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I have a long history of not living up to my potential. I had some talent in music, art, and academics, but I spent years noodling around and not making anything of it. I started a lot of things I didn’t finish. This trend started to shift a bit when I was in grad school, mostly because I wanted to practice Chinese Medicine more than I had ever wanted any other achievement. Yet, even though I had the sense that I was still underutilizing my potential, my greatest career aspiration was to be an effective doctor with a very long beard. Then, I met a girl named Briana who wanted to open a spa, and although it sounded impressive, it also seemed like way too much responsibility for my taste . . . especially given my history.
As the years went by, and I watched this woman build the spa into a sizable wellness company, I was impressed by her drive, but I was even more impressed by how she was able to turn ideas into realities, and to do so without losing her balance. I began to see that I could help a lot more people if I utilized avenues beyond my clinical practice, so I gradually took a more active role in the company. But, unlike Briana, for me it felt complicated and crazy-making to have so much going on.
At some point – three spas and one baby later – I dug my heels in. I said something like, “I don’t want anything new or different in our lives for like a decade!” She said, “Show me your schedule and let me watch you work.”
Then Briana truly discovered just how cluttered my mind is and how bad I was at planning, but it was ultimately good for both of us. She had the challenge of figuring out how to teach a right-brained musician-philosopher-type how to efficiently set and achieve goals while remaining organized and balanced with many responsibilities. And I was the beneficiary.
We saw that lot of people weren’t pursuing their big dreams because they already felt maxed out by the everyday stuff (and, unlike me, they didn’t have a partner to push them). Meanwhile, I noticed that many of my patients’ had a similar challenge with implementing consistent self-care practices and making time for the things that made them happy, and I realized that this needed to be integrated into any sustainable framework for achievement. Together, we started to develop a system to help people prioritize the self-care and soul-nourishing parts of life, navigate their life tasks with ease, unleash their potential, and achieve their dreams.
The result was our
Rituals for Living Dreambook. We launched it with a successful Kickstarter campaign. It has sold phenomenally well, and we’ve heard so many amazing stories of transformed lives.
When we asked for readers’ feedback, many of them expressed that they wanted more instruction and accountability. So, we created an online course called
Dreaming and Planning: Create a Meaningful Life. Our aim is to walk people through nine weeks of integrating these concepts into their lives, including choosing a goal and making it a reality.
We aren’t able to do private coaching with everyone who’s interested in this material, and we’d have to charge more than many people could afford, so our aim was to make this course the closest thing to one-on-one guidance at a much more affordable price.
Join us, and bring your amazing gifts into the world!
Be Well,
Dr Peter Borten
PS - Act now to enjoy the best possible price on Dreaming+Planning: Create a Meaningful Life. After tonight, the price will increase permanently.
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Do you know what finna, on fleek, stan, and W mean? If I didn’t have a teenager I probably wouldn’t either. (I’ll provide definitions below.) The older (and possibly lamer) I get, the more picky I am with my words, and the less attracted I am to jargon and slang.
But I’m guilty of overusing certain words in my work and putting my own spin on them – mostly because they describe a significant aspect of what I do and I haven’t found anything better. Case in point: the words expand and expansion.
I use the word expand all the time to describe the process of transcending your ego, getting outside your comfort zone, and going beyond your human conditioning. Expansion means recognizing that these limitations aren’t real, and even discovering that who you really are goes beyond your personality and even beyond your body.
I use the term often because I think this is generally a really good thing and I believe it represents a form of personal evolution.
Sign up now for Sacred Expansion – an 8 week course devoted to your healing and evolution!
When we don’t challenge our conditioning, we operate according to deep mental programs that define who we can be, what we think, the range of emotions available to us, etc. This “unexpanded” state restricts our freedom and tends to limit our depth of engagement with life – our body awareness, how deep we’re willing to go in relationships with others (and ourselves), our connection to the natural world, our openness to spiritual experiences, etc.
Expanded versus unexpanded isn’t a black-and-white situation. Expansion is relative, always changing, and there’s no end to it. To be open to expanding beyond our limitations wherever, whenever, and however we can is a way of life.
To be clear, “expanded” isn’t the same as happy. There are plenty of people who are happy the way they are, even if there isn’t much (or any) Spirit or growth in their lives. If you’re happy, you’re happy, and I don’t want to try to convince you otherwise!
