Autumn and The Art of Gracefully Letting Go

by Tracie Nichols, MA, CCSP

Fall is my favorite season. I love the colors, the way the earth smells, and I especially enjoy having fewer humid days. But, what I most love is how the seasonal rhythm encourages me to deepen my personal development journey.

Every year autumn invites us to distill all we have acquired, learned, and experienced through spring and summer. New habits, freshly discovered strengths, new ways of seeing ourselves - these are all integrated and refined to guide us as we discern the next right steps.

Autumn also demonstrates the art of gracefully releasing what we no longer choose to carry. Take a moment to notice what your wild neighbors are doing, now. Trees release leaves. Plants let go of what is above ground and pull their energy into their roots. Deer drop antlers.

Consider consciously aligning with autumn’s gentle releasing rhythm to let go of beliefs, fears, or habits that no longer nurture you.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Spend uninterrupted time outdoors observing and feeling the pace of life in your ecosystem. Let it sink into your bones. 

As you watch leaves fall, visualize the things you choose to release drifting away from you.

If you rake leaves or pull weeds, imagine gathering those things that no longer serve and composting them with the garden trimmings.

On foggy autumn mornings, imagine that the fog represents the things you are releasing. See them being evaporated as the sun rises.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
    love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Listen to the poem here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hnifn3rf6mndsud/Wild%20Geese%20~%20Mary%20Oliver.m4a?dl=0

Tracie Nichols, MA, CCSP is a Holistic Career Coach who believes we can learn a lot from nature about being happy humans. She offers individual career coaching and strategy sessions, as well as classes helping highly sensitive and multipotentialed people create a meaningful, enjoyable work life. Learn more about Tracie at tracienichols.com or connect with her at tracie@tracienichols.com or 215-527-5457.

Slowing Down This Fall ~ Living Life From a Place of Rest

by Jen Perry, LPC

Summer had a spontaneity to it for me this year with lots of kids activities and spur-of-the-moment trips to the lake and beach. This fall, I find myself craving a bit more paced of a schedule and routine. The benefits of rituals and routines are many - including a gentle holding pattern that allows us to live our lives from a place of rest.

Can you imagine what living life from a place of rest might be like? Instead of letting the frantic and frenetic pace of modern life dictate our personal pace in the world ~ living life from a place of rest has three important components: 1) prioritizing the essential basic need of sleep; 2) daily scheduling periods of activity with periods of downtime; as well as 2) cultivating a sense of calm moment to moment. This article will focus on the first component: Sleep.

"Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.” ~ Thomas Dekker

Living life from a place of rest means to emphasize that we rise each morning from rest and will return again in the evening to this restful state. It means to be intentional about our nighttime routines so that we can deepen the level of rest we can achieve. It is knowing how to skillfully meet occasional bouts of insomnia with confidence. Insomnia and sleep problems are often considered effects of stress, depression, and anxiety but new research shows that it can be a considerable contributor to these problems. Here is an article about just that: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/06/lack-of-sleep-could-contribute-to-mental-health-problems-researchers-reveal. Being intentional about how we approach this important third of our lives can be preventative as well as help address many mental health challenges.

Sleep “is a pragmatic response to good health. If you have good sleep, it increases your concentration, attention, decision-making, creativity, social skills, health. If you get sleep, it reduces your mood changes, your stress, your levels of anger, your impulsivity, and your tendency to drink and take drugs.” ~ Russell Foster. His Ted Talk can be found here: https://www.ted.com/talks/russell_foster_why_do_we_sleep

There must be some important reason that our bodies require so much rest. For a fascinating dip into the history of humans trying to figure out why and how we sleep here: https://www.howsleepworks.com/how.html I’m struck by the apparent import of sleep: if you live to be 100 you will have spent a cumulative 30 years asleep. I firmly believe in working with our bodies and natural rhythms for health and wellness and given the sheer percentage of time dedicated to sleep from an evolutionary standpoint I think it is worth considering how we approach it nightly.

And yet, many of us (myself included at times) deny or at a minimum rail against this very basic human need for rest. Many of us find we have an inner revolt of sorts towards bedtime, most of us carry an inner child who continues to throw a tantrum at bedtime. This is an invitation to re-parent ourselves and take our inner three year old to bed with intention.

A few suggestions to get a good night’s sleep:

Have a bedtime routine that puts you to sleep on purpose. This does not need to be complicated, just a few simple cues to your body that sleep is coming. Washing your face, brushing teeth, making a gratitude list, doing a guided meditation are all good ideas. Instead of crashing on the couch, send yourself off to bed with the intention for rest.

Lower the temperature in your room. Experts seem to suggest a temperature between 60-67 degrees for adults, 65-70 for kids.

