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How to Move Effortlessly Through Life

How to Move Effortlessly Through Life

by | Sep 28, 2024 | craniosacral, Craniosacral Therapy, grounding, healing, mind body & spirit, mindfulness, move effortlessly

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Grounding:  Move Effortlessly with Grace

Move Effortlessly. It’s easy to escape the moment. To not be fully present. The mind easily wanders into the past with regrets and guilt. Undoubtably it moves forward with worry and anticipation as well. This is to be human.

However, what if there is a way to engage with life more deeply and fully?

I was reading FB today and came across a beautiful post about grounding.  I feel it’s so important to connect to the earth.  She supports us and nourishes us continuously.  We are made of the earth, and she lives within all that we are.  So I am including this writing by “Lowen”  to share here.  Let go of your burdens my friends…  Discover Your Human Body.

Lowen is credited with coining the word “grounding” in the physiological and psychological sense and emphasizing it’s importance in human development. I believe it has now become a term widely understood (if not precisely understood) in the broader pop culture.

“Once he is grounded, a person no longer holds himself up but allows the ground to support him. By coming down to earth, he finds that his blood pressure also drops. But effecting that kind of change requires a commitment to the body and to a way of life that respects the body and it’s needs.

 

Unfortunately, our culture is moving away from the body as the source of feeling and spirituality. Our fitness programs are not designed to enhance the sensitivity of the body but to hone it as if it were a machine. In so doing, they produce people who are fit only to run the race of life. I suppose that if reaching the top is one’s goal in life, our modern-day fitness programs may help. But if one’s goal is to experience the joy of being fully alive, the excitement of feeling part of this pulsating universe, and the deep satisfaction of being a person who is both graceful and gracious, one must turn elsewhere.

When I was a young man, being “earthy” was regarded as a virtue. I never hear anyone descibed that way anymore. Has the quality of having one’s feet on the ground lost its meaning? I believe it has. The modern individual is more properly described as “flying high and fast”. It is hard to slow down when the world is racing by. It is difficult to be grounded when the culture itself is ungrounded, when it denies reality and promotes an illusion that success represents a higher state of being and successful people live richer and more fulfilling lives. All the same, the real values of life are “earthy” values: health, gracefulness, connectedness, pleasure and love. But these values have meaning only if one’s feet are planted firmly on the ground.”

 

– Alexander Lowen from The Spirituality of the Body

To Move Effortlessly is freedom and Joy

Sharon Hartnett CST-D

703 509-1792
www.craniosacraltherapistcolumbus.com

 

 

How to Understand Yourself Better

How to Understand Yourself Better

by | Sep 28, 2024 | change, Craniosacral Therapy

Do I Understand Me?

I think it’s an ongoing process to understand ourselves. We are so pre-conditioned. As children, we are taught values and personal morals. We identify who we are quite often by how others see us and define us.

This begins with the mirroring of our physical self. Our skin, our eye color, the shape of our waiste and our hips, our height and our weight. People reflect their opinions of us from early on. Perhaps they remark that we are beautiful or plain. Maybe our features look like they are of a certain culture. Also, on another level, people might tell us what we need or what we don’t need. They might say to us what is right and what is wrong, and what to believe. Our families especially even often shape what or who we believe God to BE. We often agree because this is part of belonging.

At some point though, as life greets us, some of these identify points begin to crumble. The ups and the downs of life will show us a new way. This is actually good news. When we step outside our origin story, we get to wake up to who we really are. It’s an unfolding story of authenticity if we so choose. It’s an adventure that often requires courage, an open mind, and a choice to move into the mystery.

When we break the bonds of loyalty to the image of who we are suppose to be, we break apart, and we blossom through our essence.  This is usually not an easy path- but it is a path of richer connection. It is one well worthwhile. To understand ourselves, we break apart and then re-build healthier relationships with ourselves and with others.  We grow, heal, and we learn, attaining new depths of understanding.

The funny thing that often makes me smile  though is that because of our dynamic nature, we are constantly changing from one moment to the next.  Who I am when I started writing here is a different person than right now. So when we think we have grasped a sense of Self, like fluid, we transform into someone else.This makes life so interesting.

