When Certainty Arrives

A moment when you are clear and certain of the precious treasure you hold.

When Certainty Arrives
By Lisa A. McCrohan

There is a moment
when certainty arrives
and you know, God you know,
with every bone in your body,
what you have to do.

Though it seems crazy and illogical,
though the voices around you cry out,
“This makes no sense!”
and question, “What if??”
and give a thousand reasons
why you shouldn’t

though the voice of doubt and fear
within you grip your throat and
bind your hands and feet

there is a deeper truth within you now
that anchors you,
fortifies you,
enables you
to get up,

unbind your hands and feet and heart,

and do what you must do

with a sense of deep peace and liberation.

Lisa A. McCrohan, © 2013
MA, LCSW-C, RYT
The Compassion Coach

** Do you feel a Truth rising up from within you that needs expression? Does fear grip you and hold you back from living out this Truth? I work with folks who want to live with more delight, compassion, and connection in their everyday lives – honoring the truth within themselves and bringing it into full expression. Don’t live in Frederick, MD, or the DC area? No problema! Over the phone, over skype, or in person, I offer mindful and compassion coaching. I am also a body-centered psychotherapist and yoga teacher offering individual sessions and group workshops and retreats. Visit the Barefoot Barn for more information on our services or contact me with questions, to schedule a time to talk, or learn more.

Five ways to follow what delights your heart

I don’t remember the first time I paused and softly smiled upon hearing the word, “delight.”  Maybe it was when my mom said, “How about you write what’s on your heart and call it ‘Gems of Delight’?”  As moms usually do, she knew what was on my heart before I could consciously name it.

Delight.

“Our true nature is filled with delight,” I wrote on the Barefoot Barn’s website nine years ago and it is still there today.  Look at any little kiddo.  Everything delights them – everyday things like the “magic” of peek-a-boo, their own toes, your silly faces, the dog’s huge tongue, going big poops in the potty…you name it.  Delight can be lowkey, content, an inner soft smile.  It doesn’t have to be verbose or grand.  Just a deep sense of lightness and contentment.

Delight FEELS good.  When we take delight in something, we feel connected and content.  Why?  All those great “feel good” hormones running through us…especially oxytocin, the “connecting” hormone.  Delight is good for us!

When we realllly tune inward and ask ourselves, “what delights my heart?” and we begin to get glimmers of what that is, as we follow those gems, we align ourselves with our true nature.  We actively and intentionally manifest those delights in our everyday life.

Read that again!  Aligning yourself with what delights your heart enables  you to intentionally and actively manifest these delights in your EVERYday life.  Not just on some Caribbean vacation.  Not just on the weekends, or date night, or summer break.  But every day.

credit: thislifewellness.com

And what happens?  The angst within us dissipates.  A deep sense of contentment springs from us while at the same time, we feel a sense of aliveness.  We live more connected to our Self and our dear ones.  We stop listening to the voices of our past, our pop culture, and we begin to learn that the “voice within” — the small still voice that turns us to what we truly delight – is the still voice of the Divine.

And we begin to transform our EVERYDAY lives – with this moment, this breath, this one decision.

And…get this…we inspire others to follow what delights THEIR hearts!

A true happiness takes up residence in our souls and begs us to share it with the world. Our very presence has the power to inspire others and our delight naturally spills out into our world. We transform suffering and manifest change by our very presence and simple acts of compassion.

THIS IS HOW WE TRANSFORM OUR WORLD.

So, here are five ways to follow what delights your heart:

1.  Pause.  Cultivate pausing in your day.  Here’s a post on the Sacred Pause.  Pausing enables us to regroup, get grounded, and focus on what’s most important instead of getting swallowed up in the abyss of Pinterest, Facebook, and the myopic focus that comes from being in stress mode.  Pausing throughout your day gets you in the habit of allowing your nervous system to ‘rest and digest.’

2. Go barefoot.  Go outside, feel your feet on the earth…in the green grass, in the mud.  Breathe in delight.  Breathe out gratitude.  Look around you. Notice all the beautiful simple delights right here for you to see!

3.  Share it.  Had a moment today where you just beamed with delight?  Did one of your kiddos do something that made you deeply smile?  Share it.  Tell your coworkers.  Post it on Facebook.  Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh often talks about sharing your delights, the goodness in your life, walking on the earth imprinting your delights not your woes on the earth.  Sharing further strengthens that neuropathway of “noticing the delight” in your life.  It also inspires others to do the same.

4.  List it.  Get out a piece of paper (and some art stuff if you have the energy!).  Without activating the “rational” brain, just write your responses to this question:  “what delights my heart?”

