One major source of mental and physical tension for people is ruminating about the past and time-traveling to an imagined future to work it all out before it happens. This is often called living in the past or living in the future.
The Universal remedy is to be present. Live now. Be here now. Smell the roses. Slow down and just be.
But what does that mean? What is The Now?
It's talked about a lot as if it's a tangible thing. Or a place to get to. Like Los Angeles.
There are a few ways people (including myself) conceptualize the idea of living now or living present.
Forward through time:
The first idea is as if the past is somehow pushing you forward through time or the future is pulling you forward through time. This concept is inherently not going to result in being present or relaxing into the present moment. It's a forced hanging-on feeling or an always catching up feeling of time always getting away from us. Hurry up so I can be present. I used to see life this way and it's exhausting to always need to manage a push/pull through time. A battle along the stream of time.
Train of Moments:
The second one is viewing the present moment as a series of discreet moments through time linked together sequentially. Like a train of box cars relentlessly rolling along and you are running to catch up trying to get the timing just right to climb aboard. This is a very common view of life. We might say live in the moment. Savour the moment. As if the moment is quickly going away. The fleeting moment. Life is short grab the moment. Our moment-to-moment life. This is also inherently tension-making because you're needing to hurry up to get in the moment. "Oh darn, I just missed the moment". Another version of being really busy aiming to just be.
Always Now:
It occurs to me that the moment never actually goes anywhere. It's always now. It's always the present moment. Being in the present or living now is actually possible. Especially when the now doesn't ever go anywhere. The now doesn't travel forward in time. Our brains make up time so that we can make sense of the world. We are always in the present moment. We can't not be. We are never anywhere else.
I'm imagining if people literally disappeared when they thought of the past or worried about the future. "Where did Joan go?" "Oh, Joan? She's in the past. She'll come back." Then reappearing for a second only to wink off to the future. A whole town full of people popping in and out all over the place.
Now is eternal and we live in it. Whether we are aware of it or not. All that's needed is for us to notice and slow down enough to have a good look around.
With Love,
Sara Joy
Principles of Golf, Competition, and Life
I have been writing a lot lately about three basic principles that govern how life works. These principles are a description or metaphor for how we as humans function in the world. They can be "applied" or looked at in the context of anything because like gravity they are just true for everyone. When people understand how it works, life gets pretty easy. Flow states become an everyday occurrence. People's bodies relax; regardless of life circumstances.
A friend of mine was telling me about a book he loves and reads once or twice a year. "The Three Principles of Outstanding Golf: How a Golfer's Mind Really Works" by Sam Jarman. My friend finds that by reminding himself of these principles, he creates an effortless flow state while golfing (hint: you can experience this at any time not only during a golf game) and so improves his game and his enjoyment of the game.
The heart of this book and of this understanding is that life happens from the inside out. We use the creative energy of Thought to make sense of our world perceptually, to make meaning out of what we see around us, to think our identities into being, and to imagine and create new innovations. There is an energy behind all life enlivening us and everything else, called Mind. And a third flavour of energy allows for our Consciousness. Our ability to be aware of it all.
Putting these three principles together is our experience of life.
Mind + Consciousness + Thought = Experience.
Put another way Mind + Consciousness + New Thought = New Experience
And yet another way Mind + Consciousness + Slower Thought = Flow Experience
I am fond of trying new ideas out in real life to see if they hold true or what my experience of them will be. So, I did an experiment. As many of you know, I compete in Olympic weightlifting. If awareness of how these aspects of life work together can improve one's golf game, surely, I could do the same with my upcoming competition. Oh Wow! And how it really worked!!
I realized the only reason I (or anyone) would feel pressure or stress is because I was thinking thoughts related to pressure in performance. Humans (I'm a human!) live in the feelings of our thoughts. I looked at slowing down and how that would affect my feeling and experience.
In slowing down internally, my thoughts also slowed. I didn't feel the need to add pressure. I had focus and I had excitement going for me. At the competition, I was joking around and very relaxed as we all warmed up for our session. I could see the other competitors getting faster and faster and more and more worried or stressed as their time to compete came closer.
