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Nurture Your Personal Balance and Optimize Your Life
Today is one of those days I feel extra aligned with the natural rhythms and flow, as I nurture balance in my life by listening to what I need. I spent an inspiring morning with my new crystals, outdoors for a bit in the rising sun, a little writing, followed by a hike in nature in thoughtful communication, then a refreshing shower, hydrating coconut water with chia seeds, centering in stillness with today’s mantra meditation, and now I sit channeling sacred tattoo creations for a bit before I head out for dinner and the ballet, so I may rest my head on my pillow feeling enriched by the day.
How do you nurture balance and wholeness in your life? It really does make a difference when you cultivate and nourish all aspects of your beingness. It may be that today your balance asks you to be still and inward. It may be that your balance calls for extending yourself outward more and engaging in meaningful activity. Maybe it is rest, perhaps some sunshine and physical exercise. And maybe it is nurturing your creativity, trying something new, exposing yourself to culture, spending time with loved ones and friends, playing, or eating something enlivening for your body and soul.
It could be that like me, a little bit of everything sometimes is what your soul craves.
Whatever it is, find that balance that brings an experience of optimal thriving to your life. You will see through different eyes, feel the reality of ever-new moments, create aliveness, and draw in abundance in every way.
“If you nurture your mind, body, and spirit, your time will expand. You will gain a new perspective that will allow you to accomplish much more.” ~Brian Koslow
A Community of Artists Supporting the Evolution of Creativity – My RAW Art Showcase Experience
Me with my creations at Marvel
Another spectacular journey came to closure yesterday, and yet it is just the beginning to so much more. Last evening was my shared event with a community of independent artists at the MARVEL show hosted by RAW natural born artists in Los Angeles. Thank you to everyone who came out to support the creative arts, both new friends and old. It was a fun and long marathon day, continuing in the vein of high-vibed experiences and shifts as of late.
Thank goodness that I have learned how to stay mindful and present about the need for balance, especially in my case because I work with so much energy and have the tendency to/and to be able to operate on crazy amounts of it at inhuman speed (although I never claimed to be fully human) 😉 for long durations before my body finally says enough is enough. By following my heart intuition to spend huge amounts of time in nature over the last several months, staying within my own experience and retreating when I’m not engaged in work, eating only foods that my body tells me it needs, and keeping away from activities and things that don’t feel supportive to my maintaining of balance, has been a huge life- saver.
The island of Grenada where I visited recently
All of this has helped me to stay grounded, to integrate my energy, and to recharge me from experiences like the ones I’ve been involved in that I give and channel huge amounts of energy into. This is also what has helped me maintain long periods of energy sustainment and getting more from my experiences both personally and in terms of what I’m able to offer others.
Energy is free and abundant, but living in bodies we must learn how to regulate energy and to understand how to integrate things and create that natural harmony so that we can continually keep channeling and moving energy through without the crashes, burns, blocks, and amping highs and lows. A natural sustainment of even flow can be and is possible, which is an alchemical way of living. We’re all in process of learning this as we shift into higher vibrational bodies.
When you really listen and take care of yourself, you have so much more to give. As we’ve heard, and it’s true, you can’t possible love others if you don’t love yourself, and likewise, you can’t possibly give to others if you have nothing left to give. Taking care of you is in the highest good for all concerned.
Yes, I’ve learned my lesson on how to integrate, and to always swing the pendulum back and forth, as well as learned how to maintain an equilibrium that sustains productive health and well being. That has been a life-long journey to learn and is a constant to keep in check (especially being the extremist I’ve been) until it becomes natural, but I can honestly say that I’ve graduated because the kinds of things I’ve been involved in doing lately, along with yesterday and last weekend’s marathons of high energy, normally would have seen me crash or blow out my energy, or have a few days of body break down, but this has not been the case. I have remained strong, vibrant, and renewed, even avoided all of the major flu epidemic everyone was getting not long ago, simply by maintaining my healthy balance.
The Belasco Theater venue pre-show and rehearsals
I’m very grateful for the lessons of life and the opportunity to put the things I learn into practice. What a great evening it was yesterday. I’m thankful to RAW for supporting the visionary arts and the souls whose only known nature it is to be artistically expressive. I feel that individuals in the creative arts are visionary leaders of the world and that the wide spectrum of art is a universal language that connects everyone through the collective heart. I honor the way RAW understands the importance of cultivating, bringing awareness of, celebrating, and enriching through art. In a time of community taking front stage, RAW understands this and is a bridging entity in supporting this shift.
I’m grateful to all of the independent artists who showed up and vulnerably and courageously shared their personal expressions of creativity with us all yesterday. I’m grateful to have met some amazing people, created some new friendships, for making some supportive connections, and simply for the opportunity to share my own self-expression amidst a supportive environment that believes in the cultivation of the arts.
