BE

opening the heart - journey

What is trust?????

bow pose
watercolor on watercolor paper
8/2013

What is Trust?????

Trust is both an emotional and logical act. Emotionally, it is where you expose your vulnerabilities to people, but believing they will not take advantage of your openness. Logically, it is where you have assessed the probabilities of gain and loss, calculating expected utility based on hard performance data, and concluded that the person in question will behave in a predictable manner. In practice, trust is a bit of both. I trust you because I have experienced your trustworthiness and because I have faith in human nature.

We feel trust. Emotions associated with trust include companionship, friendship, love, agreement, relaxation, comfort.

                                            From changingminds.org

Who can you trust? Why do we have issues with trust?

What comfort can we give each other?

Trust means knowing someone has your back.  That unconditionally another person is going to take care of you (emotional, spiritual, physically, financially supportive (if necessary), your needs for building confidence and self-esteem.

It means you know someone is not going to hurt you, intentionally in any way possible.

All too often people who we are closest to hurt us the most, because we don’t expect it or see it coming. 

I think we all start out trusting.  First with our parents who take care of our needs for food, shelter and nurturing.  We are dependent on that care for our sustenance.  Lucky are those whose parents never violate that trust physically or emotionally or otherwise. They are on the road to developing trusting relationships with all others that cross their path.

For some of us adults, we have to learn who to trust and who not to trust.

We have to be aware. 

Trusting someone means believing someone will keep their word, follow through with what they say they will do.

It means knowing that one can share one’s most painful experiences, be witnessed and not judged for lack of making a bad decision.

We all at some point in our lives make a decision we realize we shouldn’t have made.  Sometimes things turn out better than expected, sometimes there is a lot of pain and hurt.

People don’t always do the right thing, tempted by what is in front of them.

Trust is something that we must develop inside ourselves, trust our intuition, trust our gut feelings about people, situations and what is happening around us.

We must trust ourselves to know what is good for us, when to walk away, when to stand up, when to love, when something is or isn’t right for us.

Trust is one of the hardest concepts to deal with.

I am in an always state of learning with regards to this concept.  Who do I give my trust to? I have experienced a lot of mis-trust with men in my life.  Truth is something that builds over time. This may a life long lesson for me.

What I know for certain is I can trust myself to think through things before I make a final decision.  I trust myself to know what is good for me and what isn’t. 

Words

Up to the sky pose
watercolor, watercolor paper

how you climb up the mountain is just as important as how you get down the mountain. and so it is with life, which for many of us become one big gigantic test followed by one big gigantic lesson. in the end, it all comes down to one word. grace. it's how you accept winning and losing, good luck and bad luck, the darkness and the light. – from Philosophy line (Amazing Grace)

Words are so important. We use words to communicate how we feel.

Sometimes we are good at choosing words to express ourselves, sometimes not.

In the heat of a moment words pop out of our mouth in stream of conscious fashion. We often regret the low road we allow ourselves to take, but we have said it. Delivered words like physical blows.

In that moment, we change time, we change energy we change the direction a relationship can go.

Have we healed, hurt, given pause for reflection, connected? learned something new, created a possibility for a stronger bond or not?

How has the recipient received the words used to express a feeling, a thought, an observation. 

This sharing of words to express emotion is the most trickiest part of human development and psychology (I think):

We perceive others actions from our point of view based on what previous interactions we have had in our lives.

My ex-husband was a zero to sixty kind of guy – shooting first asking questions later.  There was no middle ground with him.  He would tear you to shreds and I mean shreds then and only after time had passed would he realize perhaps he was incorrect in his assumptions,

And still he wouldn’t apologize.  I just walked away from that. I will never understand what makes him tick like that, but it isn’t important for me to try to understand anymore.

What did I learn?  He wasn’t the man for me.

I try to never let someone catch me off guard that I might spew words that can harm.  My mother did that to me, I couldn’t of been more than twelve, but I remember the hurtful words she said one day about me in a dressing room.  It is something I still won’t repeat.

Mindfulness is a word that comes to mind when I think of how I try to be. Direct. Clear when there is a problem. 

The skill I have learned is to reflect back the words that are being said to me. To understand the other person’s point of view, to see the place where they are coming from.

Words are an important tool of communication.  I often find it easier to write them down, it helps me think clearly and then say them.

Words I like alot:  Grace, peace, love, harmony, continuity, healing,Higher road, genuine, focus, discipline, truth, joy, compassion, equanimity, laughter, smile, do no harm.

We can use our actions to heal or hurt.  We can also use our words to heal or hurt. Which do you chose??

City of angels – city of love, light, healing

Camel pose
watercolor on watercolor paper
 8/2013

I love Los Angeles, I have lived here the most of my entire adult life.

I have grown up here, had my children here and put down roots.

