Yoga has been an integral part of my life for 25 years. While it offers countless benefits, for me its greatest gift is what it does for my mental well-being. Whenever I feel down, anxious, or out of sorts, I head to a yoga class, and without fail, I leave feeling more grounded and lighter.

Yoga has a unique way of drawing me out of my thoughts and into my body, deepening my awareness of my internal space. The movement, mindfulness, and shared energy of practicing alongside others—even strangers—create a profound sense of connection and belonging, which helps regulate the nervous system.

A complete yoga practice consists of a series of poses and their counterposes. For example, a forward fold balances a backbend, and child's pose counters bridge; every movement needs its opposite for us to feel balanced. Imagine taking a yoga class that only includes side bends in one direction—you’d probably walk away feeling off-kilter and maybe even a bit cranky!

Just as our bodies need a full range of movement to feel balanced, so does our nervous system.

In yoga this morning, a student made a comment indicating she didn’t think she could enjoy the holidays this year in light of the recent elections. The week of the elections, I had a hard time processing the results. I found myself in a cycle of forgetting about them until something reminded me, sending a jolt of fear through my body as my mind conjured up images of a future reality that resembled a cross between The Handmaid's Tale, Idiocracy, and The Last of Us.

After recognizing that it's not sustainable for me to keep repeating that cycle, I decided to make it part of my meditation practice, which goes like this…

I jumped out of a moving airplane from 14,000 feet and felt nothing.

I was not scared or thrilled—I was completely indifferent. When I landed, I saw my friend who had jumped out of the plane minutes before me, hopping up and down and screaming with excitement.

I planned this skydive trip because I could tell something in me had shut down and I hoped the thrill of jumping out of a moving airplane would startle it awake, but it didn’t.

It can feel hard setting boundaries when it’s not something you’re used to. It feels like you’re being rigid and asking a lot of the other person.

This approach can leave you feeling frustrated and resentful when the other person doesn’t alter their behavior the way you want them to.

In truth, boundaries make no request of the other person, but are guidelines for how *you* engage.

I would staple this one to my forehead if I could. My defensiveness roadblocks me constantly.

Luckily, I know what to do with it when it shows up, so instead of holding me back I move through it quickly and enjoy better outcomes in my relationships.

I don’t write these posts from a high-and-mighty-I-got-it-all-figured-out place. I am an ongoing work in progress, just like you.

BUT, what I have is a treasure trove of tools that I’ve spent my life collecting to help you through areas of friction in your life.

I’m your shortcut.

When someone respects your boundaries it usually only takes one or two times of them bumping up against your boundaries before they adjust. Eventually, those boundaries feel effortless for you.

If, energetically, it feels like you’re using all of your strength to hold your line, it’s because the other person doesn't care about your boundaries. You're not being too rigid, they're not respecting your line in the sand.

Note of the difference.

This is not to say that we should stop dreaming or thinking big for ourselves—keep doing that for sure!!

This is more about how much we RESIST what-is.

Shadows develop when we run away from what-is.

Shadows haunt us and the more we resist their existence, the denser and more warped they get, the more ashamed of them we become, and the harder it gets to face them.

You are not alone in this.

Merriam Webster defines communication as "a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior."

However, our interpretation of those symbols, signs, and behavior can be very subjective.

I think about how much of my early adult life was constructed based on who I thought I was supposed to be and what I thought I was supposed to be doing.

I never took the time to consider my own wants and needs. The few times I was able to identify what they were, I labeled them impractical.

Have you ever pulled into your driveway and realized you have absolutely no recollection of how you got there? You don’t remember any turns in the road or stops you made. You can’t recall a single pedestrian, building, or even the route you took to get there. Your mind was somewhere else and your body completed the motion and took you home safely. Thank God, but how unnerving!

Do you do that in other areas of your life? How engaged are you on a daily basis?

To live “at-the-effect of our lives” means to be in a constant state of reacting to what’s in front of us without any personal sense of control. We tend to blame others for the position we find ourselves in, depend on them to validate us, and spend a lot of time trying to please them. Often times we counter this by being overly controlling which can leave us feeling even more trapped and reactive.

“Lazy” is a term I’ve used against myself my whole life. When I’m low energy I label it as lazy and chastise myself thinking a better person would have the energy to accomplish more. I have some story in my mind that I haven’t earned the right to slow down until I attain a particular level of accomplishment, which is an elusive target. 

Here's a truth that our society is set up to make you forget: You are perfection, incarnate. You are not broken, or fragmented, or separate from the Divine Energy that brought you here. You are ALL you will ever need to be, right now, as is. To know this is to honor your birthright, to live your purpose, and to transmit your gifts to others.

At 6 months old, my dog “Luna” was a stray wandering the streets of Sacramento on her own. One day, she stumbled upon a homeless guy in Oak Park who was epileptic and having a seizure and she stayed near him and licked him until the seizure ended. She followed him around for the rest of the day and although he enjoyed her company he knew he couldn’t take care of her, so he found a rope and tied her to the back of a stairwell in an apartment complex and sat across the street contemplating what to do with her. (I know this because a few months later he approached us and told me the story.) That stairwell led to my apartment door.

