Does your December feel like a race to the end of the year?

For most of the years of my adult life, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas has felt like a race.

"A race to where?" you might ask.

Great question!

Instead of racing through your list of "to do"s, try something new this holiday. Try adding some restorative practices to your days, and checking in with yourself to ensure that you are sharing and giving your best self to the people you care most about.

Don't know what restores you?

Well, here's a great place to start: STOP.

Yes, that's right. STOP doing for even one whole minute each day. For those of us who thrive on the thrill of accomplishment, fitting in, doing more, working harder, and making things look good, this might be as big of a challenge as anything you've put on your "to do" list.

That's why you need to do it now. STOP.

Just sit still with yourself for ONE ENTIRE MINUTE each day, and watch what happens. Feel everything that comes up. Feel your resistance. Feel your annoyance. Feel your jitters. Feel your desire to be anywhere but right here, right now.

Give yourself this gift every day during the month of December, and you'll be on your way to being able to give to others what they truly desire - your full presence and peace with yourself.

Want more inspiration and instructions on how to create restorative practices and restore sanity to your holiday season? Enroll in my online course starting December 13th. Register here>>

How does it FEEL to celebrate?

I've never really been good at celebrating my birthday. There are a few birthdays in my life that I remember - one was my 6th birthday when I had a party at my house with my favorite girls from second grade, complete with musical chairs, Bozo buckets, a violin serenade by my brother, and hand-selected party favors for each guest. Another was my sophomore year in college, when my roommate totally surprised me by inviting over half a dozen or so of my best friends, who arrived with cake, balloons, and songs to sing. Yet another was in my twenties, when my brother procured tickets to see Itzhak Perlman and the Minnesota Orchestra, and my parents came into town to join us.

But when it has come to my really knowing how to celebrate myself, and knowing what I really have wanted to do on my birthday, I've mostly come up blank.

Now I know that it's because I have been more focused on what it LOOKS like to celebrate than how it FEELS to celebrate.

What Celebrating Looks Like

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In our image-obsessed culture, we can easily be led to believe that what we SHOW about our lives - how we make things appear - is actually more important than how we FEEL about our selves as we live our lives.

Even the lyrics to popular songs teach young girls what it means to "party in the USA" - "Welcome to the land of fame, excess, whoa am I gonna fit in?".

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Because feelings are often difficult to express in words, or not accurately captured by images, or perhaps don't match up with the social pressure to perform and please, I have (perhaps like you) defaulted to suppressing the feelings, not bothering to connect with them, and making choices based on what will make me LOOK like I'm doing fine.

I did this without being conscious of it. It happened slowly, in small steps, over time, like any changes do.

How To Learn What Celebrating Feels Like

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When I have been in relationships, I have felt particularly pressured to celebrate in a way that LOOKS a certain way, to demonstrate a certain level of happiness or to do something that would reflect where I "should be" at a particular time in my life.

It's a lot easier to produce a celebration that LOOKS a certain way, because you can go to any store and find cards, decorations, party invitations, gift wrap, and other accessories that create a celebratory LOOK. You can get dressed a certain way, go to a certain place, and think that it's going to make you FEEL like you've celebrated.

But I've found that in order to celebrate your soul, to acknowledge what you really want, you've got to stop.

You need to slow down, rest, and create space in your life. You need to breathe deeply.

You need to relax your whole body, even the places and muscles you never knew you had.

You need to get to a place of inner silence, where you can become an observer of your thoughts rather than attached to them as who you are.

You need to know what peace FEELS like first.

And if you've had the courage to trust enough to do all that, you will automatically experience the spontaneous positive feelings that I just call "joy".

These feelings have nothing to do with how things LOOK. They are not dependent on conditions or circumstances. They are what is already there, at your core, without your having to do anything.

It turns out that a true celebration is when you can finally connect with that place in your core that does not need you to do anything at all.

So what did I do this past weekend for my birthday?

