Empathy…

“As sleeping humans start waking up, they wake up to their empathic nature. Empathy is one of the first sign of awakening in humans.”- Cynthia Payendee

Experiencing others’ experiences through our being is the way we connect, we communicate, we commune, we support, we give, we receive, we create and we destroy. Humans are designed to relate, to belong and to move in togetherness and empathy is the key that deepens compassion and ushers us to reach out and to be reached out to and for.

Humans are empath and there is no such thing as being more or less of an empath but rather how much open we are to witnessing, listening, feeling, receiving and giving to, through and for life within us and around us.

As humans, we are wired up to read the energy of others, places, instances, context, history and much more. Reading energy is natural to our energetic make-up. There is no one single human on earth who cannot read the energy of others, space, instances, context and much more.

Most of us veiled, we live our lives robotically, blinded to life unfolding within us and outside us.

Others are woken either intentionally or through cumulated circumstances.

I sit in conversations with women who speak of “draining energy and tiredness at feeling what others’ feel.” These are women who coin themselves as empath and I know it is no different for men and children regardless of age, space and time.

A recent conversation with a young woman, left us both beautifully shaken

“It is a lot for me. I know what people go through when I am physically close to them and this leaves me drained when I leave them.”

 Here are my whispers

At times, it feels like we feel for the world. We are doing the feeling job when most of our fellows are racing.

Often times, we see, hear and feel what will take the other to the next stage and we wiggle at the sight of the other’s unwillingness to listen to his/her self.

Empathy is this innateness to all living beings to feel with and along others.

Empathy calls that we move to a space within, a space that allows us to connect to our own feeling and to relate to the other, our stories need not be the same.

Empathy calls for showing up vulnerably receiving the told and untold stories of the other.

“Empathy is a choice. A vulnerable choice. In order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows this feeling.” Brené Brown

But

There is a huge difference between feeling with someone and feeling the feeling for someone.

There is a huge difference between making your story mine and understanding that you are the owner of your story and it is solely your responsibility to own it, reclaim it and heal your way through it.

There is a huge difference between standing by someone and trying to fix someone.

Pause|Breathe|Check

What are you sitting with?

What feelings? (not thoughts but what are you feeling instead and where is that feeling in your body?)

What is this word “empathy”?

How do you define empathy?

Have you ever experienced empathy in your life?

How do you do empathy?

Empathy is taking the perspective of the other and honoring that this is their truth.

Empathy is recognizing emotion in another and holding space for that emotion without judging and without fixing.

Empathy is showing up and saying “I hear you and I see you, our stories may be different, I may never understand least be moved to experience the intensity of what you are going through right here right now, know that you are not alone.”

 “Empathy has no script. There is no right or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting and communicating that incredibly healing message of “You are not alone.” ” – Brené Brown

What about persons who are are drained after encountering others whether as facilitators and/or fellows on this journey?

Do you go back home with others’ stories imbued in your energetic space?

Do you struggle in cutting off?

Pause | Check

Whose story did I take back home with me?

Am I trying to take ownership of someone else story unconsciously?

How do I navigate through?

1. Boundaries

I am still learning to navigate and negotiate through with boundaries. I stand in truth that as much as we are all connected, it is not my responsibility to fix someone’s life. I stand as a witness and a space holder.

Boundaries are about what I allow in my space and what I will not allow and much more.

Boundaries are fundamentally built from and through my core values.

2. Space for Discomfort

I allow space for the discomfort, the unease and the opening that happens with each encounter. This is the flow of life, consciously and unconsciously we are all facilitating journeys for each other. Encounters are energetically imprinted, so I stay present to the discomfort that may show up at all levels, especially after the encounters.

3. What is calling my attention?

Often times, if I remain unsettled heaving through after my encounter, I pause and ask “What is being mirrored back to me through this person? What part of my own story is showing up? what is awaiting to be acknowledged, held and embraced?”

Unsettled or not, I will always use that encounter as a space of learning and ask myself what is showing for me and allow myself to grow from that space.

4. Who to save?

Am I trying to save myself by saving someone? Am I trying to fix my own story through someone’s journey?

This is tough conversation. This is standing naked in front of self but this is the beginning of empathy.

One cannot demonstrate empathy towards others unless one can stand in empathy with and through self.

When we land in groups (regardless of their size), the energetic and systemic wiring that is re-membering and deepened is such that, we can easily leave that space with others’ imprints as others.

Discernment is needed most now onwards.

Take what belongs to you and leave what belongs to others

In a world that glorifies “Oneness”, we fail to voice out that “oneness starts with self reclaiming, re-membering and integrating parts of oneself and this applies to all humans on earth irrespective of age, time and space.”

 If you are struggling right now to navigate through feeling intensely, for you are a sensitive being and it can be confusing, complicated to feel the depth you do, below are three tips from Jeff Brown, he whispers how to keep the heart open consciously:

“We don't want to deaden our capacity to feel, but if we feel too much, we get run over by an often heartless world.

I have found my best answer in three places:

(1) Selective Attachment; that is- carefully discerning between positive and negative individuals and environments, and only attaching to those people and places that can hold our tender heart safe;

(2) Strong energetic boundaries; that is- being physically and emotionally charged, so that we can more effectively repel unwelcome energies;

(3) Conscious Armoring; that is- learning how to put on armor when necessary to manage the world and difficult situations, and, consciously removing it when it is no longer needed.

If we cultivate these practices, we stand a much better chance of preserving our sensitivity.”

May we be reminded that sacred lies in our experiences, no matter how ugly and dirty they seem, see, hear and feel.

May we be reminded that we are called to stand by and support one another

And true support emerges through supporting self-first

May we be moved to reach out, to talk about our stories, our pains, our wounds, for that which is spoken of and about, losses it’s propensity to shame and guilt.

May we be reminded we are wired up to belong

Our belongingness is catalyst to teaching us what we need most from each other is trusting that the other has all it takes to own one’s life.

Love from my heart to yours

Image source: @travel-now or crylater @Unsplash

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2020. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

Anger as Catalyst

I grew up with roaring thunder inside me. For years, I had this cycle of internalizing my anger until I would move to a peak where I would outbreak havoc in my space.

Post my outburst, I would cripple in self-judgment for I had this shameful guilty relating to anger.

I grew in a space where anger was and is tagged as negative.

Angry persons are bad persons.

Anger is equated to violence.

Imagine a child, an adolescent, a woman, roaring about violations of her boundaries and post the outburst; she is crippled with guilt and shame.

I know, we are many cycling through this right here right now.

It took me years to understand that internalized anger is self-violating and that it was less about my anger but rather my relating to anger as energy moving inside and outside my self.

Anger is probably one of the most stigmatized emotions in this world, often tagged as negative, to be avoided at all cost, spiritually connected beings do not get angry, bring in peace and breathe out anger.

For years, a stiffing intent is in operation which is that of shutting people’s voices through shaming anger as an emotion.

Women are shamed for being angry. Angry women are lunatic; angry women are hysteric; angry women are to be avoided; angry women are not good enough; angry women are to be shamed; angry women are often reminded that they are being too much.

Anger is a healthy response to having boundaries crossed.

Anger is not the same as rage, aggression or acting out. It is possible to be angry with someone or in a given context and still show up vulnerably and engage in a conversation opening up to solutions.

Most of us do not have a template for this healthy version of anger. Our relating to anger is largely influenced on how growing up we experienced and witnessed others people expressing anger; what we were told and taught about anger – ours and others; we might have learned that anger isn’t acceptable or if we express anger, we will be rejected.

Are you someone who says, “I do not get angry”?

Do you pride in being someone who is “never angry”?  

Do you have a relationship with anger?

If you were to use a word to summarize your relationship with anger, what would that word be?

Whatever is our current relationship with anger, it exists. Whenever we deny and/or refuse acknowledgement of our anger, we fail to provide a healthy outlet for it’s expression. The outcome often is our anger gets channeled into something beyond our control,

Sometimes this might be explosive: where we bottle things until we can’t hold back any longer, or until something seemingly innocuous makes us hit the roof , termed by Brené Brown as “chandeliering”

Sometimes unacknowledged anger can manifest as anxiety or depression. Sometimes bottled anger can manifest under the guise of “being honest” and allowing a tirade of pent-up feeling and frustration to pour out in someone’s direction.

Exploring my own relationship with anger, I noticed, in the past I often resorted to sarcasm or barbed comments rather than expressing anger (and the underlying feelings) openly. This doing made me felt safer but also gave me a sense of over-powering the other when I felt at my most vulnerable.

Most of us are raised to believe, view, feel and hear anger as “bad.” But anger isn’t the problem, our blueprint about anger is the issue, change the blueprint, our thinking, emotion, feeling, saying and doing will change.

What messages did you receive about anger in your childhood?

Do you deny or repress your anger, or does anger cause you to get out of control?

Most importantly, what would you like to be able to tell yourself when you feel angry?

 – Dr Arielle Schwartz

Owning one’s inner power calls for ownership of what one thinks, feels, says and do (see blog on Responsibility) and this is the beginning of em-powerment.

Moving self into one’s inner power calls for taking responsibility for what we feel and there is no byspassing of anger as an emotion.

The conversation shifts from “you are responsible for my anger” to “I am in a situation where I am experiencing anger. What is calling to my attention?”

How we navigate through with our anger can either make or break not only our experience of anger but also other persons’ experience of us too.

What is healthy anger?

Healthy anger is acknowledged; seated in the discomfort of emergence; noticed, lived and accepted for what it is.

Healthy anger is acknowledged as an emotion and not as an identity.

Healthy anger is greeted with a questioning process

What is really behind this?

What story am I telling myself?

