Muscle & Wholeness

Muscles are like out of work actors, they will take anything you throw their way. Gravity pulls everything down, down, down, and weight training is like putting the apple back up into the tree...muscles are anti gravity and lifting weights moves body parts back to their place of origin, back up, up, up. Muscles know not age and they want to work, they are made to work and it is an act of deprivation to keep them from what they were designed for, which is to keep the body strong, supported, healthy, functioning, protecting the joints and maintaining the straight up and down posture that ensures organs stay in their place of origin with lots of room to do their own work to keep you and me alive and full of life. Some may not like reading this and my hope is that it is an advanced warning, a call to action, to take care of the shell you are in purposefully. When the body is neglected, it affects, or more accurately, infects the mind, the soul. Traditionally we have been taught that we are made up of three "parts", the mind, body, and soul. Integration of these parts requires thoughtful, conscientious choosing, movement toward wholeness. Now, You and Me, we are each separate parts of the Whole of this thing we call Humanity. It is not selfishness to take care of my own body, my own mind, my very soul, it is purposeful, it is for the sake of service, for the sake of The Whole. My strength is the worlds gain and it is in my Wholeness as an independent unit that I am made available to be a fully functioning elemental part of the Whole of Humanity...without me, there is a missing link, a weakening in the chain, a broken strand of DNA. I am here, and therefore I am important and my life has meaning. You are here, and therefore you are important and your life, it has meaning...go, think, do, feel, be on your purpose, love yourself first and than you can truly love another, and than another, and so on, and so on and...

Poison

An internal warning system is built into the human being and when the humans batteries are fully charged, this system detects threat, danger, and eminent disaster by sending signals from brain to body, body to brain, eyes to feet as in run, a cow with horns is baring down on me and if I don't get out of this field, I'm going to be impaled. This system is sensitive and is subject to malfunction, override, unnecessary rewiring and disconnect. Here is an example: your child, friend, partner, co-worker is heading out the door and you suggest "drive safely" or "be good" or "be careful". What? Seriously, WHAT? Now the child, friend, partner, co-worker has received a message, a seed has been planted that it isn't safe out there and without processing the information, the directive that has been given, there is a growth. The seed has broken through its outer casing and implanted in the pysche and has taken root, reaching down into dark crevices and around uncharted corners, an insidious poisonous plant of foreign descent, meaning the host body did not plant it there and as the plant grows, creeping its way into ever cell, it is fed and watered by outside sources, the very same ones that planted the seed in the first place. Ensnared, the host feels the grip, the plant has taken over and threatens to strangle in its hold on the human. Until Truth, Wisdom, Life, Light, Love are spoken and then something happens, the plant starts to shrivel and wither and the human digs down, begins pruning and eventually, digs deep enough to see roots and by this time, the roots are barely holding on, unable to maintain their grip because the hate of lies and fear have not been fertized, watered, given the breath of life. Fear or Faith? You are wonderfully made by a Master Craftsman, with built in mechanisms for brilliance and majesty...let no man, or poisonous plant, steal your birthright.  

Off with their heads

Ouch, you just punched me in the ego, how very dare you, off with your head...ever feel this way? I grin as I write this because it makes me think of the queen of hearts from Alice in Wonderland, chopping off the heads of those that inadvertently and most innocently insult or irritate her, and she was irritated, a lot. Heads will roll is another expression that comes to mind and the not so sublte threat of beheading by a dictator can send ripples of fear surging through those that know of the temper tantrum indulgent pseudo grown ups that enjoy ruling by might. In the me ness of our existence, the discomfort of rejection, of not being liked, understood, appreciated can cause a mass of insecurities that tangle and strangle and any hint of nonacceptance is jarring. Going deeper into the jarring is the sense that nothing I do/you do, is quite right, I/you messed up and there is no fixing this one, the beginning of the end is happening now and yikes, what have I done? This is a self beheading, I lie face down, place my neck in the groove of the guillotine and pull the rope that releases the weighted blade and with one precise slice, my head has been severed from my body...decapitation is complete. The image is gruesome and yet, this is the carnage that is suffered and self imposed daily by me/you at the worst of times. I don't know who said "I am my own worst enemy" but I'm happy to quote this person and add, I am my most avaibable and capable advocate, the battle for ground in my soul must be mine, hard won with perseverance, forgiveness and abandon to being a hot mess and sometimes being just oh so right. Thoughts engender feelings and visa versa, chasing them down, trapping them and making them explain themselves is my/your ticket to freedom. Much love for me/you, with Grace, Linda. 