I slept until I felt like waking up. (I already do this most days, so I rarely feel sleep-deprived anymore, and I even more rarely feel guilty for "sleeping in".)

I savored a breakfast made for me by Rocket Man (that's the pseudonym on this blog for my partner who is such a compassionate witness as I learn to love myself). And by that I mean I noticed the fluffiness of the pancakes, I amused myself with the juiciness of the blueberries, and I allowed myself to eat two strips of bacon without a single voice of self-criticism in my head.

I then spoke out loud a thought that had popped into my head earlier that morning. "How about going to Napa?" No plans, no reservations, no idea where we were going, no agenda for what had to happen. We just decided to go.

While I looked up directions and addresses of restaurants, Rocket Man was looking up places to play music later in the evening. I didn't know it at the time. I thought he was just surfing on Facebook again.

Little did I know I would experience two things I never thought were simultaneously possible: doing exactly what I wanted, and not having to figure it all out on my own!

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After eating a delicious meal at Cindy Pawlcyn's Mustards Grill, we headed up the Valley to Calistoga to scope out a potential retreat site for my new offerings in 2011. (Stay tuned for more excitement on that front!)

We then came back to Pacifica, where at the Chit Chat Cafe, a monthly open mic was happening. The Chit Chat Cafe sits directly on the Pacific Ocean, at the back corner of a small shopping center. It's a small local hangout, with a selection of coffee drinks, baked goods, a couple of wines, and a few computers sitting at the back wall.

As of the last two weeks, I had been following a calling to sign myself up at my weekly open mic to share a bit of sound healing magic. It had occurred to me when I first started coming to open mic that a participatory music experience would be perfect. But I wanted to fit in and find my place first. To become comfortable as a violinist in this brand new setting, before giving people reasons to look at me funny.

Each of the now three times I've done this at open mic, I have been pleasantly surprised, not by the crowd's response or feedback, but by how it makes me FEEL to offer it. My fears of being "looked at funny" have been replaced with a deeper connection to who I really am, and what I can really offer in this world, if I only would step up and try.

So perhaps it's fitting that on my birthday, I stepped up to the mic at Chit Chat Cafe, and shared a few sentences about how, after many years of being trained as a performer and someone who's supposed to know more than other people, I've come to be interested in the healing power of sound and music to connect me to people .

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And then it was just "Ah".

The openness of harmonious sound. The togetherness of wordless interaction. The infinite possibilities of vibrational connection.

No need for further explanation beyond the sound. The energy in the room was palpable, because we had taken that moment to come together and focus our energies on just one sound....the one we were creating in that moment.

When it came time for me to play with Rocket Man, we already felt part of something larger than ourselves. The space was prepared for us - first with a day of celebration, and then with the intention to be who we are, sharing what we love, in this room full of people.

Our sound was unamplified and therefore intimate. Both of our songs transcended labels, categories, and time. No one cared who wrote them, where they came from, or when they were first performed. For one evening, all that mattered was the moment we shared with the people in that room.

The kinds of interactions we had with people after that performance were unlike any other we've experienced so far as a band. The last time I remember such a heartfelt connnection with an audience was when I was a teenager on a concert tour in Moscow, too young to put words on the wordlessness of musical communication, and too distracted by the hard work of "doing it right" to realize that I was touching my life's work already.

This birthday was a celebration of my growing ability to trust how I FEEL and my constant practice of letting go of how things LOOK.

Will you ever know what it FEELS like for you to celebrate yourself? It is my greatest wish for you in your lifetime.

Restorative Practice #5: Do One Thing At A Time

Have you ever tried actually doing one thing at a time? I've found that it takes a tremendous amount of trust - an amount I often don't have - to truly do one thing at a time.

Somehow my brain prefers that high-anxiety mode of doing many things at once, having many irons in the fire, keeping many options open, so to speak. But the reality of that mode is nothing ever gets done, and I never feel totally complete. In other words, I set myself up to prove the belief that underlies this kind of behavior: "I am not enough."

