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Hi there!
We’re so excited that you’re going to be joining us for 9-weeks of strategic and heart centered action to create a meaningful life.
For years, people have been asking us how we do it. Starting in our 20s, we launched several successful businesses promoting body-mind wellness, including private healthcare practices, three spas, online courses, a magazine, a book, a café, and a company that makes body care products and herbal tinctures. Meanwhile, we have an ecstatic marriage, a light work week, we spend lots of time with our kids and pets, and we have as much fun as possible.
We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we’ve learned a few things along the way. In particular, we’ve discovered that as important as it to teach people things like healthy eating and stretching, most folks need at least as much instruction in putting together a balanced and satisfying life.
When we realized we wanted to help others structure their lives, we talked to many friends and clients and the majority expressed that they felt far from achieving the life of their dreams. When we asked what they were doing to make their dreams come true, we found that most weren’t actively pursuing them.
To begin with, almost no one was clear about what their dreams actually were. They had lost touch with them after deciding (probably unconsciously and long ago) that it’s unrealistic to want an amazing or magical life. Some had even convinced themselves that it was more mature to expect lots of compromises and to learn to be content with whatever hand you’re dealt. But, they weren’t content. They had forgotten what they really wanted out of life or denied that they wanted anything different than what they had.
Many claimed they weren’t pursuing big dreams because they believed this would mean working like a dog and being unhappy. They felt that unless someone was superhuman, the only way to succeed was by sacrificing the enjoyment of life and perhaps losing your soul.
So, what were these folks doing in their free time if not making progress on their goals? Perhaps having fun, being in nature, and engaging in creative projects? Well, no. No, in fact, most felt that not only were they failing to reach their goals, but also that they weren’t making the time to cook, to stretch, to breathe, or to do other soul-nourishing self-care activities that they knew were important.
Those who had chosen to bite the bullet and put their noses to the grindstone in pursuit of their dreams tended to unwittingly ensure that they were unhappy because of how deeply enrolled they were in the belief that achievement demanded sacrifice. The things that make life sweet were often the first to go.
Finally, nearly everyone – whether actively pursuing their dreams or not – felt busy. Too busy. Not just because of their work, but because of their immersion in a relentless data stream that engages them in the job of perpetually checking in and keeping tabs on an endless volume of information. For those who believe they’re not doing enough, it offers a way to feel more busy, but because it’s unceasing, it comes to feel like an obligation. However much time and energy they devote to it, it never feels truly gratifying or productive.
We believe that balance is possible – even in the face of chaos.
And we believe that you can – you must – do the good-feeling, soul-nourishing, body-fortifying activities even while you pursue your dreams. We put these practices under the general heading we call Sweetness. Sweetness not only makes life more satisfying, it also makes us stronger and more resilient.
If you feed your life, your body, and your soul, you become more effective at shaping this life however you choose. If you fill your life with this sweetness, you bring yourself many steps closer to the life of your dreams, regardless of the outcome of any particular goal. If your goals don’t materialize, at least you haven’t spent years of your life immersed in work with little to show for it. No, just the opposite: you will have spent the time doing meaningful work, living your purpose, treating yourself well, enjoying the world, and serving your species. It doesn’t get much better than that.
And when you do achieve your dreams, if you’ve been feeding your soul and growing all the while, you’ll be better able to assimilate the new changes in a healthy way.
While integrating more sweetness adds thrust to our dreams (and even brings our current circumstances closer to our dream life) we knew from coaching others that the biggest hindrance to achievement was problems with structure. They either didn’t know how or never got around to building a structure to get them from point A to point B. Some resisted structure because they seemed to equate it with restriction or conformity. Others had learned about “manifesting” concepts, such as the Law of Attraction, and took this to mean that structure and work are needless or even misguided.
When we looked at the structures people had in place, we found that without much training in life architecture, they were often unclear about how to build stable structures that would get them to their dreams. Some structures were like a bridge made of clothesline suspended over a canyon – they seemed to span the distance, but lacked support. Making it across would depend on a massive amount of personal effort, focus, and luck. Other structures were more like a concrete pipe over a chasm – sturdier to walk through but at the expense of any enjoyment of the scenery. Still other structures were like complicated tangles of trusses, cables, and parapets – more likely to get the traveler lost and confused than to their destination.