When my time came to do my lifts, I was so relaxed that I missed the first one of three allowed attempts in the snatch. lol. ok. I get two more tries. I decided to think about some things that generally I feel angry about to generate a bit of adrenaline. Then I went out for my second lift. I absolutely slammed it up overhead so strongly my shoulder felt surprised at the speed! It was a bit too light now. By the third attempt, I had the Thought/relaxation mixture just about right because I went out and got a maximum snatch with good form.
I then went on that day to nail three excellent attempts in the clean and jerk. I finished the day with a 5 for 6 record, meaning I only missed one of my allowed attempts. An optimum fun performance at competition for anyone!
Whether you play golf or any sport, slowing your internal speed will slow your thinking and allow for a flow experience. Depending on the activity or game you may need a little bit more or less thinking for an outstanding performance. Hint: This also holds true for anything you may be up to in your day.
With love,
Sara Joy
An Experiment with Thought
One of the simple principles behind life is Thought. I capitalize it here to distinguish the principle from our habitual thoughts or individual thoughts that arise and fall away.
Thought is a word used to describe the creative force of the Universe that we as human beings have access to.
Thinking is one type of use of the energy of Thought. Another is unconscious spinal cord filtering functions to streamline information processing in the body. I consider the brain to be part of the body. The bodymind or mindbody is often spoken about. It's all one thing. It's all our bodies.
Another use of Thought is to dream and imagine. Yet another to ruminate about the past or worry about the future. Following an inspired idea to bring it to life is also Thought.
Some uses of the energy of Thought feel nice, some great, and other uses feel terrible. That feeling is a literal body signal for "you are going the wrong way". When the use of Thought feels tense, anxious, or scary, it's not telling us anything about the world in front of us. It's telling us about the quality of our use of Thought. Our bodies work much better when we feel good. Like the "I have to go pee" signal. Negative feelings are a body signal for "slow down a minute". Take a breath. Slow your roll as my kids would say.
We are designed to operate with less overall use of Thought than we realize. We have a habit as a culture of overthinking or even glorifying thinking.
You can think of body tension like rumble strips on the side of the road inviting you back to the middle of the lane. Or like my husband's newer car, the car will steer you back into the lane if you let it. You can fight the car if needed. Or allow the indicator to do its job when you've drifted out of the lane. We can fight the signal or let our system work as designed.
We only think that the cure for too much thinking is even more thinking.
I became fascinated by the question "How much thinking or use of Thought do we actually need?"
I found in quiet moments in nature (especially at Lac du Castor Blanc near Gracefield QC), I would naturally slow down. As I slowed down, so did my speed of thought. It slowed down so much; I had trouble doing things e.g., driving a car. I found that I needed a little bit more thought so I sped up a small amount.
To me, this felt like in chemistry class, when we would titrate for an amount of a substance. For example, in antibody testing they will titrate to see at what point of adding in a reagent substance does a reaction occur. It's at this point that you can then measure the amount of antibodies present in the sample.
My experience with adding in and then removing Thought was like this. Not enough and functioning isn't smooth and too much is unsustainable and doesn't feel good. We start running like a hot engine. Too long in this way creates burnout and shutdown.
When I had a series of bad concussions in 2016 and 2017, my brain and upper spinal cord got highly inflamed for a while. The brain shuts down functions to heal and wait until the inflammation passes. Like a swollen knee, you just can't use it. At that time, I would have rotating brain functions cut out sometimes unexpectedly. My ability to integrate sensory information would turn off. I would say things like "I can't get the sandwich off the counter because the fridge is on the ceiling and there's no floor." Visual information was disjointed. Sounds came from weird places. This integration of sensory information is also a use of the energy of Thought. An unconscious one. And a really important one it turns out.
So, like a cake baker, we are adding in and using different amounts of Thought all the time in order to make sense of reality, to have a sense of time, to be able to do complex tasks and interact with the people and the world around us.
If we use Thought energy, in just the right amount we are calm, happy, and fulfilled. Our nature is peace. If we use not enough Thought energy, as with my injury, it's hard to make sense of the world. And lastly, if we use too much Thought energy, we feel tense, overwhelmed, and stressed.
The key is to pay attention to your feeling. It's also very simple. Feels good? Great. Carry on. Feels bad? Slow down.
