The change you're looking for 🔍
Practical tidbits galore!
The change we want is often big change. We want less people-pleasing. More authenticity. Those are geat things to want more and less of - but how do we get there? When the change we want feels too “out there”, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of defeat. We mistake the distance for impossibility but we can bring the change we want closer.
Change happens in the cumulation of small changes in microscopic steps over time - very rarely does change happen all at once. Our bodies actually resist change that happens all at once because it feels traumatizing - even good change, even change we want. But the sensation of trauma is too much-too fast-too soon and big change can feel like that. So instead, we work with your body, moving (as adrienne maree brown says) at the pace of trust, at the pace of your body. We move slowly. We reduce the urgency. Life is very long and you have so much time to embody the change you’re looking for.
In my very Capricorn nature, I of course have tangible practices you can implement in your everyday to start shifting your trajectory towards the change you want to see in your world. But before we jump into doing - a few ground rules.
When working with affirmations, it’s important they’re believable. There’s no use repeating empty words if you don’t believe them.
Sometimes we have to have a preliminary justification to believe the affirmation. “I am a person and people deserve to want; therefore, as a person, I deserve to want”.
Stay with an affirmation until it feels like “old news”. We change our affirmations too often that our body doesn’t have a chance to integrate them into our being. Stay with a singular affirmation, instead of changing it up all the time.
To work with an affirmation, choose one or three ways to connect with it. The more you sit with the affirmation, the more familiar it will become and the more believable it will be.
Write it on your hand
Write it on your mirror
Leave a note for yourself in your car
Leave a note for yourself by the door
Make the affirmation your phone background
Have (gentle) alarms that ring throughout the day with your affirmation
Inhale, say the affirmation, exhale
When working with journal prompts, don’t rush towards the answer. Journaling isn’t like a homework assignment, it’s not about writing the “right” answer or filling a certain word count. Journaling is more about sitting with the question, than arriving at the answer.
Create space for insight by sitting with the question for the whole day, not just when your journal is open. We have our most insight when we’re doing dishes or in the shower or on the commute, because our brain is allowed to mull. Our pre-frontal cortex is slow - give it space to be slow.
You can return to the same journal prompts more than once. You’ll have new and different insight, depending on your frame of reference at the time. Just like affirmations, it’s less about “switching things up all the time” and more about digging deep.
To work with journal prompts, choose the way that works best for your brain.
Choose 1 prompt and let it roll over in your mind while on your commute. Talk out loud or let your inner dialogue wander as you consider the prompt.
Jot single words that come to mind when you consider the prompt. They can be bullet-point, sporadic - just one or two words for each prompt that come up. Don’t censor yourself, whatever comes up is supposed to arrive.
Connect the prompt to 1) body sensations 2) memories 3) phrases that come to mind when you read the prompt.
Consider - how old you feel. If you’ve felt this way before.
If you want more safety…
You may have been searching for safety outside of yourself. When we experience the outer world as unsafe, of course we do. We’re trying to find a corrective experience but we first have to find safety within. To find safety within, we become familiar with your inner world so that your pillar of safety is YOU. This is about developing self-trust.
Connect to the affirmation “I am safe.”
If you need to be more specific, try instead, “I am safe here in this moment.” Even if you weren’t safe then, you may be safe now.
Where do you not feel safe, secure, supported by yourself or others?
What is within your control to create a sense of safety?
What is my environment & what is the impact on my felt sense of safety?
Hold your hands in your armpits for at least 3 seconds. Tuck your chin without looking down.
If you want to discover your desires (without internalized shame)...
We receive so many messages about our desires being “bad” when our desires, our preferences, are integral to our identity development. They are the important part of becoming uniquely YOU - to say “I like this” and “I don’t like this” is the pre-work necessary for boundaries. If we don’t know what we don’t want, what we can say “no” to, we certainly can’t know what we do what - to be able to say “yes”. It is our “no” that creates space for our “yes”.
Connect to the affirmation “I can want.”
Our deserving-ness (of good things) is oft early on the chopping block. Sometimes a pre-caveat can help this be more believable: “I am person. I am allowed to want. Wanting is human nature.”
What do you want more of?
What do you want less of?
What does YES feel like in your body?
Cradle the bottom of your belly with both hands and see if you can trace the pattern of oxygen as your breath moves through your body. Feel your whole body expand and contract with every inhale and exhale, just as life expands and contracts around you.
If you want to harness your power…
Power, especially for trauma survivors, is quicksand. We end up playing hot potato with our power because when we experience power-over, we mistake all power as the problem. Power isn’t the problem - power without ethics is the problem. Jeff Bezos is a bright, shiny example of power-without-ethics, he uses power to exploit and the impact is dehumanization. Dolly Parton though; she’s power-with-ethics. She does have wealth and fame and she channels it in ways that are in alignment with her values. We see her values by how she wields her power. You can too.
Connect to the affirmation “I am.”
If it feels believable, adding “I can take up space” creates a beautiful ownership of your psychic space, your existential ground.
When have you felt most powerful? Was it what you expected?
What purpose has playing hot potato with your power served for you?
What ethics do you want to surround your power with?
Hold your arms straight out, in line with your shoulders, creating space between your shoulders and your ears. Put your tongue to the roof of your mouth.
The change you’re looking for is YOU, the answers you’ve been looking for are within you - we just have to listen to your body to hear. This change, safety, desires and power are the first three chakras, the root, sacral and solar plexus. They are the foundation of wholeness and integration in the rest of our spiritual anatomy.
If you want to learn more about what this change can look like for you, Jaide @rosemaryslighthouse and I are hosting a FREE workshop on March 3 at 12 PM MST to demystify the chakra system from a trauma-informed & integrative lens. You’ll learn even more tangible strategies to bring the transformation of chakra healing into your everyday. You can be the change you seek (Gandhi) - that change is closer than you think.
PS - the workshop will be recorded too! You can also catch us on IG Live Saturday February 25 at 3 PM MST, over on IG Live 👋🏻