We noticed that those who avoided structure weren’t as free and unfettered as they would have liked. Instead, they often felt scattered and preoccupied, as if they were juggling all the ideas and tasks that they weren’t building into a plan. We wondered if the reason for their resisting Structure was that it wasn’t married to sweetness; Structure without sweetness could feel cold and meaningless to people, like striving for advancement in a factory run by robots.
We also observed an unusual trend toward over-structured lives, even among people who seemed to have very little going on. It was as if the structure developed independently of a guiding vision – structure for the sake of structure – with very little breathing room. Both the desire to eschew structure and the trend toward hyper-structure highlighted the necessity of Space.
Space is one of those things we tend not to value until it’s been missing for a while. Few people would identify it as a priority, and yet, it’s an essential factor in a healthy, happy, and fulfilling life. Without space, there is no perspective or clarity. Imagine there’s a large mural painted on the side of a building, but because the adjacent building is just a foot away, you have to stand in a tight alley in order to look at it, so you’re only able to see one small section at a time. This is how we view our lives when space is lacking. Space allows structure to breathe.
Space is the crucible in which sweetness and structure interact to yield a life that feels inspired, meaningful, and fun. Through our background in Asian philosophy, we both came to appreciate the preeminence of the “emptiness” from which everything is born. In Taoism, it is called Wuji, the limitless, boundless, or most literally, the non-polar. That is, it’s where our expanded consciousness resides, which isn’t polarized, doesn’t need to take a position, and is simply open. In Buddhism, it is Sunyata – emptiness, openness, or spaciousness – the space in which the soul is unconfined by the mind. In Ayurveda, it is Akasha – space or ether – the origin and essence of the entire material world.
Alignment and healing can’t occur without the openness that space provides. Sweetness needs space in order to be rooted in authenticity and to penetrate, engage, and feed the deepest parts of ourselves. And space is the solution to our addiction to the data stream which attaches us to our devices and disconnects us from the magic of the natural world around us.
Together, structure, space, and sweetness are the underpinning of this course.
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by Dr. Peter Borten
One day last March we got word that when we picked up our kids from school they wouldn’t be coming back for the rest of the month. A few weeks later, they told us to come clean out their cubbies and desks – there wouldn’t be school for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, we were told that our spas also had to shut down. Walking around downtown Boulder, I saw mostly dark storefronts and almost no cars or pedestrians. Sometimes I’d go into a grocery store and the shelves would be nearly bare. It was surreal … and it still is.
Life is always unpredictable. But the amplified uncertainty of the current time plus the absence of many aspects of human culture that usually provide a backdrop of consistency in our lives – restaurants, concerts, school, work, team sports, movies, etc. – results in a feeling of profound instability for many people.
I believe one of the healthiest ways to respond to this instability is to create a plan and improve personal integrity – two things we focus on in our Dreambook. When we started working on the first edition seven years ago, there was no pandemic and yet we still had dozens of friends and clients who were unsure of their vision for the future or how to move forward. At this time, it’s needed more than ever.
The first section of the Dreambook features processes to help you get clear about what matters most to you. What feeds your soul? What supports your deepest values? What brings your gifts into the world? What makes life feel playful? When you know these things about yourself, you’re better able to manage the uncertainty of life due to your own inner stability.
Then we teach you how to make plans. There’s a unique added challenge to planning when you don’t know whether you’ll be able to leave the country or if summer camp will be happening. When you have a plan, though, when something unexpected occurs you can make adjustments as needed, but you still know the direction you’re headed. Without a plan, detours and obstacles may cause you to feel totally aimless and without a compass.