Often anger masks other more vulnerable feelings like hurt and shame.

“Healthy anger always walks hand in hand with vulnerability. When we express anger without additionally expressing the underlying vulnerability, this will only build barriers. It is one thing to tell friends or loved ones that we feel angry with them; it is another to express anger toward them in a way that is frightening or threatening. We will accomplish more if we express anger in a way that emphasizes that we feel hurt. That can invite the other person to listen to us and to remedy the situation.” - Peter Breggin writes in his book Guilt, Shame and Anxiety

We long to be heard, to be seen, to be felt and to be embraced yet we hold on to standing in our vulnerability, for to be vulnerable is to show up knowing that one has to control on what will emerge. To be vulnerable is to speak up one’s heart knowing that possibilities of one’s voice being ignored exist. To be vulnerable is to feel this touchy aching part of ourselves with her/his stories, wounds, pains and much more. To be vulnerable is to let go of the masks and to reach out to self and others. To be vulnerable is to stand in the discomfort of our yet-to-be embraced nakedness.

Most of us hold on from showing up vulnerably. We intent one thing but we do something else and in most cases, we are acting from a space of protecting selves instead of acknowledging the anger and it’s ilks.

How to cultivate a healthy relationship with anger

1. Acknowledgement

Start with acknowledging our anger. We do not have to like it or love it but rather acknowledge the anger that is showing up. Acknowledgement is the first step to ownership and em-powerment.

2. Hold Space

The act of experiencing anger without judging, without rushing to fix it, without bypassing the emotion.

This calls for love for self. This calls for standing in the discomfort of the emotion without throwing it on people in our space.

This calls for ownership.

As we grow and learn to hold space for our emotions, especially anger, we allow space for the emotions to activate this deep process of growth and transformation.

3. Gathering my stories

Anger is a powerful catalyst for growth, opening us deeper and moving us to our most vulnerable spot.

Ask:

“What is really behind this anger?”

Seek help and support. Let there be no shame for seeking and support.

And if our shame and guilt show up, hold space for them.

Meet them tenderly, they are equally deserving of our attention.

Let there be no bypassing.

 4. Explore the messages and Uncovering the masks

In most of us, anger does not always manifest as anger, sometimes it is resentment; sometimes it is frustration; sometimes it is anxiety and sometimes it’s depression.

These masks veil us because they feel safer and more acceptable than anger.

Start by exploring the messages you have received around anger. Growing up, I received these messages around anger.

“Good persons do not get angry. Anger means violent.

You are as bad and mean as that person when you are angry.

When you express anger, people will leave you.

A woman better learn to digest her anger or she will love her man.

Your anger is unjustified and unreasonable.”

If we have internalized these kinds of messages, then we have crafted a blueprint around anger and how it is to be in operation or in in-operation in our life and consciously and /or unconsciously, we will channel our anger in to something that feels more acceptable.

Every emotion is valid. No emotion is our identity. No emotion defines us.

Anger is as valid and as acceptable as joy, sadness, excitement, fear, happiness or any other emotion on the emotional spectrum.

Look for the feelings underneath the anger: usually these are a combination of hurt, shame, guilt, anxiety or similar. These are the root of our anger and we need to acknowledge them to relate to and express our anger in a healthy way.

5. Re-claiming and Rewriting your relationship with anger

Anger is not the problem but our blueprint about what anger is and how it is to show up in our life.

Anger discomforts but it a response to feeling wronged and violated and it can lead to constructive outcomes when processed and responded to appropriately.

If you were to re-write your relationship with anger:

What would that new relationship look like, feel like, sound like?

What would be your new experience of your relationship with anger?

6. Practice Healthy Anger

• Become aware of your anger.

• Gracefully allows space for this emotion.

• Take time, step out, listen to yourself, breathe, process your feelings and get to the roots of your anger.

• Decide how you want to respond. Responding healthily calls for showing up vulnerably in intent.

No matter how hurting we are, if we express our anger without expressing the emotions and stories that lie underneath, we will raise more barriers in relating to the other.

By showing up with our rawness and speaking of the spectrum of our experience, we give other a change to empathize with us and this is catalytic for deeper conversing, inclusive solutions and trust.

Unless we grow in awareness of what has been violated in us, we will replay the same cycle over and over again. Unless others are given space to experience our experience of our anger in a healthy way, we will fail to own our voice fully and we will run the blame on what was done unto us.

 May we dare to show up in our aching with the intent to speak up our stories, meeting our anger as a catalyst for including self and others.

May we show up, we speak our stories behind our anger, for anger is never a solo emotion, something else awaits above to be met and to be held.

Remember even the strongest and most resilient of us will go through challenges. This path of inward descend is not easy. There are bound to be dark days, come what may, do not fall in despair and if you do despair, then roll your aching on the earth, cry out and slowly gather yourself back. And if you struggle to rise then crawl your entirety, crawl like a beggar lifting your heart to life and you will be heard, seen, felt and embraced.

  Love from my heart to yours

Image source: @Camilla Quintero Franco @Unsplash

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2020. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

When the “why” and “how” are unresourceful …

“Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

The right questions are catalyst in deepening our understanding of ourselves and our current context.

The question “why” moves us to the core of ourselves , our lives and our choices. As humans we often tend to swirl in our detailed drama and the “why” question when asked in a grounded way within specific context, activates this process of channeling and funneling vital information that leads to awareness and enlightenment – we start seeing, hearing, and feeling the “why” behind our “what”.

Fundamentally, the “why” question leads us to our intent, our values, to that which matters most to us yet we are mostly unaware of and unconscious to.

The “how” question is about gathering vital information about strategy, about energy investment to making things happen whether consciously and/or unconsciously. The “how” question is about personal power.

The “why” and “how” questions are important and necessary but there are instances when these questions will do more harm than good; will drain rather than energize and will deepen the trench of drama rather than usher healing.

One specific example is “ending of a relationship”, romantic partnership, dating or regardless of how you will term what you shared with the significant other.

Sisters, when this relationship comes to an end, whether you saw or you did not see or whether you tapped into or you did not tap into the signs and symptomatic resonance of shifts and change, the blow can be huge and hard.

I hear you. I hear you loud.

Past the denial, the anger, the rejection and the attempts to make it back, we dive into the “why” and “how”.

Why did he do that?

How is he able to live without thinking of me and my pains?

Why did he not think of me and us?

Why did he break his promises?

How could he?

Why did he?

No matter how much digging we do, asking the same questions over and over again, none of what will show up as answers to us through that person or our entourage will quench our madness for long enough until we step into the questioning cycle again.

Why is this so?

When in pain, we tend to make sense of “why has this happened?” and we work from our inner systems (beliefs, agreements, narratives, values, perceptions, identities and much more) and our system is neither the reality of this world nor the other person.

We navigate life with our map, our beliefs, our filters, our memories (which get reconstructed over and over again), our trauma, our narratives and much more.

Our sense of reality is not reality per se. Our sense of others is not what others are.

How do we navigate through while setting aside the “why” and the “how”?

Begin with self

Acknowledgement of what has happened for me

What is showing up for me? (in terms of feelings, emotions, narratives)

What is my immediate need?

How can I support myself in meeting that need?

What internal and external resources do I need?

Can I do this on my own?

Reach out and seek support

Know that to be supported is to receive and give love

Know that belongingness begins with this innate quality of opening to receive and give love without questioning the bargain in return

May we be reminded that People do what they do

None of what people do has much to do with us

None of what we do has much to be with others

This is hard to digest

This is hard to accept

Behind our actions, there are needs seeking to be met, gaps to be filled

And we do our dance more than often unintentionally

Unless we start moving, being, feeling, breathing and doing intentionally, we will keep resisting changes

Endings are not easy

Endings bring to surface grief

This world cringes at the face of grief

There is sacredness in griefing endings, in griefing those unmet dreams, broken promises.

And as we walk through the grief, the call is to keep the heart open to grow, to learn, to shift, and to glow within this discomfort.

May we be humbled through life

Love from my heart to yours

Image source: @Ducan Sanchez @Unsplash  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2020. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

Worthy Now...

The greatest challenge for most of us is to believe that we are worthy in this now regardless of all. Worthiness is such a quality that demands no pre-requisites yet as humans we have unknowingly, knowingly, unconsciously and/or consciously crafted, agreed to and committed to requirements that leads to “being worthy”.

This engagement to “worthiness’ pre-requisites” often resonates as follows:

I will be worthy if I find my purpose on earth

I will be worthy when I no more respond to external triggers

I will be worthy when I have healed from trauma

I will be worthy when I have mastered meditation

I will be worthy when I feel grounded enough

I will be worthy when I am no more triggered by my partner’s actions

I will be worthy if he fights to have me in his life

I will be worthy when I can hold space for myself

I will be worthy if everyone think that I am amazing writer

I will be worthy when my mother finally sees me for who I am

I will be worthy if I stay committed to my yoga practice

I will be worthy when I have my own place

I will be worthy when I am flowing through and trusting life

 Do you resonate with these statements?

How strong is the resonance?

On a scale of 0-10, give a rating to each of these statements in view of your current life. (0 as this is not my current state and 10 is the highest state of how true and resonating this statement is for you in your life)

 “Here's what is truly at the heart of Wholeheartedness:

Worthy now.

Not if.

Not when.

We are worthy of love and belonging now.

Right this minute.

As is.”

~Brené Brown

We live in a conditional world and most of us facilitators are working and walking to undo these conditions for ourselves while holding for our fellows to undo theirs.

There is fine line between seeking to better oneself as human and believing that one is not worthy until one reaches that peak of betterment.

We may want to deepen our commitment to ourselves, to our close ones, to our community, to our choices and decisions. We may want to transcend our limited beliefs, break the cycles of unhealthy patterns, heal from trauma and own our responsibility to our life.