5.  Follow it.  If drawing delights your heart, draw.  If baking delights your heart, bake.  If giggling and connecting with your little ones delights your heart, get off the computer and go find your kiddos.  Whatever delights your heart, begin it.  In little ways.  Small ways.  Don’t make big lofty goals.  The brain loves to make pathways — when you “accomplish” something, you feel good about it.  The brain wants to repeat that.  So even after you are done reading this – commit to following what delights your heart in your next breath.  Even if it’s visualizing that canvas you’ve always wanted to paint or you pause and look at your kiddo and say, “You rock” because it delights you to connect with your children…do it.  You’ll feel good.  Your brain will want to repeat it.

Blessings of delight,

Lisa A. McCrohan

Visit us at the Barefoot Barn for body-centered psychotherapy, mindfulness coaching, yoga, workshops, and works of art to inspire more delight, compassion, and connection in our everyday lives.  ** Are you a parent?   I do mindful coaching over the phone.

Mindful Moment: Stay and Soften

One evening in December, our bedtime ritual started out like to does every night:  brushing teeth, pjs, a book, a few songs, a prayer (sometimes we sing it!), and me laying with our two year old daughter while Brian lays with our five year old son.

Our son, he is out in like two minutes.  Kindergarten does that to a boy!  Our daughter, she loves to chat, sing, lay there, ask for more milk, cuddle.  Most nights, I savor it.  I linger with Little C.  I whisper my prayers.  I lay there in the quiet, holding her, listening to her breathe…and then ask another question.  When Little C was a few months old, I wrote this poem:

My Skin Remembers

In the dark stillness of the early morning,

before the first glimmers of dawn appear through our bedroom window,

Brian brings Clara to me for an early morning feeding.

She is half awake half asleep now nuzzled next to me.

Her little feet rest on my bare belly as she wraps one arm over my chest

and tucks the other under my breast to nurse.

I am laying on my side, my left arm stretched out on the bed

and heat from the top of Clara’s head warms the inside of my elbow.

My right arm wraps around her tiny, plump, six month old body.

Our bellies touching rise and fall together in a soft rhythm.

Though my body begs for more sleep, I don’t mind being up so early

before the sunlight slowly dances into our room.

I know now with my second child that this will not last forever.

There will come a day when I will long to hold my babies again

just      like     this

and my skin will ache with nostalgia.

But this morning, I also know that when that day comes,

a smile will rise up from within me

as my skin remembers breathing in

this

very

moment.

Butttttt….there are times when I am think “O.M.G., you gotta go to sleep!”  I am tired, needing space, needing to be on my own for a bit.  And that’s when my meditation practice comes into play.

“It’s ok to feel this way, Lisa.”

“It’s ok to want time alone, to need space.”

In those moments, I try to remind myself to practice self-compassion instead of beating myself up with mama guilt “Oh I shouldn’t feel this way!  I should be oh-so-very present AND loving every minute of it.  Why don’t I feel that way? What’s wrong with ME?  So-and-so…you’d never hear that from her!  She loves everything about being a mom….”  It goes on, doesn’t it?  Well, instead of going down THAT path, ….

I pause.  I stay with what is rising up.  I don’t push it away.  I just stay.  I hold my heart and my needs and my yearnings close, with breath and spaciousness.  I soften.  And the once intense emotions and thoughts shift.

What rises up is a sense of “ahhhh, ok.  I’m ok.  This is ok.”  And then I’m able to make a clearer, more compassionate choice.

So back to this one night in December…

I thought my Little C. was asleep.  I slowly rolled out of her bed and started to get up to leave.

“Mommy, where you going?”

OHHHH I could’ve lost it.  I was tired.  It was late.  I felt my feet on the earth (on our “beautiful” carpet stained with milk and god knows what else!), I softened, breathed…

And then Little C. continued, “Mama, you stay with me?”

STAY WITH ME.  These words cut riiiight through to what is most important.  Right through any frustration, tiredness, need for alone time.

I turned back into the room, got into bed again with Little C., and said, “Yes, my Love, I’ll stay with you.” 

We laid like that for a long while.  Just in silence.  Me — softening, letting it all go, noticing, allowing.

And then Little C. whispers – half asleep, half awake, “Mommy?”

Me: “Yes, Love?”

Little C.: “I love you.”

Then she fell sound asleep.

