Simplify Your Life: Train The Michael Pollan Way

Michael Pollan has a beautiful quote about the best way to approach eating:

“Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants.”

Ladies, what if it was that simple to approach your training.

Yes, we all have multivariate goals:

-aesthetic

-athletic

-longevity-based

-performance

-basic life skill readiness

Are five of the first categories that come to my mind.

BUT, this article is specifically for those who want the least stressful, most all-encompassing, and physically effective* approach to their training.

Let’s dive in.

Answer: YES, IT CAN.

Pollan considered three seeds when growing his food philosophy—source, quantity, and selection.

I think we can use his model as a mirror for our fitness lives.

There’s a lot of advice on the male side of the world of fitness, but the female side is bleak. My throat chakra felt a need to voice this guidance so YOU stress less and live more.

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How To Fitness The Michael Pollan Way

Here’s how my fitlosophy goes:

“move naturally, move frequently, and mostly overcome resistance.”

The Source of Your Fitness Approach

1. Move Naturally

What does that even meeeeeean?

Credit: gfycat.com

When it comes to foods, natural is such a broad category that every marketing ploy under the sun has been able to claim providing such. So natural isn’t really a specific enough word. It gets overstretched. Organic is a little better. Biologically-built is even yet a tad better.

I define ‘moving naturally’ as:

moving within and into the outer stretches of the capacity of our human bones and brains.

Coming from apes, we have the dexterity and grip to express holding, carrying, and moving around many different objects—from the perfectly-shaped coffee mug to the awkward sandbag or boulder.

Our upright gait allows us to wander and explore for long stretches of miles, and our very adaptable nervous systems allow us to do so in many different (weather) conditions. Cold, hot, snowy, rainy, dry, sweltering.

As humans, natural movement begins with rolling around on our bellies and backs as little chicklets fresh out the womb. We practice proprioception as we take in the sensory stimuli of our environments. We practice interception as we feel the swings and signals inside of our bodies—the urge to pee, our heart rate, sense of thirst, etc.

Then we crawl, then we walk, then maybe we play sports, then we become adults who are mostly sedentary (I’ll get to that harangue in a little bit—don’tcha worry).

Nothing about moving less frequently and in more rigid boundaries is natural by my definition; it is not moving within our capacity nor stretching our capacity.

What are examples of moving naturally, then?

• Hanging from bars/trees

• Lunging in all directions (360-degrees)

• Jumping between different levels (boxes, tree stumps, rocks, you name it)

• Testing how far we can reach overhead with each stroke of a swim (talk about natural—swimming is like re-expressing yourself in the wombspace 👶🏽)

• Walking on novel grounds—pebbles and rocks, grasses, sands, wet and dry grounds, etc.

• Grabbing objects with our toes

• Full diaphragmatic breaths

• With other people where touch is involved (dancing, acro yoga, sex, etc.)

• On routes that force us to pay attention to where we started, the path we’ve taken, and how to get back to the start (memory-strengthening…i.e. on a hike; learning choreographed dance is also a dose of this as you must remember a series of steps and layer them together over time)

• Enduring through movement: walk a long distance, run a long distance, hold a plank for a long time, sit in pigeon pose for a long time…stretches the muscles and the mind

2. Move Frequently

Back in the day, people had to move to live.

Today, society (at least the majority of U.S. society) sees movement as a kind of a luxury or option [would you like sugar with that tea?] (which is also why the U.S. has a term coined The Four Horsemen of Chronic Disease—all preventable diseases with a consistent, healthy amount of lifestyle movement). That’s gotta change.

If you are one of those people who thinks of “movement”—and let’s remember, this is not just visits to the container we call the gym, as an option—STOP. 🛑 STOP NOW.

Movement should be viewed like drinking water, brushing your teeth, calling your loved ones, doing laundry, and tending to your garden.

IT HAS TO BE DONE, AND IT HAS TO BE DONE A LOT.

According to longitudinal research from Harvard University:

-People who sat for an average of 3 hours a day v those who sat for 7 hours a day had a 33% reduced risk of mortality from heart disease.
-People who did light activity for 30 minutes a day (even if it was split up) had a 17% decreased risk of dying in that period.
-People who reduced their sedentary time by one hour per day showed a 26% lower risk of heart disease.
(https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/why-you-should-move-even-just-a-little-throughout-the-day).

I actually don’t love research that focuses on the avoidance of the negative rather than the awakening of the positive, but this gets the point across well: sit less, move more = a recipe for better health.

How ‘frequently’ though?

Women’s Health Mag gives a good starting guideline below.

Credit: dribbble.com

I do have some alterations to this advice.

Firstly, separates the goal of MOVEMENT into three individual parts: weight loss, building muscle, and general health.

This is a delusional teaching.

When you lift weights, you improve your muscle density, which burns more fat and contributes to weight loss, and a higher lean muscle mass index is a contributor to overall better general health. You see, it’s all intertwined.

Take confidence in whatever movement you choose and shake off the separations.

Secondly, it gives you an exact number…plop, leave it there, and leave you to be.

Really good quality coaching, doesn’t do that.

As Einstein said: “the important thing is to never stop questioning.”

A good coach recognizes that you have a life, obligations, priorities, projects, families, friends, etc.
A good coach recognizes that you have a unique body and brain at a unique point in your lifespan.
A good coach recognizes that you have a unique exercise history and movement inclinations.

This is why defining ‘frequently’ is, IMHO, such a customizable consideration.

Ultimately, I define ‘frequently’ in the context of movement as:

Moving more than you’d like to and weight training 3-4 days per week.

Research supports the muscle-building, mood-bolstering, sex-enhancing effects of weight training…

The moving more than you’d like to aspect doesn’t get even limelight.

The rat-race, hamster-wheel like gym-going schedule is awesome, but as your coach I encourage you to, stay almost hyper vigilant of when your body needs a little breath of fresh air, blood circulation, and hoppiness for your cells (= happiness for your brain). Not only to notice it, to feed it with movement snacks.

Moving frequently outside of your boxes of planned training as well as your boxes of the office, the car, the house, the you name it is a habit you must form to move frequently enough for your best body and life.

What are examples of moving more than you’d like then?

• Going for a 5-minute walk when you are getting antsy doing a project for work

• Using the entry to the kitchen as you “toll station” where you must pay 5 pushups

• Adding in some arm circles and arms swings as you walk the city (just be mindful of people around you)

• Spacing out your toes and fingers while sitting in a meeting (nobody will notice and it will enhance your cognitive power)

• Drinking water (yes, a series of movements, which…as aforementioned, will conduct better blood flow and toxin flush from your body

• Dancing for a few minutes when you wake up

• Taking a detour up a hill for a little heart-rate crank while on your walk commute to work or to pick up food

• Parking at a trail while on a long road trip to stretch out your legs and immerse in Nature

• Take your neck through full range of motion exercises after staring at a screen for too long (interception: you’ll feel when it’s getting stiff and saying “move me, please!”)

• Balance on one foot then the other, rock side to side, front to back on your feet and ankles while standing in line at grocery check-out or to board a plane

And if you hold on to your oversized carry on like LD, then you’ll have weights to do Farmer’s Carries, Thrusters, and Movement Galore with!

(Credit: @yvrairport on twitter.com)

3. Overcome Resistance

‘Resistance’ is a force that retards, hinders, or opposes motion (collinsdictionary.com).

I define ‘overcoming resistance’ as:

successfully moving past the forces that hold you back.

As soon as I say “working out,” you probably think of weights, bands, chains, machine plate stacks, battle ropes, and more.

Expand your mind.

Resistance is all around us (as well as assistance 😜).

-It’s the headwind on a run.
-It’s rolling out the pizza dough.
-It’s carrying the sloshing jug of water to the picnic grounds.
-It’s gravity every time you jump.
-It’s the loving tension we are met with during a high-five.

If we are already moving naturally (within and into the outer stretches of the capacity of our human bones and brains) and frequently (more than we want to), the final piece to add is overcoming of opposing forces.

I say mostly overcoming resistance, because the research is overwhelmingly clear that strength training is queen when it comes to exercise selection.

By boosting confidence, bulletproofing the body from injury by increasing connective tissue, joint stability, and bone density, increasing your baseline metabolic rate (burn more calories while at rest), and exposing your body to its capacity to stretch into new positions and new places (back to moving naturally), the benefits are a terrific tidal wave of evidence to get you overcoming resistance everyday.

This is where your preferences and interests come into play.

• Maybe for you it means swinging a kettlebell.

• Maybe for you it means loading and unloading the groceries.

• Maybe for you it means taking up jiu-jitsu.

• Maybe for you it means saying “yes” to the hills on your neighborhood walk.

• Maybe for you it means practicing deadlifting (you literally can practice this movement with anything…I had an online client last evening deadlift her snowboarding bag filled with snowboarding equipment + dumbbells).

Credit: whitelinessnowboarding

same, same.

In closing, remember this simple way to approach your fitness life, ladies:

“Move naturally, move frequently, and mostly overcome resistance.”

As always, if you have any questions or would like to learn how to move more naturally, frequently, and overcome resistance, reach out to me!

In Simplicity,

Coach Abby

START Your Goals: An Acronym To Get You To Your Targets

You’ve heard of SMART goals, right?

Well, I got something different for ya today. START goals.

I like the acronym START as a way to get clear and get going towards those Golden nuggets in your life. But really, goal-setting, attainment, even failure isn’t about achieving “the thing;” it is all about building positive habits while you work towards the shiny object in the future.

To complete this process, you’ll need a requisite skill set. Meaning, if any of the steps feel hard that’s probably an arrow to something you need to work on (hello content for your new goal! 🤪) . I’d call the prerequisite skills:

• Imagination and foresight

• Discernment and self-knowledge of your fanciest desires

• Focus and boundary-setting

• Capacity to sit with how you feel, courage to transmute it or direct it to a loving place/state/form

Here’s the acronym:

S = see it.

T = tease it out.

A = anchor.

R = remember it by heart 💜.

T = tack it on 📌.

Run through this with me…

Pick of ONE area of your life you’d like to improve (let’s just take the five areas of my coaching for example: movement, mindset, fueling, relationships, and spirituality).

Pick just one.

We start with S.

Seeing is about being able to visualize, feel, and create a future bigger than you. Bigger than your current self. What will the person who is (fill in your blank) walk like, stand like, breathe like? Where will she live? What will she eat? What will she think about most of the time? Who will she be connected to? Visualize not just the destination but the environment within and outside of it.

Example: Your goal is to drink more water. Someone who drinks more water will have more energy to stand tall as she walks, her muscles will recover better so she will walk with more springiness, and—lungs (which are made up of 85% water) moistened with water, will open and close for fuller, better respiration. She could live anywhere (lol), but maybe you picture her in some particular location. When she drinks more water, she is better attuned to her hunger and fullness signals—so she doesn’t overeat and she craves high quality, nutritious foods like lots of veggies. She probably thinks about drinking water more often, and the world of creativity and cognitive clarity that will open up as her headaches, mental fog, and moodiness recede. She will be connected to…other water drinkers? Haha! That’s for you to visualize if this is your goal.

Next is T.

The visual for teasing out that comes to me straightaway is shaking disgusting lice out of your hair. Your beautiful head of hair—with strands free to express themselves and shine, becomes dirty, messy, chaotic, and very compromised when lice appear. So you have to pull out every bug creeping in the land of your goal(s). The bugs are the distractions and the lower priority tasks (could even never get done and it wouldn’t interfere with you doing the damn thang). So, you’ll ask yourself: what obligations can I drop here? what habits should I drop here? The bugs are also the goals that are not a “hell yes” for you or are not authentically yours. So, you’ll ask yourself: is this goal mine, or am I doing it to make someone else happy? did it come from me? And ask yourself: does this goal make me want to be a better person? does this goal make me want to spring out of bed every morning in dedication to my progress? If the answer is no, tease it out. Keep teasing it out til you get to the goal that is yours!

Now comes A.

Anchoring means deciding with full intention—with so much resolve and conviction and intensity…greater than any. other. emotion. flowing through you, that this (referring to your goal) is the thing you are committed to. That’s pretty much it. Seems simple, but you’ve paved the way for it by teasing out the bullshit.

Here's R.

Remembering your goal by heart implies that you begin taking consistent action to make it a reality. To bring it forward into your present moment. To remember by heart—just like to have muscle memory to run, shoot a basketball, square dance, or dive into a pool, means to know in your heart what it feels like to be the person who is achieving the goal. The only way to do that is to practice being that person, with full awareness, presence, and diligence. The cool thing that happens is—as the heart and brain are linked, your brain will pick up on how your teaching your heart a new way of being and you will literally become someone NEW.

By now you have:

-visualized yourself enacting your goal
-tossed out the goals that are not yours
-given a full “yes” to your goal
-begun putting in the reps needed to achieve your goal

Finally, we have (the second) T.

Tacking it on means stacking the practices that entail your goal-reaching steps to previously established habits.

Let’s go back to the goal of drinking more water.

Rather than make it harder on yourself by pushing through the paradox of choice while ordering at a coffee shop and having to utilize willpower to say ‘no’ to the coffee and instead choose water, in which case you may feel deprived or out of place, just drink the water after doing something you already do. For example, if you already drink the coffee, then after each sip of coffee, go for 2-3 sips of water. You have a battalion of pre-established habits you can tack your new goal-related habits on to. You put in your contacts, then you drink water. You brush your teeth, then you drink water. You make your bed, then you drink water. You finish your first business call, then you drink water. You get the gist.

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Now it is your time to get STARTed.

Reach out if you have any questions or feel you need guidance.

Break Your Negative Habits Today: Here's How

Carl Jung said:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

He was right.

If you simply notice what you aren’t noticing—rather, what you are choosing not to notice—to AVOID, bingo!, you will be crystal clear on what you need to work on.

It’s not easy work.

Credit: istockphoto.com

But if you are sick and tired enough of the habits that are stealing your precious vital energy, then you must change. Coaches orders.

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It sounds so obvious, because it is, but most people would rather stay in their comfortable little shells of misery than break out and see what life really has to offer. To stay in a spiral of shame rather than unfold into infinite possibility.

With a team, a coach, a set of friends, a tribe in your circle who is voting for you to break out, you are in good hands. I am accepting 1:1 clients now who are ready to break their negative habits and you can click here to apply.