Emancipation

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds...won't you help to sing, these songs of freedom. These are some of the lyrics from my all time favourite song, Redemption Song, by Bob Marley. This singer song writer was onto something incredibly powerful, that none but ourselves can free our minds. As you think, so you are, so you become. Outside pressure and persuasion can appear to be the choice makers in life and yet, it is the will that holds us to our freedom or crumbles, sending us tumbling down to our own folly. I can't help but appreciate the mounting evidence of our human capacity for pure brilliance. This is Truth as I witness the overcoming all around me, the people in my life that have been mistreated, ill used, abused and then there is the and yet part, and yet, they do the incredible by overcoming the slavery of old patterns, thoughts, super imposed upon them by outside sources and they claim their own mental, spiritual, social-pyscho freedom. Forged in the fire, we are shaped and beautifully molded by our experiences and yes there is a gift to be claimed and at the same, cruelty is the most abhorrent teacher, not to be held in esteem, it comes from darkness, never from The Light. Emancipation is hard won, it speaks to the imbued Spirit of God, the Fire in man, in woman. My breath is His, my heart beat powered by unseen hands. He guides my thoughts when I listen with my heart and then, freedom is mine. 

Night Closes In

One of those days...it's been one of those days, the kind that feels lost and listless. It is grey outside, cold, damp, dreary and with the weather comes a blanket of restless sleepiness. The great fall of summer is announcing itself, with trees letting go of leaves to litter the ground, colourfully at first, crunchy under foot and than they dry, shrivel or become sodden and brown breaking apart and disintegrating until they are no more. I am in the throws of sorrow, sodden as it were, with unshed tears. There is much suffering and sadness, cruelty and unspoken pain and I can't help but feel it, and feel the helplessness that goes hand in hand with being witness, hands pressed together, eyes turned upward, longing for relief, not for myself, for the suffering of others. The weeping, it threatened to overtake me, non stop, the dam has burst and now I stop stunned at the comfort and convenience of tears shed, falling freely with no purpose except relief of a burdened soul. The darkness, it wants to pervade, prevail. The Light, it whispers you are mine and mine alone, Trust in Me. I am caught between the two as night closes in. 

Death, the great thief

Death is the great thief, separating us from one another in an earthy surreal way. Memories play tricks on us, replaying captured video of laughter, knowing looks of love and compassionate understanding, connecting me, to you, forever. I think of my Father as I write, feeling sadness wash over me, wanting him close and knowing that in this life, he is never far and yet, he is a whisper, a rustle of leaves, a presence that I can neither see nor touch, only long for. A close friend got the call, you know, the one that forever lodges black and heavy in the heart~your Father died, these are the words her unknowing ears had to receive and transmit to the rest of all of her. Incomprehensible, unacceptable, unknowable, choiceless death, the reminder that I did not make me, you did not make you and we do not choose our own existence or departure~to say otherwise is cruel because it means we willingly leave vast sucking holes of sorrow behind us for those that long for our remaining, one last look, one last cuddle, one last I love you. The loss is unbearable and the world becomes a grey never never land, a whole person gone from sight, except in the video of the mind, the heart. I grieve now, for the loss of my Father, gone 14 years ago as my heart aches for my friend and her loving Daddy, James Albert Coppard, gone from this world to become a gentle breeze, a whisper of I am still here, with you. Melanie, my heart breaks for your loss, this is in loving memory of your Dad, Jim Coppard. 

Hear

Friday nights are special in our family because we typically get together with The Langs. Theirs plus ours makes for some crazy laughter and conversation with some food and drink thrown in for good measure. We become one functionally dysfunctional mass of people and the volume is always turned up on hilarity. The standing joke when someone chokes and sputters on food or drink is "are you choking, may I help you, I'm trained in First Aid?" Sometimes we insist, no really may I help you, even when the person is clearly able to cough and clear whatever got lodged temporarily in the throat. This brings me to my point, that I am trained in emotional first aid, as many are. First aid can save a life and so too can emotional first aid, in the moment at least. When asking a conscious person if they need help, there is an inherent understanding that the person being asked is at choice, capable of response, yes, help me or no, I don't want/need/agree to being helped. The question puts both the asker and the respondent in clear positions with one another. This clarity is fantastic in its resolution of what will happen next. What if the asking does not occur? What if I/you, swoop in and attempt to save the day, rescue someone perceived to be needing first aid of the emotional kind and we steal from them the power to choose? In coaching, everyone is considered naturally creative resourceful and whole, capable of asking for what they need for self healing, from the inside out. I am a band aid, a tissue, a shoulder to cry on, I am a stitch that fades in time as wounds mend and scar over. It is the wounded that must take care, love themselves well and seek help when they feel they cannot go it, the painful suffering, alone. This is learned and it first must be taught, to ask respectfully, can I help you? After the asking there comes the wait, the standing guard, the self management to refrain from insisting on rushing in, trusting that the one being asked is able to choose and must not be put upon "for their own good". Ask, wait, listen...hear.