Plans don’t work without integrity though. We have to honor our word, being clear and honest with ourselves about the agreements we make and always following through on them. If we don’t keep our agreements, they’re worse than meaningless. Besides not getting the result we hoped for, we end up undermining our self-trust. But if we always do what we say we’re going to do, our self-trust grows stronger. At a time when it feels there’s not much we can trust in the world, knowing we can always trust ourselves is monumental.
It’s possible for this topsy-turvy period to actually facilitate a vital reorientation in your life: where you honor and prioritize your values, gifts, and purpose, and you create effective, intelligent, soul-supporting plans to bring your dreams into reality. Thousands of people have utilized the Dreambook as a resource for making this happen.
The new 2021 edition of the Dreambook + Planner is wire bound and available now in Classic White, Greenwood, and Periwinkle.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => TOPSY TURVY TIMES
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Your third chakra is an important center of power. To understand it, it’s useful to see it in the context of the other chakras, so let’s start with a little review. The first chakra is associated with the earth element, which represents stability. It’s our foundation. It relates to survival, groundedness, and allegiance to one’s tribe. The second chakra is associated with water – an element that’s more mobile and flowing. It relates to our sexuality, creative expression, pleasure, and relationships. The third chakra, called Manipura, is associated with fire, an element that’s always in motion. In many ways, both literal and figurative, fire gives us mobility, power, warmth, transformation, and light. And these are the primary qualities of this chakra.
Moving up the spine, Manipura is the last of the chakras associated with a distinctly tangible element. Thus, it still has a strong connection to the physical body – specifically the digestive organs and the kidneys. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it’s said that we’re born with a somewhat undeveloped digestive system – we don’t yet have gut flora; we throw up a lot as children; and we often have an inconsistent appetite. But by puberty, our “digestive fire” has grown and this center facilitates the emergence of our will and our personal power.
Classical sources place Manipura directly behind the navel, and contemporary sources often place it at the solar plexus – a bundle of nerves located a few inches above the navel (aptly named for the fire chakra, “solar” refers to the ray-like spread of these nerves). Both are highly significant areas in Ayurveda and acupuncture. There's a major acupuncture point at the level of the solar plexus called Middle Duct or Middle Controller, which relates to the stomach and other digestive organs. Wherever you feel it most prominently, this is the center of your metabolism, where food is “burned up” and converted to energy.
As Robert Svoboda explains in Kundalini, one of the challenges this chakra presents an evolving human is to balance two forms of fire or agni – bhuta agni, the “ethereal fire” which digests ideas and allows us to assimilate them into pure intelligence, and jathara agni, the digestive fire. Will our appetites be exclusively directed toward food and material acquisition, or will we learn to transmute this fire into a drive to learn and understand, to evolve and awaken?
The first chakra is associated almost exclusively with the external world and its ability to destroy us or provide for us. Anodea Judith expresses the “verb” of this chakra as “I have.”3 The second chakra is also rather externally-oriented, as it largely drives us to engage in relationships with others and to relate with the world in a way that gives us pleasure. Judith expresses the verb of this chakra as “I feel.” The orientation of the third chakra, according to Caroline Myss, is slightly more internal, “as our focus shifts from how we relate to the people around us to how we relate to and understand ourselves.”5 Judith’s verb for this chakra is “I can.”
Myss explains that at the level of the third chakra we begin to recognize that every choice we make either enmeshes us more deeply in the “illusory physical world” or invests us in the power of spirit. The sacred truth she identifies with this level of development is Honor Oneself. What emerges through a healthy third chakra, Myss states, is a sense of personal power, self-esteem, discipline, ambition, the ability to generate action, the ability to handle a crisis, the courage to take risks, generosity, and strength of character. She calls this chakra “the magnetic core of our personality and our ego.”5
Myss teaches that we progress through four stages as we grow toward self-esteem and spiritual maturity: Revolution (one or several acts that separate us from group thought and establish our own sense of authority); Involution (self-examination for the purpose of understanding oneself, healing old wounds, and learning what serves us); Narcissism (which Myss defines in a semi-positive light, as a necessary and vulnerable period of self-absorption and perhaps redefining one’s image); and Evolution (a stage of internal growth in which a person’s spirit is allowed to “take charge”).
