The Medicine is Here For You. Help It Do Its Thing.

Hi Sweet Hearts. I just wanted to post a quick note about receiving good medicine. The prescription is short and sweet, but it can have a profound effect on your experience of life. Check this out:

• You walk into a room and see your good friend. You head toward each other and embrace. You squeeze tight, release and move into a greeting and conversation... but it takes a while (and maybe a drink or two) to release a certain tension. 
• You're telling your boyfriend how you like yourself, but you wish you were more this and less that because it would make your life better in these ways and he says, "You are perfect exactly as you are." You smile, tell him he's sweet, and continue with what you were saying.
• You're telling your friend about how you worked through a challenging situation with one of your employees. He tells you he really admires your ethics in business. You say, "thanks, man" and change the subject.
• You’re having coffee with a friend and she says something that completely resonates with you and your life experience, but at a higher level than you’ve been experiencing. You say, "that's great" and keep the conversation moving.

Four really simple situations, right? Notice any similarities between them? In every one, "you" kind of blew past the medicine you were being offered. Call them compliments, call them love, call them what you will - I call them MEDICINE. The kind of medicine that can move deeply into your brain, into your soul, into your karmic patterns and make change in you. The thing is, you have to receive it. You have to make space for it to enter you. You have to give it some presence for the medicine to do its work on you. Let's look at those situations again:

• You walk into a room and see your good friend. You head toward each other and embrace. You hug from a physically solid place (ie. most or all of your torso is in contact with hers, and you change your footing so that you're firmly balanced on your feet). You become aware of the fact that you're in this (precious, rare) moment of closeness with someone you care about. You stop thinking about what you're going to say. You are just present. You just breathe. You notice that it feels good... or maybe it feels awkward or horrible, but something in you is thankful anyway. You hang out in the hug for 20-30 seconds, enjoy the closeness, and let it change your chemistry (this piece is science, by the way. It takes at least 20 seconds of hugging for scientists to see a rise in oxytocin, sometimes called the “love drug,” which reduces blood pressure and cortisol - stress hormone - and improves sleep patterns). You end the hug, smile, make eye contact, feel real gratitude... say “thank you"... and then start catching up on each others’ lives.

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• You're telling your boyfriend how you like yourself, but you wish you were more this and less that, and he says, "You're perfect exactly as you are." You feel yourself ready to skip over that and keep talking, but you recognize that those words are MEDICINE. You ask him if he would say that to you again so you can really get it, and he agrees. You take a deep breath and get really mindful - maybe you even close your eyes - and you ask him to say it again. He says, "You are perfect exactly as you are." You let the medicine into every cell of your being, without expectation. You simply receive. You give it a full minute to soak into you - or more than a minute - you give it as long as it takes. You feel how it makes you feel. Maybe you realize the truth in his statement. Maybe you realize that you actually don't believe that about yourself, and you get curious about why. When you open your eyes, you release yourself from having to pick up where you left off in conversation. You give thanks. You start from here.
• You're telling your friend about how you worked through a challenging situation with one of your employees. He tells you he really admires your ethics in business. You don’t respond; you just feel into what he said. You know this is true of yourself – yes, you have strong ethics. You truly value fairness. You like this about yourself – that you are living evidence of these good values. You look up, smile and say, “thanks, man. Yeah, fairness is really important to me.”
• You’re having coffee with a friend and she says something that completely resonates with you and your life experience, but at a higher level than you’ve been experiencing. You pause for a moment and let the wisdom move into you, applying it directly to your self and your heart like a balm, then smile and say, “thanks for that.”

Things like this happen all the time. Everyone has medicine, and they are all great opportunities for sparking some amazing things in you. Truly receiving love medicine can help to heal past wounding. It can bring you right home to who you really are. It can actually change the neuropathways in your brain - moving you out of habitual ways of experiencing life into new, beneficial ones. It can help you to believe in yourself. All of which can have dramatic effects on your entire experience of life.

I’ll just offer one more example from my own life. I hope this is useful to you; it sure was for me.
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My husband Peter (back then he was still my boyfriend) and I were going to change both tires on my bike. Actually, he was going to teach me how to change a tire. You see, when we met, I hadn’t ridden a bike in over 20 years and actually had to re-learn how to do it (I can assure you, it wasn’t like riding a bike). I was out of practice riding and had never done any bike maintenance at all. Peter was going to change one of the tires to show me how, and I was going to do the next one myself. While he was changing the first tire, I started to have a mild panic attack. The panic attack consisted of these ingredients: I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed. I felt stupid. I was sinking into an old belief that I was not a handy person, that I wouldn’t be able to do it, that I was too slow, and that I’d be judged and chastised for all of that. Tears were silently rolling down my cheeks. All the while, Peter was happily changing the tire, talking to me and paying attention to the task at hand. When it came my turn to change the second tire, Peter looked at me and asked what was going on. I didn’t explain to him that as a kid, there wasn’t a lot of patience with my pace of learning. I didn’t explain that I felt humiliated before I even began. I didn’t explain that I hated doing things like this for these reasons. I just said, "I don’t know if I can do this. I need your help." A moment passed. He said: “You’ve got this, baby. I’ll help you if you need. Just take your time.” I paused for a minute to take that in - to take in his MEDICINE. He was encouraging me. He was being patient. He was going to help me if I got stuck. I felt all of that. I looked at him – really looked at him. My boyfriend. Now. Today. Right here, in our backyard of the house we live in together on this gorgeous, sunny day in my adult life. I took in the fact that there was all the time in the world for me to do this. And I felt a sense of trust that allowed me to begin. I felt challenged a couple times while I worked, and the panic flared up again. Each time, I just stopped and breathed and got present to what was actually happening right now - as opposed to how it was in the past. I wasn’t being rushed. No one was annoyed with me. It was ok to not know how to do this the first time I did it. How could I? I had never done it before! Yes, it really was ok to not know how to do this the first time I did it! I asked Peter which tool was best, which angle. I stopped and sucked my finger when it got pinched. He waited. All of this I soaked into my cellular structure by being mindful of my experience: I am doing this for the first time, and it's ok. I'm right where I'm supposed to be, and there is all the time in the world for me to do it in. And I got that damn tire changed. That awesome new tire on my kickass mountain bike that I love. Yes I did. And each time I tried to do something that required tools or building or fixing, I let myself feel more and more worthy of time, attention, and skill-building.

​So. All of this is to say: be mindful, people. Everyone around you – every single person and every experience in your life – has medicine to offer, whether it's about changing a tire... letting go of a beautiful but boundaried identity... supporting another... or anything else you may be healing in yourself. You can pay a skilled therapist to see this stuff in you and guide you toward healing (I will always recommend Hakomi therapists). You can come see someone like me who will work mindfully with you to make change by the grace of the shamanic realms. AND, most importantly, you can know that every single person -  every experience in your life - is here by your choosing and your creation (consciously or not) to show you where you need healing and to bring that healing on, if you are willing to go there. The only thing standing in the way of you receiving the medicine is you. So be mindful. Slow down. Take your time. Take it in. Feel gratitude. There is love and healing for you. It abounds. The Universe is conspiring for your healing and your total experience of freedom, if you want it (and you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this right now). Open your eyes. Listen. Slow down. Take the time to let the medicine move through you.
​It is yours, if you will have it.

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We are all on this journey toward who we really are. We are all coming home.

Loveblessings,
​Aowyn