My twelve hour day started with a very quick, only 40 minute, no-traffic drive into LA (accompanied by a powerfully integrative meditation, which I reposted from Laura yesterday: Powerful Integration and Healing providing her with some giggles), continued with a fast unloading of 5 loads up and down 4 sets of stairs and parking in 30 minutes, setting up without an assistant in time for my video interview and photography session, meeting everyone and then enjoying the rest of the evening sharing my work and seeing my beautiful friends who came out to support me.
Ancient Wisdom for Natural Balance – Ammonite Crystal Illuminations painting with orb energy
What a day and, for me, was a very powerfully integrative experience of embodiment into all that I am coming together – very mirroring of the video meditation I shared from Laura. Even the new body of work that I was sharing from my series, “Crystal Illuminations,” was a reflection of integration on many levels. I have so enjoyed watching the evolution of the work that channels through me and I know it will continue to shift, as creativity is limitless. I love letting the creative energy channel through me as it wants to and to see the constant evolution of that manifestation into my work by embracing its flow. Creative energy is one of our greatest and most powerful gifts I believe and is so supportive for our well being to allow to flow in relative ways to each.
My booth table at Marvel
Nearly half of the new Crystal Illuminations have found new homes already since last evening’s show (the pieces that have moved on are marked SOLD at the link) and I can’t share enough how happy I am to know they all went to the perfect resonating souls. I am extremely grateful that I can offer these new pieces so affordably, as I really want to make the healing arts available to everyone to support and spread integrative healing. That was part of what I was guided to channel through – not just the honoring of these amazing crystalline beings and the integration of Earth and Cosmos, but to create something that flowed with my creative joy, passions, and would be accessible to everyone. Mission accomplished. Thank you Universe for your eternal wisdom and guidance coming through. When we allow Spirit to move through us and listen to the authentic voice of our Higher Self, its always connected to the highest good.
Fashion show at Marvel
And the highest good is what I feel the intentions behind RAW’s events and their support of artists are focused on. The evening was filled with performances and an amazing fashion show at the end. The evening had a continuous flow of people coming through to see all of the artists’ offerings, but like things in Los Angeles roll, the evening didn’t really get bumping until later. The Belasco Theater, where it was held, is a night club and where the event ended at 10pm, the night life continued on, so people started lining up around the building while the show came to close. By the last hour of the night the entire first floor was wall to wall and tons of people in the tiers and flocking through.
Me modeling in an Eden fashion show back in the day
The fashion show was amazing, with cameras, action and excited viewers (wish I had clearer photos of the amazing clothing, hair and makeup) – it actually made me reminisce about, and miss, my days as a model and doing fashion shows. There was always something I loved about the fashion show experience in particular, despite my being very shy and not liking to speak in front of groups back then (something that has shifted tremendously), let alone a crowded room of 100’s of on-lookers. It was when I would light up the minute I hit the stage, becoming an integrated me, but it really goes to speak for that artist in me that LOVES the creative flair of expression that universally speaks where words fall short. It was also a precursor to my “living in the moment” as I would always avoid rehearsals at all costs and just show up for the show, as to me it was all about the moment. And the moment is all I know now (I even now have short term memory in reflection of this) and want to embrace. I may have inklings of where things are going, but I’m not attached to any of it and go where things flow.
The form of my artistic expression and even the vehicle through which I express it may change over time, but the source of energy remains the same – the power of creativity full throttle!
Needless to say the evening was a really fun experience and another door closing and opening simultaneously in my life. I loved that so many unique expressions of creativity could come together in the synergy of community and harmony under one roof. Artists really understand one another, likely because we can draw on a shared pool of experiences and sensitivities we’ve been on a journey to embrace ourselves.
Me with my creations at Marvel
Painting is my sacred key of life. Like the wing of a butterfly is essential to its flight, creating visionary art is the breath of life to my soul. My inspirational muses are the natural world, Earth’s beautiful creatures, the mystical and ancient worlds, the Cosmos, celebrations of life, and collective and conscious awareness.
Thank you again for supporting the creative arts and to keeping it alive and thriving. I promise to keep channeling its evolution, as it comes through me, and to follow my passions as a gift to the collective in support to others doing so as well. Since we are connected, any part we each can do makes a difference to the whole.
I’m excited to see where this creative journey takes me and each of us. In creative love and inspiration!
Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness.
It comes from letting the world tickle your heart,
your raw and beautiful heart.
You are willing to open up,
without resistance or shyness,
and face the world.
You are willing to share your heart with others.
