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The time is NOW…..

Remember when it was 2010 or better yet, New Year’s Eve of 2011, when we were filled to the brim with anticipation for the infamous “2012, the end of the Mayan calendar”? Here we are, in the 9th month of the year with only 3 months to go… And the world has not yet come to an end. Are we holding our breath till it turns 2013 where we will have proved our worth as a species, proving the prophecies all wrong, that we have survived, and in fact all is intact and moving along quite nicely… And then exhale?

Or are we holding on for dear life because this year has been going at the speed of light, nothing is as it was in January, you’re fueled up with the glory of the truth of the changes that have occurred, you’re on a roll and wondering how are you going to have all the buttons hatched down by December 31st, the end of 2012?

The good news is right now is the time to shore up loose ends, put closure to projects you have been working on, and move forward into the last phase of this year feeling the fulfillment of reaching your goals. So don’t sit back on your heels and wait to exhale… Go for the finish line and go out with a bang! The time is NOW!

Morning Star Foucault
Lead Massage Therapist

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How is your balance of movement and stillness? (Sitting vs moving; thinking vs quiet mind; sleep time vs awake time, etc.)

How is your balance of work and leisure?

How is your balance of community and solitude?

How is your balance of communicating versus listening?

How is your balance of doing versus being?

How is your balance of holding on and letting go?

How is your balance of connecting with your inner world versus the outer world?

How is your balance of creating versus receiving?

How is your balance of filling yourself up versus emptying yourself out?

How is your balance of engagement with technology versus engagement with nature?

How is your balance of preparing for the future versus being in the present?

How is your balance of consumption of resources versus giving back?

How is your balance of being mind-centered versus heart-centered?