To turn this behavior around, I first choose a new thought to believe: "I am complete, as I am, in this moment."

At first, I repeat it as a mantra that sounds ridiculous because my brain has never practiced focusing attention on all the ways that I am, in fact, complete, as I am, in this moment. I have trained my brain, for many years and quite intensively, to find all the ways that "I am not enough" - all the ways that I "should be" doing more than what I am doing right now.

But since I have made the choice to be and do in a different way, to connect with a different energy as the source of my actions, I keep repeating that mantra. I allow myself some stillness and some time to find one example of how I am really complete, as I am, in this moment. I find some gentleness toward myself as I learn a new way. I remember that I am like a toddler, about to take my first steps, and joyfully falling and getting up more times than I will be able to count.

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I choose something to do, in this moment, which gives me the feeling in my body of being complete as I am. These days, it is a hike. I get to move my body, deepen my breath, and bring my senses in contact with nature - the sky, the cool air, the silence.

Yesterday I happened to shoot two videos - one before my hike, and one after. I think you'll see a visible difference in my face, or at least sense a different energy from me, in the two videos. Plus, in the second video I leave you with two questions to ask yourself about your own restorative practices.

Enjoy!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Diagnosis: Human

[singlepic id=327 w=320 h=240 float=center] One of the best pieces of feedback I received from a student in my recent online course was that she felt safe and open to learn from me because I am also a work-in-progress, like her.

So much of our unhappiness, self-doubt, and fear come from the concept that we "need to know". I am beginning to see that my violin school was built upon the false concept that I needed to know how to fix everyone's problems. I can also see how the path of medical training and the system of health care delivery reinforces ideas that doctors "should know" what to do in every situation.

I spent my whole life as the "A student", the "winner", the "leader", the one who was supposed to "know more". We're conditioned to "look up" to people like this, to aspire to be in their position someday. But the truth is that we all share one diagnosis - being human.

In many ways, we have been conditioned to forget one hemisphere of what it means to be human. We have been taught only to acknowledge the bright lights, the shining moments, the things we "ought to be proud of", the items that make it on the year-end highlights list when the holiday cards go out.

The reality is that human experience includes a full spectrum of moments, ranging from intense emotions of rage and fear and inadequacy to completely serene periods of silence and calm. We are carefree and joyful, and we are threatened to our core. We are goal-oriented and focused, and we are desperately lost. We believe in everything we've ever been taught, and we are dissolved into a pool of not knowing.

ALL of this is our human experience. When we begin to deny one half of the equation, either pretending it doesn't exist, or arranging our circumstances by any means possible to avoid acknowledgment of it, our soul begins to hurt. Part of us withers, atrophies from lack of use and attention.

And while the messages from the outside world - primarily those based on marketing products and services in this wonderfully industrious capitalist economy we have - tell us that our problem can be fixed by a procedure, our pain can be alleviated by a pill, our troubles can be forgotten by a vacation, our image salvaged by the right car or pair of shoes, it becomes even more challenging to muster up the courage to listen to the voice inside our hearts, and to do the work of being compassionate with our whole selves.

In the past two years I have been slowly, gingerly learning to question without fear. I have learned to listen and receive without needing to fix. It is a way of being that I am committed to practice each day, and that I am also challenged to keep practicing in each moment. If I don't pause and become aware, my reflexes are still familiar with old patterns. If I don't get out of my chair and look up at the sky, stretching my body and clearing my mind, I am easily left with the tangle of thoughts that once used to drive my every action and decision.

In my current work, as a teacher and life coach, there is the old temptation to feel like "I need to know". To feel that old sense of being a fraud for claiming to have an answer, when in many cases I did not.

