bullied child who needs saving. The perpetrator, when you are forcing and coercing another to your own will. And the savior when you are being the one who makes things better for others because it seems like they can’t do it for themselves.

But there is another way. That of the Sovereign: One who is free of external control and therefore the up and down nature of the world. The one who charts their own course, choosing to meet the world as it is. The one who decides how she will be moved by the world, and who consciously chooses to be grown and hewn by all the experiences of Life. No questions asked.

The Sovereign is the one who allows that everyone deserves the right to live out their life as they see fit, without being forced into something or rescued from something. And is the one who is even enough within herself to bear witness to the world, without choosing for or against. Instead, choosing to be with.

This can be felt and known by all those around her. For instance, there is growing research demonstrating that we can feel the electromagnetic energy of the heart’s field. And now Quantum Biology is demonstrating how our physiology is experienced by others. In other words, when we are at peace, when we are “even,” it is a palpable experience for all those around us. This is vastly different than being part of the big drama game of suffering we all like to play. One that activates a deadness or a hardening of the heart, while ramping up the physiology of stress that then emanates into the world.

If this resonates, practice where it is easy. Try being more neutral when it comes to the small things in your day like the weather, the seasons, or the traffic. Or how about practicing a kind of internal same-ness whether you get the recognition or not, win the lottery or not, have an argument go your way or not.

Your opportunities to work with this are endless as you go through your day, and are presented to you each time you feel yourself in a less than “even” emotional place.

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What If Nothing Was Wrong?

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I sit looking out the window at the dawn of a new day wondering, “What if nothing was wrong? What if what I’m feeling isn’t a problem?” This wondering drops in after a night of troubled sleep filled with apprehension, doubt and second guessing.

Is this even possible? Or desirable. To choose to live without needing to make something or someone, wrong. Would this be a sane approach to life? Or incredibly naive? Would it leave me unprepared or ill-suited for the world? Vulnerable to being caught off guard and open to something horrible happening?

When something feels wrong to us that’s all we can see. That and the compulsion to make it stop. Make it go away. Assign blame. Be clutched with fear. Fight it. Demonize it. And then of course, create the teams of “right” and “wrong.” But what if nothing was wrong, what then? What would we see? What would we know?

What would become possible?

This is an incredibly courageous step to take, trained as we all are in who the good and bad guys are. Conditioned as we are to default to believing we know what is right and wrong. And while yes, we need a code of honor to live by when it comes to our words and deeds, it is far more complex than the black and white nature of choosing for and against based on party lines, political affiliations, religious beliefs and more.

We can favor a clear sky over a cloudy one. And yet, the presence of the clouds is what makes for the most sublime sunrise because of how the clouds help to create a multidimensional light show on the eastern horizon. There are traditions that liken the beliefs and thoughts we hold to be like clouds passing through an expansive open field of greater awareness. That part of us that knows beyond “the taking of sides.”

So when the clouds of “wrong” pass over your mind, see them for what they are; a fleeting opportunity to decide what you most want to see and create in the world. Recognizing that the clouds offer the very contrast necessary to help us decide whether we will see the beauty emerging at the dawn of a new day, or…

Every day, we get to choose how to perceive what it is that life offers us. Right and wrong are easy. Child’s play actually. But to contemplate beyond wrong is the realm of participating in a new dream for our world. One that says, I will challenge my ideas of right and wrong in the service of something far Greater.

So just for today, what if nothing was wrong with the weather, or the traffic, or what someone else does? What if for just one breath you could wonder, “If I wasn’t making this wrong, what would I see?”

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Wake-Up Calls

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In the past week, I have either fallen or stumbled and almost fallen, three separate times. They all happened while I was out running in the woods. And they all coordinated perfectly to my mind being stuck on an endless loop of negativity.

A fake argument with someone inside my own mind. Indulging old protective mechanisms against an anticipated attack. Feeling responsible for another’s choices. On and on it went. Until bam! Down I went. A startling but effective way to get me off the well worn, beaten path of a mind stuck on negative thought loops.

It’s been a powerful awareness for me in these moments because habits of the mind are not always easy to notice. Especially if the various themes of our thinking have been going on for years and years. Meaning, that what we’re thinking about can go undetected for long stretches. A lifetime even. And without something a little, or a lot, jarring to the system, we just won’t change.