~Chogyam Trungpa
Keeping Your Glow Rather Than Burning Out
Often, I’ve been guilty in the past of blowing myself out energetically and hence, physically, by getting myself out of balance. Then it takes time to replenish, regroup, and start anew. I’ve been known for being an extremist, although I saw it as driven passion that didn’t let anything stand in the way. There’s nothing wrong with committed drive to do what it takes to create what you desire, however when the drive exceeds the natural flow and synchronous timing that comes from the presence of being in heart and divine alignment, then chances are a burnout will take place in some way.
We all have things we feel important and called to do, yet sometimes we get in our own way and contrive timelines and “shoulds” that might otherwise be “coulds” if we lessened up on the accelerator a bit. Staying very presently aware of, and taking time to integrate, the messages and signs both your Higher Self and Universe are supporting you with, would provide a healthier approach, fresh perspectives, and perhaps bring new paths to the journey that may void some of what you deem necessities, or lead you more quickly to intended results.
There is an insatiable desire to do all and be all, rather than enjoying each moment of the journey and realizing this is not necessary. And sometimes you create blinders to any helpful signs and nudges along the way, as well as forget to ask for help, or nurture your well-being. It’s wonderful to be focused; it’s counter-productive to inflexible.
It also isn’t helpful if you are working against yourself by having one foot on both sides of the fence, believing you can do it all. It’s silly to think this doesn’t catch up with you. It creates the feeling of running in place, since every step forward feels tugged by two steps back. If you decide to create new things, then you must make peace, at the least, with the old and find a way to see it in the light of a gift that has fostered this new to birth. When you make peace within, then you have more energy at your hands to utilize for all you intend, without it being eaten up by frustrated inner turmoil. You then also are not using up all of your energy needed to create the new while shifting the old into closure.
Equally important in all of this is to find balance in your life, which at first will have to become a disciplined practice to reteach yourself how to make it natural again, and avoid extremes that can deplete you. That doesn’t mean you won’t have times when inspiration hits in bursts, but if you maintain a balanced, natural, and more nurturing daily life the rest of the time, these won’t blow you out the way they would if you didn’t. They also then become a natural alignment with the ebbs and flows of your life, rather than self-created. Eating healthy foods, combined with time in nature, gentle exercise, good sleep, quiet inner time, some light fun, spiritual stimulation, creative expression, being open to new experiences and perspectives, and practicing presence, patience, love and compassion, all will aid in keeping you glowing rather than burning out. And this results not only in raised quality of life on all levels, including longevity and youthful vigor, but will support more magic and synchronous opportunities to manifest in your life.
I can personally share that my past experiences of burn outs are just that, in the past. It has taken a lot of discipline putting to practice all that I shared above, but now my life is naturally flowing in this regard and the daily stresses I used to feel, have dissipated. Stress is an unnatural pressure we self-create. The more I have stepped into my natural flow and “beingness” I am at a soul essence level, the more peace I experience not only in my personal experience, but in relation to outside experiences as well.
All this to say, be lovingly present with yourself, as often you don’t realize the risks of setting the world on fire until you get smoke in your eyes and you’re about to crash. And there is the tendency to not pay much attention to burnouts since they aren’t always dramatic like a heart attack or life threatening disease. However, you don’t want it to get to that point, so better to take heed of the warnings. Long periods of too much overwork, overload, self-created pressures, time restraints, going against your natural inclinations and intuition, minus creating balance with the things above, is bound to lead to disastrous experiences of physical, mental and emotional burnouts.
Here are signs of a burnout and a few words from Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy:
- Sense of complete exhaustion at the end of a long, challenging and intense project
- Illness including a bout of flu you can’t shake to chronic fatigue syndrome and usually accompanied by depression
- Going to bed exhausted every night and waking up tired every morning and no amount of sleep refreshes you
- Everything becomes too much effort: combing your hair, going out to dinner, visiting friends, even going on vacation
- You can’t believe, under any circumstances, that you’ll ever want to make love again
- You find yourself cranky all the time, bursting into tears, or going into fits of rage at the slightest provocation
- You dread the next phone call
- You feel trapped and hopeless, unable to dream, experience pleasure, or find contentment
- Neither big thrills nor little moments have the the power to move you
- Nothing satisfies you because you haven’t a clue what’s wrong or how to fix it – because everything is wrong – because something is terribly out of whack: you
- You feel there is not one other person on the face of the earth who can help you
And you’re right.
When you’re suffering from burnout, you are the only person on earth who can help because you’re the only one who can make the lifestyle changes that need to be made: to call a halt, to take a slower path, to make a detour. When you have no strength left, you have no choice but to rely on the strength of a saner Power to restore you to Wholeness. In the pursuit of our souls, Spirit takes no prisoners.