Have fun exploring this perspective for yourself and let us know what you discover.
With love,
Sara Joy
Neutral Eyes
I was recently listening to a masterclass with long-time Three Principles teacher and therapist, Linda Pransky. She was asked by someone in the group how to handle when other people were negative. They were fine on their own but when interacting with a negative or complaining person they became anxious, upset, or irritated.
Linda's response surprised me with her quickness, her accuracy, and her laser focus to cut to the heart of the matter in a very down-to-earth way.
She burst out "Oh that's easy!".
She told a story of how she'd become aware that when she was with people who were feeling good and loving and positive, she also felt good. When she was with people who were negative and complaining, she felt angry and irritated. She struggled with this for a long time. Alternately blaming the negative people or judging herself for being affected by their mood.
She got a lot of clarity around this when she realized, and it became actually real for her, that the only difference between the two situations and the two feelings was her judgment.
She said, "I was judging the people for being negative and so was living in the feeling of my judgment or judging myself for whatever failing I decided I had. When I felt good, I had no judgment of the people or the situation."
Linda and her husband George call this "Neutral Eyes". When you see the world around you as it is with neutral eyes, all the extra thinking or judgement falls away. It allows you and your body to relax into life. If something needs doing, it will become natural and obvious to do.
I realized that I also was doing this. Any time I was judging something as less than optimal, wrong or what have you, I didn't feel good. I had tension in my body. For me, my neck tightens up, I clench my jaw. My gut churns. When I saw the world and people around me with neutral eyes, like a movie camera, everything dropped. At first, it feels like relief or sometimes very neutral. Over time a quiet joy arises. The love for life, as it is.
I can almost hear some of you saying, "Yeah but, yeah but, what about this and what about that?"
I would say in response to experiment and try it out for yourself. See what you see for yourself. Try looking with neutral eyes and feel for yourself what life looks like. Does your body relax? What do you feel? What do you notice? Experiment with it for a day or even better, for a week. Keep it if you like it. Let me know what you find in your explorations.
With love,
Sara Joy
Falling In Love with Life
The first time I heard this phrase was from my mentor and teacher Michael Neill. He loves to love. Probably more than anyone else I've ever met. His family, his dogs, his cats (he's very allergic to), whatever comes his way in life.
It's a way of living in flow with life or in flow with nature.
At first glance, it seems like it would mean just putting up with all the crap that life brings or all the crap that other people dump. In reality, the opposite is true. When there is no resistance to life, a person could be described as "in the flow". More than no resistance would be being "in love".
So, what does it look like to live "In Love with Life"?
I began a joyful journey of asking myself "Could I love this?" "Could I love that?" Just as it is without any changing. "Could I love this person, just because they are alive and they are a person?" The answer wasn't always yes.
More and more often though it is a yes. You're not loving a bad action or behaviour. You’re not loving an abusive situation.
You're loving life. As it is. This led me to wonder "What is Life?" For me, it seems that Life is nature. Life is our felt sense of aliveness. Life is my beating heart and my breathing lungs. Life is perfection with all its imperfections. Life is slowing down to the speed of nature. Life is people and plants and animals and kids and things that happen.
Being in flow with life is slowing down to be with. Maybe stopping for a moment or two or three. And just breathe. Just listen to your heart. Live slow. Fall in love.
As you slow down and tune into the speed of nature, the speed of life, your thinking and thoughts naturally slow down.
And bit by bit I fell in love.
I fell in love with people. I fell in love with the trees and the sky and the grass. I fell in love with life itself.
Love is our natural state. When everything else is gone, love remains.
Slow down and you'll find love. It's from you, it is you. We can't help but feel it. Sometimes it's a gentle warmth or the joy of being alive. Sometimes it's an overflowing fountain.
Often the only thing keeping you from being in love with life is the idea that it should be different than it is.
“Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo
With love,
Sara Joy
Second Chance
This is an excerpt from the book "Second Chance" by Sydney Banks.
Mamma Lila broke the silence by saying, "The knowledge that my kupuna kane taught me was a gradual process. It took many years to find out what he was trying to get me to See. It wasn’t until I was seventeen that I finally broke through to the world beyond our senses and found the secret of Mana.