Which is why I don’t mind the wake-up calls because what I know to be true is this: Negative thinking unchecked erodes my experience of what it feels like to be me. And it’s not a feeling I enjoy. That’s why I have come to appreciate these physical stumbles in the woods and see them as welcomed harbingers. Lightening bolts from my own soul saying “Knock it off. You deserve better than that. You have more important things to tend to.”

The call of the soul cares not for our comfort. Nor will it indulge us in our habits of mind based on our fears, the past or any other pieces of old conditioning. It’s only aim? For us to express ourselves fully and uniquely all in the service of remembering the Truth, with a capital “T,” of who and what we are.

So while I have never found my soul to be controlling or forceful, it can be very, very persuasive with the nudges it gives me, large and small, through the circumstances of my day to day life. I believe that’s the way it works. Little nudges offering us an opportunity to course correct how it is that we are living.

Maybe it happens through the experience of a health issue, a breakup, an argument. Perhaps you’ll get fired, your house will flood, or you’ll be betrayed. The soul can show up as an unsettled yearning, a depression, or a regret. Really, any of the things in life we wish with all our hearts would not happen and that we spend a lot of time and thinking trying to keep from happening.

But what if you saw every unwanted “happenstance” as a wake-up call? As a message from beyond and within. What then? Would you say yes to the stumbles and the falls that allowed you to see the beautiful forest of Life that you are passing through? Would you say yes to the chance to grow beyond the self-imposed limitations that keep you stuck in the wrong habits?

If so, be on the lookout for what is not working, for what breaks and for what just feels way past its prime in your life.

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To Trust Your Body Is To Trust Yourself

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I talk and teach a lot about trusting your body. Sounds nice. But the truth is, given how we have been conditioned over the last decades to do anything but trust our bodies, this can be a hard sell in a world encouraging the abdication of this sacred connection to the technologies and the experts we have come to put more of our faith in than these bodies of ours.

This is problematic on many levels. But perhaps the most problematic of all, is that if we don’t trust our very own body, we will not be able to trust ourselves, and we will not be able to trust life itself. Without a steady belief in what we are experiencing and knowing through our own body, we will be adrift in terms of how to navigate the changing waters of the world. And without a reliance on how life flows through these bodies, we will be at odds with ourselves over what we can expect day to day in terms of a greater support and guidance that is available to all of us.

It’s such a strange thing to be talking about trusting your body. As if it is somehow separate from your very existence and how you live. And yet, this is where we are: So horribly removed and disconnected from what is innate that we find ourselves having to do some kind of rehab to remind us of what is not just built in, but that forms the very basis of who we are.

We are mammals, and there is not a mammal out there, other than us, that does not exist without complete and utter trust in what it is experiencing, and what it means to be in a body. The good news is, this is an authentic and powerful place to go to to re-learn where to take our cues from. What I mean by this is that just by turning our attention to that which is most inherent and most basic about being in a body is the way back to trusting your body, yourself, and all of life.

Best of all, it’s not fancy, expensive, complicated or beyond your reach. It is quite literally, as close to you as your next breath. As close to you as the next time you sense thirst, hunger or exhaustion. What I am talking about here is a kind of reacquaintance to your body’s most basic and non-negotiable needs. Those things you could not do without and still survive. Those things that a newborn baby must have in order to live.

The very things modern life has taught us to put on the back burner, but that still remains alive and well inside of us and can be found by wondering to yourself, “What could I absolutely not be able to live without?”

It’s not your cell phone, Netflix or social media. It’s not a new pair of shoes, a fancy trip or a new car. It is quite literally your breath and your ability to feed yourself. I know most of us would say we already know how to do this. But do we? Do we actually quench our thirst with life-giving water or do we flood ourselves with caffeinated drinks? Do we feed ourselves what our body really needs to be well or do we consume lots of processed, fake, and ever more bizarre substances masquerading as food? Do we get the rest we need or are we more interested in staying up late to watch the latest bit of noise coming out of a screen?

To bring this right down into the body and out of the machinations of the mind, try this: Once a day pause and take a full deep breath in as you feel some sensation in your body. Then ask yourself, “What do I need right now?” If you can get in the habit of starting there, I will guarantee you something; over time as you turn more and more back to your most basic needs, a fundamental trust will form with your body which will then extend out to how well you trust yourself. And life as well.

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How Are You Creating The World?

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There is an old expression that I believe comes from the Talmud. It goes like this, “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” Take a moment to really, really let that sink in.