All of the above are “ok”. They are focal points but none of the above determines our worthiness.

The prime reason why many of us struggle past our goals, our life failing to validate and celebrate ourselves, our lives is because we are in utter dislike with who we are right here right now; we are unable to see, feel and hear worthiness in ourselves right here right now.

“Just remember, we have to love that thing that we want to change.” ~Brené Brown

These words may seem counter-intuitive. If we seek to change ourselves then we have to love that thing that we are, gently learning not to attach our identify to behaviors, roles, events, habits, situations and circumstances.

Self -Shaming | Self Loathing | Self Spitting

Self Blaming | Self Disrespect

All these demotivate and belittle

Self love and self respect motivates, inspires and aspires self and the world 

You are worthy right here right now

There are no conditions to be being worthy

We are worthy right here right now

The body will catch us quick

The mind will disagree

But keep playing that song

“I am worthy right here right now. There is no power on earth that can invalidate my worth not even mine.” 

May we be brave enough to walk on this path

May we be gentle

May we be kind

May we be held gently and kindly

Image source: @Micah Hill @Unsplash  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2020. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

Welcome the Unwelcome

What is our immediate response when “that which” shows up brings DISCOMFORT?

For the majority of us:

We close off

We close our hearts

We close our lungs

We close our lives.

Then we are left with this DISCOMFORT of being present to “something” that threatens our COMFORT.

That something is tagged as UNWELCOME. UNWELCOME is experienced as DISCOMFORT.

We feel harmony is being threatened.

That “something” could be the death of a close one, the end of a relationship, the emancipation of a child, a change in career, professional redundancy, changing homes, meeting new persons, dining with in-laws, hosting guests, presenting a project, engaging with a group of people, diverging opinions- be it political, religious, spiritual, cultural, intellectual, social  …

That “something” is the UNWELCOME and our experience of the UNWELCOME is that which ushers in DISCOMFORT.

We identity and label the “DISCOMFORT” through our feeling and the threads of our thoughts.

The “DISCOMFORT” shows up as a challenge to the current status quo or the set vision.

UNWELCOME is experienced as DISCOMFORT. None of us wants the UNWELCOME in our lives, in our space and as part of our plans. None of us want uneasiness, hardships, loses, pains and contradictions in our lives.

We live our lives planning for the WELCOME and when the UNWELCOME announces itself we cry and wiggle. The UNWELCOME ushers DISCOMFORT.

Tell me the story of your UNWELCOME (that which you planned to happen but something else shows up)

What is present in your life right here and right now that brings DISCOMFORT to you?

How are using the word DISCOMFORT?

What are the feelings?

What are the thread of thoughts?

What are the sensations?

What has led you to label that which has showed up as “DISCOMFORT”?

If you were to tell me the story of your UNWELCOME through images, colours, sounds, shapes, textures, movements, then what would I see, hear and feel?

On a scale of 0-10, what is your current level of ease in companion of your UNWELCOME? (0 being “no ease” and 10 being “highest level of ease”)

What is next?

How do we fix this discomfort?

How do we reverse the status?

What are the solutions?

“There is no fixing of DISCOMFORT. There is no plaster solution to DISCOMFORT. DISCOMFORT calls forth to be acknowledged. We do not have to like or love or be grateful for DISCOMFORT. Choosing to navigate through DISCOMFORT is a choice. We can either park DISCOMFORT for later or numb ourselves or ignite the flight mode. Whatever we choose we will harvest the fruits of our seeds ahead.”

One recurring theme since end of last year is “navigating through the DISCOMFORT of the UNWELCOME.”

The more I become present to my life and the more I witness the lives of women I journey with, I grow in the awareness that “It is less about the situation but more about our inability to honor and navigate through DISCOMFORT.”

It is not death of a close one but this inability to give self space and time to grieve.

It is not the closure of a relationship but this inability to dream beyond the pains.

It is not the diverging opinion but this inability to open up and receive from that which is different.

(words of caution – these words flew through me and in no way, are they absolute in their selves. They symbolically represent the essence of the theme. Allow yourself to see beyond and if these words bring DISCOMFORT, then ask yourself, what am I in DISCOMFORT to right here right now?)

Whenever UNWELCOME announces, there is no rushing through this process.

One can either walk through or numb oneself or fight one’s way away from it.

Walking with UNWELCOME through DISCOMFORT asks for vulnerably opening the heart with this faith that we shall grow and glow through this process.

Journeying with UNWELCOME calls for a change in our hearts, finding that soft spot and that tenderness in that DISCOMFORT and staying with it.

UNWELCOME teaches us, reminds us, guides us to witnessing the polarity of life and death, day and night, the co-existence of COMFORT and DISCOMFORT.

Many years before, our ancestors understood this. They held space for life while death was honored and revered as part of the circle of life.

Our resistance to experiencing and witnessing the UNWELCOME for we are quick to retaliate in face of DISCOMFORT, is what deepens the painful trance.

I believe from now onwards, individually and collectively, we are called to hold space for UNWELCOME and it’s DISCOMFORT.

We are called to remember and re-member that both WELCOME and UNWELCOME, COMFORT and DISCOMFORT have co-existed from the beginning of time and within we have enough, we are enough to navigate through if we choose to.

May we gather strength, love, care, nurture, community, wisdom and vision from and through the WELCOME and the COMFORT.

May we open up to learn, to service, to purge, to love, to deepen, to vision, to envision, to create and to co-create from and through the UNWELCOME and the DISCOMFORT.

May we be vulnerable and kind towards ourselves

May we tender to the PAINS | TEARS| FEARS| LOSS| TRAUMA |SHAKES that show up

May we reach out for support

May we show up to and for our communities

May we honor our voices

May we bow in reverence to our tears

May we stand in remembrance of sacred life and death

May we hear that seeking help and support is an act prayer for self and the collective

 Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: @Mohammed Nohassi  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2020. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

Responsibility is Powerful

What do I understand by “responsibility”?

What do I believe about “responsibility”?

What do I value about “responsibility?”

What do I mean when I say “responsibility”?

Image Source @DevaVenketasamy

PAUSE|BREATHE| REFLECT

Ultimately responsibility is about our responses and our ability to take actions.

To be responsible means to be accountable or to have ownership or to be answerable.

But what are we specifically answerable for?

PAUSE| ASK | JOURNAL

 What follows next is a brief of the 4 Power Zone Pattern (every meta-coach licensed under the International Society of Neuro-Semantics, co-Founded by Dr. Michael Hall, goes through this pattern over and over again for his/her own sanity with the intention to best support clients)

We are responsible at two levels

Level Inner/Private

We are responsible for our thinking and feeling – emotional and mental

Thinking: representing, believing, valuing, understanding, reasoning, etc.

Feeling: somatizing, valuing, etc.

This is our inner world and it’s much more complex than what is written out here..

 Level Public/Outer

We are responsible for what we say and what we do – linguistic and behavioural

Speaking: languaging, using and manipulating symbols, asserting, etc.

Behaving: acting, responding, relating, etc.

This is what how we bring to surface our inner world into the outer world

 To simplify this, we have two innate powers which we develop over time as we age and if provided the right environment, we blossom and own our power fully.

Our inner powers are that of feeling and thinking and our outer powers are that of doing and saying.

The two power zones are interconnected, what lives inside is projected outside.

We are responsible for our thinking, feeling, saying and doing.

Regardless of our depth of compassion, love, care and nurture, we are not responsible for others’ thinking, feeling, saying and doing.

PAUSE| CHECK

How do these above lines sit with you?

 I often sit with clients who keep stumbling over this one peak. “ feeling responsible for others’ feeling, thinking, speaking and behaving” and it gets trickier in relating with immediate close ones.

 PAUSE| CHECK

Does this sound familiar to you?

On a scale of 0-10, how responsible are you for your partner’s/children’s/parents’/friends’/colleagues’/ others’ feeling, thinking, speaking and behaving? (0 is the lowest score of your being,feeling, living and doing responsible for others’ feeling, thinking,speaking and behaving and 10 is the highest score")

Against what quantitative and qualitative facts have you given yourself the above rating?

Until the age 10, a child cannot dissociate himself/herself from his/her immediate caregivers. He/she believes to hold responsibility for others’ responses, especially the immediate caregivers.

Every child will go through this process as a natural development of his/her cognitive and interpersonal powers and eventually learn to deepen and strengthen his/her innate powers. From this place of ownership, we will see adults owning their power fully and playing an active part in creating their lives.

Truth is, most of us will not move beyond this point. We will age believing, thinking, feeling that we are responsible for others’ responses and others’ are responsible for our responses.

 What are the indicators?

BLAME| BLAME | BLAME

Blame is the one ROARING  indicator.

Blaming others | Blaming Self | Blaming the World | Blaming our Parents

Blaming our Government | Blaming our Culture |Blaming our History

Blaming our inability to choose otherwise

Blaming our habits

Blaming our past

 The higher the level of blame in our life for our past and current happenings, the higher we are out of balance on our power zones.

I see this especially with women who come to me either for coaching sessions or in women circles. Women have been trained for years to give their power away. We give our innate powers away, our power to responsibly create the life we want and this begins with our innate powers of feeling, thinking, speaking and behaving. We live powerlessly for more than often, out of our longing to maintain harmony, we allow our lives to be run by and through others; we hold ourselves responsible for what happen to others both internally and externally. We dim our light in fear of hurting others.

Women who will read this, know what I am speaking of.

Men who will this, I know you are not indifferent to these words. Your world is mirror to ours.