Now back to the blog.

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First, let’s define a negative habit.

Habits are neutral but for the sake of teaching I am using the word ‘negative.’ In my view, a negative habit is basically an addiction, which is defined by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) as: ‘a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences. People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.’ The National Institute for Health (NIH) describes addiction as: ‘a chronic, relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use despite adverse consequences.† It is considered a brain disorder, because it involves functional changes to brain circuits involved in reward, stress, and self-control. Those changes may last a long time after a person has stopped taking drugs.11’

Let’s pull a few key things from these dense definitions:

1. Addiction is treatable.

2. Addiction involves functional changes to brain circuits.

3. Addiction emerges when the ‘user’ continues to use despite harmful consequences.

I want to teach you how we can use this knowledge to overcome what sometimes feels like an impossible habit to break.

As the great Joe Dispenza guides the transformer in Chapter 11 (“Prune Away The Habit of Being Yourself”) of his book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: you must:
-recognize what is not working for you/is working against you
-admit and declare the person you were, the mistakes you made, and why you want to change your life
-surrender your mind and its intention to a greater power which will resolve your limitations and remove your mental blocks

In this order.

Unfortunately, what I see when working with people who want to change their negative habits, is…oddly enough, they’ve become addicted to the negative consequences. Even though it hurts, it stifles, it subdues, it overwhelmingly stresses them out, or they just aren’t making progress the way they dream fit, they stay the course.

What is this all about?

I have a theory.

It’s really all about homeostasis. Whether the conditions are “good” or “bad,” “healthy or unhealthy,” “life-robbing or life-giving,” we like getting used to particular pattern of emotions. The predictability of it is comforting. So we stay.

I see this across the board—through all facets of life.

• The wife who stays in an abusive relationship (verbal, physical, etc.).

• The woman who continues to slog away for an hour on the treadmill every day, never touching a dumbbell.

• The secretary who wants to own the damn office who never speaks to her boss about a raise, upgrade, or connections to a job where she can exude more power and creative control.

• The single woman who wants an intimate, committed relationship but waddles in her own learned helplessness by sitting on the couch swiping on dating apps hoping to, voíla, meet Prince Charming.

• The ritualistic night-time wine drinker who complains every single next morning about how tired, foggy, and unhappy she feels.

Again, what in the heck is happening here?

PEOPLE GET COMFORTABLE IN THEIR HABITS, NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE, AND DON’T WANT TO PUT IN THE UNCOMFORTABLE WORK OF CHANGE TO GIVE THEMSELVES THE LIFESTYLE THEY HUGELY DESERVE.

That’s the cold, hard, forthright TRUTH.

So, as I always transparently preface my clients with before they embark on the journey into positively transforming their lives: IT WILL BE UNCOMFORTABLE, AND IT IS POSSIBLE TO CHANGE.

I’ll share a few examples of people who have broken the addiction of being themselves (you might recognize them).

Demi Lovato

From a childhood thrust into the limelight—which repressed some feeling of “being used for her talent,” to heroin overdose, cocaine abuse, and alcoholism, to exercise addiction and eating disorders, to three drug-induced strokes that led to brain damage, to suicidal ideation beginning at age 7, to breaking free of any sexuality boxes, Demi Lovato has had a lot of addictions. Yet she broke the habits that were weighing her down. As aforementioned, it required a team of people who wanted to see the healthy version of her (rehab facilities, the right friends, mentors, etc.). Point is, she broke the habit of being herself. She bravely admitted: “One of the hardest things was learning that I was worth recovery.”

I loved this Joe Rogan Experience podcast episode, an intimate conversation Demi.

Adele

Adele has opened up in interviews and through her lyrics about her battles with depression (esp. postpartum depression). She turned to alcohol and spent many days in bed. She describes one of the turnkeys of her healing journey as: “Anything that could soothe my anxiety, I threw myself in headfirst. I travelled anywhere where there's meant to be brilliant energy'.”

Credit: time.com

Maya Angelou

Maya is one of the greatest female authors of all time. Few people know that she was also one of the most banned authors in America. Specifically, for publishing her honest depictions of her experience of adversity, trauma, and abuse in the South in her first novel I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. In such an audacious, courageous way, she broke her own addiction to the “smallness” and “wrongness” society tried to pigeonhole her into by breaking out her voice of how she truly felt, what truly happened, and how she overcame the “habit of being herself,”—that is afraid of her own power, which society conditioned her to be. In the last scene of her book, she does a personality-shattering action— lovingly holding the baby boy she has given birth to, no longer following the false fucking narrative that she is “wrong, untrusting, menacing and upgrading her body forever-more in the acknowledgement that she IS “loving, worthy, and whole.”

What do these three humans’ journeys to break their addictions have in common?

1. They Acknowledged Their Innate Worth.

   Demi’s decision to choose to recover because she was worth it. I hear Dr. Joe Dispenza saying “feeeeeeeeeeeeel your precious heart” here.

2. They became Open To The Unknown.

   Adele’s free-flowing permission to follow anywhere she sensed brilliant energy! Dr. Joe Dispenza would describe this as allowing yourself to feel the love that is in and all around you.

3. They Changed Their Personality.

   Maya Angelou changed how she thought, how she acted, and how she felt via the alchemical process of noticing her current thoughts, her current actions, and her current feelings and choosing new ones as she wrote her elegant, evolutionary works.

Like I said, to do ANY of these things is hard work. It is the work of the person who is choosing to be their own hero.

So you will have to ask yourself if you are willing to do that?

But…I share these examples to show you just how very possible it is to break your negative habits.

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Alright, alright…so now you want to know how to do it yourself.

You have the formula right before you (look above):

1. Acknowledge Your Innate Worth.

2. Become Open To The Unknown.

3. Change Your Personality.

To get started on acknowledging self-worth, feeeeeel into your heart and how much space the space in your heart takes up in space. IT. IS. INFINITE. Really being with that expansive feeling of love will remind you that you are worth it…you have a huge heart.

To get started on becoming open to the unknown, you must go from being somebody, someone, something, someplace, in some time to being no body, no one, no thing, in no place, and in no time. Then your world of possibilities jars wayyyyy open.

To get started on changing your personality, you must change the three components of your personality:
-how you think
-how you act
-how you feel

How, how, how?

First, you gotta notice what you are currently thinking, what your current actions are, and what your current “most of the time” way of feeling is. If you aren’t satisfied, choose differently.

Engaging in these steps attacks the three transformational opportunities I pointed out in the definitions of addiction:
It treats the root of the negative habit by becoming aware of the current habits (in thought, action, and emotion), and subsequently, changes the brain circuits in a way that fires new thoughts, new actions, and new feelings for you to become the person you choose to be.

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This has been a primer on how to break negative habits/addictions.

It is both smart and resourceful to include a team, a coach, a set of friends, a tribe who is voting for you to break out and supports your decisions. Then, you are in good hands.

If you’d like my help breaking some of those negative habits in your life (which you absolutely can), I am accepting 1:1 clients now who are ready to break their negative habits and you can click here to apply.

In Great Love,

Coach Abby

Moments or Months, Not Years: This Is Your Transformation Timeline

Moments or Months, Not Years: This Is Your Transformation Timeline

Hello folks.

Today I am talking about how long you can expect positive change to take place within you when working with anyone — professional, healer, coach, friend, mentor, you name it.

There are not exactly any magic pills on this Earth — and that is for a divinereason…we wouldn’t come together in the same awesome ways and we wouldn’t be forced to turn our gaze within to recognize that we have every piece of equipment we need to heal ourselves.

But sometimes we get lost, manipulated, swindled, lured into the fantasy world of “false hope,” or even worse, we patter down the path of what convention would say works for us “just because it is what most people (here) do.”

It happens to all of us — myself included!

When we do wander off the path of True Healing, we have to somehow be directed back to the people and resources whom remind us of our indefatigable self-worth, self-resilience, and self-regeneration.

When we do wander off the path of True Healing, we have to somehow be directed back to the people and resources whom remind us of our indefatigable self-worth, self-resilience, and self-regeneration.

Enter: Rick.

I met Dr. Rick Housewright, founder of Ghosttown Chiropractic in Lafayette, Colorado, just over four weeks ago, and immediately felt safe in his hands. After we connected on philosophical and physical conversations abound day by day, on the third day, he said something to me that hit me like a ton of bricks fortuitously fallen from Heaven:

“Abby, know this — when you meet the right people who authentically are there to help you, the healing will take place in moments or months.”

As I opened up my cell phone to type down the gems he was gifted my soul with, I felt my body transforming. His tightly packaged message so powerfully acknowledged a very frustrated, exhausted, used, and abused part of me that had been craving immense validation. Sure, as a whole throughout my lifetime, but in the more acute present tense, in my struggle to understand just why the heck my body had been falling apart for months and months.

Til that point, I felt I had dragged myself from doctor to doctor, “healer” to “healer”, surgeon to surgeon who were either broken records of dumbfounded drawl or lacking their very own vital energy to really help me get to the root of my suffering. Probably both (job burnout is real). Or, even worse, they robotically ran me through a mechanical carousel with a preset timeline, preset costs, preset curiosity, and preset limiting beliefs about the human body. I felt an immense, primitive, sense of neglect.

I take full responsibility for choosing these doctors, “healers”, and surgeons…and I forgive myself for my helplessness. I was doing the best I could, I think. Compassion will save the soul.

But I kept itching, relentlessly searching, for something that made sense to me. Someone who understood me.

My life hit a turning point in the moment that I met Dr. Rick.*

I hit a nadir where darkness and depression…as we’d colloquially call it and normalize it, morphed into numbness, hopelessness, and frozenness. The cells in my Brain were unified in saying “I can’t, I won’t, I don’t want to,” in response to Life. I literally could not sense a way forward or through.

At this point, I unshackled my heart of the Pain, Fear, and Suffering buckling me down and reached out to family members outside of my nuclear family to share how desperate I was to find the right help. That’s an understatement — I was seeking a plan to save my life.

Five days prior, I walked out of the medical office of the (at the time) PCP I was putting my trust in, and she had prescribed me Intensive Outpatient Therapy straightaway. For anxiety, mood, and depression. I left her office determined to follow through — a plan had arrived, and I excitedly called family members to tell them the plan…but, truth be told, something in my Heart and Soul did not feel right about it.

This was when Patience showed up at THE MOST ANNOYING TIME EVER.

But, She did.

A puff of her perfume crossed my nose, and I couldn’t ignore it. “You just have to wait a little longer, Abby,” she spoke.

I wanted to be enraged, rip myself out of my body, fight back, scream “Fuck No, Bitch, I Won’t!”…but, like anytime a soft, gentle, benevolent Truth touches your Soul, you don’t fight back. You accept. It is there to HELP You.

I felt the divine directive to wait a little bit longer.**

The silent, inner, non-dominant guidepost to grow my grit into the gumption my Soul needed to turn with the turning point.

Trusting — not as the innocent little girl waiting alone in a corner for someone to console her or save her soul; rather, as the wise and wild woman opening her heart and her palms to team up with the people who her instinct told her a “100%, FUCK YES, You Can Trust Them” vibration in response to meeting.

This was my inner alchemy.

Where Fear had once blocked Gnosis…
Where Smallness had once blocked Courage…
Where Clinging to the Known had blocked allowing and entering the Unknown…

My inner knowledge, my inner badass, my inner adventurer came together to create the New Me.

Since this divine, woven moments of meeting Rick and not just listening, but heeding my Soul…I have unwoven into something beautifully brand new; a.k.a. “I’ve Changed.”

I adhere to a pretty strict program of meditations, hours-long writing sessions, workouts, depth psychotherapy, chiropractic care, and psychotropic medications that are Bringing The Most Out Of Me.

It’s no coincidence that I say “I’ve changed” and “I have broken the habit of being my (old) self,” because I am absorbing the wisdom and guidance of the brilliant Dr. Joe Dispenza each morning and each evening for meditations.

Yes, I still sometimes feel aches, pains, wobbles, and flashes of fear in my body, but my Personality (how I think, how I act, and how I feel) have changed. Hence, I have changed.

The lesson here is that — after months stacked on months of feeling like I was going nowhere but down and out, falling apart, and crumbling into a desperate mess, after just four weeks, I Have Come Back To Life.

Again:

When you meet the right people who are authentically there to help you, your healing will take place in moments or months.

It absolutely is not meant to take years, decades, or even longer.

When it takes years to begin feeling better, that’s a surefire sign that you are working with people who are straight up manipulating you — the offering of their services and presentation of their “healing” plan steered by Money and Power. There is so much more I could say about this…about how important it is that your clear, hone, polish, and tune in to your Intuitive sense of who you instinctively trust; how important it is that you practice and sharpen your faculty of discernment by saying “no” (sometimes, a “no thank you”) when it is not for you (and, oppositely, saying “yes” when it is for you)…but I can save that sermon for later.

Again:

MOMENTS OR MONTHS. THIS IS YOUR TRANSFORMATION TIMELINE.

I’m half warning, half inspiring you, wholly directing you into a deeper respect for your body and time.

If there is any goal, healing, transformation you want to make in your life, and it’s already been one year without you seeing, feeling, knowing positive change is occurring…fucking run the other way as fast as you can. Leave. You are wasting your precious, beautiful soul and life.

Now you might be asking…
How in the hell does transformation take place in moments or months? I thought you said there was no magic pill.

Listen in:
The full expression of your transformation and healing cross a lifetime. And the speed, depth, breadth, and routes travel their own unique timelines for each unique human being. I am not implying that a full reversal, makeover, reincarnation will take place in moments or months (though this kind of is what I am saying).
To clarify, you might not see, feel, and know all of the positive changes you are experiencing right away…and they take time to develop and emerge.
However, the alchemization, inside-out, positive life change takes moments or months to flip on.
It should take moments or months…not YEARS…for you to see the light inside of you that you get to shine on your own healing potential (a.k.a. every cell in your body).

When you meet a personal trainer who is authentically there to help you transform your fitness, it should not take years to start feeling more energized, stronger, and more confident in your skin. Don’t expect to drop 20 pant sizes in moments or months; do expect to become stronger, brighter, lighter, and freer to move.
In moments or months.