"I remember as if it were yesterday. My kupuna kane cried with joy when the pearl of wisdom was handed to me from the spirits.
"It was only two weeks later that my kupuna kane decided to leave this material reality and join my kupuna wahine—my grandmother—who had died two years earlier."
As she spoke about her grandfather her face revealed her great love for him. It was obvious that there had been a very close bond between them.
We sat quietly for a moment, then I said, "Mamma Lila, please tell me more about Mana."
At this point she rose and walked toward the ocean. She stood gazing out at the sea for a couple of minutes then beckoned me to her. "You asked me to tell you about Mana. Mana, in essence, is a spiritual power that, when grasped, can open the doors to all cosmic consciousness. Mana is love.
"True love is pure spirit power being manifested. The manifestation can take many forms. There is a mother loving her child, a doctor caring for his patient, a father playing with his children, a child with a new puppy, people caring for the less fortunate.
"Love is a positive feeling and if people cultivate this feeling in their lives, they will free themselves from any unbalanced conditions that surround them.
"Love is not just an idea. Love is a living, breathing essence that the wise can pluck from the air at will and then like a master artist mold it into something beautiful.
"Love, my dear Richard, makes the impossible, possible." When she stopped talking, an incredible tranquility came over me and before I could say anything Mamma Lila said, "Look within yourself for the answer you seek." With these words she stepped forward and embraced me saying, "It is time to part and if it be written we will meet again. Until then, Aloha, my young friend, and may God be with you."
I love when Mama Lila is speaking about Mana or love. This is at the core of all human beings. When we look to living from this positive feeling, life sorts itself out. We don't ever need to go into a negative feeling to "fix" it. If there is a negative situation that we want to change, actions will be obvious from the space of beautiful loving feelings. Look to the love, look to the Mana.
With love,
Sara Joy
Embracing Experience
Embracing Experience
"If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world" Sydney Banks.
We are designed to live our lives in the moment. What does that mean? We do very well in each moment experiencing what comes. Feeling the feeling of the moment. Experiencing the sensations, feelings, or pain in our bodies. We are designed to live in our bodies.
I noticed that my habit was to resist a lot of experience. The way I would do that is by saying to myself "It shouldn't be this way". War - It shouldn't be this way; a pulled muscle at the gym -It shouldn't be this way; a flu - it shouldn't be this way; my daughter gets mad at me - it shouldn't be this way. Every time I judged that something should be different or shouldn't be, I resisted, I tightened up, I clamped down, I held in, and was holding on.
Interestingly when I started experimenting with stopping the resistance and just being with what is, I relaxed. Then I started to be curious about "what if I embraced experience", "what if... no experience was a problem".
Then life started getting really interesting. In embracing each experience that came I had a much stronger sense of my own wanting, my own simple desires in each moment. My own intuition. I knew more and more often what it is I wanted. It may be that I don't want to read any more about war. I want to read a fun novel and have a beautiful meal with my husband. In embracing, there was no more resistance, no more holding on at all. I feel much more open and more allowing of all emotions and feelings. This then allows for more actual feelings like love. Numbness or polarity starts to melt and dissipate. It was never real to begin with.
We are made to live life in all its expression. But we are made to live our life. Not your neighbour's life or your mother's life or the life you think you should be living. We are made to live our personal moment-to-moment, what-shows-up-for-you life.
As my mentor and friend Michael Neill often says, "Show up, Be yourself, and See what happens."
When the Community Changes
When the Community Changes
One of the aspects of life that people often bring up in their work with me is how to handle, how to defend yourself from other people with the assumption that other people aren't going to or can't change.
It might be a spouse, a boss, a student in their class, an extended family member. The conversation is often about how the other person is always negative, maybe unfeeling, perhaps overly emotional and how they can't change or are unwilling to change. And yes, the other person's behaviour or willingness to change very much looks like "don't wait around holding your breath for that to change"!
One of the first people to teach what is now called the Three Principles, based on the work of Sydney Banks was Dr. Roger Mills, a clinical psychologist from the US. He'd been using this approach in his practice and getting excellent transformational change with his clients.