 Terrible things happen in life. Challenges, problems, and undesirable events occur. Things go wrong, plans fall apart, relationships end, the best intentions fail to achieve objectives, people trick and cheat us, rob and rape, and do all kinds of bad things.

Endless among us engulfed in deep rooted trauma, we may never step out of feeling, thinking, speaking and behaving as a victim.

For some of us, waking up is our best and we may never heal in this life, we may never be moved enough to own our innate power to feel, think, speak and behave without projecting and/or absorbing others’ realities as the cause to our state.

Space be held for this collective part of us, this part that will not heal in this life time.

 For those of us who are willing to be willing to brave this tide, know that to think and feel that you are a victim is a choice.

You can think otherwise.

You can feel otherwise.

You can make that choice.

PAUSE | BREATHE

 An invitation into the mind-set of responsibility

To live within and through responsibility, it starts with acknowledgement of one’s powers (inner: to feel, think and outer: to speak and behave), checking where one is on this spectrum, appreciating this awareness and gently moving self in a space of self as the cause and keys to all, one step at a time.

To be able to do that, it calls for several cognitive awarenesses, as below (but the list is not an end in itself)

Take each of these below phrases, give yourself a rating on a scale of 0-10 and with each rating have your quantitative and qualitative evidences to support your rating. (with 0 being this is not your actual experience and with 10 being the highest rating of your experience as a human)

“I’m the person in charge of my thinking, emoting, speaking, and acting.”

“I can hold no one else responsible for what I think, believe, understand, decide, remember, imagine, etc.

“No one makes me or forces me to think or feel anything.  My thoughts and feelings are mine, they are created inside my body, and they are created by the meanings that I create about things.”

 What do we do next?

Start with creating

What’s important to me?

What are my talents, skills, possibilities?  What can I develop?

How do I want to live my life?  Relate to others?  Invest my energies?

As we dive deeper in owning our inner and outer power, we end up creating a solid sense of independence which then allows us to be healthily related to others in an inter-dependent way (rather than co-dependent).  Then with this core sense of responsibility, we know that we and we only are responsible for our health, wealth, mental wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, relationships, work and much more.

Ownership of one’s power often leads to closure of doors to that which engulf us in unhealthy living.

 Responsibility is Powerful

Creation happens from a space of responsibly using one’s power

May we create from a space of responsibility

May we be reminded that our acts of responsibility impact ourselves and the collective

May we be brave enough to leave legacy of “power ownership” for our children

Take it slow | There is no rush on this path

Breathe | Rest | Love | Laugh

 Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: @DevaVenketasamy  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2020. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

Being in a flow state

What it means to be in a flow state:

Popularized by positive psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura, flow state describes a feeling where, under the right conditions, you become fully immersed in whatever you are doing.

Image @DevaVenketasamy

Through the process of being absorbed in whatever we are doing taken over by a sense of fluidity between our body, heart, soul and mind, our senses become heightened and our focus deepened into that one act of doing and being, creativity floods in effortlessly, we experience what we coin as the “flow state”. We are literally flowing through each stage with ease while the knowingness of the unknown ahead has little if not no grip on us.

Have you ever experience a “flow state”? (know that this is subjective to how you define flow state and it does not have to be what I wrote)

If I was to peep into your inside world, what will I see, hear, feel and witness of your “flow state”?

While I gave my description of the “flow state”, how would you define your “flow state”? (Think about the qualities, the nuances, the sounds, the sensations, the words, the colours and anything that may come to you.)

Where do we begin if we are to consciously move into the “flow state”?

We start with clarity on our intention and from our intention, we move into action.

It seems easy but often the intention part is the tedious drilling and once we move through this, we are able to see beyond.

 How does this apply to our lives?

Last week, one of my clients said these,

“I feel out of flow.

I want to be in flow.

I want to experience being in flow again and again.”

This conversation got me thinking deep as what it means to be in the “flow state” in our day to day and I questioned,

What does it mean to be in the flow state?

What if we are limiting the flow state to “mainstream-positivism” only?

What if through our blinkers we are bypassing truths opening up to, for, through and within us?

If I were to shift my current definition of the “flow state”, what will I see, feel and hear otherwise that I am yet to see, feel and hear?

 Here my whispers:

I have heard myself and many cried about being “out of flow” when wounds, pains, trauma, tears, fears, challenges, blockages and troubles show up.

We are quick to coin such situations as being “out of flow”, that is, not in the flow state.

If being in the flow state equates to being immersed in life, receiving, witnessing, giving, easing through then I believe that the flow state opens us readily to that which we have kept hidden for years and lives.

Do not curse the wounds, pains, trauma, tears, fears, challenges, blockages and troubles easily. The wounds, pains, trauma, tears, fears, challenges, blockages and troubles are part and parcel of dancing with life through the flow state.

As we deepen our immersion in life, we are bound to come face to face with the shadow self, the unspoken part of self. This happens only when one is in the flow state. Those of us who are descending inwards know this stage of meeting the shunned self, that part which brings in another level of awareness, growth, opening and humility.

To be flow is to move.

To move is to shuffle.

Shuffling brings its ounce of chaos.

Chaos precedes any creative process.

What has shifted in your awareness? What are you present to right here right now?

Do you still see, feel and hear the flow state as before?

How would you define the “flow state” now?

Being in the flow state also means welcoming the discomfort..

Welcoming the discomfort and consciously choosing to create from there.

What do we do when wounds, pains, trauma, tears, fears, challenges, blockages and troubles show up?

We stay open. We keep the heart open. We become present to the inner conversations.

We pause and ask:

What is showing up for me?

What is my priority need?

How can I support myself?

If I ever to use this energy that has showed up for, to,through and within me, what can I create that will nurture my life and impact beyond my life?

This is my lesson from last year. If my inner victim shows up, I hold space for her but I am intentional in staying open to life, no matter how scared I am, I stay open.

Humans are open by default, for we belong even when we crave for belongingness, we already belong.

We are always in the flow state, our intention tells us of our focus.
Check our intention and change the quality of flow state we experience.
We are in the flow state connected to our intention.

As we march one step into 2020, May we be grounded in our intention.

May clarity usher through, within, to and for us.

May we remember that even the ugly, the dirty, the pains, the tearing, the tearful, the fearful are part and parcel of being in the flow state.

Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: @DevaVenketasamy  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2020. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

Intention Setting Part 2: What lenses are we using to vision our future?

We are many to have experienced in the past, to be experiencing in this now and to experience in future frustrations as to manifesting our set intentions.
 
For most of us, when we are guided and led through sessions by a facilitator/coach/mentor/teacher/guide, we are able to move to a space of seeing, feeling, sensing, hearing and witnessing “what we want”.
 
This is the beginning of the enfolding of “that which our heart deeply seeks” from the creative matrix of Universe.
 

Yet, we are many to struggle to move beyond the point of vision setting.
We have a vision and despite all our sincere dedicated active efforts, the entirety of our visions if not parts of our vision remains un-manifested.
 

Why so?

Here is one recurring pattern that I have witnessed these past months in my coaching sessions with clients:

When we set intentions, how we process the world around us and how we perceive the future is crucial is the manifestation of that future.
The lenses that we are using to look at the future are pivotal in moving us either towards or away from “that which we have asked for”.
 

What lenses are you using to look at the future?
Lenses of the past? Lenses of the future?
 
I invite us all
|Pause| Breathe|
Become aware of space around us
Let our gaze roam
|Pause| Breathe|
 
Ask these questions
When I look at my present, what eyes am I predominantly using?
Do my eyes predict the next based on what I have already lived?
Do I fear that “that which I have asked for” will never happen?
Am I open to unfolding of newness and possibilities especially connected to known spaces, places and relationships?
How often do I hear myself say “well, it is impossible”?

 
Many of us tend to look at the future with the eyes of the past, this is an unconscious deeply rooted programming on autopilot mode.
We set intentions, yet the emotional charge of our past comes in dictating our vibrational alignment with that which we have asked for.
 
We set intentions, yet for many, the belief of the fear that it will not happen, the unworthiness, the memories of having been hurt, the imprints of the past experiences, the divorce, the loss of a job, the death, the losses and much more come in our way.

The Law of Attraction gifts us exactly that which we are vibrating.

 
We set an intention, yet deep within, we do not feel worthy enough to receive, we believe that we have struggle to make things happen, we believe that we need to close off to protect ourselves, we believe that external factors are key to us getting that which we have visioned…
The list is endless.
We get exactly that which we vibrate at an unconsciously level.
 

|Pause| Check|
How does this sit with you?

 
Our past eyes predict, especially catastrophes. Our past eyes caution. Our past eyes restrict. Our past eyes operate within a closed container for they are limited to the known possibilities and hurdles. Our past eyes demand that the other change, for our vision to manifest. Our past eyes worry about the external “how”.
 
Our future eyes are not limited to what we went through in the past and what we are experiencing in this now.
Our future eyes do not care whether we do not have enough money right here right now; whether we have had dysfunctional past relationships; whether we do not a car; whether we are homeless; whether we have been violated; whether we have violated..

Our future lenses is not restricted to the past for the future lenses is grounded in possibilities of openness, growth, healing, relating and much more.
 

|Simplify|
 
Intention setting is placing that seed deep in the darkness of earth’s womb.
The lenses that we are using to look at our future direct our energy and unconsciously, we use these lenses to nurture the seed and this nurture determines whether the seeds will set roots and grow into the plant that we envisioned for ourselves.

If we seek a future different from our past, for this is the very basis of visioning, then we are called activate new neuron pathways inside us.
Once these new pathways are activated, they grow in depth, network, density the moment we start focusing different compared to what we know and what we have used in the past.
 

 What are you nurturing your vision with?

What support do you need?

What is showing up for you right here right now?
 