Darken your room. Turn off all lights, electronics, get dark out curtains or a bed tent. (Find a bed tent here: https://www.privacypop.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI76zQzdaa1gIVgiaGCh1Ndg6dEAAYASAAEgIU3PD_BwE. Bed tents are great for kids!

Use a white noise maker such as this one at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/HemingWeigh-White-Noise-sound-Machine/dp/B01NAPB57J/ref=sr_1_4_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1505048583&sr=8-4&keywords=white+noise

Shut down screens at least an hour before bed

Aim to get at least seven hours of sleep

Go to sleep and wake up at approximately the same time each day. Your body is amazing … if you ask it to stay up beyond bedtime you WILL get a second wind and be able to stay up, albeit at some cost to your health and well-being that accumulates over time. Read more at https://brightside.me/inspiration-health/how-to-fix-all-your-sleep-problems-with-science-302110/

What to do when you can’t sleep. If you have insomnia, the worst thing you can do is freak out. This will push sleep further away. Instead, emphasize to yourself that rest counts for something and sleep studies show that we often get more sleep than we think we do during sleepless nights. Breathing and intentionally relaxing your body, or practicing sleep yoga or yoga nidra can be very helpful. Here is an example of a yoga nidra:  http://www.yoganidranetwork.org/mp3/space-love-compassion. Counseling can help with insomnia and other self-care issues.

Jen Perry is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Mindfulness Meditation Teacher, Peaceful Parenting Educator and Coach. Jen’s approach to her client’s mental health and wellbeing focuses on implementing mindful self-care and self-compassion practices. Jen helps people prioritize what is truly important to them and build a heartful life that they love. In addition to seeing clients individually, Jen works with families and runs a weekly Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Therapy Group. Jen can be reached at jen@heartfulnessconsulting.com or 215-292-5056. Additional blog posts can be found at https://heartfulnessconsulting.com/blog/

The Value of Time in Transitions: A New Kind of Stroll….Slow

by Brittiney George

“In other cultures, time is cyclical. It's seen as moving in great, unhurried circles. It's always renewing and refreshing itself.  Whereas in the West, time is linear. It's a finite resource; it's always draining away. You either use it, or lose it. "Time is money," as Benjamin Franklin said. And I think what that does to us psychologically is it creates an equation. Time is scarce, so we speed up. We try and do more and more with less and less time. We turn every moment of every day into a race to the finish line -- a finish line, incidentally, that we never reach, but a finish line nonetheless.” –Carl Honore (https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_honore_praises_slowness,4:10).

Does this idea make you curious?  Check out all of Carl Honore’s Ted Talk  - at  https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_honore_praises_slowness

Do you already know you need to find a new kind of stroll?  To reconnect to the world around you instead of being a prisoner to the clock?  There are some wonderful opportunities to join us at The Resiliency Center to do just that:

·       Meditation

·       Nature Walks

·       Qi Gong

·       Moms Support Group

·       Self-Compassion Group

·       Rest, Restore, and Move Class

·       Rumi and Hafiz Poetry Evenings

·       Infant Massage and Baby Signs Workshops

….and more.  See our Google Calendar at www.theresiliencycenter.com for class listings and other ways to reconnect and reenergize in your life.

Brittiney George, BS, CRS, CST, ICI, CEIM, is a Somatic Therapist specializing in Transformative Touch.  She offers Somatic Therapy sessions, Infant Massage, Baby Sign Language workshops, and exploratory movement classes at The Resiliency Center.  She also co-leads Connection, Expression and Movement (CEM), a monthly workshop series focusing on body-mind integration.  For a complimentary 55 min. Somatic Therapy session (new clients) contact Brittiney at 610-389-7866 or movebackintolife@gmail.com.

Possibility and Presence through Transition

by Tracie Nichols

What if, by holding our questions a little longer, we saw answers where we least expected them…” Victoria Kindred Keziah

As day transits to night, I’m wrestling with words for this article about transition, specifically about the possibilities found in times of transition. I’ve been resisting the urge to “power through” and reach the end. Holding my questions a little longer, looking for a bit of unexpected inspiration.  

I notice that outside my window, low-angle sunlight flickers through sycamore leaves teased into movement by cooling daytime air. I’ve held my questions until I reached this transitional moment of the day. There are certain things - certain qualities - that can only exist in transitional zones like this late summer evening. Things like golden sunlight, rising breezes, and cricket song.

When we’re talking about transitions in our lives, the same principle holds. There are certain possibilities that only exist in the complex both-and state between problem and solution, ending and beginning, here and there.

Biologists call the transitional space between two distinct states of being an ecotone. In nature, these are places like a stand of shrubs between forest and field, or a reed bed between land and water. In our lives, these are the uncomfortable in-transition places between situations like being partnered and being single, or between one career and another.