If this is so, how committed are you to spending the time to recognize that who you are, impacts your perceptions of life?

We live in a very, very sick society. I know that on some level, we all know this. How could we not? It’s everywhere. But because it’s everywhere, it begins to take on a kind of background hum and a sense of fait accompli. But if you’re willing to see how things are, you can see it in the poisons sprayed on our foods that we give to our children. You can see it in the collective worship at the alter of the screens, and the ways we refuse to keep ourselves from what is devaluing our lives. You can see it in the ways that we have begun to mandate which medicine people must use in order to be part of society. And you can see it in all the ways that we have never been more ill in body, mind and soul.

There is more. Much more. More that we have come to accept as normal. Even as it visibly sickens us.

But it’s not true. This isn’t normal. And somewhere deep inside we all know this. I believe it comes down then to what someone recently said to me about “calling the ghost by name.” A willingness on our part to name what is messed up and broken.

Because here’s the truth, who you are is not separate from the sickness of the world. You are merely one aspect of the way things are. Because when you add it all up, what’s out there is based on the sum total of each and every one of us. Of all the messed up and broken aspects of ourselves that we will not be with.

This is not a New Age cliche. It is Truth. For as we change our inner perceptions, and change what it is that we ourselves are being, the world reflects that. How could it be otherwise?

For instance, how do you contribute to the harmful food supply out there in terms of what you consider food and feed yourself with? Where do you place a screen above all else and even engage in that which is less than what you actually need and deserve? Where do you hold that others should do as you do when it comes to how people live and take care of themselves? And where have you been less than willing to address what ails you?

When you recognize that you are out of alignment with your values, you shift the ethics that run the world. When you change the way you feed yourself, you shift what nurturance is available to all of us. When you decide to stop all the scrolling and make the people in your life a priority, the world begins to prioritize people over machines. And when you decide to finally commit to something you need to do for your own health, the world begins to heal.

Today I read something that feels like the antidote to all the sickness. An author was making the point that in certain traditions, beauty was less about the physical appearance of a person, and everything about how well you knew yourself. That’s the guide. How well you know yourself. How well you know the “are” of you.

I know it seems like a lot, and maybe you are even wondering how what’s out there is connected to what’s in here. But if you see this as a lifelong exploration of getting to know yourself and what it is that makes you tick, you are halfway there. And then, if you’re willing to simply consider that what you’re seeing out there, is in here, you will be all the way there.

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The Broken Unicorns In All Of Us

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When I was a kid and had accumulated a little pocket change of my own, I would walk down to a place called Cushing Square to visit a tiny store that sold glass figurines. I can’t remember the name of the store, but I can still recall the display window that faced out to the sidewalk and what it felt like for me to go inside.

It was absolutely magical to be in this space and to be in the company of all those glass animals. They felt so mysterious and powerful to me. I wanted them all. But because the figurines weren’t cheap for a kid, I would have to save up for what I wanted. In the meantime, I would go into the store to visit with all those little creatures I felt such a connection to.

At some point, I acquired a three-level tiered stand where I could arrange these little friends of mine into different scenarios and configurations. No matter what I did in this regard, there was always one that stood out for me: The Unicorn. I felt moved by her golden horn and the clear see-through nature of her body. I looked at her every day and every night. She was the one I loved most of all.

So you might imagine how I felt when I came home one day to find her horn broken off. It was devastating. But worse than the devastation of something so important to me being broken, was that no one would admit to doing it. And no one saw that justice prevailed.

That day, something precious and innocent broke in me. I stopped going to the store and I don’t remember what happened to all the other glass animals.

Heartbreak and innocence lost is something every one of us will pass through. Not one of us will come to the Earth and leave unscathed in this regard. We all have had our “broken Unicorn” experiences and for many of us it will follow us around for the rest of our lives. It will color how we see the world. What we believe is possible. How safe or dangerous the world feels to us. What we believe will happen to us if we love open-heartedly.

As that old song goes, “the first cut is the deepest.” Very understandable then to go through life making damn sure it doesn’t ever happen again.

This is one way to live and it makes sense given how devastating it can be to learn as children what a cruel place the world can be at times. Unfortunately, when we hold onto this through life, not only do you lose out, so does everyone around you.

There is another way. But it’s a big ask to the child inside of us who got so hurt when we didn’t even know that kind of pain or disillusionment was possible. What is that “big ask?” To reclaim your innocence. To take back your wonder and sense of possibility. The road to get there is certainly long and arduous. And it will require that you feel what you never wanted to feel again. Ever.