While this isn’t a totally comprehensive list, I hope it provoked some insight. If you’re human, I’m sure you noticed certain areas where you’re out of balance. I encourage you to think of balance as a dynamic thing – just like the balance between night and day and all the natural forces. Don’t strive for perfection. Consider taking a card and writing down a few of the activities / orientations from above that are lacking in your life. Then try to remember, throughout your day, to bring your attention to something on your list. At the end of the day or week, reflect on how adding in small doses of balancing qualities is affecting your overall sense of well-being. By the way, if you like this sort of thing – exploring and growing – have you ever thought about being a life coach? Click here to check out our life coach training program. It’s based on deep, meaningful principles like what I shared here! Be well, Dr. Peter Borten P.S. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into your inner balance, “clean house” internally, shed patterns that aren’t working for you, and open into your highest self, check out our upcoming program Sacred Expansion. Click here for more info. [post_title] => Bring yourself into balance now [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => bring-yourself-into-balance-now [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-03-18 14:46:21 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-03-18 14:46:21 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=9282 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8962 [post_author] => 5 [post_date] => 2023-02-23 17:30:14 [post_date_gmt] => 2023-02-23 17:30:14 [post_content] => Last week I wrote about giving away our power, and how it’s more common and subtle than we might think. We looked at some of the many ways people give their power to other people, and explored why doing so is more of a burden than a gift. In short, when we give our power to another, both parties are usually unaware of the transfer. The result is that the giver treats the recipient as being responsible for their own (the giver’s) happiness, stability, or whatever else they subconsciously traded for. It’s not unusual for relationships to involve a two-way power trade, with both members acting powerless and blaming the other. For this reason, it’s important to not only reclaim your own power but to also give others back their power. Because the trauma of scarcity is so deeply woven into our history, we tend to feel that more of anything is better. Thus, we may be reluctant to give someone back their power, and/or we may feel that it’s unkind to take back our power from someone we love (especially our children). So, let me reiterate something I said last time: each individual’s personal power is theirs alone. It doesn’t benefit others to give them your power and it doesn’t benefit you to have theirs. If anything, it makes the relationship unclean. Taking back your power will never weaken the other party; it just promotes greater freedom for both of you. Here are some practical steps for reclaiming your power (and letting others do the same). If you have our workbook, Freedom, you’ll find it very helpful during this process. 1. Don't look to others to define your self-worth. Your worth is your worth – one incredible human life – the same as everyone else. It has nothing to do with your abilities, acquisitions, or looks. 2. Practice being okay with having different views, tastes, and choices than your peers and loved ones. 3. Practice letting go of wanting to be liked or approved of by everyone. Yes, it can be uncomfortable. Feel into that discomfort without letting it push you to give away your power. 4. Establish healthy boundaries. Don’t automatically say yes. Don’t get sucked into drama. Find your center. 5. Forgive. One of the biggest power suckers is resentment. Forgive others and forgive yourself (including for having given away your power). It’s not usually a single act but an ongoing commitment to keep forgiving. 6. Know your needs and values. Beneath every conflict there is a need/value. 7. Don't try to fix people. If you have trouble with this, consider this: Are you absolutely certain that you know what’s best for them? Have you asked them if they want your hep? 8. Learn to help, care, and love without giving away your power. 9. Be responsible for the story you tell yourself about life and your place in it. 10. Discover the identities you’ve taken on (victim, helper, life of the party, supermom, etc.), and evaluate whether they serve you. 11. When you’re angry or upset about something someone did or said, and/or if you find yourself thinking obsessively about them (positively or negatively), always check in: have you given them your power? Now for the woo-woo part, which is just as important: 12. Learn what power loss and entanglement feel like. Learn what it feels like to be clean with your power. As you become increasingly familiar with the difference, you’ll know when repair is in order. This is easier said than done, but becomes increasingly clear when you practice the steps above and the following ceremony. Again, routinely doing a somatic practice like what we teach in Freedom is a great way to hone your sensitivity and familiarity with the felt sense of your power. As a general guideline, when your power is entangled with another’s, you’re likely to feel something other than good and solid in yourself when you’re with them or thinking about them. You may feel a certain neediness toward them, as if you’re less than whole. You may feel overly affected by whatever they say and do. You may feel destabilized by them. You may feel tired. You may feel self-conscious. You may experience the idea of them as an irritant in your system. 