I like Myss’s writings on this subject because they’re consistent with an ancient notion of the fire element as the agent of transformation. Fire was central to alchemy, and a remnant of this idea still exists in modern scientific notation where the symbol of fire – an upward-pointing triangle, like a flame (the Greek letter delta) – is used to indicate both heat and change. Fire gives us the capacity to refine metals, to burn away the debris, perhaps even to turn lead into gold.
In Ayurveda, it's the fire of our digestive organs (the yang in Chinese Medicine) that gives them the ability to transform food into human. It's really pretty miraculous. In Vedic thought, fire is said to take things from the earthly realm to the spiritual realm. Mantras and offerings thrown into a fire are said to reach the Divine. And because the tongue is also associated with the fire element, when we speak our words aloud they're said to pass through the fire and are thus imbued with the potential for transformation.
When we choose to act, the state of our third chakra influences the likelihood that we’ll follow through to completion and that our intentions will take root in the world. A weak, insecure, or collapsed center has little power, which can make it overly controlling. Playing it safe but still wishing to exert control, it may give rise to eating disorders or the accumulation of a very large midsection. It's a similar case when our personal will is at odds with Divine Will or the will of our soul: if we succeed at initiating the change we desire, it will occur through force rather than power. Myss’s explanation of the Evolution state of self-esteem speaks to this concept of power, and it echoes Gary Zukav’s teachings on empowerment and evolution in The Seat of the Soul. He writes, “When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment.”10
How can we manage this power in a reverent way? Zukav asserts that humans have historically approached evolution as a matter of competition for external power – and that the next phase of our evolution will arise from the recognition of authentic power. Here’s a passage on this topic from Zukav (I cut and rearranged a bit, but didn’t change any words):
All of our institutions – social, economic, and political – reflect our understanding of power as external. Anything we fear to lose – a home, a car, an attractive body, an agile mind, a deep belief – is a symbol of external power. Competition for external power lies at the heart of all violence. The perception of power as external splinters the psyche, whether it is the psyche of the individual, the community, the nation, or the world.
No understanding of evolution is adequate that does not have at its core that we are on a journey toward authentic power, and that authentic empowerment is the goal of our evolutionary process and the purpose of our being. We are evolving from a species that pursues external power into a species that pursues authentic power.
Our deeper understanding leads us to a kind of power that loves life in every form that it appears, a power that does not judge what it encounters, a power that perceives meaningfulness and purpose in the smallest details upon the Earth. This is authentic power. When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose, and meaning.
Beyond transforming our understanding of power as Myss and Zukav teach, here are some pragmatic recommendations for strengthening and balancing the third chakra:
- Heal your digestion and your relationship with food. Unhealthy eating patterns and digestive problems divert energy from this level of being.
- Learn to manage your stress. Stress, through activation of survival mechanisms, scatters our power and diverts energy away from our center.
- If you have adrenal fatigue, rehabilitate yourself. This requires refraining from using more energy than you have; going to bed before reaching exhaustion; avoiding stressors and stimulants; getting deep, restful sleep; and eating whole, nourishing foods.
- Strengthen your core. Yoga, pilates, and tai chi are excellent for this. Holding plank pose (balancing on your forearms and toes with a straight back) is also a great core-strengthener.
- Challenge yourself to take risks (if this is something that’s difficult for you).
- Practice following through on what you start. Don’t begin anything you don’t honestly intent to finish.
- Cultivate self-discipline.
- Unearth and heal your shame.
Finally, when you feel an urge to act and you're uncertain about it, try asking yourself, "Who wants this?" or "Where is this coming from?" See if you can quiet your mind and allow an answer to come. Is it an urge of your personality, an urge fueled by a desire for approval, security, or control? Or does it arise from a deeper part of you? Wishing you self-reflection, healing, and empowerment,
Dr. Peter Borten
Sources:
- Johari, H. (1987). Chakras. Energy Centers of Transformation. Destiny Books.
- Judith, A. (2004). Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts.