When you meet a meditation teacher who is authentically there to help you transform your mind, it should not take years to start building greater concentration and expanding your imagination of what’s possible to create from the field. Don’t expect to reach nirvana; do expect to become better at thinking deeply about one thing at a time and to become more astute of the space between stimulus and response.
In moments or months.

When you meet a nutrition coach who is authentically there to help you transform your nutrition, it should not take years to start pooping better, sleeping better, and feeling a steadier flow of energy throughout each day. Don’t expect all villainous bacterias from your gut overnight; do expect to become a more balanced human being who spends less energy deciding what to eat and more energy connected to what they eat.
In moments or months.

When you meet a relationship therapist who is authentically there to help you transform your relationships, it should not take years to start sinking further into trust, vulnerability, and intimacy. Do not expect to land your husband at a coffee shop by mere will of signing up for a 12-pack of sessions; do expect to become connected to and comfortable around other humans, even in this crazy world.
In moments or months.

When you meet a spirit guide (yes, these show up in many ways and forms) who is authentically there to help you transform your spirit, it should not take years to start sensing your connection to everything around you (and vice-versa). Do not expect to solve your gnarliest, most mysterious questions in front of a crystal ball in one session; do expect to become a seer of new doors opening up in your world that you never thought possible.
In moments or months.

If your personal trainer, meditation coach, nutrition coach, relationship therapist, or spiritual teacher (yes, these show up in many ways and forms) are taking years to ignite your inner gnosis of your own self-worth, self-resilience, and self-regeneration, they are not for you. Accept this gift.

Wrapping up, transformation sounds like this big, hairy, scary monster that we all are doomed to fail at overcoming. But really, it is an acknowledgement of your own strength and magic within, and when you meet the right people who authentically want to help you, you will feel them spark that innate power.

Whatever challenge/s you are facing, whatever struggle you are grappling with, whatever suffering you are seeking a way out of, remember to keep your antennae of discernment high up and tuned in to those who believe in you and your healing power — and choose only them. You got this, friend.

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*I should be careful with this language, however, because in the process of healing, it doesn’t just hit you…come randomly…fall into your lap like a golden goose. Rather, it requires one’s own conscious decision — the channeling of your own power…to CHANGE. We do not choose the exact circumstances and conditions that nudge us to wander within, but we absolutely do choose our response.

**At this point, I was helplessly having hysterical outbursts of despair, sadness, and grief nearly every hour on the hour. I was pulling off the side of the road for hours at a time to wail and sleep while awake as I contemplated just how to pull myself out of the numbness. The tears were terrifying tectonic shifts of my mind and soul. Minus the spirituality, they took a toll on me. I even walked into the doctor’s office that day with my eyes glued shut — simply from the puffiness accrued from the purge. The old layers of my Soul were dying.

How Well Do You Really Know Your Body?

How well do you really know your body?

Straightaway, you’re prob like “the best.” Better than anyone else.

This should be the case, but I’m gonna throw some doubt your way.

The best is true.

You are the Queen, the owner, the master of your own body.
However, I wonder how well your orientation to it matches those roles.

What I mean is…
-If I asked you to stand on one foot with both eyes closed, would you trust yourself to balance?
-If I asked you to walk in a straight line in the dark, would you believe you could do it?
-If I asked you to name the ten foods that make you feel most alive, could you do it in under 5 minutes?
-If I asked you to tell me what pre-sleep routine is most effective for you, could you describe it?
-If I asked you to tell me which crevice in your skin is most sensitive to touch, could you point to it?

All of these are examples of both body-awareness and body-trust.

Just like any successful, flourishing relationship both are needed at very high levels.

If you were unsure about any of the above questions, it might be time to:
a) Try these exercises/challenges.
b) Simply bring awareness to your breath.

Why breath awareness?

Because, breath is the bridge from the mind to the body — from living outside of yourself, ungrounded, un-sensing, unknowing, to being embodied. And embodiment is a vast component of self-knowledge — one of the tenets of Ashtanga yoga (called ‘svadhyaya’) and one of the tenets of my coaching methodology.

Step one is pretty much always bringing awareness to the thing you want to know better.

So, in this case, it is your body.

I’ve been baffled by people who say they really know their body well — what foods make them tick, what time of day they are most amped to exercise, how alcohol makes them feel, etc. — then, when I curiously inquire for their answers, they suddenly get shy.

This is a glitch in the process.

You may know your body well — have paid crystal clear attention to it over its many gracious years, but you may not have fully accepted what it requires to thrive.

I believe that’s why people go to the extremes of either quiet, subdued or catty, protective when: I present the idea of keeping a food journal (“oh, I already know exactly what I eat…I’m doing well in that arena”); I present the idea of going for more walks throughout the day (“I don’t have time…I work all day”); or I present the idea of meditating (“I have my other ways of clearing my mind”).

Some ingredients for the body simply cannot be replaced. They are non-negotiables.

I would say knowing which foods your body thrives on, knowing how much movement keeps you calm, still, clear, creative, loving, etc (the best version of you), and being able to be still with whatever is moving through you are three of those non-negotiables when it comes to seriously knowing your body.

And knowing your body is a key piece of knowing who you are.

Like I said, awareness is step one; then comes acceptance; then comes action; then you’ve created a routine that serves you in a loving, wholesome, svadhyaya way.

Celebration: What Are You Waiting For?

CELEBRATION.

At what time does it come? Do we wait until we’ve crossed some physical or proverbial finish line to dance, sing, and feel joy in our hearts? Or can we choose to celebrate in any moment? The fact that you are reading this now means you are a miracle; you were chosen. The odds of you being born were 1 in 4 trillion…maybe 1 in 4 quadrillion!

I believe that the aura and essence of celebration can be felt in every moment. Much like we hold manifold archetypes (the Martyr, the Saboteur, the Queen, the Warrior(ista), etc. etc. ), we can hold manifold emotions at once…
Joy is one that is always there.

I advocate for doing and thinking more things that activate your Joy Sense. More actions that bring Joy into the spotlight to dance, sing, and twirl in your Heart. When you do, your whole body gets lifted and the whole world around you celebrates osmotically. You do a good deed for all.

Of course, there are times to be more stern and serious—physiologically locked into a mode of concentration that will pull out your very best work, keep you deeply attuned in a conversation with a loved one, or keep the heat inside of your body after exiting an ice bath cold 🥶.

But, even in the grittier, more serious moments, you. can be Joy. I mean, can you?

Can you be generous enough in your loving-kindness to accept Joy alongside Pain, Jealousy, Frustration, and Fear? Can you still see her, honor her, give her the warm shoulder rub she deserves for all of the positive emotion she brings to your human balance?

I believe this is both the challenge and the opportunity woven into one: to be both light and heavy at once.

“I believe this is both the challenge and the opportunity woven into one: to be both light and heavy at once.”

This is the Yin and the Yang, the Hard and the Soft, the Stone and the Feather, the Dark and the Bright, the Ebb and the Flow, the Up and the Down, The In and the Out, and the Low and the High.

All of it.

It requires gumption to accept.

It is brave…it can feel mighty scary…it can seem incredibly impossible at times.

I’ve thought to myself, perhaps casting the question to G-d: but I am just one tiny human bean…what do you expect of me? when it feels like I have to choose the exactly right goblet to pour my smoothie of emotions into.

The point/reward of whole acceptance is not to meet anyone’s expectations outside of you; it is simply and beautifully to give yourself the conditions to flourish within.

“The point/reward of whole acceptance is not to meet anyone’s expectations outside of you; it is simply and beautifully to give yourself the conditions to flourish within.”

So that, when a smile crosses your path, you can feel the smile return in your heart.
So that, when a man grabs your hand and pulls you onto the dance floor, you can jolt out of your ego, shielded state and join the dance par-tay!
So that, when you receive the opportunity to join a dinner party with friends old and new, you can say “Yes,” join the table, and forego your own perfectly planned Paleo meal.

Because, you see, two smiles generate far more happiness than one on its own.
Because, you see, a dynamic, unpredictable dance is far more exciting than one done solo.
Because, you see, a gluten and cheese-filled meal accompanied by uproarious laughter and curious conversations is far more nourishing than a meal of the perfectly selected ingredients.

This beckons the question: how do we bring more Joy into our lives? 🤷‍♀️

The answer is simple: like every over thing we want to become better at: P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E.

Practice…what exactly?

There are two things to practice:

1. Practice Noticing Joy When It Shows Up.
   
   Notice the everyday moments, every day, when Joy knocks on your Heart’s door, showing up to say “Hi!”

   -notice when Joy flutters through your fascia, fans your soul, and makes you feel some kind of sweet way
   -in the ordinary moments, too; maybe especially
   
   When Life feels like nothing more than connected dashes of doldrum moments, notice the tiny butterfly whose delicate little wings generate enough propulsion to create flight. And to tap even deeper into the wonder, awe, and delight granted by witnessing that creatures can fly. WOW!
   What does that knowing inspire inside of you?!

2. Practice Acting Out Joy.
   
   Act out Joy with effective rituals. This is a necessary step and series of repeated steps—each fresh in its feeling, to awaken Joy from its, too necessary slumbers and elevate its charge throughout your body.

   -every person’s resonant, resident rituals make up a unique potpourri practice

   -what in this magical world lights you up?

   I recommend you start with just ONE practice that lights you up from the inside-out, makes you want to Rise Up, give to others and the World, connects you to a deep sense of self-reverence and self-love. Together, that ignites Joy.

   One ritual I have found to be awesome, enticing, and expansive is the OSHO Dynamic Meditation.

   In this off-the-beaten-path meditation, you—the practitioner, first dance, move, roar, “hoo” and “ha” the chaotic energy of your mind out of your body before settling into stillness and silence. It is a formatted flow designed for what Osho would call the “Western Mind,” a mind filled with clutter of opinions, advertisements, worries, and general neurosis.

   If you are like me, this dynamic meditation makes perfect sense.

   But I really encourage you to not just nod your chin and agree; rather, to put it into motion.
   
   It requires 60 minutes of your life and takes you through five stages:

   Stage 1: Breathing

   Stage 2: Catharsis

   Stage 3: Jumping and Shouting the mantra “Hoo”

   Stage 4: Silence

   Stage 5: Celebration Through Dance

   Aha! See the final stage? CELEBRATION THROUGH DANCE.

   I haven’t come across many meditations out there which include intentional, invitational CELEBRATION. I LOVE THIS!

Outside of dynamic meditation, you have other rituals that evoke a sense of lightness, gratitude, and shimmer within your soul. If not, this is your prompt to return to Practice #1: Noticing Joy When It Shows Up. Yes, begin pondering your Joy Triggers.

As you notice what lifts your heart, makes you want to dance a jig, and generally spreads warmth throughout your body, write it down. Therein, you will build your list of Joy Triggers.

Some of my Joy Rituals or Joy Triggers include:

• Gratitude Journaling (which I’ve written about here)

• Exploring New Coffee Shops

• Massage (especially Thai Massage)

• Sensual Dance

• Book Clubs

• Freshly-baked Challah

• Surprising others with gifts

• Writing “Thank You” notes

• Long hikes in the mountains

But still, I really do dare you to try the OSHO Dynamic Meditation. If it feels too daunting to do alone, look for an upcoming sign-up for my guided Dynamic Meditation Event (held solo and within retreats). In these experiences, you are definitely not alone…50+ of us will be dancing and meditating together 😀.

Whatever your Joy Practice Du Jour, the intention is to allow yourself to sink deeper and deeper into your Noticing of the uprising, up-swelling, and invocation to Feel Celebration Within.

Remember, the intent of Joy is not to show off your celebration in any fancy way. The intent is to simply and beautifully give yourself the conditions to flourish within. Noticing your own dance within is the reward in itself.

“Remember, the intent of Joy is not to show off your celebration in any fancy way. The intent is to simply and beautifully give yourself the conditions to flourish within. Noticing your own dance within is the reward in itself. ”

Happy happy, joy joy, joy joy, happy happy.

May you connect to Joy in this moment, and in all moments of your Life!

In Jiggly Joy,

Coach Abbs

The Power of Permission: Become Your Own Green Light To Go

Per = towards/for.

Mission = focus, project, purpose.

Alone, a mission is simply an idea. A dream. A master plan.

It needs belaying force—a rope pulling the mission out of you and nudging you with the mission into the Universe.

That force is the GREEN LIGHT.

We all know how our best inventions fall null when they overstay their time in the idea stage.

How do you reach lift off? Get your genius to launch?

If you want to go from thinking about running a marathon to putting in the gritty steps to cross the finish line…

If you want to go from thinking about starting a new coaching business to actually showing its face, features, and costs…

If you want to go from thinking of sending a love note to a crush to actually typing out the words and hitting ‘send’…

You need a GREEN LIGHT.

Someone, something, some energy that says “yes, you can go.”

Those words are that rope—that symbol of the prefix “per.”

Just like we are so programmed to hit the gas pedal when we see a traffic light go green, our psyches are also programmed to seek that green light to hit the gas pedal on our goals.

The conundrum hits when we recognize that the GREEN LIGHT won’t always appear outside of us. The work we have to do is to learn and practice finding the GREEN LIGHT and shining it on our ambitions and passions to set it free/in motion.

That can be really hard work, but we all are capable of doing it.

Sometimes, you’ll cross paths with a mentor who sees the potential in you and says “you have to show this to the world. It’s gold.”

When they say that, you feel something light up inside of you…

Where?

In your heart.

That’s the ignition of the recognition of your courage to take the steps to run the race, launch the business, share the love.

So what’s curious is, the light was inside of you all along, but it needed a little signal from outside.

These times will happen.

People will tell you “yes, you can.” People will give you the GREEN LIGHT.

But to be raw and real, you won’t have someone at your doorstep or in your inbox every moment saying “yes, you can.”

What I recommend you do to become your own GREEN LIGHT, permission-granter, go-giver is to feel into the space in your heart’s center and the space that that center takes up in Space (like as an expansive whole). You’ll feel how much room there is to express yourself. You’ll get more comfortable moving through space, taking up space. And when you tap into that energy of freedom, see and feel the neon green light shining, pulsating in your heart. Then let it radiate out into that infinite space.