It wasn’t intentional. It just happened. But when I reflect on it I am happy it did.

I feel like I have the best of the world right here in my backyard.

The other day in yoga class it was a tight fit and I began chatting with the person next to me, we began to extol the virtues of living in LA: the weather, the fresh produce and foods, the people, the lifestyle.

I felt so happy, this is the place I consider home.

The  virtues as I see them:  the beach, the beautiful pacific ocean, always there, gorgeous, blue, beautiful, inspiring.

Vegan food, so many choices of how to not eat dairy!!

My favorite restaurants are Native Foods, Vegan Glory and RFD. In that order.

The spiritual life, there are so many religions and lifestyle choices here.  I love seeing the Hasidic jews that walk on Saturdays,

The Hispanic peoples in the park having big birthday parties, the indian ladies walking their children to school and every other culture that resides in this town, eating in Korea town.  It is truly a muliticultural place.

The other thing about the City of Angels is all the gyms, and yoga studios and general physical fitness people are into.  I have belonged to three gyms at one point or another.  People work out here.  I work out here, I used to ride my bike everywhere, when I was centered in one part of town. 

Even when I am moving through traffic during rush hour, I remember this is my choice to live here.  And I do get frustrated sometimes with the traffic, but at the end of it I still like living here.

I don’t know what the hold is the City of Angels has over me!! I never intended to live here.  But I kept growing, and learning and growing and maturing.

I discovered myself here.  When I landed here I was broken, lacked sense of purpose for my life, discipline and I found everything that I loved here.  I found my work, my purpose, my path on this planet here.  All it takes is for one person to take a chance on another and I found people willing to take a chance on me and give me an opportunity to  grow.  I was so grateful that someone  gave me an chance that I worked as hard as I could to be the best I could be. Cliché’  - true.

I came from hard knocks and a dysfunctional family life, I have survived all of that and am better for it.

I have met people I love, people I am fond of, and people I don’t want in my reality. 

All in all this is my town- from Santa Monica to Downtown. I love it all.

My favorite things, right now

Standing bow pose
colorpencil on paper

My favorite things:

things that make me happy.

What are they at this juncture in my life?

What makes me happy?

What are my favorite things?

The people in my life make me happy.  I feel surrounded by nice people.  People who care, people who take a minute to listen to me, comfort me, make me laugh, make me happy.

I have a fondness for travel size containers of beauty products.  It doesn’t matter if it is for the hair, skin or face, I love to try new things without having to commit to a big container.  I will try almost anything lotion, face cream, hair conditioner.  And that is how I decide what I like.  I have a new favorite website, birchbox.com.

It is a candy store for me.

I have said it many times, but I am loving yoga and the contortions I am learning to do with my body.  I have not taken any advil or used topical cream on my knees in months.  I have also eliminated processed foods and sugars.

I am lovin’ country music and duets.  I love duets, especially country ones.  My favorites are Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw, and Carrie Underwood and ken paisley.  i am loving lady antebellum as well.

I always love summer fruits.  The cherries have been outstanding.

I love peaches and the smell of summer fruit.  I even tried to make a cherry crisp, I have to try again, it could be better.

I am loving water. 

Cold, cold, cold water. Refreshing.  My body craves it.

Moving through Life - Observing the Passage of time

Standing Bow - Dancer
colored pencils on paper 2013

It is crazy how quickly it seems days, weeks and months go by.

Life is filled with joy, laughter, things to remember, errands to run, work outs to have, too many things to think about, the good, the frustrating, the in between.  And more,

Life is all that we make of it.

Sometimes it’s more, sometimes less.

It is easy to run around like a chicken with our head cut off.

It is harder to stay meaningful, balanced and mindful.

There was a time in my life where I didn’t pay attention to the details of what was going on around me.

These days I do my best to be observant.

What I know for sure is that my attitude determines the outcome.  I am learning to pace out my negativity and judgemental-ness. And to say words of kindness and thoughts of  non-judgementalness.

Time is flying by, it feels slow one minute, then the next a school year is over, and we are all a year older and a year more experienced in what we are experiencing. That is a kookie sentence, but think about it.  

For the past two months I have been a yogi.  And I love it.

I have done yoga for the past two weeks, everyday, making it work.  I am grateful for every minute I am in the studio working to strengthen my body. I just feel so happy.

My body feels better.  My mind feels better.  I am still searching for the spiritual connection; I feel it as I move through postures.  I have my favorites. I love standing bow.  It was hard in the beginning; I had to lean up against a wall.  Or I needed the safety of the wall to support myself.  Now I can do it without the comfort of being near a wall.  I love breathing.  Breathing is what really makes yoga work for me.  I feel my energy moving through my body.

Time keeps moving.  We keep moving with it, whether we know it or not.  We make a choice of how we are going to move through time and space.  I am practicing gratitude.