One Question that keeps us in the Present is, “Who AM I Now”?  I don’t usually advise, but this is advice to keep this question ongoing.  It helps us to stay clear and present.

What a gift it is to move through time and space always in flux, even when we resist.  What a gift it is to know ourselves through investigation and experience.

As a Craniosacral Therapist, I have been privileged to witness many people transform and transcend their current struggles. It’s beautiful to observe the diving down into the deepness and the rise back up into the light.  The dance between the shadows and clarity is meaningful and precious. Eventually finding balance brings in clarity and groundedness.

I’d have to say that discovering ourselves and understanding  brings about a sense of empowerment and embodiment.  What do you believe?

I leave this post with,  “How well do you know yourself?”

Sharon Hartnett CST-D

703 509-1792

www.craniosacraltherapistcolumbus.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 Things to Know about Highly Sensitive People

7 Things to Know about Highly Sensitive People

by | Sep 8, 2024 | barbara brennan, Craniosacral Therapy, Energy Healing, healing, mind body & spirit, mindfulness, Spiritual Healing

Recognizing the Gifts of Being with Highly Sensitive People

Understanding Sensitive People takes effort. Yet it’s definitely worth your while.  About 20% of people are sensitive.  Basically, what this means is that we (I am including myself) react more to life’s stimulation. At times, it’s not as easy for us sensitive people to screen out certain stimuli.  Things can become overwhelming for us if we aren’t mindful to our comfort zones.

Anyway, in the recent past, I was talking to my Craniosacral Therapist about my sensitivities in group relationships, and she recommended the book, “The Highly Sensitive Person“, by Elaine N. Aron.  As I began to take the test in the beginning of the book, I checked off almost every single characteristic of a Highly Sensensive Person (HSP).  Wow, this woman understood my life without even meeting me!

Honestly, I can’t tell you how alone I have felt (on a certain personality level) for a long time being highly sensitive.  Most of the world either masks it or is less sensitized.  I have processed things and been in the healing and therapist field for close to 30 years.  I have worked on boundaries and so many things.  Yet, still-when I walk into a room, I feel the mood of the people, and all the nuances in human relationship.  I hardly miss a thing, especially emotionally.  This even extends to plants, trees, and watching a bird fly.  It’s as if I feel ever flap of the wings. My heart resonates.  Yet I also feel very vulnerable.

At the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, we learned to develop what Barbara called “HSP” Higher Sense Perception.  Same acronym.  This is a fine tuning of seeing, feeling, tasting, sensing etc at a very subtle level.  This helps people who work with energy or relationships to become astute and skillful in meeting people in connection,  the auric field and other dimensions. This has benefited my clients in that I can deeply sense stress, pain, and dysfunction simply by tuning in.  When I do this, I can use my sensitivity skills to help ignite the healing response within.

For me, being aligned with my sensitive nature is tremendously helpful in my work.  I can sense things and support where others may not. On a fine level, I gather so much information through listening and melding.  I know how to meet the “Other” in a gentle manner with touch which can encourage wonderful openings.  At the same time, I often have to take some alone time afterwards to settle and digest life experiences.  Being senstive doesn’t necessarily make me an introvert, but I do need to rest and integrate often. Self care is crucial.

Aron, writes in her book that our mind/body experiences are different and unique.  Some of our positive traits that she mentions are:

1. We are better at spotting errors and avoiding making errors.

2. Highly conscientious.

3. Able to concentrate deeply on things where we are drawn.

4. Especially good at tasks requiring vigilance, accuracy, speed and detection of minor differences

5. Good at being able to process materials at deeper levels.

6. Deeply affected by other people’s moods, which help us to understand and be more present.

7.  Able to learn without being aware we have learned.

There is so much great material in this book.  What I like best about it is that I don’t feel so alone in that I feel different than so many others.  Also, It helped me to refocus on the gifts of this personality I have lived with.  I feel so aware of the interconnection of all of life.  I feel it deeply.  Sometimes, life hurts as the casing around the heart breaks wide open, but I am also able to have such profound life experiences.  I have become emotionally stronger in my vulnerablity and can hold that for others in “Presence”

I am sharing today about being sensitive, and I hope this helps someone else recognize that there are many other of us around. We need to learn to accept ourselve and find the seeds of truth and kindness inside to make this life of sensitivy so worthwhile. We do this through self nourishment and awakening to our authentic selves.