But in the feeling you get to heal, and then you get to decide how armored up you want to be. And when. Because to live for our entire lives waiting to be hurt again is to live as a victim. And to live as a victim is to live shut down to the magic, wonder and possibility that lives in the world.

Want to give it a try? Think back into the past. Do you have a sense of where the mentality of the broken Unicorn began for you? That place where you felt wronged, betrayed or violated. Then observe with great kindness how that plays out now for you. Where and when it shows up. You don’t have to do anything for a very long time other than to just begin to make that connection.

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Holding a Vision for Your Life

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“Hold the vision. Trust the process.” These words are inside a frame that sits on top of the table that I come to each morning to start my practice. Some days I don’t notice the message. Other days, like this one, I do. And it’s always exactly what I need to hear when my mind is teetering on the brink of believing in the wrong things. It’s always the antidote for me in a world that stands for so very little worth calling a vision. A real balm for my soul in a time where there is so little faith in trusting a process to unfold as too many of us opt for the quick and convenient fixes offered up to us like candy we can’t say no to.

Without a vision, we are subject to the whims and the noise of a world bent on selling us the wrong things. Agendas that care not for our truest human needs or the call of our own soul. Without vision, we are fated to live someone else’s life as we allow ourselves to be hemmed in by the rules and regulations of a culture too sick to know how it is limiting and hurting us.

Without a sense of trust in the process of our own lives unfolding as they do, we run the risk of comparing ourselves to the wrong things. Sub-standard versions of what our lives should look and feel like. Erroneous ideas about what it takes to really thrive and to actually and truly know ourselves from the inside out. All of this leaves us at odds with the fluctuations of our own inner rhythms and disconnects us from the Great Mystery as it is meant to move through us.

A yoga teacher I know recently summed up perfectly a life-giving alternative to this disconnection when she said, “Out of the space you create for yourself comes the clarity, and out of the clarity comes skillful action.” For me, this is the process you must learn to engage with to be able to hold a vision for your life that is actually yours. A course correction, if you will, that takes you from a less than or non-existent vision to the one your soul would have you know.

So stop. Sit down. Breathe. And wait. Wait until all the noise and the fears and the scattered thinking begins to clear out. And then teach yourself to trust the unfolding and the unwinding process you must go through in order to be able to fully claim that vision inside of you that is just waiting to be born.

 

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What Is Possible When It Comes To Healing?

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Years ago I read a funky little book called Mutant Message from Down Under where an Aboriginal tribe called The Real People took a white woman on a walkabout for several months. In one of the most compelling scenes for me, and believe me there were many, one of the tribe members intentionally leapt off a cliff suffering a compound fracture of his leg. If you don’t know what this is, his leg bone was broken and it was sticking out through the skin.

It left me flabbergasted as to why someone would voluntarily put themselves at such risk. Why would someone intentionally jump off a cliff and suffer such a serious injury? Because… he knew how quickly it could be healed, and because the tribe wanted to demonstrate to this woman the true nature of healing; which looked like two healers working on this man’s leg, basically reminding it of its inherent wholeness. Sounds kooky, but within a very short span of time (I think it may have been an hour or two), his leg was healed. There was no cast. No steel rod implanted. No crutches. No stitches. No long rehab.

Impossible, utterly impossible is what most of us would think. But what if, just for the sake of argument, it were possible? What then?

This kind of “miraculous” outcome fascinates me and serves as a measuring stick, a North Star if you will, for what is available to us. Possibilities like this keep alive in me the knowing there is far more to healing than we have ever been told. If only we could get out of our own way by opening up our minds and leaving behind all the outdated and corporate-driven ideologies that drive our current healthcare system.

But this is a big leap. A giant step into the Great Mystery we call the body. A journey that can only be undertaken by learning how to let go of all the fears and preconceived ideas we have, while teaching ourselves to be absolutely present to the moment as the body reveals it to be so, without trying to control a single thing. And in its place, to see ourselves as part of something much vaster and far more Intelligent than we could ever come to on our own.

This is where true healing resides. But it can be so hard to get to given all the noise around fixing and medicating and controlling these bodies of ours. All of the unwillingness on our parts to step into the unknown with the greatest of humility and allow ourselves be taught, as opposed to trying to make the body come in line with our limited understandings and approaches.