Often we only notice ecotones in passing, if at all, our goal being to get out of the discomfort of between by moving quickly from here to there.

“Possibility only lives on the edge.” “Presence is the only way to walk the edge...” Margaret J. Wheatley

Translated from Greek, “ecotone” means “house of tension.” While tension can equate to unhelpful stress, it also means the productive, supportive kind of tension that our muscles exert to hold our bodies upright (without which we’d be floppy floor-dwellers), or the motivating tension of curiosity and anticipation.

To find the productive tension that opens us to possibility in our personal ecotones, we need to approach life transitions mindfully, bringing our full presence to the dance.

Then tension suspends us, holds us upright so we can notice possibilities being created by our here and there rubbing together sparking new ideas and opening paths we never would have seen had we only focused on reaching there.

The next time life tosses transition into your path, I invite you to bring your whole presence to the experience, be willing to surrender to healthy tension, and notice both what is and the unique potential of what could be.

Tracie Nichols, MA, is a Certified Career Services Provider with a Master’s degree in Human and Organizational Transformation and a passion for helping people explore their in-between places. She offers individual career coaching and strategy sessions, as well as classes helping people create a meaningful, enjoyable work life. Learn more about Tracie at tracienichols.com or connect with her at tracie@tracienichols.com or 215-527-5457.

Find your Roots to Bend in the Wind

by Elizabeth Campbell, LPC

“Like a tree, you have to find your roots and then you can bend in the wind,” Angela Farmer. 

September is a time when many individuals are transitioning.  Kids are starting preschool, transitioning to kindergarten, middle, or high school; young adults start college or a career.  Whether it is a change such as these or another transition such as a break-up, divorce, job change, or a move, it impacts us.  It can change our support network, routines, and what our day to day life looks like.  All of these things impact our mood and our ability to manage stress. 

Things that connect us with a sense of predictability and stability can keep us grounded during a transition.  Change can make us feel uncomfortable and like the rug was yanked from underneath us.  Things that make us feel stable therefore can help to feel like our feet are on the ground again.  This may be in the form of creating routine, such as a daily ritual for self-care, to bring stability.  Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, and restorative yoga poses also calm the body and combat the frenetic energy that can come with change while also helping us to feel more grounded.  Giving a sense of predictability can especially be important for children going through changes.  Letting them know what to expect (ie. visiting a classroom beforehand, telling them the process of school drop off) can help them have appropriate expectations.  Providing predictability can also come in the form of maintaining consistency in areas that aren’t changing.   Finally, I cannot state enough how important some form of nurturing self-care is at this time, notably in taking care of our bodies through sleep and healthy eating.  Often we step away from the ways in which we care for ourselves when stress of change takes over.  This is one of the most important times to rely on self-care. 

One difficulty that can occur during transitions is that we may hold on so tightly to the way things were that we are unable to enjoy the benefits of the change. Shifting our focus to being flexible in our expectations can help us to connect more into the present.  We also often do not show compassion to ourselves during transitions.  Change, whether positive or negative, can universally be difficult.  Expecting no impact on our system and becoming angry or disappointed in ourselves when it inevitably occurs often breeds more stress.  Granting ourselves or our loved ones the flexibility to make mistakes, be irritable, or mourn the loss of what they are leaving behind gives room to bend so we don’t break.

Elizabeth Campbell is a Licensed Profession Counselor who provides empowerment and strength-based support to individuals in personal growth and change.  She specializes in play therapy with children, family therapy, creative counseling for adolescents, and trauma-informed treatment for all ages using an integrative, mindful approach to address the whole individual and promote healing.  If you would like to connect with Elizabeth, reach out at elizabeth@elizabethcampbellcounseling.com or 610-757-8163 or learn more at www.elizabethcampbellcounseling.com

From my Heart: A Story about Dealing with Emotional and Physical Pain

by Karen Steinbrecher

I recently returned from a 10-day vacation to Norway and Sweden.  Yes, all was beautiful and fantastic, and the Scandinavian people were delightful. However, as with all things, there were challenges. We were constantly on the "go" on this cruise, walking, traveling, and mingling with many people in various activities. I did also experience pain, chronic neck and leg pain, while interacting with mean passengers from France.  I used the "inner smile" practice suggested by Thich Nhat Hanh, a well-known Tibetan monk, and was able to shift my feelings and state of being.

Qigong is my tool to weave through these situations.  Using my knowledge of the "tool" of QiGong, I was able to reduce and perhaps heal the pain I experienced. Emotional pain can lead to physical pain, and physical pain can lead to emotional pain. Research studies show evidence of the links between emotional, physical, and spiritual pain.