Sharon Hartnett CST-D

703 509-1792

www.craniosacraltherapistcolumbus.com

 

 

How to Empower Yourself By Facing Your Own Fear

How to Empower Yourself By Facing Your Own Fear

by | Aug 31, 2024 | Craniosacral Therapy, fear, healing

Fear Embraced

The Stimulation of Fear. Prepare to Run!  Get ready to fight! What a great friend fear can be to each of us.  It often moves us toward safety. Fear is a strong emotion. Human Beings, as animals, have evolved successfully thanks to the biological process within each of us that shifts our bodies into gear when in danger.

In fear, the adrenal glands prompt us to react when faced with an immenent threat. The challenge though is when we can’t fight or flee, the brain freezes.

In Craniosacral Therapy, I often work with people who live in patterns of anxiety, PTSD or panic attacks. At some point in their lives, there was an inability to act against a given threat. So in current times, sometimes the logical mind is taken over by the limbic system. Living in hyperarousal, it’s easy to be overly sensitive or to be easily triggered.

If this sounds like you, take back the reins of your own life force!  There is a way through. I find that there are many good therapists out here in the world with great tools to reflect and teach how to calm and bring you back to center.

From a Craniosacral Therapy perspective, we work with the Cranosacral System (CS).  Bascially, that focus is on the brain, the spine, and particularly on the cererospinal fluid which surrounds it and flows. We listen and meld with the rhythm of the CS of an individual, supporting and helping to enhance the nourishment of the nervous system as well as helping to release toxins.  Most clients find deep relief and peace after they start to trust the process of receiving the benefits of their own healthy self-regulation.

A Craniosacral Therapist works in a body centered manner. In the higher level, they learn to open up dialogue to fear. There are also body centered psycotherapists who work with the body which can be helpful too. Then there are therapists like me, trained in both.  All of these work at supporting the limbic system to find balance. We include the body to brain relationship, from bottom up.  This acts as a doorway to transform and heal.

I do want to remind you that fear is never the enemy. I often invite my clients instead to allow whatever is happening to move through as long as they are strong enough and in a comfort zone to make room for the movement of emotions.  If not, there are techniques and different ways to slow down or minimize at a healthy pace.

Fear is only an emotion.  It’s not who you are.  It’s just waiting to be processed and to come into completion.  When that’s done. you are set free.

Sharon Hartnett CST-D

703 509-1792

www.craniosacraltherapistcolumbus.com

Moving Into the Light: How to Lift the Shadows

Moving Into the Light: How to Lift the Shadows

by | Aug 27, 2024 | change, Craniosacral Therapy, healing, mind body & spirit, Spiritual Healing, thought for the day

Your Sacred Light Opportunity

We are all mixtures of light and dark.  Sometimes others will try and fool you.  They present themselves as holy, as illuminated and high and mighty.  That’s ego.

The Truth is that we are all made from the same Source, the Creator. The story of origin lives and dies everywhere all the time.  We are all ordinary in our sameness.  We are all extraordinary light creations in our unique experiences. We are all small. We are all great. Every soul possibility that lives with me, lives within you. That is the substance of God.  It is the love of God that sustains us whether we remember or don’t.

I used to wonder when I was younger, why am I alive?  What is my purpose here?  How did I get here?  By my 30’s, I felt such a deep dark hole near my heart.  I missed something in this lifetime, and yet I didn’t know what it was.  By now, in this stage of my life, I know it was the Light within.  But I have to decide to take the path of truth and love many times over to wake up.  We are all interconnected.  We all do better when we unite.

Anyway, for me, this hole has been my teacher. The spirit which lives within me has chosen to be a  spiritual seeker. I move toward the “whole “open heartedly.  I am an opener of doors. Yet I also  know that to constantly seek can present its own stuck dilemma loop.  Therefore, I aslo love to choose gratitude as well. I tend to rejoice more in the moment.