Be kind
Be gentle with yourself
It takes bravery to keep running the redundant hurting cycles to survive
It takes equal bravery to step out of the redundant hurting cycles to gasp for air and gift yourself the chance of seeing otherwise.
Wherever you are regardless of what you believe about yourself, know that I see you and you are enough

 
 
Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy 

PS: Spread the words and share it with someone who may need to hear,see and feel it all

Image source: Ben Helisson @ Unsplash  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

What is intention setting?

Clients who sign up for preliminary sessions leading to coaching journeys often ask this question,

“What is intention setting?”

Intention setting is getting clear on “what you want”.

Intention setting is making a consciousness grounded choice on where you will be focusing your energy onwards for a near future, mid-term future and long term future.

Stating what you want is different from saying “for what I want to happen, he has to change, she has to go, they have to stop controlling me, my boss has to change his/her attitude, the world has to change, society has to accept me, my mother has to stop nagging me and this list is endless.”

|Conditions|

This is not intention setting; this is controlling everything in your life.

Intention setting is as simple as it sounds, “clarity on what you want”.

Intention setting lies at the core of any coaching conversation.

Why so?

Not deciding on what we want to focus our energy on in a session gets us to dance, to swirl, run and roam aimlessly.

|Pause |Imagine|

|Run| Swirl| Dance|

|Roam Aimlessly|

This running, swirling, dancing and aimless roaming, opening doors and never closing the ones that have served, our energy goes in all directions and we are left drained instead of energized and focused.

This is a cycle that most of us are engaged in our everyday life until we decide to pause and start dwelling on what we truly deeply want.

Focus is about directing energy and when energy is directed intentionally, one starts playing an active role in shaping oneself and one’s world.

For most of us, in the beginning we are unable to state clearly what we want and one of the reason is we have been wired internally for years to flood energy in all directions that pausing to nail one specific suddenly presents confusion, unclear and   threat to the internal world where energy has been flooding in all directions instead of on specifics.

We have been training ourselves to roam in all directions.

Can we learn to live intentionally?

|Absolutely Yes|

Where to start?

In many instances, having a grounded conversation with a coach, a facilitator supports in bringing clarity on our inner strategies, beliefs, agreements, values and much more. The act of being heard and being mirrored back by and through someone else brings a wealth of information about ourselves that support us in gaining clarity on what we want.

Self-help books, podcasts and intention setting exercises are equally helpful and purposeful.

Whenever you are, whether you are sitting, or standing, whether you are in hope or in despair, whether you are seeking or you are confused, whatever it is, if you have reached so far, know that these words were meant for you.

Pause and ask yourself this one question

“What do I want?”

And allow yourself to be moved to moments of epiphany unfolding visions of whatever it is that you want and for this to happen, you will have to stop roaming aimlessly.

Remember this is just the initial step, the rest follows through and within. In coming weeks, I will talk more about it.

Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

PS: Spread the words and share it with someone who may need to hear,see and feel it all

Image source: H-H-HeyerleinE @Unsplash 

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

Balance an Ever Dynamic Dance

These past months ushered intensity in ways I have not experienced before. Four months through the steepest inward descend, I am gently yet fiercely emerging allowing balance to own it’s rightful place.

Our human body, this temple knows its way to balancing,

to reaching, to being and to doing equilibrium.

I am witnessing how the world that we live in, has cut off from this essence, from this truth.

When we pause long enough to listen, there is this intuitive flow that guides us to whatever it is that we need most at specific times.

Our physical body does not operate in isolate. We are an intricate system of emotions, chemicals, atoms, molecules and through it all, energy is the essence and the core.

I believe there is an intelligence within us that knows it’s way to achieving balance at all levels. This intelligence is alive, in motion, in service, in support, in guidance, in leading within each one of us.

What we go through, how we go through, our lifestyles, our inner world, our beliefs, our agreements, our narratives, our fears, our wounds, our trauma, our hopes, our dreams, our desires, our passions, our expectations, our disappointments, our celebrations, our beginnings, our endings, our emotions, our feelings, our reacting, our responding, they all impact on our inner equilibrium.

June 2010, I made a choice to end my 10years heavy medical allergic treatment with no back up. It would take me months to learn to trust that all I had to do was to give my physical body space to walk it’s way to balance while learning to tend to both my draining and healthy cycles, patterns, narratives, reacting, and responding.

It has been a long journey since; my physical body has healed in ways that cannot be explained. These past 8years, we had uncovered diseases, unexplained peaks of triglyceride, high probability of fibromyalgia, clinical depression, high inflamed sciatic nerves, shoulder sciatic, unexplained prolonged head aches, Post Traumatic Syndrome & Post-Secondary Traumatic Syndrome, the list is endless.

Each time, I have been diagnosed with one such so called disconnected disease, I would pause long enough and whisper “we will show you”.

“We will show you”, is my way of roaring that the entirety of “Whatever I am” does not and will not conclude an agreement with the diagnosis.

I am not negating the help of medical science but modern medicines treat us as disconnected operating parts. In recent years, quantum physics have been surfacing wisdom in a more understandable or rather acceptable ways. Quantum Physics is now bringing evidence of an interconnected life within and with the outside world, how gratitude impacts, how prayers miles away can heal and how one tiny butterfly can either cause a havoc or birth a new world. None of these are aliens to our psyche, for deep within, there is this intelligence that still taps into this wisdom passed through our ancestors, be it through the way we are called to honor food, life, earth and healing through nature.

Since 2010, I have learned to hold myself to this trust that my body is always working towards equilibrium and my job is not to get in it’s way.

I recommend that whoever seeks to engage consciously, actively and with full awareness on such path, to please seek support from grounded facilitators.

There are endless unconventional modalities that support humans holistically be it through energy healing, movements, art of breathing, meditation, creative expressions, coaching.

On my own journey, my focus has been on reconnecting with my body temple. I have immersed myself in yoga, energy works, healing, coaching, arts and creative expressions, movements works, nature, intentional rituals, my menstruation cycle and trauma works.

When we begin to trust this intelligence that dwell within, there is wave of transformation that ushers in and one step at a time, we are transformed from what we eat, to how we speak, from our hair to our toes.

Balance right now is not the same Balance in coming hours or months or years.

Our job is not to get in the way of our Balance. Our job is not to control our equilibrium but rather to play an active role in walking towards our inner Balance.

And we start playing that active role, our inner balance shifts our outer world,; relationships, people, places; food, breathing, work, creating and much more.

2019 is my year of speaking, spreading, whispering, talking, teaching, learning, creating, co-creating, unlearning about cycles. As a Circle Facilitator and an Em-Powerment Coach for Women, I thought I had understood the essence of cycles yet these past months I was swirled into my own cycles.

For two weeks now, I have been consciously rewiring my brain. This rewiring is a grounded choice pertaining to what has emerged for me. Rewiring is not unknown to us yet we are not many to do it consciously.

I have much to share, to say, to whisper, to give and to receive.

In coming weeks and months, I will dive deeper in my sharing.

I believe the juiciness and ripeness of our stories are meant to be shared as prayers for self and collective.

As I ease my way through my sharing, I invite each one of you to pause and let these words seep deep within. You may agree or disagree, you connect or disconnect with me, know that there is space for it all. My intention is not to seek alignment nor agreement but rather to ignite conversations that will serve the purpose of moving us to question, to query, to seek and to challenge with the intent of elevating awareness and living consciously.

I will love to hear from you.

Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: Alexander Krivitshi @Unsplash 

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

|WEIGHT|BELLY FLATNESS| BOOBSTIGHTNESS| BOOTY FIRMNESS” WRIGGLENESS FACE|

“My dieting never lasts for long. Each time it lasts for one month at most and then I get tired, it feels like a punishment.” she shared.
“What is your intention for dieting?” I asked
The logical answer came in “to be healthy and fit.”
I kept pressing and she added, “well, my blood test is great. Everything is fine with me.”
“What is your intention for dieting?” I pressed

“A flat belly looks beautiful when I dress up.” She added, hearing her own self loud in front of another
“Who said that a flat belly looks beautiful when you are dressed up?” I asked
“My mother, I have heard her being cautious about food, her own uneasiness around her body size, structure all her life. I see how I have joined her on this ride.” She added as her narratives unfold

|MY DEBRIEF AS A WITNESS AND COACH|
Behind everything that we do, be and engage in whether actively or passively, we carry intentions. Above all these intentions, we carry meanings, deeply embedded meanings that we use to navigate life

Some meanings allow us to stand in our Power and be our bestest selves and other meanings drains us.
Often we engage in activities with a certain focus, yet we do not reach far, for underneath we have a circus of meanings, intentions, beliefs, relating, identities and much more at play.

This was a recurring example of what on the surface seems to be “weight control and health”, yet underneath, we have an amazing woman trying to reach a beauty standard connected to the flatness of her belly with beliefs, agreements and narratives planted from an early ,she was made to believe that there is wrongness with her body.

|TRUTH|
1. WOMEN BODIES AND CONSUMERISM
Women’s bodies are contested terrains. In this system that we live in, women’s bodies are being used against them.
From an early age we are fed with beliefs and agreements that if we are to be accepted then there are bodily-standards that we have to reach.
To reach these standards outside our human scopes, we will consume all sort of services and products.
The survival of this capitalist consumerism world rests on deepening consumptions. 
Women are by far the biggest consumers of this world.

2. CLARITY OVER YOUR “WHY”
Whatever it is that we are engaged in or we seek to engage or explore, have clarity on and over our “intention”?
Why is this important for me?
We are not looking at reasoning but at uncovering our values. This simple question carries the potential to reveal much for, to and through us.
More than often, areas that seek acknowledgements will emerge and this could demand deeper works and conversing.