- Judith, A. (1999). Wheels of Life: The Classic Guide to the Chakra System. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
- Khalsa, G. K. (1991). Energy Maps: A Journey Through the Chakras. La Crescenta, CA: CyberScribe.
- Myss, C. M. (1996). Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing. New York: Three Rivers Press.
- Svoboda, R. E. (1995). Aghora II: Kundalini. Albuquerque, NM: Brotherhood of Life Publishing.
- Wallis, C. D. (2013). Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition. Petaluma, CA: Mattamayūra Press.
- White, J. W. (1990). Kundalini, Evolution, and Enlightenment. New York: Paragon House.
- Woodroffe, J. G., & P. (1931). The Serpent Power: Being the Shat-chakra-nirūpana and Pādukā-panchaka; Two Works on Laya yoga. Madras: Ganesh.
- Zukav, G., with Winfrey, O., & Angelou, M. (1989). The Seat of the Soul. New York: Simon and Schuster.
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Hi there!
We’re so excited that you’re going to be joining us for 9-weeks of strategic and heart centered action to create a meaningful life.
For years, people have been asking us how we do it. Starting in our 20s, we launched several successful businesses promoting body-mind wellness, including private healthcare practices, three spas, online courses, a magazine, a book, a café, and a company that makes body care products and herbal tinctures. Meanwhile, we have an ecstatic marriage, a light work week, we spend lots of time with our kids and pets, and we have as much fun as possible.
We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we’ve learned a few things along the way. In particular, we’ve discovered that as important as it to teach people things like healthy eating and stretching, most folks need at least as much instruction in putting together a balanced and satisfying life.
When we realized we wanted to help others structure their lives, we talked to many friends and clients and the majority expressed that they felt far from achieving the life of their dreams. When we asked what they were doing to make their dreams come true, we found that most weren’t actively pursuing them.
To begin with, almost no one was clear about what their dreams actually were. They had lost touch with them after deciding (probably unconsciously and long ago) that it’s unrealistic to want an amazing or magical life. Some had even convinced themselves that it was more mature to expect lots of compromises and to learn to be content with whatever hand you’re dealt. But, they weren’t content. They had forgotten what they really wanted out of life or denied that they wanted anything different than what they had.
Many claimed they weren’t pursuing big dreams because they believed this would mean working like a dog and being unhappy. They felt that unless someone was superhuman, the only way to succeed was by sacrificing the enjoyment of life and perhaps losing your soul.
So, what were these folks doing in their free time if not making progress on their goals? Perhaps having fun, being in nature, and engaging in creative projects? Well, no. No, in fact, most felt that not only were they failing to reach their goals, but also that they weren’t making the time to cook, to stretch, to breathe, or to do other soul-nourishing self-care activities that they knew were important.
Those who had chosen to bite the bullet and put their noses to the grindstone in pursuit of their dreams tended to unwittingly ensure that they were unhappy because of how deeply enrolled they were in the belief that achievement demanded sacrifice. The things that make life sweet were often the first to go.
Finally, nearly everyone – whether actively pursuing their dreams or not – felt busy. Too busy. Not just because of their work, but because of their immersion in a relentless data stream that engages them in the job of perpetually checking in and keeping tabs on an endless volume of information. For those who believe they’re not doing enough, it offers a way to feel more busy, but because it’s unceasing, it comes to feel like an obligation. However much time and energy they devote to it, it never feels truly gratifying or productive.
We believe that balance is possible – even in the face of chaos.
And we believe that you can – you must – do the good-feeling, soul-nourishing, body-fortifying activities even while you pursue your dreams. We put these practices under the general heading we call Sweetness. Sweetness not only makes life more satisfying, it also makes us stronger and more resilient.
If you feed your life, your body, and your soul, you become more effective at shaping this life however you choose. If you fill your life with this sweetness, you bring yourself many steps closer to the life of your dreams, regardless of the outcome of any particular goal. If your goals don’t materialize, at least you haven’t spent years of your life immersed in work with little to show for it. No, just the opposite: you will have spent the time doing meaningful work, living your purpose, treating yourself well, enjoying the world, and serving your species. It doesn’t get much better than that.