Personally, I am a Pisces, so I am overly sensitive, creative and very emotional.  This thing called life has been so easy in some ways, but internally not so much.  I live inner struggles all the time by trying to understand how to fit into humanity and its polarities, and to feel, and understand how limiting my beliefs and others can be.

I recognize that in our own way, each of us suffers.  We all feel pain.  Nobody wins the prize for who has it worst.  However, what we decide to do with all that we have been given-that’s what matters.  That’s what give meaning to our lifes.  That’s where we get to join into the school of human evolution.

We have two choices in life really.  A “Yes” or a “No” to what life has to offer us.  Being human, we identify as being individuals.  These are the rules we live by.  I am me.  You are you.  We are taught from and early age, our names, and some type of social order to which we belong.  Our tribe so to speak.  Yet, at some point, do we want to step out?  What does he take to move away from the familiar?

Each tribe has its own resonance.  It’s own ways of doing things.  We belong until we don’t anymore.  It is inherent in all of us that we will  have opportunities to grow. Awareness is moving in and out as waves of new consciousness , intending to wake us up to something bigger than our individual selves. Alas though, we can resist change too.

These tiny brains that we are given soak up everything which is being mirrored to us.  Our identify is formed by all the outer influences and how we dance with them based on our soul configuration and personality. Because we each live different lives we each end up experiencing, accepting and also confronting expriences which are Light Opportunities for us to grow and shift into the Greater Whole.

The 3 Main Core Challenges:

1.  Choose Love or Move Away From It

2.  Take Responsiblity for our Choices and Actions or Deny Life as It IS.  Also included here is to Blame in order to avoid oneself.

3.  Choosing to live authentically or to pretend to be what others want and tell you to be.

For us humans, it’s not so easy to love all the time. Conflict is inherent in indivualism at this point of our evolution.  Some times we are just plain mean spirited.  Often we can see ourselves and others trying to hurt each other. Underneath all of us are woundings that have never been fully met nor understood.  So we repeatedly act out our lower selves. We are living in an illusion of our own making.  Our social media imposes fake reality all the time. With AI emerging, even more so in the future.  Still, we can choose love and light at moment.  It’s available.

Often, it seems so hard to take responsibility for our hurtful and cruel choices.  At a young age, most of of learn to slip the blame somewhere else.  It gives us an instanteous relief.  However, in our youth and until we learn, we don’t realize that the lies we tell ourselves hurts our health, wellbeing and our soul self.  Pointing a finger creates nasty karma when we don’t sense and feel into the consequences of our own negative actions.  Choice point moments are to accept Yourself as you are. You are Light.

One of the most painful things is to live by the standards of others. Although we train for this starting at a young age. We all do.  Eventually though, as we mature, we are intended to break out and find God in our own individuality. I truly believe that is why we are all here. We have these Light Opportunities to transform and transcend beyond what we ever imageined we are capable of. Change can be found in the smallest acts or grandiose.  However evolution enters into your life, you get to choose to hold onto a past that is over.  Or- you can choose to be in your truth and express the true authentic you.  No matter what the cost.  There is profound beauty in being yourself.

This world is a low dark place on many spots.  At the same time, the Brightest, Most Beautiful Compassionate Light is EVERYWHERE.  Sometimes it will be more apparent. Sometimes we have to listen through our senses intently to catch sight.  The best place to begin to look is Within.  Learn to Trust Yourself and to be kind.

In conclusion, God is not “Out There”.  God is in everything.  That includes you too.  Perhaps people have labeled you as “bad”, “not worthy”, or “not wanted.”  But that was them.  Live in your own lane, and follow your heart.  Your reason will align with compassion, kindness and generosity to Self and others that way.

I’ll give you a little hint.  What I have discovered is that the path is going to continue your whole life.  We are not all awakened all at once. No matter what color skin, which religion, or type of job we take. We come here to journey in these skins together.  So take the opporunities one at a time. Learn from your mistakes and glory in the gifts of nature. Everything is here for your taking and understanding.  And when it’s enough, you’ll remember that you are embodied, whole and complete. The seeking stops.

Sharon Hartnett CST-D

703 509-1792

www.craniosacraltherapistcolumbus.com