The only difference now is that I am aware. I continue to learn, as I have always done, although I now model my learning process not from valedictorians and Ivy League graduates but from nature, animals, and 3-year-olds. I continue to make mistakes, the kind I previously avoided at all costs by restricting myself to a narrow range of possibilities. I continue to be very observant of myself and of others, as I have always been, although I now judge and label a little less. I continue to encounter situations - every day, actually - where I simply do not know.

The difference now is that I am starting to smile at these moments. I greet them and welcome them with a friendliness and openness that I once reserved only for that dose of approval and praise from others that I lived for. Now I can distinguish between smiling at myself and waiting for others to smile at me. I have glimpsed the sensation of more gentleness and kindness than I ever received from another person. I am becoming familiar with the tenderness in myself - the tenderness I now believe I share with every other human being at their core. I am my own gardener, as someone wisely posted the other day on my Facebook page. It's true.

With the number of "inspirational" people in my world, it's easier to "think positive thoughts" than to smile at my own fear, or to smile at my own judgment of others. The challenge is finding a smile to greet ALL aspects of life - and to acknowledge the wholeness of feeling fearful, doubtful, angry, and just plain crappy. Not to resist or avoid these feelings, or try to eradicate them, or wallow in telling about them, but simply to be with them, allow them their time, and then let them go.

Our suffering comes from resisting. Our suffering comes from turning away, and not wanting to look at what's really there. Our suffering comes from blaming ourselves, or feeling bad about ourselves, when the darker, lower, "negative" sides of our experience show their face.

What would it be like to sit with all of it, calmly, receiving it without needing to label it as "good" or "bad", without needing to find a solution, without needing to know the answer?

I feel relief...and a little smile along with it.

Photo credit: Grant Kwok, used under a Creative Commons license

Restorative Practice #4 - Take A Day Off!

When was the last time you took a day off?

Were you too sick to get out of bed?

Were your kids too sick to go to school?

Did you plan a vacation months in advance, spending money you didn't have, going to a place you thought would be fun, only to come back needing to take MORE time off?

Why do we WAIT until the breaking point before we take the time that we need for ourselves?

Try this: pick a day, any day. Preferably right in the middle of the week, exactly when you think you "can't" take any time away from whatever "important" project you're working on. And just take the day off. Make up an excuse to tell your boss if you have to, but know in your heart that you are doing it for the most important person in just this moment - YOU.

Choose something you love to do, a place you love to be, and do it. You might even find that SLEEP is what you need the most.

Before you say, "NO! I can't possibly do that!", I want you to try it. And see how that small gift to yourself affects your energy, your attitude toward yourself, and the way you treat your coworkers, family, and friends.

When we can finally treat ourselves with genuine kindness and gentleness, maybe we can begin to act with true compassion toward others.

Or Else What? Finding Your Own Answer To Holiday Overwhelm

[singlepic id=299 w=320 h=240 float=center] It seems to me that there's this game we play around the holidays. We somehow feel obligated to replay the old tapes of the past, gathering together in the same ways, repeating the same "traditions", whether or not they still work for us.

The result? A clenching of the jaw, a tensing of our shoulders, a knotted up feeling in our stomach, as we enter this "joyous" holiday season. Some of us might even roll our eyes without knowing it when we say the word "family".

Since all the messages around us are shouting, "Peace! Joy! Love! Thankfulness! Giving!" we feel downright guilty about our deepest truth: we just don't want to do the holidays the same way anymore.

That guilt gnaws at our energy for a good two months. We conduct our surface actions under the weight of the thought, "This is what I have to do." So we suck it up. We buy our plane tickets, or get in our cars, battling the crowds of people who all seem to be happily going to visit family, but very well could be gnawing away inside too.

Or we buy the new sparkly red dress, the high heels, the purse, the whole deal. We show up at the party with all the people we don't even like. We do it anyway. Why? Not exactly by choice, but because we think "we have to".

Or else what?

When was the last time you questioned your own holiday patterns of action and so-called "traditions"?