In this energetic shift of a moment, you’ve already begun to spin the world at a different speed, interact with people in a higher vibration, and shine your green light onward and upward.

Next comes putting in the physical work.

But if you do the spiritual, inner work to find and permit your own soul’s mission to be liberated, you are good to go.

Doing that inner spiritual work, is you expressing the word “per,” pulling the mission out of yourself and into the Universe.

This GREEN LIGHT exists inside of you, and to feel and be it’s—your “, yes, I can” is a gift to all.

Somatic Awareness In Sweat Sessions and Beyond: Be Awake For The Book Your Body Is Writing

Here’s How To Soak Up The Most From All The Sweat In Your Lifetime.

What if you could remember your workouts so well that you never needed to write them down?

I mean…

What if you could ascribe your training sessions to your long-term memory without every opening up Evernote or an old-fashioned notebook?

No, really…

What if you could become the living, breathing, walking, organic reflection of your hard work?

Workouts and beyond, you can. You already are.

It just requires a little more of your focus and attention.

Objective-style journaling — writing down the x’s and o’s of a workout plan and reporting the sets reps, weights, tempos, etc. keeps you on pace and in line for proper progressions. It helps you safely and smartly become a stronger human being.

Deep noticing, presence, and somatic awareness do what writing in a journal cannot for you: it keeps you awake to the ever-expanding possibilities of your body.

Tracking your progress mathematically is imporant. Don’t get me wrong. But it will not spiritually inform your cells that a positive evolution of YOU is occurring.

Noticing…
-during a boxing workout, how your biceps feel as they tear and re-build
-during a hard run, how your lungs feel as they go on the turbulent journey of huffing, puffing, searing, then re-salivating
-during a long swim, how your brain feels as it transforms red flags of fear (of drowning, of running out of oxygen, etc.) to green flags of endurance and confidence

Being fully present to…
-the temperature, cadence, breadth, depth, and pathway of air as it moves in and out of your body
-the texture of your environment and the sensations it stokes on your skin, eyes, hands, and feet
-the ebbing and flowing, shrinking and growing of your perception of time

Together, this noticing and purposeful presence…choosing to place your attention fully in each moment and what is being experienced, makes you a witness to what/who you are becoming.

And that is a beautiful phenomenon.

Tapping into higher consciousness, going deeper into the spiral of awareness as you work out and work in with your pineal gland and turn mere motion into a spiritual awakening…is a beautiful phenomenon.

It is a metaphysical phenomenon that does not require a pen and paper; your body is the journal, the record, the scorekeeper, the somatic secretary of your life — in workouts and in any type of work, journey, challenge, experience you enter.

Your soma (body) will remember the times you overcame immense burning to do a few more reps on the squat.

Your soma will remember the times you stretched your range of motion in a lunge three inches deeper than you ever had before (likely since childhood) and the win that announced to your brain.

Your soma will remember the huffs and puffs your lungs endured to finish a hard run.

Simplified, we can call this “muscle memory.”

But it goes much deeper.

On a fascial level (the inter-web of tissues that connect literally all of your pieces — bones, tendons, ligaments, muscles, organs), your fascia — quite a pliable organism, remembers the shapes you took.

On a mental level, your mind (the brain in action) remembers the new heights, new distances, new triumphant spirit you chose to embody.

On a heart level, your precious chambers of unconditional love remember the moments you chose courage over cowering, the moments you chose exploring instead of exiting, the moments you chose resilience rather than retreat.

I am so grateful that the body remembers these moments.

I want you to be able to experience that, too.

I want you to actively engage your power to focus your attention, on what you are feeling, sensing, thinking, being, and ultimately becoming.

In workouts and beyond, choosing to be the sober witness to your life’s journey will be the best decision you ever make.

You will be reading the book of your own life’s story, within each page soaked a deep remembrance of the emotion that each bullet of sweat, surge of silliness, gush of gratitude, and hush of harried voices you experienced to become who you are as you reflect. Each page somatically inscribed with your deep experiences and all of the chapters encased by your conscious decision to prescribe to each moment, Love.

You will be able to reflect back on your life and all of your experiences with such deeper visceral recollection, appreciation, remembering, celebrating, knowing…really knowing yourself, for who you were and who you became, if you dare to do so.

With Loving Awareness,

Coach Abby

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Two books that relate to these topics beautifully:

• The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk

• The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal

Finally Free Your Voice: Here's Where You Begin

“And the time came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

— Anaïs Nin

Do you have an important message to share with the world? It is a rhetorical question; yes, you do. Keep reading to learn how to liberate that limerick, lesson, love letter, liaison, and/or passionate message pouncing in your soul.

The throat is the pipeline between the head and the heart. A place where what we create and what we feel intersect and can flow.

But, sometimes it is hard to let that truth flow from your windpipes. Especially as a woman. Maybe you can relate.

Be it voicing an opinion…
Be it voicing a feeling of un-safety…
Be it voicing a question that you are ultra curious about…
Be it voicing an interest in another person…
Be it voicing an idea for a business…

You feel a sense of cardiognosis* flowing up from your heart…inspiration rising, and then…chhh, chhh, chhh…it gets jammed.

Stuck.

Artist credit: nineravenstudio

Your most authentic message gets caught in a web of Conditioning 🕸 , which declares:

• “You are not allowed to say that.” (The Tyrant)

• “You, how dare you think that!” (The Judge)

• “You are going to embarrass yourself.” (The Cynic)

• “You are crazy for thinking that.” (The Bully)

• “You don’t have anything worth saying.” (The Hater)

If you view the above examples like you would a picture in Highlight’s Magazine, you’ll see YOU are the common denominator.

Circle yourself and it’s time to go to work within.

That Collective Voice of shitty messages exampled above is the weak expression of what is called the Shadow, most basically described as the parts of ourselves that we deem unacceptable. Hence, we keep those self-aspects in the shadows.

Carl Jung described the Shadow as “the block which separates us most effectively from the divine voice."

The Shadow, however, is like a slingshot sticky hand that will grab onto whatever society says that matches it’s antagonistic nature. So the teacher who told you you couldn’t say something…the parent who shamed you for thinking something…the friend who told you not to go on stage…the popular guy on YouTube who called you a lunatic…the boss who told you that your idea was lame.

You must recognize that this Collective Voice is not all you, but exists within you (again, the common denominator). The fantastic news/opportunity here is that once you recognize this—that all of these messages don’t really “belong” to you, you’ve already grown. From this place of separation—where we can really see which messages stick to our soul and which stick to society, we can teach ourselves to practice clearer, freer self-expression.

But, as Napoleon Hill said “knowledge is only potential power.”

The Shadow’s gaggle of afraid and persistent parts will continue to congregate in your throat, gossip, and generate dumb wildfire, bullshit falsities that society has shaped you to believe, and those “false truths” will continue to work against you until you do two very important, brave things to shine light on the shadow. Two steps that I am impelling you to take today:

1. Feel in your heart the love that is far more powerful than the fear, then call it up to your throat space.

2. Become aware of the non-judgmental, pure awareness of your own awareness (meta-awareness) , then send it down into your throat space.

The result is something magical yet real: you permit yourself to speak freely. Your authentic voice flows.

Artist credit: Josephine Hall

Hopefully you are a visual person, because I am going to keep running full-steam with flying colors with these visualizations.

When your throat is closed and unfree, it is as if it is a realm of a hungry ghost (credit to Buddhism and Gabor Maté for this concept), who is black, damp, and vicious, like a tornado, swirling around and stealing your vital energy. Anything that tries to pass through is shredded, diverted, stolen away.

When your throat is open and free, that space is like a clear blue channel—a stream, of Truth, that doesn’t give a damn about what other people think and has no dams blocking it’s expression.

Flow.

When the Shadow’s Collective Voice lingers too long in the throat’s center, it’s potential messages devolve into a lower frequency energy state—creating a habitat of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, hesitation, frustration, aggression, and guilt.

When the Light (opposite of the Shadow) floods the throat’s center, it’s potential messages evolve into a higher frequency energy state—creating a habitat of clarity, confidence, decisiveness, peace, honesty, and fluidity.

IMAGINE THAT!

Imagine if you could get that black energy to clear, and allowed the blue energy beneath to serve you on your journey?

YOU CAN.

Start today. Start N:OW.

Start with this Ground Energy Release meditation, a la my friend and tremendous light worker Ann Bruinsma, which guides you to find the energy that is trapped in your body, feel it and connect with it, intensify it, then send it back into the Earth where it can be recycled into something beneficial. It’s powerful, people!

It may seem like you are “doing nothing” by “just” connecting to the energy in your body and using your brain and heart to direct it, shift it, transmute it, release it, etc. But YOU ARE DOING POWERFUL WORK.

Do not knock it until you try it.

Your throat, your voice—the center of attention in this post, can return to the open vessel of expression that it was designed to be. But, living in this world, it does require clearing, cleansing, and “Spring cleaning” what’s not yours over and over again.

To return to the authentic YOU, if nothing further.

I strongly believe that every person has a message to share with the world. A gift inside of your beautiful heart that can be packaged and shared in some way to make the world a better place. That is why I am sitting here typing this article in this moment.

You feel me, darlin’?

TAKE THIS: You deserve to awaken and permit your inner carrier pigeon (a Light part) to go the distance across the bumpy skies of Shadow parts, risking the illusory injuries of speaking up (enter: “how embarrassing!” “how crazy!” “how weird!” “how taboo!”) which, in truth, is a brave, bold risk to heal and brighten the your inner world and all of the world around you.

YOU CAN SET YOUR VOICE FREE.

Remember, this silent work you are doing—tuning in somatically, viscerally, ever-so-deeply into where your channels are blocked, is being seen by the Universe, upgrading you, and paying off in dividends further than you could possibly think of.

In closing, please know that your voice is a necessary in this world.

It is a weapon, and you can choose whether it is a weapon of healing or destruction.

In this post, you’ve been given the tools to contact the energies flowing between your head and heart and release what is not yours. To Spring Clean your Throat Chakra. To open up the channel from which your roar, your poetry, your avant garde business ideas, your unique perspective, and your prerogative may flow.

In the next post in this series, I will guide you into how to get crystal clear on what it is you are dying to say so you may bring your truest voice forth. One step at a time, sister :D.

*a spiritual gift inside of the heart/the heart’s intuition

How To Gratitude Journal Beyond The Vanilla Way (Flavors Are Abound)

Gratitude journaling is not a new practice. The science behind it is neither new.

Writing (not just thinking about) what you are grateful for, has prompted positive changes the human brain in wonderful ways since the human brain existed.

Intrinsically

• releases dopamine, which is a feel-good hormone that promotes prosocial behavior, increases intrinsic motivation to achieve goals, and boosts us into action

• releases serotonin, which is a happiness hormone that is akin to turning up the brightness in your brain and body

• together…creating a potion for stronger relationships, higher self-esteem, more robust physical, mental, and spiritual health, and better sleep (mmmm…just to name a few benefits)

Extrinsically

• enhances your enjoyment in work and relationships

• increases adherence to a regular movement practice

• increases motivation to be of giving, kindness, and generosity (again, just to name a few benefits)

The intent of this post is not to convince you to gratitude journal (I think by now you know you should), rather to diversify your options of how to do it.

I feel like when I was first introduced to the “Gratitude Journaling World,” there was just the simple, vanilla, bland option of write down 5 things that you are grateful for. I am a person who: craves new flavors and experiences; I like to mix-and-match; paint the world as I need to see it, etc. if you catch my drift. I felt like there was a void of formats for expressing my gratitude through writing.

That’s why I’ve produced this article: for your optionality of expression.

Below I have offered four different gratitude journaling options for you—going from least to most time-consuming, heart-expanding, elaborate, cerebral, and illustrative. Some like it vanilla and some like it Baskin Robbins. Now you can pick your flavor and make it a playful practice of going deep.

I will say that like any other practice, gratitude journaling is best performed as a stepwise process where you attain comfort/mastery in the basics (like a white belt) and continue challenging yourself to exercise your heart harder and harder in the more advanced options (like a black belt). So, best advice with proceeding is to be honest with yourself about whether you’ve tasted a flavor before moving to the next.

VANILLA [SAY HI TO YOUR HEART]: THE BIG FIVE
How
-At day’s close, settle/”drop” in to your heart (the meeting of the gut and the brain) first.
-Write down five things you feel grateful for.
-Be mindfully, consciously, lovingly with each word and thought as you write them, just as you would with each of your children.

CHOCOLATE [EXPAND YOUR HEART]: THE WOW WATERFALL
How
-At day’s close, pour out a list of what you feel grateful for.
-Let it spill over from your heart’s center.
-Don’t be afraid of “drowning the world in Gratitude” (haha)—if that happened, it would be a miracle. (I mention this, because, as a white belt exercise, people who may be less intimate with the emotion of gratitude might find themselves hesitant to express it…a bit like pulling teeth).

STRAWBERRY [ADVENTURE YOUR HEART]: NEXT LEVEL BIG FIVE
How
-Expand on one of your big five from the VANILLA flavor.
-Feel into it, re-remember, and re-experience how awesome it was by tracking these seven senses:

1. What did it look like?

2. What did it smell like?

3. What did it taste like?

4. What did it feel like?

5. What did it sound like?

6. How did it rumble your heart? (i.e. reminded you of the great power of kindness, generosity, and connection)

7. How did it tickle your gut? (happens when you contact an intuition you have been neglecting…i.e. feeling inspired to take a risk you’ve been afraid to take, because you witnessed or heard someone do that thing)

NEOPOLITAN [THE BIG MIX: BEHOLD YOUR HEART TO THE UNIVERSE]: A GRATITUDE DATE
How
-Write a gratitude letter/love letter of gratitude vibes to some one, some time, some place, or some thing that you feel SO MUCH thanks, closeness, and intimacy towards.
-Remember that this is not for/doesn’t have to ever be shared with that person. It’s just free reigns to fully relish and dance in the deep love you feel. It’s a precious experience when you are ready for it.
-Don’t shackle yourself. Let yourself engage your senses and wild ideas. Be the wild gratitude-goer.

I remember, as a kid, going to a restaurant called Max & Erma’s where they had this giant bathtub converted into an ice cream sundae kit. The waiter/waitress would deliver you a glass bowl and you’d adventure to the bath to fill it with whatever and however many scoops of ice cream and toppings you could fit or your heart desired to take.