13. Perform a ceremony of taking back your power and giving others theirs. It can be quick and easy. Imagine a pipe or tube connecting you and them. First you’re going to take back your power. Say or intend something like this: “Show me any fragments of my power that are in their energetic field.” And imagine these bits of power light up, like a bunch of fireflies (or however else they naturally appear to you). Next, say or intend something like, “I’m sorry for giving you my power without your consent. I release you.” Then call your power back to you. Unlatch from the other person in all the places you’re hooked on. Imagine there’s a filter in the middle of the tube connecting the two of you, and the filter’s purpose is to only let what’s yours pass through to you. With each inhale, imagine you’re drawing back your power, pulling it out of them and into yourself. With each exhale, imagine that you’re re-incorporating this power within yourself and consolidating it into the central axis of your body. Do this for a few breaths until it feels complete. Step two is to return anything of theirs that you’re carrying around. Ask for their energy to show itself and to unlatch from you. Then imagine the filter is reversed so that it only lets their energy pass through to them, without allowing any of your power to leave. As you relax and open yourself, imagine with each exhale that you are giving them back everything that’s theirs. Imagine With each inhale, imagine your own power is drawn toward the central axis of your head, neck, and torso, becoming a bright, strong column of light. Exhale again, releasing their energy back to them, and continue until you feel complete. How do you feel? It’s not uncommon to notice that you feel instantly calmer and clearer when things are set straight in this way. Next time we’ll talk about the other form of power sacrifice I mentioned in the previous article (ignoring, denying, or failing to recognize our own power and agency). Be well, Peter [post_title] => How to Take Back the Power You’ve Given to Others (13 Steps) [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => how-to-take-back-the-power [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-03-07 21:54:37 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-03-07 21:54:37 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8962 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8184 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2021-02-21 01:15:30 [post_date_gmt] => 2021-02-21 01:15:30 [post_content] => We recently opened enrollment for this year’s life coach training program, which always feels exciting to me. There’s a buzz of activity as the new participants get oriented and we’re introduced to the next group of open-hearted individuals who are devoting themselves to helping others. First everyone goes through an eight-week program called Sacred Expansion which is kind of like “cleaning house” before we get into the details of how to help others. Of the many topics we cover in the coaching curriculum, one that people often mention as being both incredibly basic and incredibly life changing is our relationship with agreements. Agreements can be seen as a primary tool of creation. Ideally, the process begins with getting in touch with the impulse to create – what is sometimes called “divine will” – and is informed by your life purpose. This way the effort comes with its own batteries, rather than draining us. Having a clear vision and setting a clear intention of what we want to create are also important. When we then make an agreement (or agreements) in service to this intention – with ourselves, with others, with the universe – we initiate what my teacher Matt Garrigan called “a contract for fulfillment.” We engage the power of our word. And as we follow through on our agreements, momentum builds and opportunities arise. It never fails. Except when it does. The problem is, we often make agreements without any of the consciousness I described above, and then we consider it no big deal to break those agreements. While we might recognize, sadly, that what we intended never materialized, we often have a blind spot around the fact that we didn’t keep the agreements we made to support the intention. One of the things our coaches learn is how to bring clarity to this process for their clients (in a non-blamey way); it’s very gratifying for both the coach and the client. Not only does the client start achieving their goals, most importantly, they learn to trust themselves and their power. Today I’m going to share with you a basic method for rebuilding the self-trust that’s diminished by broken agreements. When we make agreements with others, most of us understand the consequences of breaking them. If you break agreements with your boss, you might lose your job. If you break agreements with your friends, you might lose your friends. If you break agreements with family, you might hurt their feelings and lose their trust. In all cases, a relationship will be damaged. So, what happens when you don’t keep an agreement with yourself? It’s not so different, really. A relationship is damaged, it’s just harder to see. Let’s say you decide to work out every day for a month but you quit after five days. There doesn’t seem to be anyone getting screwed by breaking this agreement. Nobody is mad at you. Of course you’ll let yourself off the hook. But your self-trust is eroded. If you forgot to pick up your child from school, you would probably make it a priority to regain their trust because you care so much about the relationship. But, chances are, you don’t do that when you break an agreement with yourself. You may be barely aware that an agreement was broken. This matters in many big and small ways. If you serially break agreements with yourself – you don’t get things done when you say you’ll get them done, you don’t wake up when you say you’ll wake up, you don’t treat your body as healthily as you tell yourself you will – the material consequences are unfortunate, but small. The bigger consequences are things like not being able to count on yourself or giving up your big dreams for ones that are more “realistic” given your history. If you have a habit of breaking agreements with yourself, and now you want to do something big and important, your mind will have a lot of evidence to undermine you. Here are four important steps for reestablishing self-trust. 1: Become clear about what constitutes an agreement and be conscious of the agreements you make. If you had a passing thought about washing the car and then it didn’t get done, is this a broken agreement? Well, you need to decide that (before it happens). I recommend choosing a format for making official agreements with yourself and sticking to it. If you want to make agreement with yourself to wash the car, you might think to yourself, “I agree to wash the car today,” or you might say it out loud, or you might write it down. Just come up with the terms for what constitutes an actual agreement. 