In the 1980's, he heard about a housing project in Florida called Modello. It was the worst of the worst. Drugs, violent crime, poverty, abuse, addicts and dealers, prostitution, children neglected, you name it. The police wouldn't go into the project area because it wasn't safe. Everyone who lived there was seen as someone who would never change; who was simply incapable of change.
"Don't waste your time" he was told. "It's too dangerous". He knew differently. He knew he could bring about transformation from within the community at Modello. He knew that at our core no human being is broken, everyone wants to feel love and connection. We just create realities for ourselves that are built on false assumptions and we build up and up on those false foundations until negative behaviours, bitterness, anger, and apathy look like the only way forward.
Over a ten year period, Dr. Mills proved this to be true in Modello. Person by person, slowly and then more quickly, people began to change. They found out that self-esteem is a natural quality and not based on situations or performance. They found out that feeling happy and good doesn't have anything to do with the life circumstances you find yourself in.
The whole community changed.
There's a really moving story in the book "Modello" written by Dr. Jack Pransky about a woman who was a crack whore and had nine children. She was one of the residents at Modello and she was not interested in changing. At all. She badly neglected her children to the point of having them taken away from her forcibly. She wasn't feeding them and she was high all the time or working to get enough money from the Johns to get high again.
The people in the community at Modello had always looked down on her, in particular, because if they were bad, at least they weren't as bad as her. They saw her as broken and beyond help. And she won't accept help anyways as she's not interested in a different life. Incapable. A waste of space. She avoided the other residents and lived up to their view of her.
Then something interesting began to happen. The people, especially the women of the community, who were involved in Dr. Mills’ program began to see themselves differently. Then they began to see others differently. They themselves were no different than other people, even her, the worst of them all. If they were able to change, anyone could.
After her children were taken away, she hit a low point. She started to try to get her life together. Unsuccessfully at first. However, the more the people around her viewed her as being whole and inherently good, the more she began to live up to that view of herself.
Over time and without this lady learning any of the lessons the other residents were learning, she got off drugs, got a job, got married and got all her children back. She ended up moving out of Modello to a better more affluent area with her new husband and children.
Excerpt from "Modello: A Story of Hope for the Inner City and Beyond: An Inside-Out Model of Prevention and Resiliency in Action":
"Pam: Before this incident happened, I can only remember hearing judgments cast by the other residents. 'She's really bad!', they would say, but they didn't offer to help even the kids. Later, slowly, people would come into the office and say, 'I'm really kind of concerned. Is there something we could do for one of her daughters?' or, 'Her kid keeps coming to me every day asking for bread'. And the residents started slowly to feed the kids, asking them over to dinner. People began to speak to the lady. It then turned into, 'There's got to be something that can be done!'. There were a lot of crack kids in Modello, but everybody separated themselves from her. "Well, I will never be like that. She's too far gone. She's like dirt. I don't want anything to do with her!'. And slowly, 'Maybe she's not so different. She used to be a nice person. Isn't there something that could happen?'. And there was! That woman was not touched by these principles; she was touched by people who were touched themselves. People had a change of heart toward her, and you felt it. It touched her. And suddenly, you heard, 'Maybe I can do something.' "
Magic happens in first becoming grounded in yourself and your wholeness. When you view yourself as whole and with kindness, others around also have the opportunity to shift in themselves. I don't have all the reasons why this might be so. It happens time and time again.
You start to view yourself, others and the world around you differently, softer, with love. You become an overflowing wellspring of love and good feeling.
You look around and colours are brighter, tastes are tastier, sunsets more beautiful. And sure enough, other people are nicer.
Who changed? You? Them? Maybe it was there all along.
Walkabouts, Live Theatre, and Old Churches
Walkabouts, Live Theatre, and Old Churches
As some of you may know, I was at a training in London, England the last couple of weeks. The emerging theme from the trip for me was walkabouts, live theatre, and old churches. Also, Shakespeare and fresh seafood. Here are some insights from London! And one mini-insight from New York City.
I love walking around new cities without my phone. I'd never been to London before. Getting to know a new place just by walking where I feel. At each corner, go straight? Left? Right? What looks interesting and go there. Eat lunch in an interesting little cafe. Find a small museum or shop and just explore. No plans and no boundaries.