 

P.S. If any of this resonates and you want to explore what is possible when it comes to your health and healing, check out my latest offer, The Healer Within: A Life-Affirming Movement Putting Your Health, Your Healing & Your Life Back Into Your Own Hands

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The Creepy Places

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Out in the woods recently, the most amazing thought dropped into my mind: The less afraid I am of my own nature, the less afraid I am of Nature herself. I did not intend this thought to occur, nor was I even thinking about anything related to this statement. Nonetheless, when that knowing dropped in, I felt gifted by an enormous understanding of myself, as well as being the fortunate recipient of a map for how to think about what I see reflected in myself and in the natural world.

And that is why I love being in the woods. Or at the ocean. Or in the mountains. I never know what pearl might just drop into my mind. Solutions to big issues and ways of knowing the world in a more honest way find me without effort, and reveal to me what is possible with these minds of ours when we are not filling them with fear, excessive screen time, addictive substances, incessant distractions or insipid conversations laced with gossip.

Nature has its own undeniable and uncommodify-able Intelligence. A bounty that cannot be forced to offer itself, but that is available to us when we make ourselves available to it. My experience has been there is a kind of wisdom just waiting to express itself to us. If only we would just get out there and listen. If only we would just get out there and see that how we feel about the natural world is actually how we feel about ourselves.

Which is why I have noticed over the years that the less I make myself wrong, the less I need to make things like ticks, bees, slugs, and other “creepy” and “gross” things wrong. The less afraid I have become of my own dark and murky places, the less I need to demonize the shadowy woods and other locals or creatures that I don’t fully understand.

My time in nature has taught me that the more I accept and understand myself, the easier it is for me to include that the world is full of creepy, stingy, gross and slimy things that I just don’t get why they’re here. But whether or not I understand their existence is not the point. The point is, they belong, therefore we all belong.

With this said, it leaves me thinking maybe all of the chasing and the yelling and the legislating we are doing around Mother Earth and how to “save Her,” is actually another one of our human diversions that covers up what truly needs doing. Maybe what really needs to happen is for us to double down on getting to know the truth and the totality of our own human nature. Because I can guarantee you one thing: When we know the Truth of who and what we are, we will not harm, squander, demonize or try and control any of the Earth’s beauty or bounty.

No legislation required.

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Time & Timelessness

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In practice this week, I had such a strong sense of having all the time in the world, while simultaneously knowing, there’s no time to waste. Such an interesting paradox to think about being trusting enough to know I have all the space I could ever need, while at the same time holding a strong boundary in my living around not wasting one bit of it.

Is it possible to hold both? 

I know for me that when I am in practice, in the woods, tending to the medicine garden, making food or medicinals, engaged in a meaningful conversation, creating content or writing, time expands, and I am gifted with all the space I need. It often feels like I have been at something for weeks or months because that is how endless it all feels. I think this kind of timelessness becomes available to us whenever we are engaged in truly heart-felt and meaningful activities. Times where we are so focused and absorbed in what we are doing, that we lose ourselves in a kind of uninterrupted, everlasting, Divine expanse that seems to go on and on and on.

The experience of time opening up in this way gets harder and harder to come by when we allow ourselves to be at the beck and call of the incessant ring tones and buzzing of the machines that never leave our side. Despite all that we have “gained” with the technologies, what has been lost is not easily apparent to us because of how hard it is to measure the value of something that can only be known and felt through intentionally creating the opportunity, distraction-free, of timelessness.

For those of us who have had that experience, perhaps we can see beyond the allure of the pinging. But what about those generations who have never experienced that feeling of open-ended time and what it has to offer. Will they even know something truly precious and life-giving has been lost to them?

Which brings me to boundaries. A clear line in the sand must be drawn so that we do not take our days and lives for granted. So that we do not forget for one moment that life is short, and that it will be over before we know it. This is a vastly different approach to life than the frenetic and stress-filled pace that many of us live by where we are cramming more into a day than can possibly fit there. This approach to time leaves us depleted, guilty and overwhelmed. It is based on scarcity on the one hand and on an over-consumptive attitude on the other; where we never have enough of the most important things and where we are mindlessly too full with too many of the wrong things.

But as the old saying goes, “There is no time like the present.” Meaning? If you sense time has gotten away from you, that you are approaching it in a profane way, it is only in this moment that you can decide to do something different. To choose to make time sacred. To make it worthy of the one life you have to live.

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