As I pulled the covers up over her little chest, as I walked out of the quiet room, I thought about how that could’ve gone comPLETELY different.  There are times it has — when I’m like, “BABY!  You gotta go to sleep!”  Times when I lay there but I’m not really present.  Times when I am tired and under resourced.  And I react.  Instead of respond.  And as I walked out of the room, I found myself oh so grateful for the intention I set years ago to be a mindful mama, for how that has informed my practice of SOFTENING, tending to, allowing, being with, being gentle IN OUR EVERYDAY LIFE.  I found myself bowing to the community of moms and  dads who are on this journey of healing our world through being RIGHT HERE, present to and regarding our little ones.

STAY.  STAY AND SOFTEN.  With our own hearts, with our little ones.  I am finding that the more I offer myself such sweet spaciousness, the more I am able to extend that to my dear ones.  And I smile softly, with no regrets.

Repost: Mindful Moment: My mom’s every day love…in a grapefruit

{I wrote this a year ago.  I was reminded of it because, lately, I find that I am being called to a deeper sense of “selflessness.”  I see and notice and am grateful for how my mom and my husband both live lives of “serving the other.”  I am being called to be “less about me” – in every thing. More on this as the adventure unfolds}.

Grapefruit.  I could’ve sobbed over my grapefruit the other morning.  Carefully cutting the outside circle of my grapefruit, I stopped.  The memory of my mother so lovingly and thoroughly cutting my grapefruit for me as a girl flooded my mind and heart.  Back then, I probably didn’t say, “thank you.”  Back then, I took it for granted that she put such extraordinary care into something so ordinary.  Back then, I’m embarrassed to admit, I never thought that it was any “big deal.”

Now, as a mom to two little ones, I get it.  The time, attention, care, focus, energy, and “groundedness in what is important” it took for my mom to cut my grapefruit and never even say anything about it – I know all too well now what a big deal that is!  To take the time, to put off showering or brushing teeth or fixing her own breakfast, to put attention into one thing instead of being a multi-tasking queen, to muster up the energy from a night of little sleep from a tending to a sick little one, to find balance in divvying up time with more than one child, to recognize in the moment “THIS. This is what matters” — THAT is extraordinary.

mom and me

And I am humbled.  Grateful.  I want to go back in time and savor every little cut out triangle of grapefruit and hug my mom and kiss her and tell her she rocks and thank her for all the little every day ways she showed me extraordinary love.  Cutting my grapefruit.  Making my lunch (yes, even through high school).  Telling me to “take a mental health day.”  Braiding my hair.  Driving me (and team mates!) to and from soccer practice.  The list goes on.   Flashes of these memories flood my heart.  And I pick up my phone to call her.  She’s asleep.  My heart can’t wait to tell her “thank you.”

Ordinary things done with extraordinary love.

Before having my two little ones, I wanted to do extraordinary things in this world.  I had specific ideas about what that meant.  None of them involved cutting grapefruit.  But the other morning, I thought about how now it’s my turn to embody this legacy of loving with great tenderness and attention in the ordinary.  And I am quietly grateful as I go about my afternoon.  I cut an apple for my two little ones, peeling the skin carefully so my little C. can easily chomp away.

beholding my little one

grandma…still lovingly regarding her honeys

a repost: Mindful Moment: My Skin Remembers

{Last night, as I was laying with our little two year old, Little C, in her “big girl bed” (oh yes, she wanted a twin bed like her big brother so we finally made the switch), as Little C nuzzled up next to me and asked me to stay, and I thought, “Ohhhhh the work I have to do,” I was reminded of this post.  I was reminded that I have a choice — to soak up this moment with my daughter or go and do work.  I was reminded of what is most important in that moment — breathing in the sweet smell of my daughter, feeling the warmth of her breath against my cheek, delighting as her little hands explored the contours of my face.  I breathed this poem/post again and was grateful I made a good choice.}

These moments last for such a short while

In the dark stillness of the early morning, before the first glimmers of dawn appear through our bedroom window, Brian brings C. to me for an early morning feeding.

She is half awake half asleep now nuzzled next to me. Her little feet rest on the space between my bare belly and hip as she wraps one arm over my chest and tucks the other under my breast to nurse. I am laying on my side, my left arm stretched out on the bed and the heat from the top of her head warms the inside of my elbow. My right arm wraps around her tiny, plump, six month old body. Our bellies touching rise and fall together in a soft rhythm.

Though my body begs for more sleep, I don’t mind being up so early before the sunlight slowly dances its way into our room. I know now with my second child that this will not last forever. There will come a day when I will long to hold my babies again just like this and my skin will ache with nostalgia.

But this morning, I also know that when that day comes, a smile will rise up from within me as my skin remembers breathing in this very moment.

(see original post from 2010 here.)

 

Believing in our beauty

spontaneous snapshots from Brian

The other evening, I was walking out of a lovely meditation in the softness of candlelight, when I noticed a woman’s reflection in the mirror. In an instant I was moved by her and I said to myself, “Oh my goodness. That woman is beautiful!”