I consider the zenith of gratitude journaling to be an experience that is exactly like this but with a different intention. When you go to that ice cream sundae bar, you are thinking “how much deliciousness can I possibly fill my belly with?!” When you go to the gratitude bar, you are also thinking: “how much delicious emotion can I possibly feel/recognize in my heart?” Except, in the case of journaling, it is so you can share that elevated emotion with the world. Share the greatness.

Trying of these flavors is engaging in a process of becoming more vulnerable with yourself and the world around you and doing a good deed for everyone.

But listen, emotions can be scary. Don’t judge yourself for starting with vanilla. I’ve separated these options into different flavors for your fun in choosing, not to judge you for where you are beginning/or for you to do that to yourself.

Feel free and expansive, feel powerful, feel helpful, feel of service, feel awesome in your choices as you move deeper into your relationship with the gratitude and radiate that gratitude further into the world!

Next gratitude journaling post, I will share best practices:

• to prime your gratitude journaling practice

• to close each of your gratitude journaling practices

• to stick to your beautiful gratitude journaling practice

Have fun and enjoy!

Abundant love,

Coach Abby

The SAME FUCKING SOURCE: Your Energetic Instinct To Keep Going, Is Right Here

I was running across the Mesa Trail, feet crunching in the snow, eyes vigilant for icy crags here and there. I was mindful but cruising. In a flow state.

It’s often in these flow states—where I am fully absorbed in the activity I am doing, lose track of time, and have an equanimous inner-outer awareness that is total Presence, where some of my soul truths rise up.

I don’t remember what particular “fluctuations of the mind” were arising for me prior to that run, but I do reflect now that there is always a possible perturbance, problem, or inconvenience we want to get rid of. Discontent—asantosa in Sanskrit.

Runs are one of the modalities in my trainer’s toolbox for stilling those fluctuations, and reentering on the prana that makes me feel present, wholesome, here and now.

I slowed down ever so slightly to tip-toe across a larger rocky area—a little sketchy and scramble-y, then found solace in a flatter running path and I was cruising again.

I heard the faint trickles of ice cold water to my right, a delicate and loving sound, and I found the beauty beside me. A mountain-fallen creek glazed over with translucent, bone-white ice, yet still sharing its essence, flow, and fluidity. Water continued to sway left and right like a lover held in her lover’s arms dancing to a sweet slow song. The water was contained but it was moving. There was life. Dynamism. Joy in the tiny ripples.

And the phrase came to me: “SAME FUCKING SOURCE.”

Again, I don’t recall what I was worried about, why I felt trapped, or what disturbance I wanted to purge from my life…but the river made me remember my inner power.

SAME FUCKING SOURCE.

What does this phrase even mean?

It means, there is an infinite, immortal, unwavering, and untouchable source of “continuation” within each of us. A mixture of instinct, will, drive, and amour for more…more connection, more exploration, more accomplishment, more discovery of what we are made of and what the world has to share/offer.

This source sits, at least in my body, right in my Heart.

It’s where what I call my Joy Jar exists. Full of exuberant, ego-free, enduring energy to “just keep fucking going.”
I tap into the Joy Jar when I am amidst a rugged workout that asks me to continue to exert myself when my mind is telling me “enough.”
To keep living my fullest expression of life.

I tap into the Joy Jar when I am writing a blog post and Resistance roars her ugly head and says “you don’t even know what you are talking about” or “nobody cares.”
To keep living my fullest expression of life.

I tap into the Joy Jar when I am investing in a continuing education course to overcome old fears of scarcity and realize that everything I am choosing to spend is a conscious investment in my brighter future.
To keep living my fullest expression of life.

The Joy Jar might contain a certain color, texture, image/s, movie/s, and motions for you.

I often picture it containing marigold honey, a sweet, succulent and divine resource that, somehow is ever-replenishing, and wants to add its natural richness and floral-ancestry, containing a genetic message to keep producing, keep producing, keep producing…churning inside of my little ❤️.

During a workout, I dip my legs and arms, my toes and fingers, my heart outside of that heart (mettaaaaaa) into that Joy Jar for the sustenance to keep going.

During a writing session, I dip my neural networks and past traumas into that Joy Jar for the glucose to keep going.

During a financial investment, I dip my wallet into that Joy Jar for the prosperity within to keep going.

Each the Joy Jar and the flowing water within the ice are reminders to me, on a soul level, that we always have the power to keep moving forward. That our bodies are always working for us, not against us. I mean this on a human plane and a geographical plane. Even when bones are broken and fibers are torn—and we may label ourselves as “broken” or “done for”, there is a force within us that is full of ripe, eager life. Even when the water freezes—and we may label what was once liquid now as ice, there is a force in the pond that is full of ripe, eager life.

And in this ripe, eager life is an intelligence much bigger than our brains, much more powerful than our minds, that knows “we got the sauce” to not just survive, but thrive.

The ingredients to breakthrough and bourgeon into an even more brilliant form of energy than ever before.

An intelligence that knows that, even when the mind is like “no, that’s the limit, I’m done,” that that just cannot be true. It is a lie, and you know better. You know deeper. That “you are limitless,” and “you are not done.”

Steven Pressfield, one of my personally most cherished authors, calls that voice who gives all of its effort to convince you to call it quits Resistance (yes, with a capital ‘r’). I’d call the opposing force, that sits within—fueled by nature, spirit, favor, Universe, and that is working with you Insistence. Perhaps it’s the Insistence that reminds the Resistance that is can be power for good rather than evil.

Positive insistence.

It wants you to keep going because it believes in you. Because it sees a future of even more prosperity, love, and flourishing than you can see.

Insistence is not just found in ripples and shimmers of water within a frozen pond.

Insistence is EVERYWHERE.

It is in the twinkle that alights in a baby’s eyes when her temper tantrum over spilled milk is interrupted by a tall person who is just absolutely a fascination to her brand new eyes. She forgets about the milk and she is enamored with the new creature. The frequency of her body changes, her eyes brighten, her tears cease, and she is back in life.

It is in the flicker of heat that flushes through the hands and feet after an ice bath—what was ghostly beginning to regain color, wiggle, grasp, gesture, and return to life.

It is in the remembrance of our ancestors overcoming immense adversity—like hiding in a shed for two years with no food or physical connection, when we are sitting at a coffee shop imbibing in the great luxury of typing a blog post and an iced oat milk latte. What seemed like the worst situation in the world—a travesty, is fed perspective that offers immediate gratitude and the opportunity to choose with full intention to thank now who you are expanding into.

It is in every period of time—no matter the length, which you feel you have nothing left in the tank, no inspiration, no propulsion, no strength…that you must remember and reconnect to the SAME FUCKING SOURCE.

I bet other images come up for you. Let those shimmer and grow within. Let your connection to those divine sources of energy increase in charge.

These ideas:
having nothing left
no more air to breathe
no force to carry you ahead
no strength to overcome

First, thank them. Make peace with them. They are also on your team.

But, in the vein of this post, also recognize that to believe that those are the truth…your truth, is to become blinded by illusion.

Whatever your SAME FUCKING SOURCE is, contact it every single f*cking day.

The SAME FUCKING SOURCE is the energetic reminder that you are made of more and you are designed to keep moving forward.

The SAME FUCKING SOURCE is the energetic reminder that even when you cannot see or feel it, you have a little energizer bunny beating at your heart’s drum for you.

The SAME FUCKING SOURCE is the energetic signature of your life force, always there and always on your side, inside of you, beside you, behind you, above you, below you, giving you that boost you need to keep going.

What is your SAME FUCKING SOURCE? It may show up in multiple forms and in multiple places. It can be everywhere if you are so awake.

Much like I spoke about the rainbow always being behind the clouds even when we cannot see it, the SAME FUCKING SOURCE is that light that keeps you on your path, always, even when you cannot see it. But when you cannot see it, I urge you to look for it, and to feel into it, to embody it, because it is there.

Let it glow and let it grow.

When I was running those mountain trails and I made contact with that SAME FUCKING SOURCE without—in the frozen river, and with that SAME FUCKING SOURCE within—the heart-opening expansion of energy that put new pep in my step, I cracked up.

I was giggling as I galloped across the ever-growing path.

That’s a sign—much like a sign of healing, that nature is nudging me to notice the infinite playful power within.
The power to stay in the game, cuz the game loves me.

I stopped my run momentarily, bent down, and cupped the water into my hands to splash my face.

“Woo! I’m alive!” my body happily screamed.

At that moment, much like how a rainbow smiles through the curtains of clouds—where the color returns and the freshness of life arrives again, the phrase “SAME FUCKING SOURCE” was etched into my heart and will be forever more.

Remember, friends, that wherever you are and wherever you go, you have a SAME FUCKING SOURCE to—a will, a desire, an Insistence on continuing to explore life.

Don't Forget About Discipline, It Makes You Whole

As athletes and human beings, it’s easy to hit the gas pedal and test what we are made of.

We use part/s of our brains — the dorsoprefrontal cortex and more holistically the corticolimbic system, to notice shiny objects, produce the chemicals to chase them, and then make available the energy to physically chase and claim them.

Sorry to be a lame-o, but consider the classic primal example — which is also very evolutionarily important, of the Hunter-Gatherer. For my style of inclusivity and imagining that there were, too, female hunters, we’ll take it this way.

A woman rests her head on her straw pillow in the woods at 8:30 pm. The sun is down and the moon is out, and it’s time to rest. Before she slips into sleep, it is already on her mind that the wild game that roam and inhabit the area will be out at 6am crossing her path. The sounds of their hooves and huffs and the smell their sweat have been so programmed into her brain that she doesn’t have to “look” for the food anymore. She just has to move towards it.
Her brain rests and digests the previous day until, say, 5 am, and at 5:01 am— click, click, boom, her brain starts dispensing cortisol into her body. She is waking up and she has a purpose. More aptly, she is waking up for a purpose: to feed herself and perhaps her family/tribe. When 5:52 am hits — flip, flip, both of her eyelids pop open and the rising sun’s rays rain down into her eyes. She becomes more alert and her respiration widens — diaphragm, lungs, nostrils expand. As oxygen floods her, and she is ready to go!

Transfer this deep, deep, old, old, programming of *having to get up to gather your food* to today’s brain and the modern athlete/human, the brain works the same way, simply chasing different “end games”.

Consider the hard-charging triathlete — and ya, I’m gonna stick with a female example.

A woman rests her head on her cooling-infused memory foam pillow in her temperature-regulated bedroom at 8:30 pm. The sun is down and the moon is out, and it’s time to rest. Before she slips into her slumber, it is already on her mind that she has a hard brick workout at 6am (for the non-triathletes, that’s a bike ride immediately followed by a run). The bountiful burn of cycling through the spinwheel’s resistance and chopping her arms and legs through the wind’s resistance without avail has been so programmed into her brain that she doesn’t have to “psych” herself up for the training session anymore. She just has to move towards it.
Her brain rests and digests the previous day until, say, 5 am, and at 5:01 am — click, click, boom, her brain begins shooting cortisol through her bloodstream. She is waking up and she has a purpose. Rewind…she is waking up for a purpose: to build her cardiovascular engine, to build legs of steel, and to create an even more iron-willed yet equanimous mind. When 5:52 am hits — flip, flip, both of her eyelids jar open and the sunlight flooding through her bedside window graces her eyes. She becomes more alert and her respiration widens — diaphragm, lungs, nostrils expand. As oxygen fills her, she is ready to go!

Both of these examples — ancient and current, showcase how the brain developed in it’s first two stages to chase and conquer shiny objects.

credit: conflictsavvy.net

The reptilian brain — or “brainstem”, enabled us to avoid hazards.
The limbic brain — or “mammalian brain,” enabled us to approach rewards.
Thirdly and finally (unless there is a new layer coming), the neocortex — or “monkey brain” enables us to connect to other human beings.*

When the very fucking powerful hormones adrenaline and dopamine are released, it becomes so easy for us to hit the gas pedal and test what we are made of. Allow me to shift that language: hitting go and chasing the thing doesn’t just become easy for us, it becomes habitual. Conditioned. How we move through the world.

This go-getter mode is a beautiful human expression; but if we only wake up and chase the meal or chase the PR, not only does our brain not stay optimally healthy (our neocortex literally shrinks — it’s a matter of “use it or lose it,” much like everything in life), we miss out on a fully lived life.

This is a wake up call for you.
A wake up call that I was gifted over the past year, and one that I want to — without imposing on the Universe’s plans, write to your heart today. 
It’s a call to exercise all three parts of the brain (which sounds plain and boring), and can only be done by practicing the things that make the neocortex strong.

The scientific talk is dragging on — I’ll put it bluntly…

WE NEED TO CONNECT AND STATY CONNECTED TO TRIBE.

WE NEED TO CONNECT AND STAY CONNECTED TO FAMILY.

WE NEED TO CONNECT AND STAY CONNECTED TO FRIENDS.

WE NEED TO MAKE NEW SOCIAL CONNECTIONS TO EXPAND THE NETWORKS OF OUR SOCIAL BRAIN.

It’s easy…being the hard-charging athlete, to stay focused with laser vision on being the best at the thing, whatever it may be.

But it’s not necessarily healthy.

Just like, within the fitness realm, bodybuilding is admirable and gratifying and impressive in many ways…and it may even be fulfilling, but it is not necessarily healthy.

This is where my discussion of determination and discipline enters.

I’d call determination that deeply-rooted, go-getter drive to secure the shiny object and reach the finish line. 
I’d call discipline a more highly-evolved faculty to pull back, reflect, and judge how to proceed.

Determination gets you to the next finish line, the next meal.
Discipline gets you the life you want to build, a lifetime of family dinners.

Determination is a quick-to-come, quick-to-go hit of glucose from a sugar cookie.
Discipline is a quick-to-come, long-to-stay fat-packed avocado.

Determination gets you the victory.
Discipline gets you the victory that you celebrate by dancing with loved ones.

Determination — no offense, and I can say this because it is coming from my own self-reflection…is quite simple-minded.
Discipline is broad-minded.

The struggle is that, as athletes and human beings, it is hard to hit the brakes and notice who we are/what we are made of.