3. CHANGING BODIES
Our physical body is bound to undergo deep changes throughout the course of our life.
There is no escape to it.
Even as a yoga teacher, my physical body as underwent deep changes, my belly is not flat, neither are my booty and none of these are my intentions.
Our physical body will keep changing and evolving, the health of our body matters.

4. UNEASINESS BEING WHAT WE ARE PHYSICALLY
This is a conversation that calls to be held over and over again with self, with others and this world.
There are deep discomforts for most women connected to how we look physically. None of these are natural to our essence; we are speaking of centuries of domestications, veiling, contamination, narratives

THE CALL TO |RE-CLAIMING| RE-CONCILIATING| RE-MEMBERING| RE-WRITING| IS ROARING

I will love to hear from you and how all these resonate with you

Love from my heart to yours

#NyameDua #MeghaVenketasamy #MetaCoach

Image source: http://helloflo.com/3-social-media-movements-embracing-div…/ (cropped and modified) 

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

To be Heard

Sisters,

If you seek to be heard, then know that your half-baked sharing will not suffice.

I say “to be heard”, for to be understood happens at another level.

Truth be, we all seek to be heard.

Over the years I have witnessed myself and so many women reaching out for support yet withholding ourselves from speaking out our hearts unshamingly.

If there is one thing that I have learned from my relating with my sister and other women in my life is that “my openness to speaking “whatever it is” that is churning is my space, leads me to a space of seeing, hearing, feeling, witnessing and acknowledging “whatever it is” that is crucial for my growth in that moment in time.

When we open to speak our heart, it matters less whether the other understand or not, what matters most is during the act of sharing we will reach a peak where we start hearing our own selves.

This act of hearing self carries the seeds of healing, shifting and transformation.

So if you seek to be heard, stop withholding information.

Speak specifically about “whatever it is”, be it of confusions, pains, wounds

Do what you can but do not withhold information from your own self.

It is not about what the other will think of you nor how the other will see, hear or feel you but rather about your own comfort and /or discomfort at seeing, hearing, feeling, witnessing and acknowledging “whatever it is” for your own self.

To women who come to me for women circles and one to one coaching,I always send them back home with this gift of trust.

It takes tremendous trust of self to open up to one’s stories in front of another.Clients often confuse this trust to be that of trusting a facilitator’s tool, which is part of the process but the entirety of the trust comes from one woman too tired, too frail, too shaky,to even understand that she has reached a point on her path where trusting her body and her psyche is all that is left to her and for her.

Such woman pours out her entirety vulnerably without any inhibitions, without second thinking and as she pours out, she starts hearing herself, from that act of hearing, there is a deeper level of understanding that oozes and slowly healing, shifting and transformations pace in.

I am not saying to share your story with anyone you meet along way, I am simply saying while you open up to share, ground yourself in trusting your own self while remembering it is not what about the other will think, feel, believe, see and hear of you but it’s about you and your path.

Sisters,

If being heard is what you seek then know that your half-baked sharing of “whatever it is” in your space is dis-serving you.

If you are unable to speak openly, then maybe this is a place to start with and then to gently allow yourself to be witnessed by someone else when you are willing to.

Years of dwelling in fear of life has numbed us from our instincts, there was a time when the act of sharing, whispering, saying, listening, hearing and gossiping were prayers said, held and nurtured for one another.

Take it one step at a time

| Check your inner judgement | Check your self talks |the Dos | the Don’ts |

| the Should Have | | the Should Not Have |

One step at a time

Be kind and gentle towards your self

It’s an intense time

We are all waking up

We will no more be able to bypass it all with “positive chanting”

Whether we want it or not, life is ushering us all to embrace “whatever it is” that hurts, pains, wounds most, for this is the way to liberating

As you walk that path of gathering your selves

May you give yourself permission to be heard vulnerably wholely

May you gently walk your self home

May this walk teach you to guard off life

May life whisper your essence to you

May you be brave enough to listen

Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

#NyameDua #MeghaVenketasamy #MetaCoach

Image source: Jeremy Bishop @ Unsplash  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

PACE | PACE | LEAD

If we seek to connect and engage actively with anyone on this earth, we start with rapport building. We start by becoming, mirroring, humming, whispering as that who is in front of us.

In a conversation we step into the other’s world while holding boundaries grounded, for the intention is to see, feel, hear, and experience the other’s world through the other.
We breathe the same breaths.
We tone the same tone.
We wiggle the same wiggle.
We giggle the same giggle.
We beat the same beat until the other sees him/her in us.

This is no mimicking.

This is the sacred act of acknowledging the world that has just shown up in front of us
We then reach a potent peak where we are fully aligned.
The fertile soil of the other is ready and willing to be lead to the next level.
 
This is the dance we engage in coaching.
We pace, pace and lead with the client.
As coaches, we hold the frames and we lead the game for the intention is hold space for the client to manifest for his/her self whatever it is that she/he has gained clarity on.
 
The quality, intensity and depth of rapport “Pace|Pace|Lead” determine that which the client opens up his/her self to, awareness, choices and commitments for the next.
Put it simply, unless, we are in rapport, what happens is aligned with set intentions.

When we are out of rapport, what we manifest is not aligned with our intentions.
Yet what we manifest is an immediate vibrational representation of our energetic focus at that specific time.
 

Shift Gears| Focus on Self

Human beings are always conversing and relating with, through and to life. We are always engaged in this dance of “Pace|Pace|Lead” with life. This eternal engaging of “Pace|Pace|Lead” manifests life through and within life physically.

 
What do we do when we are unable to manifest?
We are always manifesting.
Or rather what do we do when that which we are manifesting is not aligned with our core intentions?
 
So what does one do?
Where does one start when weeks, months and years have been invested and focused on that one project, one relationship, one work, one brand, one concept and one whatever it is?
 
 
Step Out| Pause | It will be “OK”

Check “What are you manifesting?” | Look for evidences of that which are being manifested right here right now.

Often times, over-focus on the destination leads us to being out of rapport with life.
 
Being out of rapport is not an end and certainly not a fatality. This is a potent time to learn, to gather self and harvest ripeness of self.
 
 

Start Here

What am I being called to create/experience/manifest right here right now?

Focus your energy on whatever you are being called to create/experience/manifest right here right now.

Center Yourself| Grounding

Give Space| Give Yourself Permission to be carried through this phase

Pace| Pace|Lead

As powerfully put forth by my sister and fellow companion on this journey of shifting and transforming,Pratibha Kujur

“If I can't manifest something better then let me focus on manifesting something different.

Keep doing something that pleases my heart till my desires take physical form.

Make the shift gradually.”

 
Often times, along this journey of ours, we will be asked to pause, to slow down and to Pace| Pace|Lead with life, for to move to the next level we will have to learn a higher level to Pace|Pace|Lead with life.
 
Keep being and doing until the heart shifts even if the doing and being has nothing to do with one's purpose. Each time, the day embraces the duskiness of the night, we will be taught of the interconnectedness of it all.
 
I hear myself and I see how important it is to hold such conversations as entrepreneurs.
 

This is no failure – it’s a dance of re-aligning our grooves, our moves, our swirls, our steps and our breaths, our beats, our giggles, our wiggles, our tears and our entirety with life
Along way, we will be called to un-learn, re-learn Pace|Pace|Lead with life.

Holding space for each of us
Holding space for the intensity in the sky
You will be back in no time
We will be back in no time
Keep believing even when "nothing is coming through"
Be the Dragon Slayer to any Resistance
Keep Breathing
 

Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: Kunal Parmar @ Unsplash  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

What if it really does not matter what you do but how you do whatever you do?

How will this change what you choose to do with your life?

What if your contribution to this world is not dependent upon discovering a new meditation technique or following a guru, but rather upon becoming present to your present and deeply appreciating yourself and the world as they are right now?

How will this affect your search for spiritual development?

What if the question is not why am I infrequently the person I want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?

How will this change what you think you have to learn?

What if the essence of who you were, who you are and who you will be, have always been enough?

How will this shift how you see, feel and hear about your past, present and future?

What if life is about balancing light, dark, pain, pleasure, death and birth with compassion, gentleness, kindness, openness and inclusiveness towards self, first and last?

How will this affect how you feel when you wake up every morning?

From 9th June to 19th June, I immersed myself with a wave of change makers,  Michael Hall, the Founder of The International Society of Neuro Semantics, along with trainers and coaches in the making from across the globe.

The reason why I landed where I landed, I owe it to “a shaken frightened unsure version of me in September 2015 ”, I had set an objective of being on the assist team to supporting emerging coaches in five years to come.

An objective that I had forgotten since and a life that I kept walking on, until March 2019, I went back to check the 2015 set objectives.

I smiled, no wonder, my entire life crumbled down, whatever I had constructed and built before September 2015 was washed away post September 2015. I was kicked out of my comfort space to own my self.

What was present in my space back in September 2015 that led to the materialization of my objectives?

What can I share that you may use in your own intentional objective setting?

Vulnerability, I was sore to my core, I was present to some of my deepest longings, needs, pains, wounds, fears, wants and desires. Beyond all, I was present to my callings, I heard my self. I saw my self. I experienced my self.

This was enough to catapult my life ahead.

Vulnerability is that space of being utterly honest towards self, there is no bullshitting, no shying away and no masking.  It is a deep place of power. A space of courage, for navigating in unknowingness is courageous, calling upon the whispers of the heart.

Magic happens when one sees oneself but also when one allows others to witness oneself. We move to a deep space of learning, growing, glowing and deepening of love.

This journey started with one question and here I am, open, raw,

walking into the unknowingness of the next.