The feeling of going with what you want in the moment is at once familiar and fresh. A little scary sometimes. It reminds me of being a kid in the summertime. Everything is possible. Each moment is a new adventure. Since coming home, I've been experimenting with living this way in each moment. What would I love to do now? What about now? Ok, what's next? I've started to notice a subtle and at the same time obvious body sensation of yes and no. Like a pull toward or a push away. It's very easy to override or rationalize. I can talk myself into it or out of it easily. And when I settle into this sensation, it's a simple desire of what I want. It's a feeling of life moving through me, of life living through me. Following this is becoming very interesting. I'm never sure what is going to happen next in a delightful way. I would invite you to experiment for yourself. See if you can get a feel for your own moment-to-moment lived desires. Let life move you. And then see what happens next.
The one time where I ended up in a city in a place I ought not to be was in New York City years ago. I was following a map to a bankside park on the Hudson. Or the other river there, I forget which. Maria, my then assistant was with me, all of a sudden said "Sara, we just passed a shrine to a dead rapper". I looked up from the map and realized "We are not supposed to be here". We were on C Street in Alphabet City in Manhattan. Luckily it was 10 am and not much was going on. We became aware of our surroundings and found the park and all was good. My point with this story is that we were not aware and ended up in a rough neighbourhood. When you are aware and following your own knowing, you notice a rough neighbourhood or situation right away. It's obvious. You then go a different way.
It feels like following quiet whispers.
Live theatre is just fantastic. I’d forgotten. It’s been a long time since I saw a play or musical. I got to revel in the shared experience of watching A Midsummers Night's Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. The energy of the crowd was exhilarating. The acting exquisite. I never knew how much I needed tea towels printed with quotes from the play from the shop! Too funny. They are excellent tea towels though. I then, later in the week, followed some whispers and ended up at Tina Turner: The Musical. OMG! That was fantastic! The beauty of the music and sound that filled the theater was so beautiful. I love the energetic interaction between artist and audience where magic fills the very air.
Some spaces and locations seem to be amplifiers of our own natural energy at the core of us. Saint Margaret’s church is one of these places. Found, out of the way, on the grounds of Westminster Abbey, it’s an old church built way back in the twelfth century. The place vibrates with aliveness. I sat there for an hour basking and resting in the feeling of being one with the stones and the earth beneath my feet. It was powerfully still and the air felt sacred. I felt like a boulder, solid in a rushing river, with London streaming all around the church and yet removed from the quiet space inside.
My next stop was St. Paul's Cathedral. It's famous for its large dome built by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London in 1666. I wanted to hear the old pipe organ in the spaciousness of the domed ceiling. There's also a series of smaller arched domed sections of the ceiling. So, I went to a service to hear it. It was gorgeous! The music seemed to float down from the ceiling after swirling around up there. I was truly transported.
All in all, the trip was about listening and trusting myself, my inner wisdom, and being alive to the spaces and life around me.
We Go Deep
We Go Deep
I am excited to announce that my friend and colleague, Dr. Kathleen Perry and I, have been producing a podcast!
You can listen to it on Apple, Google, Spotify, and a couple of other podcast places.
https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/d3svkEPBBAb
This project started because both Kathleen and myself wanted to "do a podcast" and weren't sure how. We decided to do a "practice podcast" and see how it goes. I'm pleased and delighted to let you know that it's going very well.
The first couple of (especially the first) episodes are rougher with long pauses. It's all unedited so you get us as authentic as we know how to be. We've learned as we went along.
We deliberately didn't plan or figure the whole thing out in advance. We decided to let our innate creative genius show up and see what happens. Well, what happened is a podcast!
Give it a listen and let us know what you think.
Nancy is also the tech genius behind getting the audio into an actual podcast. It's a team effort.
We called it We Go Deep with Kat and Sara. We have conversations once a week (or so) on life topics from a perspective of 'what is just true for all human beings' on a day-to-day level and a wider spiritual level. There is a range of topics that have occurred to us to talk about. If you have ideas for topics for us to go deep with, let us know.
Love,
Sara and Nancy