Listening to my body and my feelings during my trip, I knew I needed some alone time.  Qi Gong provides an opportunity to go inward and create a sacred space within, even in the company of others. Whether it was in my hotel/stateroom or outside touring the gorgeous landscapes, I flowed through QiGong movements. It is said that QiGong is even more powerful when practiced outside in Nature and with others. I felt the healing energy and the relief it brought. When others asked about my movements, I was so happy to share the gift of QiGong.  When we practice, we move the energy, Qi, that animates all life.  Gong means the moving, the work of cultivating that energy. The movements flow to harmonize Heaven and Earth/Sea:  Yang [Heaven] and Yin [ Earth].  The Norwegian words are Hima La Harv  [Himmel OgHav] for Sky and Sea.

When we flow with QiGong movements in my classes at the Resiliency Center, we begin with the Joy Practice and say..." I am the Universe, You are the Universe, and We connect for Peace and Love with Healing".  I remembered that Universe was presenting a challenge for me to do just that.  It was a challenge, and I hope that perhaps as I worked [Gong] to heal myself, somehow I did connect with others, kind and unkind alike, to promote Peace, Love and Healing.  As we heal ourselves, we heal one another.

QiGong is easy to do and easy to practice; in a group, the energy is even more empowering.  Moving and flowing through QiGong helps to balance the autonomic nervous system which is a key to healing.  Rather than sitting still, with QiGong movements your pain, emotional or physical, will be less.  Join me, Karen Steinbrecher on Thursdays at 2:00 p.m. and 6:20 p.m. at The Resiliency Center. Learn more and RSVP at karensteinbrecher@msn.com  or 215-836-7184.

Meaningful Movement with Others through Self-Awareness

by Brittiney George

“Taking responsibility for your physiological state is not only about learning how to down-regulate your system, but it is about communicating your state to those around you…mammals evolved to co-regulate – meaning that we help each other regulate our states through care-giving and reciprocity.”* So how does Self-Awareness impact regulation and relationships? 

A strong sense of self allows you to be in RELATION with others instead of REACTION to others.

Your body knows safety and danger and is constantly reacting to the cues received regarding it.  “Your body can sense something and react to it without it necessarily entering your conscious awareness.  In fact, your vagus nerve has two branches- an older branch that can be recruited for defense by going to the organs below the diaphragm and eliciting immobilization behaviors… and also another newer more evolved branch that, when functioning, keeps “fight/flight/freeze” in check, and supports your health, growth, and restoration.  This branch is the part of your autonomic nervous system that is responsible for allowing you to connect, self-soothe, be playful, and be in relationship.”*

When you tune in to the physical and emotional responses in your body you get to know how you can move with them and learn from them, instead of merely reacting to them.  When you acknowledge, give voice to, and share these experiences in relationship with another, it helps to regulate your system, and create more meaningful movement with your partner or friend.

What are some tools to help with regulation?

Change Your Breathing Pattern:  “Have you noticed when you are upset with your partner, you begin to huff and puff? This is your body physically preparing to mobilize for a fight or to run…in an effort to slow down, you need long exhalations. Try extending your exhalations through intentional breathing or through singing. Singing is wonderful because it uses muscles of the social engagement system.”*

Honor Your Story by Choosing Who and What you Share:  Honor when your gut is telling you, this isn’t someone I want to share my story with.  If you find that difficult, try out some of the empowering statements below:

·      Being authentic does not mean that everyone has the rights to all of me.

·      I can choose who knows the details of my life.

·      I can choose what I share and who I share it with.

·      I choose to honor all of my emotions, even the ones that are hard for me.

·      When I feel vulnerable, overwhelmed, or scared, I can choose to share my experience with someone that will receive my story with respect…..not agreement, not to hold the weight for me, not to take the pain away from me, but to respect the impact that what I’m sharing has on me.

Learn to Listen to the Cues of Your Body:  not sure how to even start listening to your body?  Or maybe you hear your body all the time (pain, anxiety, fatigue), but don’t know what to do with the information.  Somatic Therapy is a wonderful tool to help.  For a complimentary 55 min. Somatic Therapy session contact Brittiney George, at 610-389-7866 or movebackintolife@gmail.com.

*The quotes in this article are from Dr. Stephen W. Porges, creator of The Polyvagal Theory, and a distinguished university scientist at the Kinsey Institute and a Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina.  Information from this article is available at:  http://www.neilsattin.com/blog/2016/04/34-the-science-of-safety-with-stephen-porges/

Brittiney George, BS, CRS, CST-L3, ICI, CEIM, is a Somatic Therapist specializing in Transformative Touch.  She offers Somatic Therapy sessions, Infant Massage and Baby Sign Language workshops, and exploratory movement classes at The Resiliency Center.  She also co-leads Connection, Expression and Movement (CEM), a monthly workshop series focusing on body-mind integration.  For a complimentary 55 min. Somatic Therapy session contact Brittiney at 610-389-7866 or movebackintolife@gmail.com.