Among all the questions that I have shared, I cannot choose which one moves me most and deepest. I am sitting with them and I invite to sit with them.

As you sit with them, may you gift yourself the gift of vulnerability, for unless you are broke open will your magik ooze within without.

May courage dwell in navigating the unknowingness of life

May faith lead each step in the unknowingness of life

May Love Usher within and without

Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: Daniel Burka @ Unsplash  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

What we say to our daughters matters because it teaches them what to value.

“Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs, and our assumptions.” ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Our language imprints the world of our daughters and our sons and they use these imprints to navigate this world.

 Reflecting on the conversation that I had with an amazing 10 years old girl yesterday, she reminded me of the power of our words.

Here is her happening

“One of her classmate, this 10 years old boy says that he loves and that now they are together. She added further that she understands none of this and for her, he is her friend. She wants to tell him that they are friends but she is hesitant for her intent is not to hurt him, so she has kept quiet for days now.”

I queried gently, “Do you know what is this love that he talks about? “

She replied “I have no clue about the love that my friend speaks of and I am afraid that he will be hurt  and disappointed if I tell him bluntly on his face that we are friends and play buddies.”

We drilled further for some minutes and what came up next was her fear of “hurting him for not liking him the way he likes her.”

Here is what I told her, holding myself as witness and reminding that I would not say less to any little girl and boy out there.

“You are not responsible for how others feel. You have every right to choose who to like and not like, who to welcome in your space or not. This is your birth right. Your job is not to worry about how others will feel if you do not join them in their ride. Your job is not to fulfill others’ expectations. Your job is to be honest with yourself and your heart, even if this may scare you and even if this may put people off. You are not responsible for how others feel in friendships, everyone has a right to visions, assumptions and ideas. You my precious one, you are called to live by your own. People will be more hurt in the end when you get tired carrying the masks of faking, they will not understand why you faked for so long. Truth is, in your attempt to please them, you faked.

So know that you are not responsible for how others feel, not even how your parents feel.

Your responsibility begins and ends with yourself. Your responsibility begins with what, why, where, who, when, and how you say, do and be.

This is all under your creative reach.

Just because someone felt hurt because of his/her unmet expectations, know that this does not make of you an unworthy person and/or bad human.

You do not have to invest energy in fixing how others feel.

Hold space for others to feel what they feel and allow yourself to feel what you feel, even when it is not comfortable.

As a girl, you have the right to choose who to allow in your space and not. When things do not sit properly with you, when your heart and your pinky feel otherwise, heed to yourself even if the whole world roars; heed to yourself and know that you are always led, guided, protected and deeply loved.

As a daughter of the world and a woman in rise, know that you are called to no more carry the burden to pleasing this world; you are called to release the drama of becoming something else for this world; you are called to play a role beyond this world’s expectations.

You have every right to it.”

For every Mother, Father,

Aunty, Uncle,

Sister, Brother,

 Grandmother, Grandfather,

Guardian, Teacher, Fellow Seers

Who will read these words,

I invite us to spread these words,

I invite us to ripple these words across the globe

Language is a legacy that we have been passing on from daughters to daughters since the time of time.

A word is more than just a word.

The intent, the intricate definitions, the beliefs and agreements of the words can either caged our daughters or teach them to soar.

What we say to our daughters matter, because it teaches them what to value.

Our daughters will be the partners of tomorrow

What kind of partnership do we want to plant?

What is our vision?

What is our intention?

Where do we stand amidst this?
What do we need to hear about ourselves, for ourselves?
Do we have the right to choose?
 

Much love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: Guille Pozzi @ Unsplash  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

What Else....

Our beliefs and agreements know their way to hide deep within our subconscious, often covered under layers until one day, the Pandora box opens wide and there is no running away.

These past two months have been physically straining and challenging. My vitamin D hit bottom low once again (I was first diagnosed with this issue end 2016). This while the symptoms were more painful: slowed digestion, insomnia, lingering tiredness, gastric fire imbalance, loss of hair, deep sadness ,agony, joint pains, excess gas and I could go on this endlessly long list.

Image Source: Madhura Srinivas, September 2018,

My choice was and is to stay focus on aligning my body with that which is natural. I have been sunbathing at every possible opportunity since. Much has shifted since, my energy is rising each day and so is my sense of groundedness.

These past two months I have walked myself through a process, I have called it the “What Else Process”

Here is what I did exactly and what was uncovered and revealed to me through this process.

I invite you to give yourself permission to walk through this process at your pace in your own time.

Step One - Questioning your answers

The more I sunbathed everywhere and I am still doing so, the more I noticed that people on this island (Mauritius), they shy away from the sun. I started questioning why do people do that?

Why do we run to a shady place instead of glazing in the sun?

Eventually I started questioning myself, “Why did I shy away from the sun?”

And I would journal my answers

Each time an answer popped in, I would journal it and I will ask “what else?” and I would move on until the next answer popped in.

Here are some of the answers

I don’t want to be sticky on my way to a meeting

I don’t want to be smelly sweaty on my way to a meeting

I will be dehydrated

I will end up with a headache

I don’t want to have a bad sun burn

I don’t want to feel physically hot

And the list went on until last week, an answer popped in and up to now, there has been no other answer beyond this answer

“I don’t want to become darker”

This answer hit me hard and I sat with it for days. “I don’t want to become darker.”

I called this my meta-answer, there is no answer beyond this one. This is the key that will lead me to something bigger.

This answer speaks of aversion, whatever it is that I was trying not to be and become.

Never underestimate the act of questioning one’s answers.

We are too often veiled by our agony that we do not understand that

“the problem is never the problem.”

But I did not stay here, I went deeper. I coached myself. You may choose to do same but I  gently suggest that you reach out to someone you trust, someone with whom you may an open heart conversation.

The depth of our conversation depends on our self opening.

Step Two - Association

How is “staying in the sun” connected to becoming darker?

I associate staying in the sun with becoming darker.

We are always associating one thing to another and this carries the power to shape our life in ways.

I was told and taught over and over again as a child, too much staying in the sun browns you and I ended up making this part of my reality and agreements.

I am inviting you to pause and start checking,

“What do I associate with whatever is happening in life right here right now?”

Our associations dictate experience.

Step 3 – What are the beliefs?

The most important part of what was uncovered for me. I asked myself what is above this agreement of “not wanting to become darker?”

Here is what unfolded for me:

Dark skin means ugliness.

This belief was cocooning in my subconscious for years.

For years, I have been vocal about whitening products. I am against all forms of skins whitening and hurting products and processes. I do not believe in changing one’s skin color to fit certain norms yet deep within my innerness, I been carrying this belief “dark is ugly”.

Step 4- Whose belief is this?

It belongs to my grandparents (may their soul rest in peace). My grandparent believed that dark was ugly and they spitted this belief to all their children and grandchildren.

A dark child is an unwanted child.

A dark child is not promised for a bright future.

A dark child will never be enough.

A dark child is an ugly child.

My parents, my uncles and aunties never supported such belief but somehow the fertile soil of my childhood absorbed it and this impacted hugely on my growing up as a child, a young woman and where I stand today.

Step 5: Re-claiming, Re-conciliating, Re-membering and Re-writing

In a process of uncovering whatever it is, the most crucial part is that of calling it back.

Re-claiming: I called back this belief and agreement about dark skin and skins of all shades. They are not mine. They are not my property. They do not align with my core values

Re-conciliating: It does not mean that I have to find others’ goodness in what they did but rather holding space for what I went through as a child, as an adolescent and a young woman owning to this belief and agreement.

This is the crucial phase, this is the phase where the human body calms down and the emotions rise with a grounded consciously aware intensity.

The one question to be asked here is , “What can learn and deepen my growth?”

Re-membering: Remembering one’s essence. Regardless of any situation, when one opens up to learning and growing, one moves closer to one’s essence, the untainted worthiness of being a human unconditionally regardless of the external standards.

Re-writing: carrying others’ beliefs within one’s space is heavy, burdening, crowing and poisioning.

The final step is to write one’s own beliefs.

“Beauty comes through shades and tones. I am one such beauty.”

Plant this belief within your fertile soil, then nurture it through days, weeks, months and years.

 I have simplified the process but you can always  give it a try. Here are the steps below:

Step One - Questioning your answers

Step Two - Association

Step 3 – What are the beliefs?

Step 4- Whose belief is this?

Step 5: Re-claiming, Re-conciliating, Re-membering and Re-writing

Please be kind and gentle towards yourself

Awareness is not always a rosy path

Things will be unveiled

Much will be uncovered

It will pain but it will heal

If these words resonate with you and if you want to understand more of whatever it is that I have walked myself through, please know that my doors and my heart are open, feel free to write to me @ megha.venketasamy@gmail.com

Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: Maduras Srinivas, September 2018  

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

Showing up for the Self

Sunday 28th April 2019 ushered the closure of 7 days of circling through and

within creativity, creating and creations.

I am contemplating that which is emerging for me, holding space, giving myself permission to walk this path.

Hear my whispers:
Our blinkers do not allow us to see beyond the concepts of creativity, creating and creations. We are few to be present and aware that every second we are creating, every second we are using our energy to birth and to annihilate part of us and beyond. Creativity, creating and creations are multi-dimensional. The focus has long been external while in truth, this is an inward journey, a journey of learning to trust, a journey of honoring the beauty and ugly and a journey of sacredness.

The emergence of purpose-based enterprises is shifting the consumption landscape but we are to many to dwell in the drama of externalized audience.

As an entrepreneur, I know this ride to building an audience, analytics on my webpage, the number of responses on posting and the audience reached. I am familiar with this stride I have been there for long enough now.
 

