wellness

Image: source

Your Mind, Body & Spirit

• Remember that your body believes what you tell it and it will act accordingly.  Talk to your body (seriously!) and tell it want you want to occur and/or thank it for getting your attention.  Be positive when talking to your body and be grateful for the messages it sends you. 
• Daily Self-talk – Flood your mind with positive thoughts, peace, joy, happiness and comfort.
• Do your best to keep balance and harmony with all things.
• End the day with positive messages to yourself.  If you have children, this is an excellent time to talk to them and give them positive messages to sleep with.  Tell them that tomorrow will be a happy day, tell them how grateful you are, tell them the things you love about them, tell them that they are happy, healthy, strong, loving and whole.  Say the same things to yourself too!
• When you can, get outside and enjoy the fresh air.  If there is sun shining, make sure you enjoy it and soak up the vitamin D.  Be out in nature as much as possible.  Your body will thank you.
• Get some form of exercise, our bodies are not meant to be sedentary. 
• Make sure to get plenty of rest.  If you do get sick, honor your body by resting and sleeping as much as you need to.

The Feminine Process

Image: Suffering- Soul Painting

“Depression comes as a gift that stops one from hurrying briskly, confidently into the market. Stops one from rushing to the shopping center to buy one more bargain blouse for an already overcrowded closet. Stops one from emptily mouthing what one no longer believes in anyway.

“Depression stops time… and one settles into one’s own waters as a sailing vessel without wind… without wind… without momentum…and one sinks into one’s depths.

“And somewhere, deep inside, in the beehive tomb, one sits alone… and weeps.

“Depression comes as a gift asking that a woman recognize her own substance and trust it as the quiet, steady voice of her own truth. As she trusts it, hearkens to it, attends as it unfolds, she learns that of herself never allowed to develop when her allegiance  was with the collective…”

“Depression serves a woman is it presses down on her, forcing her to leave behind that which was not herself, which had influenced her to live a life alien to her own nature. Her suffering, now substantial, insists that she no longer deny its truth.

“She can no longer ‘keep stiff of her upper lip,’ or ‘pack up her troubles in her old kit bag and smile, smile, smile’ or, as one woman struggling with her weight said, ‘rise above it all.’

“…Depression asks that the attitude towards one’s life be changed, that the source of authority be recognized as no longer outside, but now deeply within, that one relate to each event, task, and moment of one’s life personally, subjectively…”

“Present-day society is afraid of depression. Whatever it resembles – reflection, introversion, a drawing within for quietness – may also be feared.”

“Suffering is feared and the sufferer outcast. Collective attitudes have evolved fostering archetypal masculine doing and achievement values. As woman entered the work realm outside her home, there was little alternative but to adopt those values. There was little recognition that her processes as woman was of a different nature or that doing/achievement values were not complete or valid for her.

“The issue is not whether woman can achieve, but that preoccupation with achievement may deny a descent into her deeper nature which a woman must make to touch her true strength. The masculine must perhaps fly to fulfill a part of its heroic nature. But woman, pressed to fly, may lose herself and be prevented from descending into her depths, prevented from fulfilling her own feminine nature.

“For through her descent, she touches the power of the feminine, the power that comes of being, not doing… the power of wisdom in the face of a very old woman, a face on which one reads, ‘I know what I know.’

“A woman through her descent, touches a deeply feminine authority, as different from the authority of the masculine as is the moon from the sun.

“It is an authority not of abstracted, rational, objective knowledge, but an authority which allows her to speak from her own unique experiencing of life, from her own deepest personal conviction.

“A woman prevented by her own fears or cultural attitudes from making this descent, is left to speak only from her achievement-oriented side rather than from a deeper experiencing of herself as a woman.

“Because present-day society has not understood, has feared the process which woman must undergo to claim her power and wisdom, has recognized only the masculine process, women have been left little alternative but to speak ‘as men…’

“Woman herself has become alienated from her need to sink into herself. She has begun to expect herself to have the energies, emotions, and attitudes of the masculine. It is a tragic token of the lack of recognition of a separate and unique feminine process…”

“A woman could be helped to understand her depression as a passage of initiation to claim her own soul and wisdom to be shared, later, with other women as they prepare for their own passage. She’s is taught, instead, to fear her experience and to loathe herself.”

“…It is this meaning, emerged from her own suffering, that allows a woman to descent, each time anew, into her own depths, to be present to the truth and wisdom lying there. For only by her willing descent can she uncover, again and again, the meaning of her life.

“Can we come to a new understanding of the feminine process toward wholeness? Can we, as women, take it upon ourselves to deepen within ourselves and each other and appreciation of the descent in the feminine process?”

~Judith Duerk from Circle of Stones: Woman’s Journey to Herself

Soul Expression

I wanted to share an example of creative soul expression. I sat in stillness and then used wet watercolor as exploration of being. No labels, no form, no critique. The process unfold naturally without direction. 

A painting is the expression of the heart and soul; it transmits cultural messages and the mysteries of the universe. It is born out of the desire of the artist to represent the forms of nature and man through the spirit of the artist as he perceives his world.


An artist not only captures the forms of nature, the artist’s spirit interacts with the spirit of the animals or men he is painting. His painting captures both the spirit and the message of its subject. One can see it in the expression, the eyes, and the gestalt of the painting. All good paintings communicate an emotion or message to the observer. It might be a message of love, harmony or tranquility; or it might be a message of danger, fury, or sadness. It could be a lesson, or something that all of us as humans can identify with, such as a desire to be loved.


The painting as art served ancient peoples as a medium to purify and refine the human spirit. The well studied and observant artist through his own meditation gives life to the animated states, feelings, and spiritual essence of the animals and humans he paints. The purification or refinement of the observer’s spirit occurs through the inspired artist’s ability to communicate the subject’s (man or animal): spirit, animation, feelings, thoughts, and the scene or stage of the subject, with all of its colors and form.


Copyright: © 2004 by Ernesto Apomayta

Spirit

Wisdom

love and light

Let me introduce myself and this space as a place to share love and light. All are welcome to dwell in the shared words and positive energy. I have a daily mindfulness practice and continue to work on attaining a higher vibration for mind, body and spirit. I may post others art work or words but will credit where credit is due. Feel free to join my circle and feel grounded and peaceful. Some of you may need a reconnection to spirit or help through a difficult season in life or just for the joy. Hopefully what I share can touch each one of you with positive energy. Here is the first post:

Artist:Unkown

Grounding Breaths

Take three deep breaths and know you are being held by the universe in each breath. 
Feel your aliveness and gift each breath gives.
Raise your arms above your head with courage as the positive energy flows down your arms, through the middle of your body, down each leg and ground you as strong roots into the earth.

Blessings.