I looked again.

That woman was me.

In those millaseconds, before my ego and all my stories and conditioning came into play, I was moved by who I saw in the mirror. And when all the veils of illusion were lifted for a brief moment, I thought she was beautiful. So beautiful that I thought she was striking and filled with light, softness, and feminine loveliness.

When I realized the woman was me, I teared up for a moment. My oh my, how we have learned to not SEE ourselves for who we really are. Shining, glowing, lovely, and beautiful.

I’d like to spend the next forty years believing in my beauty.

You, too, are beautiful. A soul shining. A lovely woman. To be regarded, adored, and honored.

Anything else is a lie we have been believing for too long. Enough.

It’s time now that we believe in our innate beauty. And shine.

Tips for Everyday Mindfulness #12: The Sacred Pause

taking a sacred pause in Spring.

“Rest in the pause between breaths.
Pause in the rest between thoughts.
Bask in the space between words.
Stop in the stillness of a calm lake
and listen.”
- Julie Rappaport

In her book, Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach talks about the Sacred Pause. Pausing for a moment in our day, perhaps several times in a day, to “arrive” right here. In your day. In your body. In your life.

As a mom to two little ones, I know how busy life can be. I get up at the crack of dawn (ok, even before dawn!) and I feel like I am going all day until I, often, fall asleep in my son’s bed after singing him to sleep.

It is challenging to get away for a girls’ night, a weekend retreat…let alone a week-long retreat. I find that I need “everyday” retreats. Mini retreats throughout the day so I can arrive at my heart again, center myself, and feel MY pulse as well as the pulse of Life. I need these mini retreats in order to be able to respond to my children (and husband and co-workers) instead of react.

Every. Single. Client. or workshop I facilitate, I offer the wisdom of finding “everyday ways” to take mini retreats. To center ourselves. To re-arrive in this moment. One such way or tool is the Sacred Pause.

The Sacred Pause is a gift. It gives us a chance to come back to our hearts. To relax. To recharge. To begin again our daily tasks of caring for others.

Here’s how a Sacred Pause might look:

Take a moment to pause.
Maybe you’d like to sit down.
Feel the feet on the floor.
Let the legs relax.
Soften the belly.
Feel the heart slightly lifting up to the sky.
Feel the crown of the head lifting up to the sky.
Soften your face – eyes, jaw, lips.
Feel the shoulders relax.
Become still.
Sense your attention deepening and feel your body.
Take a few full breaths – slowly exhaling.
Breathe in…
Breathe out…
Sense yourself softening – your eyes, shoulders, judgment
Sense yourself softly smiling.
Feel the heart – from the back of the heart – lifting.
Feel the sensations of your body – maybe tingling in your shoulders, or warmth in your hands.
Feel the body from the inside out.
Allow yourself to rest – just breathing in and out, feel the rise and fall of your breath.
Stay here, still and breathing, for as long as you need.
When you are ready, open your eyes gently and slowly.
Notice how you feel.

There you go. That’s what I try to remember to do and what I offer to others. In a few minutes – at the park, at work, before walking in to the house, when I’m brushing my teeth. A mindful practice that can often bring me back to my heart and help me to arrive here again and remind me of my connection to my own Self and the pulse of Life.

Mindful moment: the Toilet seat warmer

It’s been awhile since I write about a mindful moment. Here’s one from today.

My boys have been in Florida playing at the beach, driving golf carts (into grandpa’s garage door) and taking over the controls of the cockpit for the pilot to get a break (I’m kidding of course).

Little C and I have been hanging with Grammy. In shopping, riding the escalator,

eating icecream

and taking naps

I got a moment to use the bathroom. At my brother and sister-in-law’s house.

This isn’t just any ordinary toilet. Oh my goodness. Their newest bathroom addition is a heated seat! Oh yes. My cheeks had no idea sitting on the pot could be so…warm. And comfortable.

One angle I could go with this is that our egos are just like this: we have some pleasurable experience and we want to make it happen again and again. True, I did “move out of the now” by jumping to seeing me buying one of these hot seats and loving how warm my buns are on those nightly middle of the night visits to the pot. And then, of course, the ego would want something else and then something else.

But another angle is this: I didn’t even realize how cold my behind can be until I sat on this warm seat. I didn’t even think there was another way to sit on the pot.  That got me to thinking: how often do we not realize the coldness in our lives? The harshness of some things?  How we relate to others, what we say to ourselves, how we hold our bodies, what we put in to our bodies, how we go about our days without the comforts of good rest, sweet embraces, kind words, and warm cheeks. We just take the way we do things as a given and the only way to love, relate, and be.