2: Be forthright and clean with yourself. You know whether you meant something to be an agreement or not, and you can’t really hide from yourself. But we pretend to hide, keeping our agreements nebulous, by maintaining a cloudy mental environment. Did I say ONE more game of Candy Crush and then I’d walk the dog? I think I meant to say SIXTY games…Or, I know I planned to work out today, but what I meant was that I would work out unless something more important came up. Be honest. As you distractedly lift your two pound dumbbells while watching The Late Show, ask yourself, Is THIS what I intended when I agreed to work out every morning? Do your best. Think about the quality of participation a boss or client would expect of you, and deliver at that level to yourself. 3: Don’t make too many agreements, especially as you begin this process. If you wanted to get an estranged friend to trust you again after you missed five consecutive lunch dates, you wouldn’t start out by offering to edit their thesis, refinish their floors, and meet them to watch the sunrise every day for a year. You’d be setting yourself up for more damaged trust. Instead, you might ask them earnestly to give you one more chance at lunch, and you’d make sure to get there a half hour early. The process of reestablishing self-trust starts with baby steps. For the first few days, you might want your only official agreements to be things you’d probably do anyway, like, Wake up by no later than 7 o’clock, and, Have dinner ready by 6:30. Do this so you can become more conscious of your agreements with yourself and the be sure to keep them. Over time, you can add a bit more to your list. But never make an agreement you think you’re likely to break. 4: Clean up broken agreements. Treat yourself like a friend. If you broke an agreement with a friend, you would acknowledge the damage that was done (“I feel terrible about missing your show. I’m really sorry. I cherish you as a friend and I want to be there for you.”). And you might do something special the next time you saw them (like bringing them flowers or helping them with a project) to demonstrate your interest in fixing the relationship. Likewise, if you break an agreement with yourself, rather than beating yourself up, acknowledge and repair the damage. Believe it or not, there really is a hurt part of yourself – a part of you that takes these broken agreements to mean, I don’t need to keep my agreements with you, because you don’t matter. Affirm to yourself that you do matter and that you can be trusted. Then make a new agreement that goes beyond the one you broke, and be sure to keep it. Or, if you broke the agreement because it wasn’t a realistic agreement (which means you had no business making it in the first place), make a new agreement about something that supports you in another way (some act of self care, for instance), and keep it. Be a person of integrity. Eventually, you’ll have an impressive mental dossier on your trustworthiness. In essence, you will have demonstrated to yourself hundreds or thousands of times that what you say is going to happen … happens. Then your word will be as good as law. When you say to yourself, I’m going to change the world, there will be a mountain of evidence to indicate that big things are coming. If anything is out of whack in your life, turn back to your agreements, start keeping them, and watch how things fall into place. If you’re intrigued by the idea of teaching this to others, guiding them through the process of coming into their power and sharing their gifts with the world – then check out our coaching program. Enrollment will be open until April, but Early Bird Pricing ends Tuesday Feb 23rd at midnight! Be well, Peter P.S. One more hint: when you’re in a state of trust, your heart will feel open. When you’re not trusting, your heart will feel tight, clenched, or closed. Tune in. [post_title] => How to Rebuild Self-Trust [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => keeping-agreements-and-cleaning-up-broken-ones [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2021-02-21 02:14:47 [post_modified_gmt] => 2021-02-21 02:14:47 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://thedragontree.com/?p=8184 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 1 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) ) [post_count] => 3 [current_post] => -1 [before_loop] => 1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 9282 [post_author] => 489 [post_date] => 2024-03-18 14:46:21 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-03-18 14:46:21 [post_content] => Happy (almost) spring equinox! At the halfway point between the solstices, the equinox is a time of balance between day and night, hot and cold, and yin and yang. It’s a good time to tune in to your current state of balance (or lack thereof). Take stock. Balance doesn’t imply that everything is equal, just that there is a state of relative harmony between opposing forces. If you have a couple minutes I encourage you to read the following questions as an assessment of personal balance. Take a pause after reading each question to let it sink in.

How is your balance of movement and stillness? (Sitting vs moving; thinking vs quiet mind; sleep time vs awake time, etc.)

How is your balance of work and leisure?

How is your balance of community and solitude?

How is your balance of communicating versus listening?

How is your balance of doing versus being?

How is your balance of holding on and letting go?

How is your balance of connecting with your inner world versus the outer world?

How is your balance of creating versus receiving?

How is your balance of filling yourself up versus emptying yourself out?

How is your balance of engagement with technology versus engagement with nature?

How is your balance of preparing for the future versus being in the present?

How is your balance of consumption of resources versus giving back?

How is your balance of being mind-centered versus heart-centered?

You may also be interested in:

Bring yourself into balance now

How to Take Back the Power You’ve Given to Others (13 Steps)

The Dragontree

The time is NOW…..

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