But once you have an inkling of recognition that there’s more to life than what’s on the surface, it awakens your inner seeker, which has an insatiable appetite for the truth and perpetual inclination toward expansion.
Where do we start? There are countless ways to promote your expansion. In my opinion, two of the most vital and powerful are these:
- Cultivate an inner YES. When life is uncomfortable, we’re pressing against our limitations. When we resist and say “no” to what’s arising, we stay small and confined. When we say yes, the experience changes. When we say, “I’m open to this,” or, “How can I make this an opportunity?” or “How can I grow through this?” or “What is this showing me?” or “How does this support my highest good?” these are all ways of saying YES and promoting expansion.
- Be innocent and curious. One of the biggest hindrances to expansion is all of the shoulds we’re imposing on ourselves and the rest of the world. Some examples: People should let me into the lane when I have my turn signal on! I should be more successful at this point in my life. He should appreciate everything I do around the house! I shouldn’t be sick. Taxes shouldn’t be so high! We all do it. Just watch your mind and you’ll see. There’s a certain arrogance to “should,” as it implies that you know how the world is supposed to be and it’s wrong. Instead, what happens when you release your “shoulds” and your grievances? What happens when you just become innocent and curious?
The third way that I recommend you support your expansion is through our upcoming course, Sacred Expansion. It starts April 1st.
It’s an 8 week journey led by my wife, Briana. She’ll guide you through a nature-based framework for recognizing where you’re limited and discovering who you could be without those limitations; releasing baggage; deepening your connection to Spirit; and building the resilience and courage to continue the process on your own.
Initially, Sacred Expansion was the preliminary phase of our Dragontree Life Coaching training program. We felt this process of “cleaning house” and opening oneself to growth and change was an essential prerequisite before guiding others.
But the response in the first couple years was that the Sacred Expansion portion of the training was, for many students, the most transformative part. So, we decided to make it available to people as a stand-alone course.
Here’s what one of our graduates had to say about it:
Sacred expansion is like a crash course in being a better human. So often, we stop examining what we do and what we say in a meaningful way – we get so steeped in assumptions and learned behaviors, and patterned thinking, that we forget there are other ways to look at things. This is challenging self-work, but at the same time, Sacred Expansion is so gentle, so loving, it’s almost as though the lessons and questions are hugged into you, they are absorbed so sweetly, so completely without judgment or blame or shame. – Heather Wells
I highly encourage you to sign up!
Click here to learn more about it.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. for those who are out of the Gen Z slang loop. . .
Finna: like a contraction of “fixing to,” as in “going to” – “I’m finna go to the store”
Fleek / On Fleek: flawlessly styled, groomed, perfect, etc. “That outfit is on fleek! That song is fleek!”
Stan: a very zealous or enthusiastic fan
W: abbreviation for “win.” Used to congratulate someone or express a victory or success.
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Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been posting excerpts from our upcoming book on our three-part foundation for forging a successful and balanced life: structure, sweetness, and space. First, I explained how sweetness can be scheduled liberally into our lives, and how we can infuse it into otherwise mundane tasks and settings to elevate them – and ourselves. Next, I explained how structure is vital in healthy change and accomplishment, and it’s the means by which sweetness becomes integrated into every day. Finally, there’s space, the hardest thing for people to recognize and value, and the most essential for the fullest awakening of a human soul.
Space is the crucible in which sweetness and structure interact to yield a life that feels inspired, meaningful, and fun. Space is where we connect to Spirit. Space is where we find ourselves. In space we can come to understand our shadow and learn the depths of our potential. Space is where we listen – not to our media, our voice, or our own thoughts, but to the silence that holds it all, to the Truth that’s tapping on the window of our consciousness. Alignment and healing can’t occur without the openness that space provides. Insight and creativity are possible only with space. Sweetness needs space in order to be rooted in authenticity and to penetrate, engage, and feed the deepest parts of ourselves. Structure needs space for perspective; it doesn’t breathe without space.
Many traditions have a term equating to space – as the “emptiness” from which everything is born. In Daoism, 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.
