These past months have been filled with confusion, anger, and fear for many in this country.
Witnessing deportations without due process, assaults on the courts and universities, flip flopping tariffs, and military action have shaken the foundational sense of safety and justice for many Americans.
I’ve been listening to you and engaging in many conversations about how to live in balance during these times.
When the world seems hostile, disrespectful, and unsafe, it’s a really good time is to explore how to navigate with sturdiness, skill, and soul.
Soul first.
What’s the highest ideal that guides you? Perhaps love, compassion, generosity, or kind understanding? Whatever has guided you thus far is important in this moment of history. The challenge is how you apply that ideal in a practical manner through your energy, thoughts, words, and deeds.
When you’re hair’s on fire or you’re shaking under the covers, it might be a challenge to view people or situations who trigger you with compassion. That’s understandable.
So body next.
Remember how important it is to breathe. Deep, slow breaths. Long exhales to calm the nervous system. Square breathing. However you choose to practice breathing will be helpful.
Soothing your nervous system with the power of HeartBreathing brings you into greater organization. This means you’ve got full access to the wisdom of your brains (gut, heart, head). Allowing you to return to a centered, calm state to determine how to proceed. This supports emotional regulation so you can tolerate what you’re facing. [The Self Soothe Strategy guides you through this.]
Where’s your mind focusing?
If you’re reactive to the many media news streams (including your inner dialogue or friend’s opinion), it’s easy to get distracted and dysregulated. Frustration and fear love a reactive mind. So does the opposition or whomever you’re getting all riled up with.
When your mind-body is organized, it’s easier to choose your focus. The intent to do your best as you move through the day with an open heart and strong self care supports your potential to bring compassion, generosity, or love to your interactions.
Connection. Communication. CommUnity.
Look to those who bring comfort and feel sturdy to you. Connect with others who can engage in conversations that explore without demonizing. Support one another with care and consideration as you process your feelings or concerns.
If you’re in a family, friend group, or work space where folks think very differently than you or are reactive, it might not be the best place to explore your differences. However, when you’re able to have an honest conversation with those who view situations differently than you, seek to understand them.
Bridging divides in perception, opinion, or lifestyle requires openness and a true desire to put yourself in another’s place.
Do your best to become peaceful in your mind, body, and emotions. So your interactions throughout the day broadcast peace. Explore where acceptance, understanding, generosity, and forgiveness may be responses that support, empower, and heal. What you choose to share in today’s unrest really matters in everyday interactions. Don’t underestimate the impact of small ripples. Just make a lot of the positive kind all day long.
As the country becomes polarized, seek to keep your mind and heart open.
Here’s some advice from a wise man in tune and in balance with feminine wisdom.
I receive succor in this higher understanding of how to be in a world that holds so much pain, destruction, and beauty.
This may help you explore how to live in the world and keep your heart open. To choose to be spiritually focused without losing touch with your humanity. Herein lies guidance for action that is balanced, coming from a perspective that there is harmony to the implicate and explicate order of the universe. And your experience within it.
I discovered the wisdom of Ram Dass after he passed.
I’ve learned a lot from the documentaries about his life and his talks. He offers a richness packed into a few minutes or hours that often left me more willing to live in this beautiful, horrible world with a heart that stays open.
Plus, I like how he talks like a calm, happy hippie. Words like “far out, cool, and groovy” bring me back to my high school days.
Ram Dass taught about courage, how to sit with pain and grief, encouraging an experience of hope within despair, and offered an invitation to face death consciously. He demonstrated what a heart wide open looks like in a person who is clearly human.
Imagine a country filled with hearts that want to stay open.
No matter what side of any situation you find yourself on, I wonder if you could begin with calming your body and opening your heart and mind. Every choice, every ripple matters.
You’ll find the link to Ram Dass’ talk in the HeartWarming News below.
Peace be with you and with all. No exceptions.
Ram Dass’ talk led me to a creative, cool resource: the After Skool channel on youtube. I found some of my favorite teachers there. Listening to their voices while the concepts were illustrated artfully. It’s a visual delight. The intent of this channel is to empower individuals to shift their inner world with artistic presentations of profound thinkers. The idea that the world changes when your internal world changes is not new. It IS empowering and shared by mystics, physicists, and medicine men and women. Here’s the link for How to Keep your Heart Open in Hell by Ram Dass. Next up for me? Allan Watts. He probably says groovy too.
Learn the one essential skill that allows you to face any challenge with confidence, sturdiness, and inner calm.
More than a technique. It’s a game changer.
There are moments in life when something ancient and deeply meaningful finds its way into your life. Two years ago, I was seated in the doorway of the Sun Temple in Ollantaytambo in Peru. I had climbed the ancient steps, communed with the spirit of the mountain, and gazed out over the landscape.
There comes a moment, sometimes quietly, when you realize you don’t want to keep postponing your life. Not in a dramatic way, nor as a declaration, but as a simple, honest recognition that what you are living now matters. You begin to sense an invitation, not to fix yourself or become someone else, but to turn toward your life as it is and meet it more fully.
I enjoy airports. Most likely because they signal that a travel adventure is about to begin. My family followed the “arrive two hours early” rule for every flight, and I’m still a fan. It allows me to relax and enjoy the airport phase of the travel experience. I’m not worried about security lines, overpriced water, or what boarding group I’m in. Although, truth be told, those days of being upgraded to first class have left a subtle longing for wider seats and fewer people.
I remember walking into Westminster Cathedral in London, looking up, and being struck still by the vast beauty and scale of the architecture. People milled around me, some even bumping into me, yet my face remained turned heavenward. I could not move. Eventually I noticed my body returning to its normal sense of size, as if I had taken a journey within that vastness without realizing it.
I’ve always had a distant relationship with horses.
I once rode the pony a friend cared for at a local barn when I was a pre-teen. I’ve done a few trail rides, including what felt like a few death-defying adventures in the Colorado Rockies. I even calmly steered my horse back onto the trail after she reared and raced down a small forest hill. It was a natural instinct. After all, I’ve watched enough television to witness experienced equestrians deftly managing rearing horses.
I have been reading a series of novels set in the late nineteenth century that portray the social structures women were expected to live within. Hardships were often hidden behind social niceties, beautiful homes, fashionable clothing, and the polite manner considered fitting for a lady of society. A woman’s ability to enjoy simple pleasures such as reading freely, choosing her friendships, or expressing her opinions was often restricted by her husband.