And when you do achieve your dreams, if you’ve been feeding your soul and growing all the while, you’ll be better able to assimilate the new changes in a healthy way.
While integrating more sweetness adds thrust to our dreams (and even brings our current circumstances closer to our dream life) we knew from coaching others that the biggest hindrance to achievement was problems with structure. They either didn’t know how or never got around to building a structure to get them from point A to point B. Some resisted structure because they seemed to equate it with restriction or conformity. Others had learned about “manifesting” concepts, such as the Law of Attraction, and took this to mean that structure and work are needless or even misguided.
When we looked at the structures people had in place, we found that without much training in life architecture, they were often unclear about how to build stable structures that would get them to their dreams. Some structures were like a bridge made of clothesline suspended over a canyon – they seemed to span the distance, but lacked support. Making it across would depend on a massive amount of personal effort, focus, and luck. Other structures were more like a concrete pipe over a chasm – sturdier to walk through but at the expense of any enjoyment of the scenery. Still other structures were like complicated tangles of trusses, cables, and parapets – more likely to get the traveler lost and confused than to their destination.
We noticed that those who avoided structure weren’t as free and unfettered as they would have liked. Instead, they often felt scattered and preoccupied, as if they were juggling all the ideas and tasks that they weren’t building into a plan. We wondered if the reason for their resisting Structure was that it wasn’t married to sweetness; Structure without sweetness could feel cold and meaningless to people, like striving for advancement in a factory run by robots.
We also observed an unusual trend toward over-structured lives, even among people who seemed to have very little going on. It was as if the structure developed independently of a guiding vision – structure for the sake of structure – with very little breathing room. Both the desire to eschew structure and the trend toward hyper-structure highlighted the necessity of Space.
Space is one of those things we tend not to value until it’s been missing for a while. Few people would identify it as a priority, and yet, it’s an essential factor in a healthy, happy, and fulfilling life. Without space, there is no perspective or clarity. Imagine there’s a large mural painted on the side of a building, but because the adjacent building is just a foot away, you have to stand in a tight alley in order to look at it, so you’re only able to see one small section at a time. This is how we view our lives when space is lacking. Space allows structure to breathe.
Space is the crucible in which sweetness and structure interact to yield a life that feels inspired, meaningful, and fun. Through our background in Asian philosophy, we both came to appreciate the preeminence of the “emptiness” from which everything is born. In Taoism, it is called Wuji, the limitless, boundless, or most literally, the non-polar. That is, it’s where our expanded consciousness resides, which isn’t polarized, doesn’t need to take a position, and is simply open. In Buddhism, it is Sunyata – emptiness, openness, or spaciousness – the space in which the soul is unconfined by the mind. In Ayurveda, it is Akasha – space or ether – the origin and essence of the entire material world.
Alignment and healing can’t occur without the openness that space provides. Sweetness needs space in order to be rooted in authenticity and to penetrate, engage, and feed the deepest parts of ourselves. And space is the solution to our addiction to the data stream which attaches us to our devices and disconnects us from the magic of the natural world around us.
Together, structure, space, and sweetness are the underpinning of this course.
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Who would have guessed that I’d get the best massage ever at an airport?
I’ll be back on 13 October at 12:30 p.m. Would love to make an appointment with Nye.
Thanks,
Jean
Allie is amazing. A true professional, ensuring that my treatments were to my satisfaction completely. What a beautiful soul! I will certainly be back on my next trip to Portland. Thank you for this oasis!
I just had to cut my massage short due to a flight change, but I wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to the staff who were super understanding and flexible. The half of the massage I did receive was really wonderful and super relaxing. Thank you for such a great experience and for being so accommodating to my sudden schedule change. Will definitely be visiting again!
Thank you, Carolyn! We’re glad you made your flight!
I just had one of the best massages ever. Then relaxing after in a recliner with warm neck wrap and tea! I forgot I was at an airport. Long layover? Great place to loose yourself…