In my early 30’s, after ending a long and painful relationship with someone who did not deserve a morsel of my time, I met a man who was vibrant, engaging, self-aware, ambitious, and funny and the moment he expressed interest in me I ran for the hills.

I used to fear my power. I thought that if I let myself get too proud or too loud, others would roll their eyes behind my back and judge me for thinking I’m full of myself. Unconsciously, I made myself smaller, quiet, and more AGREEABLE because I feared that if I let myself get too big I’d lose the interpersonal connections that I craved.

While studying the inner-Shadow, I learned two (of many) very important distinctions that’ve liberated me from that limiting mindset:

When I was an adolescent, one of the worst things a girl could be called was conceited. Accepting a compliment, acknowledging an innate skill in a subject matter or sport, agreeing that you looked good in an outfit, overdressing for an occasion, or admitting it was reasonable for a crush to like you was all that it took to be labeled conceited, and once that term was attached to you it was hard to get away from its limitations. For those of us that weren’t rebellious enough to lean in and lay it on thicker, we played it safe by being humble which meant being complimentary when speaking of others and deprecating when speaking about ourselves.

The systems of self-protection we use when we are younger cement into belief systems as we age, which is why reclaiming the Golden Shadow is such an important part of inner growth—especially for women.

Many years ago, I was cruising in a car with my friend and updating her on my life in my typical self-disparaging way. She interrupted me and said something to the effect of, “I don’t know why you’re putting yourself down so much. Why are you taking all the blame? Can you tell me the story without putting yourself down?” I ignored her and continued talking. She pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned to me and said, “You talk this way about yourself all the time and it hurts me to hear it. This is what I love about you…” and then she rattled off a detailed list of wonderful attributes. I squirmed in my seat and tried to cut her off, “OK, I get it.” But she ignored me and kept speaking. Her list was comprehensive and powerful and I felt overwhelmed and started crying because I didn’t think I deserved the nice things she was saying.

Typically, when we talk about the inner-Shadow we are referring to negative aspects of ourselves that we reject, but the Golden Shadow

When we talk about toxic relationship behaviors like gaslighting, love-bombing, or ghosting, it's usually in the context of how bad it feels to be the VICTIM* of them, while pointing the finger at someone else as the culprit. But what happens when we are the ones carrying out TOXIC* behaviors?

Rarely do we hear someone admit they have a bad habit of gaslighting their partner (i.e., the act of manipulating someone causing them doubt their perspective). Many who do probably don’t know they are doing it, and even if they become aware of it, the behavior is so harmful and criticized that it’s unlikely they’d admit it out loud. So how do we reconcile it when we are the one doing harm?

The sitcom "New Girl" single-handedly carried me through the pandemic lockdown a couple years ago. It was such a pleasure to witness the dynamic of the main characters and I can easily relate to their awkwardness and immaturity. Jessica Day is the female lead whose inability to take a compliment makes me laugh out loud every time because she perfectly embodies how compliments make me feel.

There are some compliments I can receive with grace and ease because these are aspects of myself I acknowledge and accept as me. Other compliments make me want to run out of the room from the discomfort of it because somewhere along the line I decided that I don’t get to be those things and I believe they aren’t me (even though secretly I wish they were).

The late psychologist Dr. Donald Winnicott introduced the idea of the “False-Self” which he described as a personality façade people adopt to protect the vulnerability of their “True-Self”.

It’s most likely we have many False-Selves, but when I consider an over-arching one in my life, what comes to mind is how I spent most of it pretending to be UNAFFECTED*. As a SENSITIVE child, I was vulnerable to people who liked to push my buttons and I thought that if I appeared to not care they would stop, and/or I’d feel it less. My logic was reinforced by others who told me, “Why do you let them get to you so much?”, as if my feelings were the problem, not the button-pusher’s behaviors.

Recently, I heard an interview with comedian Roy Wood Jr. where he shared a story about an accident his father was in that physically disabled him before Roy was born. His family told a version of the story that seemed innocuous, but recently he learned that his father’s experience was more emotionally scarring than had been previously told and the true version revealed a lot about why his father was the way he was and how that colored Roy's world view.

People only speak kindly of the dead, so Roy's words resonated with me because the only thing I hear about my mother is that she was a “sweet and perfect angel of a woman”.

The above Anais Nin quote comes to mind as I reflect on a recent conversation about hesitating to explore the inner-Shadow because it feels too confronting.

When I discovered the Shadow almost 15 years ago, I felt trapped in a life that didn't feel like mine because I was living an identity that wasn’t true to who I really am.

Here’s the thing about BULLIES: most bullies are very SENSITIVE people who don’t know how to deal with their sensitivity because at one time they were taught that it was not acceptable to be SENSITIVE* and being a BULLY* allows them to feel powerful instead of weak, which is how they perceive their sensitive side.

Author Debbie Ford once said that trying to hide our Shadows (the parts of us we don’t want others to see) is like trying to keep 20 beach balls completely under water at the same time.

Have you ever regretted the way you came across in a conversation or argument with someone else—some part of you was triggered and you reacted in a way that goes against how you want them to see you? Then, you feel shame as you replay it over in your mind while promising yourself that next time you'll be less affected, but each time it happens your faith in yourself wanes. I know how awful that feels and I am here to tell you that it's not necessary to ever go through that again.