In a recent post, Courageous Heart, I mentioned how I have stood courageously and gone forward into my own inner darkness, my own dark side, my own habits that were limiting me in living the life I came to live. It started with an awakening, a realization really, that I was not happy in the life I was living at the time. Elizabeth Lesser’s book, Broken Open, exquisitely details this process of being broken open to reveal the hidden depths within oneself. All the pain one is hiding inside is revealed. She describes the process of being broken open, navigating through the quagmire, into a new state of being as the Phoenix Process. My Phoenix Process took many years and as Elizabeth Lesser says, we don’t only go through one. We may go through several throughout our lives and sometimes simultaneously. That was me. I seemed to have called forth things in an avalanche of experience. As I read her book, I realized I had experienced a version of almost every one of her examples: divorce – check, death of a loved one – check, violence in childhood – check, loss of pregnancies – check, check, birth of children – check, check, illness/pain – check. On and on it went. I began to wonder if maybe I was just really dense and I wasn’t getting some big message the universe had for me. I have come to realize though that it is all my gift. Each experience served to give me an understanding of what it is like and with that – compassion. Deep compassion for all the pain each of us experiences in this world. Along my road of transformation I found some amazing tools. The first one was the study of Shamanic Journeying for 4 years with my teachers, mentors and friends: Hank Wesselman and Jill Kuykendall. The shamanic journey path helped me connect with my higher self. It helped me see the bigger picture, the spiritual aspect of all that is. It helped me find and come into relationship with the Divine. It is my personal spiritual path. Now I am beginning to venture out and share what I have learned along the way. The second stop on my journey was Transpersonal Energy Healing. I studied at Lionheart Institute for 2 1/2 years studying topics such as Basic and Advanced Energy Healing, Transpersonal Spiritual Counseling, Living Body and Soul (the energetics of anatomy), and Family Constellations. The energy healing studies got me in connection with my body as well as my energy body. I began actually feeling my whole body and the subtle messages it sends me. I learned a felt sense of peace, contentment, joy, and oneness. Next I studied Hakomi which is a body centered psychotherapy technique using mindfulness and loving presence as a basis to understand how a person has organized their life’s experiences into their own unique view of the world around them. Basically why I do the things I do. It’s a beautiful and loving practice that gently helps one understand themselves and heal those old wounds that are stuck in the nervous system. The belief is that when we experience something that we experience as traumatic (everyone’s version is different), it can get stuck in our nervous system. Years later, we are still responding to similar experiences from that same nervous system place until it is acknowledged and healed. So, in this 2 1/2 year phase, I learned about and healed a lot of emotional wounds and shifted a lot of habits that were no longer serving me. The most recent area I explored is my femininity. Now why would I need to explore that? My very analytical mind wondered the same thing, but I followed where my instincts drew me and found myself in Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts. I started off in the online Boot Camp, but that didn’t satisfy. So off to New York I went, a place I never thought I would be heading as I really love open natural spaces and crowded spaces can be very overwhelming. Mama Gena, in a room of 250 women, opened me up and broke me open in ways I didn’t know I needed. I found myself facing my lifelong aversion to connecting deeply with women and finding the loving arms of sisterhood for the first time. I dove right in, reading any books that were mentioned, watched movies, participated as much as I could and learned so much about myself. I learned where I held myself back from being seen and heard in the way that I wanted. I learned where I held myself back from opening up with other women. I studied with Mama Gena for 2 years. She opened me up to my sensuality, got me back in touch with my sexuality, helped me discover my own pleasure and my desires. I have become a pleasure revolutionary. I now know more deeply what brings me pleasure in every moment of the day and if I can stay in my pleasure how different and more full my life becomes. In the spirit of exploration, I found myself in the workshops of Rachael Jayne Groover who created The Art of Feminine Presence. I have become a certified teacher of her work. It is a series of beautiful, spiritual, energetic and lovely practices to help women get in touch with their own unique version of femininity. It helps women understand their presence and power from the feminine aspect. How to stand in the world as a fully feminine woman. The work of these two amazing women is similar and different. Both women approach the subject of feminine in their own way and I can see that some women would be drawn to someone like Rachael Jayne who would not be able to open one iota with Mama Gena and vice versa. The world needs both. So, as I often do, I found myself right in the middle. I like it that way. I can find my own version. All of the above cascaded over me, through me and around me over a 5 year period. A lot of it overlapping. At the same time, I was trying to work through the ending of my almost 20 year marriage, figure out what to do with my life since I hadn’t worked for money in 17 years, help my kids and myself transition out of home schooling into regular school – well, private school really, and generally keep myself sane in the process. My Phoenix Process has been a huge one. I feel my Phoenix rising every day. I feel my power in myself. I feel my own desires, my own dreams, my own vulnerability, my own tender places, my own resistances. Life is always changing and moving on and I can choose to go with the flow or stand and resist. I have chosen to quit resisting and try going with the flow. It can be scary at times, but I am much happier and I have seen my kids grow in ways they never would if I had not stepped into my Phoenix process. So, what is your phoenix process? Where are you resisting? Where are you going with the flow? What are you learning along your own journey? With much Aloha,