Last night, walking myself through the debrief of this 7days journey, I asked
Will I buy my own services?
Will I allow myself to be coached by my self?
Will I step into my own facilitated journeys and just be?
What if no one shows up, will I keep up the pace and walk myself through this journey?
What opens for me and through me through whatever it is that is being created?
Am I embracing my enoughness?
Am I embracing my magnificence?
Am I humble enough to show up for myself regardless of all?

 
Hear my answers:
 

I will. I will walk myself through my own journeys, I will show up and witness myself in all my vulnerability and magnificence and while I do so, I will hold space for the sacredness in all.

It has been a long ride to be able to utter these words for and to my own self.

This belief and trust in creative leading and guidance from beyond self. When one moves to this phase, creativity becomes consciously grounded in sacredness.
I know I will have to keep walking my way back to this essence.

I invite each one of you to pause and question yourself and as you walk yourself through these questions, I invite to give yourself permission to feel whatever emerges.

What is my call of the hour?
Can I show up for my self regardless of what this world does?
Do I believe in that which I be?              
Do I believe in that which I create?
What if no one shows up, will I keep up the pace and walk myself through this journey?
 
The power within any creative space is that of believing in that which one gives birth to.
Do I believe in my creativity, creating and creations?

Whatever, however, whyever, whenever, whyever and whoever be the journey, what matters is showing for the self.
Showing up for the self whether the world shows up for the self or not, is the call of the hour.
Showing up for the self and contemplating the magnificence of one’s creations is the call of the hour.
Showing up for the self and swallowing the juiciness of one’s own creations is the call of the hour.
Showing up for the self and trusting in that which is being is the call of the hour.
Showing up for the self and believing in the essence of the self is the call of the hour

Much love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: Jeremy Bishop @Unsplash 

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

“An emotion is your body’s reaction to your mind.” ~Eckart Tolle

If there’s one tiny act of ownership one can invest in, may it be that of owning one’s emotions regardless of the “what, how, what, why, when and when”.

The easy way through is that of holding someone responsible for however, whatever, whyever, whenever, wherever and whoever we feel. This is addictive, this is toxic and this is the peak of disempowerment and worst, this is self-victimizing. We have all been there; we all roll there from time to time.

Most of us were never told and taught and many will never be taught and told that “what we feel is part and parcel of our internal experience. Everything we experience has it’s legitimate place within the matrix of our internal existence. This is us experiencing this world through our perceptual lenses, filtered, deleted, distorted, generalized, assumed and spiced up with our endless internal programs and topped up with our beliefs, agreements, memories, anchors, wounds, pains and trauma.”

Relationships regardless of their nature and appellation are the ideal playgrounds for the drama of victimization to be birthed, fed and nurtured. That said, we do not forego and / or condone the sickness of people who seem to have invested of their selves in intentionally hurting others at all levels.

The intent of this write up is to surface this facet “if we feel what we feel, it is an inside business. This inside business has it’s own mechanisms, rules, values, boundaries, agreements, memories, pains and wounds.”

Are you aware of your internal mechanisms?

What motivates you?

What repulses you?

What sickens you?

What inspires you?

What revolts you?

What are you seeking?

What is your language?

How do you create?

What do you believe in?

How do your beliefs fuel your life?

What do you hold yourself from saying?

Eckart Tolle once said “Make it a habit to ask yourself: What's going on inside me at this moment? That question will point you in the right direction. But don't analyze, just watch. Focus your attention within. Feel the energy of the emotion. If there is no emotion present, take your attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body. It is the doorway into Being.”

We are the ones to unconsciously and /or consciously influence what, why, when, where, how and why we feel.

Here’s the truth, this world is of stimuli. We are the one who consciously and/or unconsciously choose to react and/or respond

Do we react to the external stimuli while holding others responsible for our reacting?

Here’s another truth, people understand us better when we speak in a language that we align best with.

Do we speak that language of alignment to our close ones?

Here’s another truth, just because we have shared something does not mean that now our loved ones and/or anyone understand us better now

Do we assume that our loved ones and/or people understand us now, only to be disillusioned later?

Here’s another truth, no one is responsible for how we feel, we consciously and / or unconsciously influence our experience. You may have been to your favorite restaurant several times, you may have been there when you were in your best state and also when you were sick or in a less of your best state, your experience may not have been the same, for there were so many unseen, unheard, unworded factors at play.

Do we hold others responsible for what, why, when, where, how and who we feel?

Where do we start?

This is the path of self discovery and growth.

For those of us who firmly believe in leaving this world a touch better, then start with ourselves.

Start this journey of expanding our perception on ourselves,

Start this journey of removing our blinkers

Start this journey of ownership

Ownership of the mess and gold in our lives

It takes one grounded conversation at a time to shift and transform

Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: Allef Vinicius @Unsplash 

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Wiitgenstein (1922)

What one believes in, either limits one or moves one beyond. However, Whyever, Whenever, Wherever, Whoever, Whatever one believes in and acts from that belief, one is ongoingly shaping one’s world.
 
The mainstream spiritual fashion world coins this as “positivism and negativism”, as a coach and facilitator, I call it “the bewitching of self through language, yet the only way through is to stay within this world, uncover whatever it is and re-write from that space.”

I would lie if I were to say that I have always had an empowering, kind and gentle language towards myself and my world. I am still uncovering places within me in need of acknowledgment, embrace, healing and shifting. Over the years, I have been taught and I am still learning how my beliefs, my words, my language towards myself, my sense of power, others and this world keep impacting my sense of self.
 

I am honoring my born day on this 22nd of April and these last days have been intense, as I paused to question what one intentional word I want to use for the coming 12months. A word or words that will anchor me in grounded intentions, remind me of my choosen focus and lead me to stand grounded in a creative process instead of swirling the dance of the victimized one.

My words or rather my choosen phrase for the coming 12 months is:
“I pause to open and receive”

 
The choice of these words are symbolic for I have spent the last ten years running, walking, rushing, healing, speaking, vibrating, voicing and dancing the emergence of my self.
 
This weekend as I went through this simple process of questioning myself; remember it all starts with a simple question.

 
What emerged for me was, this need to open up and to receive. I purposefully choosed to roll it out in a phrase for my intent is to now use this phrase to ground myself in every action that I will engage in.
 
Words are not just words, they are part and parcel of our inner game and this inner game is mirrored externally.
 
I invite you to pause for the coming days and question yourself. If you were to consciously choose a word/words and/or phrase that will be used to strategically guide you for the coming months, what will these words be? Why these words?
Behind these words, what is the need?

 

My emerging need is that of balancing. To balance one’s life, there is this dance of giving and receiving that is to happen and to be able to receive, one has to pause to open, there is no receiving on the rush or on the run.

I call this the process of the  self, for the self is in truth a dynamic process of unfolding, releasing, birthing, decaying, dying and rebirthing.
And to truly receive, one has to believe in the process of being bestowed with wisdom and whatever it is, every single second.

 
May that which we are today usher
the strength, courage, power, love and wisdom to open us to receive from life.
May that which is ushered in our space reminds us of this one truth
"The self is a process in itself, there is no beginning and there is no end
The Self is a process that every Seer will go through".
 

Much love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: Sharon Pudman September 2018, The Awakening Shakti Woman Conference 

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling

Re-Negotiating To Deepen The Seeds Of Choices

Ultimately, we are all seeking a better life, a happy life, a fulfilled life, a peaceful life, a balanced life and a successful life (regardless of how we all define these terms). Walking the path of our seeking is accompanied by act of choices.

Any act of choosing ushers in the potential to shape this now and impact the future. By default change, shift and transform are part and parcel of any act of choosing. There is a fine line between “how consciously we choose" and  from what state we choose.”
 

We are often faced with what we may call “surface changes” which unfortunately are not sustained over the long term. Surface changes are fueled by brief if not medium-term moments of genuine motivation, inspiration and the real desire to further ahead.

 
Question: Where is the gap?
Answer: Our resistance to re-evaluating, re-aligning, re-thinking, re-emoting our relating to self, power, time, others and the world every time we choose, especially when choices are bound to impact in the near immediate future.

 
To deepen the seeds of our choices within, we are called to re-negotiate how we relate to our self, power, to time, to people and to the world.

 

What holds us humans, from re-negotiating is the fear of “not-knowing” that which awaits at the other hand, the mind screams “loss” while the psyche knows and understands that there is no gain without releasing that which has served its purpose and there is no furthering by holding on to what which pollutes one’s vision.
 
As a coach and a woman circle facilitator, I have been observing this cycle within my own self and with women that I am honored to journey with. This resistance to move further despite the awareness of what no more serves oneself, of that which is poisoning one’s life, of that which is hindering one’s progression.
 

There are endless paths to explore in expanding awareness of who one’s relating to self, to power, to time, to others and the world is the place to start.

 
Here is what I mean
 
Exploring beliefs about one’s perception, connecting, agreements, narratives, stories, identity, values, memories and imagination connected to self, one’s sense of power, time, others and the world.
Once we start this exploration journey, we are bound to re-negotiate our relating to each aspect of our life.
 
Where do we start?
Start with one tiny step.
 
No Change No shift No Transformation is made possible without re-negotiating one’s relating to self, power, time, others and the world.
 

Love from my heart to yours

Megha Venketasamy

Image source: Jeremy Bishop Unsplash 

Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2019. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use and Sharing: Feel free to use the Share on FB or Reblog for personal, non-commercial or educational use with all links intact. If you are an organization, institution or individual seeking to use this material for promotional purposes, please ask first. If wanting to include this information, and/or the ideas explored therein into your workshop materials, teachings or written work, please cite this article and author accordingly. All information provided on this post is non-liable and is not intended to replace professional legal, medical, psychological, psychiatric and/or financial counselling