When was the last time you gave yourself permission to even ask the question, "What do I want to do for the holidays?"

Oh I'm fully aware that there are a group of you who are squirming or rolling your eyes or cursing me out right now as a heretic, a threat to the very fabric of upper middle class suburban culture. I hear you. I grew up surrounded by traditions of a very ancient and foreign culture, and I was not-so-subtly shaped into believing that these needed to be the foundation of my life forever. Or else.

The point isn't whether or not the traditions have any value. The point is, I never considered any other options, purely out of fear. I never even dared ask, "Or else what?"

Until recently. Until I started to look directly in the face of everything I had been avoiding, stepping around, exhausting myself while trying to "do the right thing" all the time.

“You do not have to be good./You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting." These words from Mary Oliver's poem Wild Geese might just capture the feeling of dragging yourself through yet another holiday season of obligations. Yeah, right. Easy for her to say. She's a poet.

But can't we all relate to the oppressive feeling of trying to "be good"? Trying to live up to some imaginary ideal of what it means to be a good daughter, a good wife, a good sister-in-law, a good mother?

I know what it's like to feel the threat of literal death as a consequence of disobeying "the rules" of whatever your particular religion is. My religion was family. No one broke the sacred ranks of family. Or else.

Or else what?

Since I never asked, I never found out. Until I actually found the courage to take little steps outward. So my steps weren't that little. I "squandered" an education, for example, by graduating from medical school without a job. Wasting money, wasting time, wasting an education - all of those thoughts, and the accompanying guilt, I confronted many times before and since that decision. And yet, not only have I survived, but I have thrived since that decision. I have, with each decision since then, gotten one step deeper into my own life, closer to my own true self's potential for creativity and service to the world.

Now, after three different careers and many lessons from great teachers, I am less attached to the "outer evidence" of thriving that I used to think were more important than my own feelings. Things like having lots of good shoes, wearing stiff clothes that make me look "important" but are totally confining to my body, and getting the approval of people who have certain credentials and wear those same kinds of clothes.

It took me until I was 33 years old before I was finally able to say calmly, "I will not be travelling anywhere for Thanksgiving this year, and no, I do not have plans to eat a traditional turkey dinner with anyone else." I spent it instead at the beach with a dear friend, sipping hot chocolate and ordering French fries while snuggled in our own corner of a hotel lobby, with not a care in the world nor a restriction on any of our topics of conversation.

It was the most delicious Thanksgiving in recent memory.

I imagined all of my family members, eating off the same dishes, going through the same motions, smiling through the same awkward moments, denying themselves their own true desires, halfway across the country. And I realized that I have now done something they have never done in their lives – I’ve spent Thanksgiving my own way.

I've found my own answer to the question, "Or else what?". It has come to me gradually, and gently, over time. I still notice the old guilt and the old questions coming up, but I know better now. I've experienced something more nourishing than any food I've ever tasted. It's the taste of joy. And the taste of real gratitude, not the obligatory kind.

And isn't that the essense of the holidays we've been trying to create anyway?

Photo credit: Used under a Creative Commons license, by Patricia Van Casteren

Recognize and Rest

I've been teaching and deepening my learning each time I teach. This time it's the lessons of Tibetan Sound Healing, as transmitted by the lama Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. So simple are the sounds of the warrior seed syllables (just 5 single syllable sounds, chanted repeatedly), and yet so deep the lessons, when practiced. The concept that really stuck with me from Tuesday was resting in the recognition that "I am complete, as I am, in this moment." Without reason. Without condition. Without any explanation.

I breathed it in and felt the power of resting in that energy of peace, joy, and freedom. What power could I manifest if I just rested in that recognition?

Today I practiced again, right after a particularly poignant moment of recognition for me.

Take the time to say this to yourself: "I am complete, as I am, in this moment." Say the sound "Ah" and breathe into the feeling of space opened by the vibration in your body. Repeat and rest.