Discipline asks of us to:

• do the thing you have to but do not want to

• slow down and practice moving at different gears, even though they aren’t all ecstatic and euphoric

• adapt our movements and decisions around what we notice, not what we want to see

• consider how our actions affect/effect other human beings

• disperse our time amongst not just our basic needs and individual needs, but others’ needs, too

• view what we do today — in this very moment, in it’s long-run context

Determination is seeing the tree within eye-pitch on a fartlek run.
Discipline is seeing the whole forest when on a recovery run.

From the athletic perspective, I practiced tons of determination (brains 1 and 2) for many, many years — even though I’d like to think/I convinced myself that I was practicing discipline, too.

But as you grow, the hairs split (and gray, for some).

From the human perspective (no, not separate from the athlete), I practiced both determination and discipline, but counted on the feeling of immediate euphoria and ecstasy that a workout could deliver me more than anything else.

It was my #1 source of happiness. And my #1 purpose: to be in the best shape ever.

This was born in me when I was about 7 years old, actually.

So rep by rep, step by step, I became more determined but not as disciplined as determined (that’s another question, whether we need more of one than the other or in equal balance).

If you can relate to chasing one goal…even if it has an ever-evasive finish line, at the expense of everything else, you’ll get what I’m saying.

The bodybuilder knows what it takes to be the best, and, again, while it is admirable and temporarily satisfactory to create the one thing you lust after sculpting, it may not get you to where you want to go.

Side story: when I first moved to Boulder, I’d pull up to a mountain at random (just while on a drive between clients) and run the mountains for hours without first thinking about water, cell phone, directions, etc. That’s the adrenaline and dopamine taking over. And, again, it’s gorgeous, not grotesque. But it isn’t everything.

The disciplined athlete and human version of me would now think before going: pack the water, preview the route and any closings, bring validation of my identification. That’s the serotonin and estrogen teaming with the iron-willed, go-getter.

My goal here is to illuminate the importance of feeding all three brains and exercising discipline as well as determination.

The impetus for my writing is a series of injuries I accrued in the past 10 months, joint to joint to joint — YUCK!

Because my determination was so much stronger than my discipline.

I think it is unnatural to practice discipline. But it is human.

As athletes, we become a little non-human in order to achieve goals.

I am now inviting various practices of discipline into my life so that the ferocity, power, and magic of my determination can serve myself and the world, rather than break me down.

What are some of the ways that you can practice discipline, both as athlete and human — and some of the ways I am?

I created a little acronym, cuz I love them, to teach you.

• Meditate — noticing what thoughts are driving your actions and beliefs

• Expand — consider what actions will grow you as a person, not just an athlete (or fill in the blank of the persona you are most attached to)

• Commune — do the things you love to do with other people

• Collaborate — create things with other people

• Air out — disperse your training/workload over longer stretches of time; leave some space for your muscles, mind, and that ONE persona to breathe and receive other aspects of life!

A mecca is a holy place.
A mecca is a lusted for destination.
A mecca is where magic happens.

I proffer that the mecca of human living — in its dynamic way, is a practice of both determination and discipline, and I encourage you to practice both qualities in your life on a daily basis. You will return a much more wholesome YOU.

*I do believe there are brains beyond these three brains (a spiritual brain), but we can save that for a future post.

How To Restore Natural Movement When Tangled In Fear: Be A Baby Again (With My Permission)

As babies, we are born with fresh eyes and hopefully into a very safe, nourishing space to play. Testing out a squat…rolling on your belly…arching your back as you yawn…all natural responses to the environment and innate curiosities. We do without thinking. 

As we “grow up,” mature and age, we can incur experiences that make us tight and tethered. 

We separate body and brain, and shoot nearly all of our energy into our brain space. 

Overthinking is born. 

That once expansive playground looks more like a prison cell. 

How does this happen?

•Psychologically, teachers and other experts tell us what is right v wrong. 

•Physically, parents and coaches tell where we can and cannot explore. 

•Emotionally, thought parameters and movement parameters force our energy of exuberance and love into tight spaces when they are meant to flow and grow. 

Living—a moving experience…and naturally dynamic, becomes very unreal and uncomfortable because we lose touch with natural movement. 

What I’m suggesting as a deep, unwinding reset and renewal to is basically unwind the fear by returning to crawling, rolling, going out of bounds, etc. 

If a basketball player was out of practice for years, he/she would likely return to the fundamentals: single ball dribbling, lay-ups, lateral shuffling, and pivoting after picking up the ball. There is the physical aspect of reigniting the muscle memory of how to thoughtlessly perform these actions. There is also the emotional and mental aspect of rebuilding the confidence it takes to grace rather than brave the court to enter a game of play.

Likewise, if a human is out of practice of being what I’d call “naturally human” versus “modern day human” for years, he/she would need to return to the fundamentals, too.
-Let’s say shaking someone’s hand became an unsafe physical activity because of a fear-riddled pandemic became an unsafe movement, he/she would have to practice the basic handshake again.
-Let’s say climbing a mountain became an unsafe physical activity because as a child he/she missed a step up the stairs*, fell down, cut his/her knee open, and his mom shouted “oh no! you are hurt!”, you’d have to practice in stepwise fashion (wonder where that phrase came from 🧐) walking up stairs again.
-Let’s say looking someone in the eyes became an unsafe physical activity because as a child a bully told you “don’t look at me!”, you’d have to practice making eye contact with humans once again.

You can see how all of these physical activities have emotional, social, and mental branches.

MOVEMENT IS LIFE; AND LIFE IS IN MOVEMENT.

So, back to the main vein of this post: what is the most effective way for you to begin moving like a natural human again?

I’ll simplify it as bluntly as I did in yesterday’s post about going straight to the heart whenever in confusion and/or pain; whenever you are finding yourself in a freeze pattern around physical expression…go back to the basics. I might even say: “act as a baby again.”

Pretend—but really invite your brain to explore this…
that you just landed on Earth and you get to explore this planet for the first time again.

How exciting! How brand new! How fresh!

With all this space around you, how might you move?

Adult you will overanalyze the question, pause, and try to figure out the answer as if it is a great puzzle.

Baby you doesn’t think about it—s/he just moves!

This is the Wu Wei way. The way of effortless effort and actionless action.

Baby you—without the strangling systems 2, sometimes overly logical thinking, gets to exploring. With soul. With flow. With, the spirt of what mythologist and masterful story-spooler Joseph Campbell called “following your bliss.”

There is no reason that you cannot return to that fearless, exploratory mode of moving in the world.

It really is a shame that so much of what I’d consider to be exploratory movements have today been lumped into a category of Impulsivity. Because we automatically put them in the “off limits” category and try to fit into even thinner boxes of movement and being.
-To go off the beaten sidewalk while on a neighborhood stroll to go for a “wee-wee” rush of swinging? “Impulsive!”
-To run backwards on a trail when the path is clear just because you want to experience a new direction? “Impulsive!”
-To dance in the barbell rack between sets cuz it stokes your happiness hormones and gets you jazzed on life? “Impulsive!”

Are you catching on to how many of our physical “don’t’s” have no credible human flourishing basis?

They are just made up rules that we have to challenge.

Unfortunately/fortunately, most of us are so wound up at this point, that we have to practice being babies again.

We have to practice feeling safe, playful, free, and expansive in our bodies in this world. Either once again, or more robustly in the now.

This BABY NON-SENSE is actually a MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY for you to:
-unwind your nerves
-reprogram your subconscious beliefs about your body and your body in space
-feel mobile AF again.

So don’t be such a close-minded adult and shirk off the power of returning to innocence.

This is where we will start.

For the sake of brevity and respecting your busy lives, I will keep this post to an introduction and share a full routine to restore natural movement in the following posts, mimicking the movements we needed to and knew to naturally rep out as babies to grow our brains and evolve healthfully. Expansively!

How does THAT sound?!

Yeah, fucking awesome, I know.

So until that next post, here is your starter exercise:

lay on your back and breathe for six minutes.

It kind of is that simple, but I’ll give you these expert tips:

-Consider swaddling yourself with a blanket or laying a heavy blanket (~weighted blanket) over you.
-Be in a restful, calm space. No bright lights (if outside, the sun is perfect). If inside, find a dim place. Not crazy hot or crazy cold.
-Let your feet fall where they may. Place your hands on your belly, one on each side so you are resting in the space between your rib cage and hip/side.
-Follow this breathing pattern: 4 seconds in, 4 seconds hold, 4 seconds out, 4 seconds hold. This is a classic Box Breath technique designed to bring your autonomic nervous system (which controls involuntary responses) into a more harmonized state—not too alert and not too rested…awake and relaxed and calmly aware.

This is where it starts. Laying on the gracious, spacious ground like you first did as a one-week old youngin’ and bringing awareness to the one most basic movement that we take for granted yet forget how to support ourselves with as time goes on. Your precious bones and muscles—just as precious today, deserve to experience the safety of the floor. Your precious diaphragm, blood vessels, and brain—just as precious today, deserve to experience a state of relaxation, happiness, and gratitude.

By the end of the six minutes, you will have created a new internal environment. One that—supported by the comforts of the swaddle, the quiet, the appreciation of your body, wants to support you.

You may quickly feel yourself unwinding. It may take time. Trust the process.

In the next post, I will dish out the first series of movements to dance with to expand your sense of safety and thus empower you to feel more naturally inclined to playfully move through life!

Happy Breathing!

Your Coach,

Abby Shaye

What The Heck Does Your Heart Have To Do With Healing Your Aching Joints?

Navigating injuries is painful. Confusing. Disarming (no pun intended…well, it always is ;)).

In our Western World, we take a joint by joint approach. The shoulders, the hips, the knees, the ankles…

In the Eastern World, we take an organ by organ and chakra by chakra approach. The brain, the liver, the kidney, the bladder, and yes — the heart. The oases of swirling energy spawning magically vibrant colors we call chakras.

Is one better than the other?

No.

This is not a discussion of superiority.

It is a discussion of holism.

It is also a discussion of origin.

When my injuries began…that is, when I first noticed the franken-feeling of a deep red band of pulsating light surrounding and emanating from my waist — my pelvis and low back stiff as stone, I looked right into the center of my psoas. The psoas, a hip flexor and spine lateral flexor and extender, bridging the back and pelvis, the trunk and legs, known as the “master emotional center.” Being so emotionally in-tune, I thought: what hard conversation have I not had and who do I have to have it with?

I assumed I was harboring some intense, toxic, fierce emotion in my psoas/psoaii that needed to be released.

Recognized and released. Through witnessing and healing.

I’ll save the fuller story for how I unfolded that conversation for a future post, but for now, I want to delve into how — regardless of whether I had perfectly pinpointed THE organ of origin, THE muscle of origin, THE chakra of origin…there is always one place where healing can and will emanate out of.

So, rather than go on a crazed, WebMD, panic-attacked pleated, chronic tension-caked, incessant worry and stiffness like the best player ever in a game of never-ending freeze tag when you are it, I would like to offer you the fore-guidance for whatever next pain you may experience in your life.

To immediately go to the Heart.

It is more than just an organ. It is a spiritual center — in my currently biased opinion, like a Master Chakra, that can pour healing green waterfalls of light down into the lower chakras and shoot playground fountain like surges of water up into the higher chakras.

But it can only do it’s job if it itself is loved, honored, and nourished.

I think that for some long period of time I was trying to give from my heart when my heart was broken.

And I would repeat strong, affectionate affirmations of self-love to my heart, but the programming/conditioning of my mind was not in alliance with the mission.

With the return to Truth.

And so, like the “Iron Curtain” that the Berlin Wall dropped between East and West Germany…which quickly created two silos — one of wealth, privilege, power, and freedom, the other of poverty, lack of resources, victimhood, and struggle, my Heart and my Head were at war.

Where did this war start?
How did this war emerge in all of the joint dysfunctions I’ve had to overcome?

To both questions — not important. I don’t ever need to know.

What I do know and need to do…and, again, what I’d instruct you to do at any time you are in confusion and/or pain, is to go to your heart.

The Heart is this infinitely regenerating source of giving, love, connection, and gratitude.

When you really sense how big your heart is, you realize it is the size of the entire Universe.

You are your Heart.

And instead of asking for healing, just be aware of all of the love and wholeness that is already there.

That love and wholeness, like the lime green aura of absolute awesome elevating energy, will cater to the cells of your body. Like a much better ibuprofen — which you take through one vessel, your mouth, and it distributes its analgesic effects to the areas of the body that are aching and crying. The Heart, when you knock on it, when you call upon it, when you sing to it for re-connection, will feed your wounds with its green goodness.

Get that thought out of your head right now. That’s the war announcing itself.

But the war is a record of the past.

We’ve all had a battle or two, or ten, between our Heads and our Hearts. It’s called being Human.

If we were born with the perfect ability to embrace ourselves with unconditional love on a cellular level, I really don’t think we’d be here.

I think this is one of the journeys and missions that is inherent in being alive. Learning to love yourself.

An affirmation is cool.
A heart dance is cool.
A big, giant, juicy, full-wingspan wrap-around self-hug is also cool.

But if it is not creating change on a cellular level…in EVERY SINGLE CELL IN YOUR BODY…that is, EVERY SINGLE CELL IN YOUR BODY, is in full agreement that it is upgrading with the program…with the new truth…with the new Self, it is not getting the work done.

Two of the specific ways I am learning to truly love myself (this phrase still sounds so cliche):

• With the help/assistance/receiving of other’s love and compassion.

• By asking my very own brain to receive the wholeness, innocence, authenticity, and abundance of pure loving energy that is in my heart.

Back to that war thing — as I was listening to The Art of War author Steven Pressfield express yesterday on his view of the utility/origin of Resistance, he believes that it is there as a progeny of the Ego, to get in the way of allowing oneself to express ones highest gift and highest Self through the help of some higher power.

We are here, all facing Resistance, so we can come further together.

So that we can be guided into these lanes and lessons of love, where we just have to figure out how to create connection where there is disconnection.

And, as I believe, the heart has everything we need — all of the goodness, to heal and elevate everything. Each cell in our bodies. Each flower petal in each garden. Each clenched jaw on each stressed out American (and hey, probably people in other countries, too).