Often we can be numb and unaware that it could all be different. Less harsh. More gentleness.

Well this toilet experience made me wake up…to the comforts around us in our everyday lives – the sacred pauses, the sweet warmth of good friends, the warm embrace of my beloved, the loveliness in nature no matter where you live – …

and the ways I can offer warmth and comfort to others. It may not be with a seat warmer on the pot! But maybe through a more present Lisa.

Hope Sprouts

In the late 1990s there was a movie titled “Hope Floats.”  Yes, hope can be buoyant.  It can rise to the surface and remain no matter the waters.

While I can identify with those “watery” qualities of hope, for me, hope doesn’t float.  It sprouts.  It grows.  It sends its roots out deep into the earth while at the same time it reaches for the light.  It can appear quite fragile – like a simple little purple crocus growing right now in the middle of winter in our garden.  Or like the fragile fruitless strawberry vines in our garden.   But hope’s root system is deep and tenacious.

No, for me hope doesn’t float, it sprouts.

It takes up residence.

We may not see its “work” going on beneath the surface, but then one day, we notice.  Life.  Sprouting.

And deep within us we sense hope’s tenacity and its ability to break through the rocks and mud and into the light.

And we recognize that somehow, both beyond us (grace) and also with our permission, we have invited hope in and it is in every cell of our bodies.  Breathing us into our next breath.  And the next one.

And we sense that, somehow, life has a way of triumphing over death.  Again and again.

So I’ll take the unusually warm days here in January and February with our crocus sprouting.  These little purple gems remind me that in the dead of winter and my now new long walks as I commute in the wee hours of the early morning before the world wakes up that spring does in fact always follow winter.  And hope always sprouts.

Mindful Moment: Courage

Third grade music class.  Our teacher asked us to share our musical talents.  Only problem:  I didn’t play any musical instrument.  I didn’t dance (wait for it!).  I “only” played soccer.

Buuuuuut, it never entered my head that that was a “problem.”  I loved dancing.  I used to put on records and dance in our family room.  The Beachboys, Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and yes, even the Singing Nun!  It didn’t matter that I had never taken a dance class in my life. To me, at least.

At home, I selected the song I would dance to.  It was Christmas time and I selected a lively song with fun lyrics:  Frosty the Snowman.  The day came when it would be my turn to share my “talent.”  After fellow students performed on the guitar, clarinet, and recorder, the teacher called my name.

I carried my record  to the front of the room, told my teacher to put on “Frosty the Snowman,” and waited for the music to start.

I had no idea what I was going to do.

I had danced to this record and song a million times.  But from a place of shear delight.  Not a place of “being watched” or because I was “good” (or not!) at it.  I never “planned out” my dances.  I just heard the music and moved my body.

But now, up in front of a class full of kids and a teacher who was about “sharing a talent,” I felt a bit uneasy.  For the first time, I realized, “Ohhhhh, there is a RIGHT way to dance.  And I don’t think I know it.”  I stood there.  Absorbing this new reality into my consciousness, my memory.  It was one of those moments in life when you realize something and your world shifts.  For decades.

Yet…standing there, looking back , I think I must have intuitively done what now I must consciously do: ground myself and honor what I know I need to do.

I danced.  I made up each move as I went along.  I can seriously remember moments in the dance when I said to myself, “Ok, now let’s do a turn to the left and spin.”  And “Ok this is the part when Frosty is running and saying ‘catch me if you can.’  I’m going to run over there to the other side of the room.”  And the finale:  “Here it goes…’Frosty the Snowman had to hurry on his way, so he waved goodbye saying don’t you cry, I’ll be back again some day.’ Look back over your shoulder, Lis, and wave to everyone!”

I finished.  I don’t remember what anyone’s reaction was.  I only remember going back to my seat on the floor in the middle of the room on the right side, sitting cross-legged, and I grew quiet.

Part of me was wondering if I should be embarrassed, wondering what others thought.  That feeling, that new awareness that maybe there was a “correct” way to dance and my way of doing it in my family room wasn’t it, stayed with me.

In that moment, though, I knew I couldn’t have done the dance any differently – I had to dance how I defined it.

I couldn’t have named it back then, but the quiet within me was partly one of contentment.  I somehow knew I had done something courageous:  I honored what dance was to me, from within every cell in my body, even if that didn’t fit into someone else’s definition of ‘dance.’

And my “talent” was just that:  honoring the movement within me even if it may not be the “correct” way of doing it.

It has taken me decades to reclaim this courageous nine year old.