A related term in ancient Chinese philosophy is Tian, meaning heavens or sky. In Daoist cosmology, there are three realms of existence – the heavenly realm above us (tian), the earthly realm below us (di), and the human realm between, where we blend the qualities of heavens and earth and live in the dynamic swirl between these poles. The heavenly realm is considered to be the domain of pure Yang – the creative force and the intangible spiritual origin of everything. And the earthly realm is considered the domain of pure Yin – of substance and form. The ancient glyph for earth was three stacked broken horizontal lines:
As you can see, the breaks in the three lines form a sort of vertical trough in the middle. The quintessential character of the earthly realm is receptive, and this opening in the earth indicates that it’s a vessel – a vessel to receive and hold the spiritual qualities of the heavenly realm. This is how “heaven on earth” occurs – by our making space in ourselves, to be vessels for the truth of our vast undifferentiated awareness.
When we make space in our consciousness, there’s a place for answers and intuition to come in. I’ve attempted to conceptualize this in the diagram below:
Besides the expansion that space enables in us, there’s another great reason to make space a priority: it’s the antithesis and solution to our addiction to the data stream that dominates our lives and attaches us to our devices. All the time we spend plugged in to the massive flow of information and ideas, we’re disconnected from the magic of the natural world around us. Even though we know in our hearts that there’s nothing more precious than the space in which we discover what we’re connected to, we’ve made some pretty deep agreements with our mind to let it run the show, and that means working hard to fill every possible bit of space. Minds don’t like space.
So, this week, I encourage you to strike a compromise with your mind. Ask it to take a break for a while, and promise it that you’ll give it some really juicy reading or a Sudoku later. Then go be. And say hi to space for me.
With love,
Dr. Peter Borten
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I have a long history of not living up to my potential. I had some talent in music, art, and academics, but I spent years noodling around and not making anything of it. I started a lot of things I didn’t finish. This trend started to shift a bit when I was in grad school, mostly because I wanted to practice Chinese Medicine more than I had ever wanted any other achievement. Yet, even though I had the sense that I was still underutilizing my potential, my greatest career aspiration was to be an effective doctor with a very long beard. Then, I met a girl named Briana who wanted to open a spa, and although it sounded impressive, it also seemed like way too much responsibility for my taste . . . especially given my history.
As the years went by, and I watched this woman build the spa into a sizable wellness company, I was impressed by her drive, but I was even more impressed by how she was able to turn ideas into realities, and to do so without losing her balance. I began to see that I could help a lot more people if I utilized avenues beyond my clinical practice, so I gradually took a more active role in the company. But, unlike Briana, for me it felt complicated and crazy-making to have so much going on.
At some point – three spas and one baby later – I dug my heels in. I said something like, “I don’t want anything new or different in our lives for like a decade!” She said, “Show me your schedule and let me watch you work.”
Then Briana truly discovered just how cluttered my mind is and how bad I was at planning, but it was ultimately good for both of us. She had the challenge of figuring out how to teach a right-brained musician-philosopher-type how to efficiently set and achieve goals while remaining organized and balanced with many responsibilities. And I was the beneficiary.
We saw that lot of people weren’t pursuing their big dreams because they already felt maxed out by the everyday stuff (and, unlike me, they didn’t have a partner to push them). Meanwhile, I noticed that many of my patients’ had a similar challenge with implementing consistent self-care practices and making time for the things that made them happy, and I realized that this needed to be integrated into any sustainable framework for achievement. Together, we started to develop a system to help people prioritize the self-care and soul-nourishing parts of life, navigate their life tasks with ease, unleash their potential, and achieve their dreams.
The result was our
Rituals for Living Dreambook. We launched it with a successful Kickstarter campaign. It has sold phenomenally well, and we’ve heard so many amazing stories of transformed lives.
When we asked for readers’ feedback, many of them expressed that they wanted more instruction and accountability. So, we created an online course called
Dreaming and Planning: Create a Meaningful Life. Our aim is to walk people through nine weeks of integrating these concepts into their lives, including choosing a goal and making it a reality.
We aren’t able to do private coaching with everyone who’s interested in this material, and we’d have to charge more than many people could afford, so our aim was to make this course the closest thing to one-on-one guidance at a much more affordable price.
Join us, and bring your amazing gifts into the world!
Be Well,
Dr Peter Borten
PS - Act now to enjoy the best possible price on Dreaming+Planning: Create a Meaningful Life. After tonight, the price will increase permanently.
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