But, it is like the quirky, quintessential artist Pablo Picasso said: “The meaning of your life is to discover your gift; the purpose of your life is to give it away.”

If you’d politely excuse me, Pablo, I’d offer that just giving it away ain’t the purpose.

The purpose is to actively offer the gift in collaboration with others’ energies.

What I mean by this is, to engage in conversations, embraces, adventures, playful moments, dances, chants, jiu-jitsu matches, and to co-write books.

To engage in conversations when the conflict between the Ego and the Heart feel much too incongruent to every find harmony and peace.

To embrace lev to lev (heart to heart in Hebrew) when the Ego is feeling hurt, scraped, let down yet the Heart is feeling free, uplifted, and positively energized.

To adventure when the Ego is feeling scared and small — and as a result, rigid and recalcitrant, but the Heart is offering both of its hands to the Ego to play with its wild, creative, imaginative, and yearning for something exciting and different — for your greater good.

To play when the Ego thinks it needs to meet its work quota to uphold a particular identity/persona/role in society yet the Heart is hopping and happy as it: hears the buoyant bounces of a game of hopscotch outside the window; feels the wispy, whittled molecules of rainfall grace its skin as the rain begins to fall; and senses the synchronistic, sensual, scintillating energy existing between two souls when simply ordering coffee to get a caffeine kickstart to the day.

To dance when the Ego wants to stay stiff, startled, single-pointed, yet the Heart wants to flow, bend, twirl, wind, and soak up the energy of fields beyond our vision.

To chant when the Ego is afraid to speak yet the Heart has so much to say.

To roll and tug, push and pull when the Ego believes it is the strongest character in the room, but it needs some nudging from the Heart to really see how much more effortlessly effective and how much more form-free fashionable it can be when it appreciates its exquisite smallness.

To develop a new expression beyond the Ego’s always correct ideas, straight-lined and unbudging, when the Heart just wants to offer a splash of compassion that might change the entire potion of Ego ideas into something beyond what pure thought could ever create.

You can see that herein the Ego represents one person — the more close-minded Clovis, and the Heart represents one person — the more open-minded Ophelia.

Whirling all the way back to the start of this post, when our joints are tight and aching…when our bones are feeling brittle and weak…when our organs are feeling malnourished…

This is a sign of an overactive Ego. An overactive Clovis.

Clovis has to let Ophelia in.

The alchemy, the transformation…the reorganization of energy (alignment) and the elevation of love (agreement with wholeness) is what will happen.

So no matter the ailment — real or perceived (if you are perceiving it, it is real), you must turn to the Heart and ask it to flood you with its unwavering belief that you can. Then, you must appeal day after day after day to the Brain to get on line with the Heart — it’s knowing that you can. You will feel the internal change, and you will feel yourself forget your pain and remember your strength.

You will return, with a Heart-based essential energy (thank G-d), to your future self…the unlimited Self that is waiting for you.

Five Subtle Yet Surefire Signs You Are Healing

When we are stuck in fight-flight-freeze state of being, everything feels impossible. In fact, that is because we are ONLY feeling…feeling a record of threat from the past. I'll always say that conscious breathing is the #1 gateway from the past to the now, but becoming “unfrozen” doesn’t happen overnight. Healing is a process of transformation, which literally means changing (trans) shape (formation). Unlike Play-Doh, us more complex, fibrous yet flexible human beings, require a high and consistent repetition movements and inputs before we have that “breakthrough”…that, transformation.

Good news is—you are entirely capable of transforming.

Rep by rep, just like Sisyphus restarted his push of the boulder up the mountain day after day after mo-f*ckin day…until he reached the top…until his brain synched up with his body to learn “YES, I CAN…” you can, too.

Whatever trauma, Trauma, pain, perceived brokenness, weakness, distress, dysfunction, derailment, misattunement, or other ailment you are sensing right now, remember that with a Sisyphusian spirit and a remembrance of your bullish, brilliant, basic (in the sense of innate not insignificant) will to commit to consistent action to make your life the brighter reality of the future that is waiting for you, you will wake up with the following signs—maybe one by one, maybe in bundles, maybe all at once. But you will, my friend.

1. You are yawning more frequently. This means your nervous system is coming back on line, feeding your brain the message that you require more oxygen for your next journey, or next phase of your journey. Without thinking, you expand your jaw and pull in pure oxygen to stimulate your senses and awaken the loving, passionate energy in your cells…once and for a reason dormant, and now ready to embark on–nah, BE, the Adventure that is your Life.

2. Your stomach is gurgling. I just experienced a lot of this this morning whilst “performing” Joe Dispenza’s 45 min Healing Meditation, a wonderful, powerful, guided meditation for awakening the innate healing power within each and every one of your G-d gifted cells. This meditation–as a tiny precursor, is designed to really challenge you to overcome the level of blase, bullshit frequency beliefs you have been subconsciously handing your entire Self over to for years…and to re-teach/re-train your body how to overcome the old, crusty, weak, untrue programming it has been sliding by on for way too long. As you program your mind to live at the level of the supreme, unlimited healing, homeostatic intelligence of your body–to join in the flow of keeping you sweet thing whole, your Body (soma and psyche together, there is no separation), 

3. You are giggling more spontaneously–even cackling. Ever consider the origins of the phrase “I’m cracking up.” When someone says that to me, or when I say that to someone, I really know what’s happening. Something hard, heavy, rigid, unyielding in myself and/or that person has finally dismantled. In a beautiful, life-expanding way. Completely in your favor. As the great Sufi poet Rumi once expressed: “where the wound is, is where the light enters.” Or as the great musician Leonard Cohen once imparted: “there is a crack in everything; that is how the light gets in.” [As a tongue-in-cheek side link, people are even taking this to asshole, spending time with their perineums open to the suns’ rays…maybe not such a new morning ritual]. Back to stoic writer Abby–both of these men recognized something of transcendent value–breaks, cracks, fissures, faults, holes, gaps…are not inherently negative things. That is just the value we’ve been conditioned to lay upon them. It’s purely a matter of perspective. In fact, as a total mindfuck reversal of how you may have seen/feared “breaks” in the past (be it a broken bone, a romantic breakup, a friendship break-up, a job break-up…), crack is necessary for the enlightenment. The uplifting. The elevation of your Self. Long to short winded, the feeling, the almost automatic, effortlessly cracking open of where the immense pain once inhabited, is a surefire sign of your healing. Of your return to and elevation to your Highest Self. It’s like when you’ve done enough meditation, made enough love, drank enough water…just enough to relax your muscles to “pop” out their tension, and your joints to “click” back into place. Yes, you can be your own chiropractor.

4. You feel a natural compulsion to move. I’ll reiterate it again and again: you are a Bodymind. There is no separation. When you are in coherence–your heart’s nonjudgmental, compassionate, creative energy linking your chaotic brain and vacillating body through one harmonious channel, your not only freedom but perceptivity to your body’s needs are far more in tune. You are not thinking about the paper you have to submit by 6am tomorrow. You are not focused on eating enough protein at your evening meal. You are here, now, as the energy, not the matter that is You. So, if you feel antsy and need to get up and walk, you just do. If you feel dull, dragging, dim, and need some sunshine, you find it (maybe on that walk). If you feel stiff and stuck–empty of inspiration, you get up a boogie your bones. The natural compulsion to move and almost immediate expression of movement–whatever the heck it may look like (WHO CARES!), is the dynamic expression of your healing. Know this. Your body does. As freely as you will cough when you have a tickle in your throat…as freely as you will burp when you have an excess of air in your belly…as freely as you will lean back and (hi sign #1) arch your upper back to open your heart and pandiculate your spine when you’ve been sitting still for a smidgen too long, is just as freely, in all of these ways and more (hint: micro-your movement practices, macro: your adventure and travel choices) you will move when you are healing. 

5. You are fidgeting more. What is fidgeting but the nervous system’s natural way of telling you that it’s ready to do something. Ready to go! Now, if you were my beloved “Health & Fitness” professor from University of Michigan, you might more obsessively, deliberately train yourself to fidget more frequently because it burns more calories and increases your basal metabolic rate. But that flavor of fidgeting is not the healing sign type. Healing fidgeting is when one day, you recognize that you have melted out of your statue-esque, frozen state…a state molecularly built on fear, and something has “come over you.” You are sitting at a coffee shop and you start tapping your feet, dipping your ears from shoulder to shoulder, having the natural propulsion from within to leap to your feet to grab a refill of water–not to wait until you’ve finished your work to do that “heavy deed.” Other examples of fidgeting = playing the piano with your fingertips, turning your head and eyes to take in the holistic environment around you, and–when seated, changing your seated posture more frequently. In a sneaky way, your body fidgeting (a somewhat unconscious process), is your body telling you “I am safe and ready to engage with the environment around me.” Go, Fidget, Go!

Pain is an amazing and necessary teacher.

But no human is designed to or deserves to stay stuck in Pain forever…even for longer than necessary.

With the various tools of movement, mindset, nourishment, touch, and spirituality, you can and you will transcend your current perception of limitation. Your current “this is miserable.”

Remember that still small voice within that is saying in response to your misery thought “This can’t last forever,” that it in fact will not.

I am a sister for you on your path.

And if you need to chat and expand your consciousness and action toolbox around how to perpetuate, install, and become the change you want to see, please send me a message sharing your story and let’s get started empowering you to empower yourself to heal…to go beyond survival, into thrival…returning to and broadly speaking out in all your magical ways the YOU AS LARGE AS THE UNIVERSE…the infinite, glowing you!

Lastly, I leave you with: you are not alone, you are not wrong, and you are not abnormal. You are a human seeking certain nourishment your soul intelligently knows it needs to thrive.

You Are The Fucking Rainbow

Ever notice how a rainbow is always there, but we cannot always see it?

The magical array of colors in their perfect partnership, fantastic family, banded together…always, yet we cannot always see it?

There may be clouds covering its radiance. 

There may be a sun safeguarding its power.

There may be a rainstorm, a snowstorm, a windstorm, coagulated in front of its majestic nature.

Its energy…its essence…its Truth, always strong and surprising, solid and scintillating, secure and silver-lining, but it’s sight not always in plain view.

And, when the clouds camber, when the sun sits back, when the rain relents, when the snow softens, and when the wind winds down, the colors emerge one at a time in all their grandeur. 

This metaphor of the rainbow has been coursing through me a lot lately.

How the power, the gentleness, the awesomeness, the nurturing, the empathic, and all-embracing wholeness that the rainbow embodies is within each of us, regardless of whether it can be seen from the outside, and/or at all times.

As I’ve surfed and battled, climbed and sunken, surged and drowned, in this crazy mixture of pain, discomfort, injury, disease, illness, fatigue, blasphemy, and confusion, I’ve remembered at every moment that deepest in my core, in the womb that will give birth to the children of the future, the next generation, the progeny of unique, untouched Purpose, “I Am Fine.” “I Am Healthy.” “I Am Wild.” “I Am Free.”

Yes, I’ve felt like a woman with Multiple Sclerosis, hands shivering and shaking uncontrollably, fingertips fidgeting across whatever I am holding or touching.

Yes, I’ve felt like a woman with cancer, a “random” node appearing under the surface of my skin upon my thyroid gland growing a little bigger with time, yet an x-ray ruling out anything serious.

Yes, I’ve felt like a woman who has lost and continuously failed at her job, showing up to work and powering through the misery and agony and imbalance with that endlessly regenerative, bottomless source of enduring energy to “do my best no matter what.”

Yes, I’ve felt like a woman with severe neurological problems, my deranged knee defunctly guiding me through all places at paces I less than enjoy to move at…especially the one where my legs are kicked up on a table and I’m not walking at all. 

Yes, I’ve felt like a woman with a severe mental issue, unable to “get it together” quite enough to focus on any ONE thing long enough to give it the love and attention it needs to develop, grow, evolve.

Yes, I’ve felt like a woman who was so weak and frail that even the simplest of human movements, the gait cycle, right foot in front of the other — walking…the simplest of healthy exercise options…just moving forward…the simplest and most elemental of all human survival needs, could become my enemy.

When you are trapped like this…or so it seems, do you still have the rainbow within?

FUCK YES, YOU DO.

When you feel fucking downright fucking afraid of getting out of bed, because then you will remember your limitations, do you still have the rainbow within?

FUCK YES, YOU DO.

When you feel incredibly withdrawn from society, because you are embarrassed about who you have become, who you have shrunken into, who you have hidden for your own judgment of unworthiness, do you still have the rainbow within?

FUCK FUCKING YES, YOU DO.

When you cannot even bear to open your eyes, because the Sun will reflect back to you that you are alive and you must accept who you are in that very, exact, moment in Life, and you would rather not be that version of you in that very, exact moment in Life — would rather just not be in Life, With Life, do you still have the rainbow within?

FUCKING FUCK FUCKING YES, YOU DO.

When you feel someone else, something else, other forces, have strangled your soul, told you what is and what is not possible for your expansively bright future, and spread through you like a vicious virus you don’t have the power or right to stand up to, do you…like, actually, do you still have the rainbow within?

YOU DO. YES, YOU DEFINITELY DO.

This is one thing I know for certain.

You may say there are no certainties in life.

I disagree.

The power inside of you, the rainbow inside of you, which holds every color, every energy, every frequency, every vibration, every ounce of fortitude and magic you need to manifest your best, is always inside of you, never dim, always staying lit.

The rainbow inside of you is one certainty you cannot get rid of. It is one source of infinite power that you will never drain. That you don’t have to worry about recharging. It’s just fucking there for you, in your best interest, at all times, no matter what. And it will help you overcome whatever challenge you face at any time, with a 100% success rate. It is the most reliable source of energy you will ever find, and you must never forget. 

It is one antidote to suffering, or at least a pathway within that you can take at any millisecond to help you surely titrate away from the dark and into the light. To feel a little brighter, a little better, a little more Alive.

It is YOUR superhuman, super-spiritual, unbound yet enclosed, intangible yet hyper-real, non-scientific but proven, badass and hardcore and kind and generous, like the very best fucking friend you’ve ever had and will ever have, POWER.

It is a channel you can tune into at any time. Just take a deep breath and cut out the noise. The distractions. The un-truths.

And you will return to that fucking rainbow within, and you will thrive. You fucking winner, you.

