I’ve spent time with several people lately that have been really struggling with deep sadness and grief. This sadness can feel so profound that the heart contracts and it feels very similar to a heart attack. Your heart can feel heavy with grief.

Have you ever felt your heart contract with pain, to where it feels difficult to breathe as well? Panic attacks are actually an activation of the PANIC/GRIEF/ABANDONMENT circuitry. When these attacks happen, it seems as if the very ground beneath your feet falls away. You can feel lost. Your SEEKING circuit dissipates, and you have no way to even begin to make movement in your world.

As we begin to allow ourselves to be held by others, and not be alone in our grief, we can have the courage to name our experience. We can receive some acknowledgement around what it’s like to be us in those moments. Such as, “Would it be sweet if someone understood just how difficult this is?”

Notice what happens in your body as you...

The other day, when I woke up, I felt something was stirring within me. I had had a little bit of a restless sleep with fragments of memories from when I was younger. So, I reached out to my empathy buddy, and I asked for some support, some resonant support of my inner experience.

It is such a pleasure to have a place where you can share your inner experience and to be met right there. To have trust and companionship to discover you really do make sense after all.

As I received the support, what I was able to tune into was a very, very young part of myself. There was a sacred vow, something like, “I, Gloria Mae, solemnly swear to my Essential Self, that I will be utterly committed to being less than. Believing that I’m not enough so that this other person in my life that I was close to, would have peace and security in a world that made them feel insane.”

I really tuned in to that this vow was made out of love for this other being. That is a really important piece...

I want to talk with you today about aging. Aging is something we do from the moment we come into this world. When we are really little we just can’t wait until we are older. There are so many things that we are looking forward to and time seems to stand still when you are young. 

I remember as a kid, when I got 30-minutes to go play, it felt like forever! Well, these days, 30-minutes seems to go by pretty darned quick. 

There are other things that come along with aging, as you get in the older years of aging that is. Maybe you start to notice you have more body aches and pains. I know I have, riding a horse isn’t as easy as it used to be, but it is still really fun. 

Maybe you have less energy and find you need to have your siestas mapped out for yourself. Or, maybe you are noticing you have more wrinkles, or grey hairs, or maybe you dye it. 

There can be so many different things that change in our lifetime. You know, what is possible, when we are...

One of my favorite things to do is to go out in the paddock and be with my healing herd of horses. I really love having the opportunity to support others and facilitate their experience with the herd. There was a particularly touching experience recently.

Someone was really caught up with all the stories that spin around, and around, and around in their mind. This person would get worried that the stories would just take over, because when we have certain stories, we can start believing those stories are true. Even when they are not. 

Having a way to check in to the body’s wisdom, which supports us to come into what is true for us, is really helpful. It’s even more helpful when we are able to do this in the presence of a horse. 

Horses have such big hearts and such big guts and resonance; they are sentient beings who are acoustical. They are able to tune in to what is happening in the human and reflect that back, communicating in such a way that the human...

There have been times when I’ve felt such deep sadness and pain that I would turn to others and take it out on them. I would flip my lid, get angry, have a fit and get really irritable. When I’m able to slow it down, I tap into what is really happening inside. 

This happened the other day with a client. This client was feeling such distress because they had just flipped their lid with their partner. When we took the time to slow down the experience within, they recognized this memory from when they were six or seven years old. 

They had an experience of being forsaken by their parent. We took time to really be with those sensation and notice the sense of hypervigilance that had arisen within them. The memory unfolded a little more and they realized that when they were seven their mother had another baby. When they brought the baby home, the seven-year-old was moved out of their bedroom and they had the experience that their mom just wasn’t the same.

So,...

With the way things have been going in our world, I’ve heard quite a few people talking about how long they have been alone. How long they have been in a sense of isolation and not having the liberty to engage with others as they used to be accustomed to. 

Their life has really changed, and some people feel scared. They are noticing that the longer they are alone, the more sensitive they feel when they do get to venture out. They have a high-tuned alert sensing into other people, worrying about social distancing, worrying about who is wearing a mask and who isn’t wearing a mask. 

They are worried about their own health and well-being, as well as the health and well-being of those they love. So, they might over-think things which creates a worrying cycle that creates more anxiety and stress, which creates more cortisol flooding their system. This is going to wear them out by creating a sense of exhaustion from the inside out. They have this hypervigilance for...

I’ve been thinking about what it’s like when one feels mistrustful. This can show up in different ways perhaps; maybe you’re feeling mistrustful of a situation and there are components of that situation that stand out to you. It just doesn't feel safe, or it feels out of balance. 

Maybe the mistrust is in relationship with another person, there’s something that’s been said, or an action taken that doesn’t contribute to your needs for consideration or respect. 

Mistrust can show up in a lot of different ways. Maybe it shows up because you feel that there is not enough of something so you feel mistrustful whether you’ll have enough for yourself and worried that someone else is going to take more.

Most likely, these scenarios that play out reflections for us of our own inner experiences we had when we were younger. Revealing for us some inner patterns that need acknowledgement of what our experiences were like. We need understanding...

Have you ever had self judgements? I know I have, and I think that’s pretty common for a human being to have.

There was a person I was working with the other day who noticed a pattern that they struggled with. The pattern was being quiet when they were in relationship with somebody instead of speaking up when they had something they would like to say. Or, maybe they didn’t agree with a friend. 

What would happen inside of them is they would have a self judgement. Criticizing not just themselves but also the other person, but not speaking up when they were not in agreement. 

They developed a belief that they held a really bad energy inside of them. There was a hopelessness that this energy that would be so critical would run them, and they would feel helpless and hopeless and they’d say, “I can’t help it!”

A big ball of energy would come up as anger, criticism, and then there would come shame that they would heap upon their own head....

There has been a lot of anxiety that goes around; with any transition, seasonally, a new year, starting a new job, or new neighbors. There are so many different ways that we can experience transitions in our life.

I was working with a client the other day and they were noticing how they’d get really busy leading up to any kind of an event. That it had actually become a way of life. They were noticing just how much getting anxious affected their body.

Not only did if affect their body, it also affected their thoughts, how they would speak to themselves and what they would tell themselves. They uncovered what they would do is tell themselves, “I will not relax. I will be responsible for getting everything done, even though I might suffer just a minute, I will keep on plowing through.”

Underneath that there were some shadow beliefs; I don’t have a choice. I don’t have support, there is a complete lack of support. So, acknowledging the need for...

Have you ever felt intense emotions? I have. It’s really important, if we haven’t had anyone to accompany us with intense emotions, to know that it’s possible to develop not just a tolerance for them, but to welcome them and recognize energetically what they are meaning for us.

To recognize what the gifts are that they are bringing to our awareness, rather than trying to push them away or smoosh them down. They will just get bigger when we do that.

I was working with someone who was feeling very intense emotions. They would have very intense anger, then it would flip into very intense sadness. Their experience was, when these intense emotions came, it always made life more difficult, everything would get worse, and they always felt they were made wrong.

There was no sense of welcoming of their intense emotions, so their intense emotions got even more intense. That can burn us out, it’s really hard on our nervous system, pumping all this cortisol and...