Why Do We Experience Pain?

Pain.

A scary word? A comforting word? Something else?

I feel like we’ve all been conditioned to avoid pain. Yes, seek discomfort; but, yes, too, avoid pain.

One of my good friends and co-trainer’s reminded me along this tiresome, aggravating, and pain-full (no pun intended) journey that pain is there for a reason — to tell you something.

Like a carrier pigeon, delivering a message from a village far away to your very hands and eyes…Pain puts itself in the envelope of our flesh and the brain flaps its wings in a harrying fashion to alert us (the ‘I’) that “something is off.”

As far as I’ve been able to construe — after 30+ appointments with different sports medicine doctors, family medicine doctors, functional medicine doctors, acupuncturists, massage therapists, energy workers, chiropractors, and of course bundles of 1:1 meetings between myself:myself, that’s the most descriptive and accurate “diagnosis” for me: “something is off.”

To be clear, I have a great understanding of what is off.

It has spiritual roots.
It has emotional roots.
It has social roots.
It has physical roots.
It has psychological roots.
It has community roots.

And, just like a tree in the Redwood forest, if the singular tree does not feel connected to the greater forest, is swinging to and fro from the gentlest gusts of winds, feels a need to hide its true colors from the others, feels ill and unfed, doesn’t even feel like waking up to receive sunshine and carry out its life purpose of providing oxygen to its surrounding community members (people, plants, animals), and feels completely estranged from the community it stands amongst…is it really alive?

That’s how I have felt for the past 9-ish months. But, to be honest, the feeling of isolation and malnourishment began way before that.

• I was scurrying for sources of spirituality when digging into the well of my own soul just didn’t feel like enough…not a fast-burning source of fuel, a long-burning source of fuel…but perhaps missing a necessary chemistry component to create Life Force for Greater Life.

• I was empty and aching in my heart, hoping for some source of magical loving fuel when my ex hit me with pure projections of his own body-related insecurities that touched on past issues I had overcome.

• I was scraping for sources of social connection when my friends backhandedly distanced themselves from me for not being vaxxed yet told me to my face that they were ok with my choice(s).

• I was powerful, springy, forceful, had undying-stamina, creative and dynamic in movement flow, yet showing up for training sessions more frequently than I needed to to fill my soul, and more frequently than I needed to chisel my best physique.

• I was frail, unappreciated, not exercising my massive creativity, and not meeting with other minds frequently enough to generate new idea babies and new businesses and new gifts for the world…a recipe for a dull and hollow mind which is reflected in an imbalanced brain state (not to mention the concussion I had in August of 2022).

• I was completely ignoring how loving I was, how well I can connect with other people, how much I love teaching and learning, how much I appreciate and thrive on physical touch, and how much I love to dance with others — staying alone in my apartment instead because I needed to eat and then sleep for my next 4 am wake up to SERVE THE WORLD AS A PERSONAL TRAINER.

Does any of this, on the surface, sound painful?

Maybe, you human, can see that the glaring answer is yes.

But maybe, you human, have not considered pain to be part and parcel of all of these aspects of self, community, and life.

I’m here to tell you today that all of the parts of your Self are in constant, intimate, honest communication with each other at all times.

Hence, if you are upset or frustrated with your work situation, your spirit, brain, body, and the people around you (an extension of you…your proverbial Redwood Forest), will feel it, sense it, know it, and be impacted by it.

This is why people who stay in unhappy, unhealthy marriages for years develop drinking problems, cancers, anger management issues, and other dis-eases abound.

This is why people who choose careers because their mom and dad told them to carry an aura of self-defeat and self-doubt into surrounding areas of their lives: relationships, academia, adventure, etc. A seemingly impenetrable message of “I can’t choose my passion” acoustically bounces from eardrum to eardrum in their brains.

But, in all of these situations, for all people — regardless of socioeconomic foundation, racial foundation, religious foundation, spiritual foundation, body type/genetic foundation, all of us humans share the inter-corporeal sense of “flow,” “health,” and “homeostastis.”

Alternatively, like we know light and dark because they exist in juxtaposition, all of us humans share the inter-corporeal sense of “dis-ease,” “illness,” and “dysregulation.”

What baffles me is why we tolerate the latter host of feelings for so long without making changes!

I mean, human speaking to human, I am pondering the same question now.

Dr. Gabor Maté, Hungarian-Austrian psychiatrist who specializes in addiction and trauma, simplified the reason for me a couple of years ago, as I was scaling, surfing, and grappling with the terrifying tides of abandonment trauma I had in my life. He put it like this: 
“[…] when people are faced with the choice of either attachment or authenticity in their relationships, most will go for attachment first, seeking approval and recognition from others instead of learning how to give it to themselves.

Sad but true. Human.

Maybe not so sad once we recognize it, right?

Can you recall a time when you felt the best choice for you in your bones, but chose something different to “follow the crowd” or “to fit in?”

I am sure you can. I certainly can.

It’s bigger than ‘peer pressure.’

It’s the real, core, base fear of being alone. Of being shunned from community. Of rejection. Of abandonment. Of feeling betrayed. Of feeling not good enough. Of being tossed out, like Joseph was tossed into the pit by his brothers.

And because why? Because you followed your truth?

Ridonkulous, seriously. Come on, people.

The strange and very surmountable reality is that we always have a choice to choose our authentic way, and that if the people who we call our loved ones cannot or are not willing to accept us for following that rainbow of truth that stems from our innermost knowings, inklings, and powers, they are not for us.

This circles me back to the the origins of pain.

Abandonment — not necessarily of others to you, but of you to yourself — — your truth, your inner knowing, your instincts, your bliss, your kinks, your curiosities, your messages…like the carrier pigeon…the message being the pain you feel in your body, is a directive…not just an unconscious rhythmic regularity like your heart beat(ing)…it is in some ways more important than that.

The pain in your body is telling you something.

The longer you ignore it, subconsciously telling it: “you can wait for later,” “you come second, third, fourth, way later in order,” “you do not have any value,” the greater it will grow and the bigger a mystery it will be to unravel.

Not to say you will not get to the root of it.

YOU WILL.

But, I encourage, maybe even beg you to get intimate, honest, and constant in conversation with deep pains in your body, at least once a day.

Not at the expense of its counterparts (hello again, light and dark), but for the growth, elevation, illumination, expansion, and permission for the light parts…the flow, the health, the homeostasis, to flourish.

Not just for you (but damn, that’s a dandy feeling); but for the world, too.

Because when you feel whole the world smiles.

Some may call this shadow work, others may call it deep listening. Whatever you call it, it is a very practical yet spiritual and divine slice of due diligence we owe to ourselves and the world.

What does your pain mean? What might your pain be asking for? Of you?

Personal Change Starts Now: Cutting Through The Bullshit That Holds You Back!

There are 5 known stages of transformation in the world of psychology. They are as follows:

MAINTENANCE

ACTION

PREPARATION

CONTEMPLATION

PRECONTEMPLATION

To make it through these layers to the top, you need grist for the mill and you need gumption. You need “stick to it” ness. You need determination and a strong why/set of why’s.

But, if we pause for even more wisdom, you need to be super aware of the internal and external ingredients that are slowing you down.

Refresh yourself with this great quote from spiritual leader Marianne Williamson: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

So, in a confusing and paradoxical way, often times we know exactly how we want to feel but we are afraid to move into that upgraded self.

In my felt experience and in witnessing my clients’ transformations, the key ingredient that we absolutely need to hold onto is permission to go.

And then there are a hoard of other ingredients that we need to take seriously the imperative to let go of. These include:

• The need to know the outcome.

• The need to know whether you are right.

• The need to know if you are making a smart decision/step.

You’ll notice that attached to each of these needs is a fear:

• The fear of failing.

• The fear of being wrong.

• The fear of being stupid/feeling embarrassed.

We often times do not catch ourselves living in fear, but, like hyper vigilant gatekeepers of our own souls and vitality, we must constantly check in to see if it is fear or LOVE that is guiding our next move.

These ingredients that we think—on a very subconscious, deeply engrained level, are moving us forward are (cold, hard, raw truth) actually just keeping us in place. They are keeping us in the maintenance phase of the you you are today, as if you are a fixed person and have become fully evolved.

If you are on the same wavelength as me, that ain’t okay.

We are ever-evolving beings, and one of the greatest gifts we have as a part of life and the human condition is to challenge and change ourselves—to see how awesome we can feel and become.

When we wake the f*ck up, we see with such unmistakable clarity that both these needs and fears—which comes in tandem clumps, are nothing more than illusions. Nothing more than thoughts which we can place our attention on or not place our attention on. And as we know, what we focus on grows. And these clumps, much like plaques in the bloodstream from an imbalanced diet, will progressively feed dis-ease throughout one’s lifetime if not cleansed by…love-driven choices. They bind little fear together to create big Fear.

Who are we without these illusions then? Can we even lead a life without illusory thinking to some extent?

I don’t know that I can answer that question. I can only speculate.

I think it comes down to choosing how to think (#metamoment).

My suggestion is to:

1. Find the green light—your permission to go, within you or outside of you!

   • Sometimes you can dig and scrape and claw to the bottom of your heart’s barrel for the courage to go. Sometimes you need permission from outside of you. Neither is better than the other. There is no right or wrong. This is about returning to the Truth that this change is good for you and for the world around you, so you just gotta find that green light that will cue to you: it’s okay to go! If you need outside help, be mindful not to ask for others’ opinions towards your change, rather to make it very clear that you just need them to tell you “it is okay.”

2. Choose to focus your attention on your next step.

   • What will animate and nurture your transformation is at least 85% in the fourth phase, ACTION. Remember, sans the false belief that we can 100% control/know the outcome and the need to judge our desired changes as right or wrong, smart or stupid, all that is left is the wisdom in doing the work.

3. When your attention wanders to the fears and old, illusory needs, return to step #2.

   • Naturally, some old fears will creep up. The only was to transform and transcend these fears is to keep placing your most precious energy source, your attention, on doing the work.

When repeated over and over again, no matter the behavior/persona change you are committed to, this process will guide you through personal transformation from bottom to top.

Those illusory fears and concomitant needs are like guck between the pipes of your energy flow—your Chi, Ki, Prana, upward, which is necessary to carry you from You Today to You 2.0 and beyond.

Just feel for a moment what it would be like to lift the burdens of needing to know the outcome, needing to be right (or wrong), and needing to be seen as smart.

Do you feel lighter? Freer? Is the positive energy flowing more electrically through your veins?

I personally can feel the greater sense of even flow (cue Pearl Jam) by just guiding us through this dynamic imagery.

Hear this & remember this: your transformation is for you.

If, in your heart of hearts, there is a change you want to make, you gotta trust your intuition and find the permission to go. Within you or outside of you.

Nothing else is really relevant nor helpful.

If there is a change you know you need to make, start this cyclical 3-step process now. If you need that permission to go, send me a message and let’s journey together.

I believe in You and the you’s to come.

Coach Abby

The Elements: Something To Fear or Something to Flow?

I sit here typing as a great windstorm is abreast us in Colorado.

Up to 100 mph they say.

My first client this morning told me that in Chinese medicine the wind is something that is considered “bad” and is feared. That it is something to stay away from. She said: “so they will probably say to stay inside today.”

This clashed with every fiber of my being.

There is a time and place for reason and safety, and there is a time and place for staying inside…

But has our culture become way too afraid of the elements?

In my spirited opinion, the Truth is that the elements are here to guide us and to bolster us. To strengthen us and enliven us. Not to destroy us.

Under this premise, which is rooted in gnowledge, I can say that we can live with open arms, open eyes, and open ears to the wind. To the rain. The hail. The sleet. The drought. The heat. The fire.

ALL. OF. IT.

Not everyone will get this, but everyone gnows this.

And what I mean here is that we all have an innate capacity to thrive and resound through any situation and all elements. Any weather.

We make it through any storm.

One reason people may not yet understand this is because of their beliefs around and within Death.

Do you believe that when you die, you just die forever? No shred of your soul, spirit, or essence lives on?

If so, you will likely fear the wind today.

Do you believe that we are made of only physical matter that will decay and nothing will be left behind? No impact, no legacy, no cell-influencing memories and impressions? No lessons passed on and into the next generation(s)?

If so, you will likely fear the wind today.

Do you believe that life has a finish line…an end line…a single trough or single peak…a single “it’s over” and that’s it? No opportunity for continued growth and evolution, for continuing to spread your wings and fly to new destinations and viewpoints after the soul leaves the body?

If so, you will likely fear the wind today.

In today’s post, I’d like to invite you to explore the Truth that you are in an epic, wonderful, ever-going dance with the elements.

I’m talking about the wind.

The water. The wood. The fire.

And I’m also talking about all of the elements of your environment.

Coronavirus. Your relationships. Your job.

ALL. OF. IT.

Everything that you interact with is from the Source of Love, and therefore, cannot be feared. It can only be loved.

Our society has become so afraid of everything.

As Newton laid out for us, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transferred or changed from one form to another.

So, what if you were so bold and brave and fearless as to convert all of that fearful energy into loving energy?

What if, when you heard that 100 mph winds were coming, you said “Awesome, I accept you!”

What if, when you heard that there was another virus in the world (which there have been for thousands of years and will continue to be for thousands of years to come) you said “Awesome, I accept you!”

What if, when a relationship “didn’t work out” and you and the other go your separate ways, you didn’t cling to the past and you simply looked to the open space of your sparkling, ever-opening future and said “Awesome, I accept you!”

What if, when you heard that your workplace was closing, you said “Awesome, I accept you!” and you immediately turned your heart even more open to your endless ability to pivot, expand, invent, and give to the world from your innate gift!?

What if…

You chose LOVE instead of FEAR.

What if…

You woke up today and said “fuck, I’ve been hiding for years. I gotta get out!” “There is a whole world out there I am missing out on.”

What if…

You began to believe that you are actually allowed to dance with the elements. To speak your piece. To play in the rain. To run in the wind. To flirt with the fire. To roll in the snow. To gallop, dive, and twirl in the water. To be in love…because, after all, you are made of Love; and to alchemize Fear into more Love…because, after all, you are a magician in your own way, capable of reviewing the same source and stimuli again and this time, choosing to energize it with the belief of “Yes, I can.”