Emotionally Conscious Yoga Practice

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Kathleen in a yoga posture

By Kathleen Calder

In yoga classes that I’ve attended in various places across North America, the postures and physical focus are used as a tool to triumph over the emotional body and mind – two aspects of each human being that are rather important for personal growth. It feels ironic to me that yoga seems to be passed down each lineage without much consideration of this. In my experience, you seem to be expected to attend class and focus on improving control over your body, mind and emotions, rather than experiencing them in a real way. In many ways, yogic philosophy seems to be, or at least seems held by most people to be, about achieving enlightenment through mastery of those three realms.

I have yet to encounter a lineage of yogic practice that actually embraces emotionality and doesn’t encourage the participant/”yogi” to transcend what they are feeling or thinking.

Stillness is wonderful to achieve, but beating yourself into submission to it and not feeling what is there for you to feel is both extremely unkind to the self and our subpersonalities or parts of us. It is also nearly impossible to achieve in this western culture that we have signed up to live in. In this way, yoga has become a form of medication to the majority of western practitioners.

I have also felt a preaching-quality to some yoga classes, as if you are attending church. While I feel the spirituality of yoga should remain intact, the preaching can be a bit much to take in. Especially when most of it is about learning to shut out my mind and emotions from my practice, while my healing work “off the mat” is about going into these very places and learning to love them for what they are. In SoulFullHeart, we challenge the parts that hold our emotional reactions so that they can grow and heal, but never do we try to shut them up or put them out of their misery. My own experience with trying this method is that it doesn’t solve any problems or complete any unfavourable patterns in my life. I tried to use yoga to numb my emotional reality or at least get space from it.

I didn’t realize until I reached a certain point in my personal SFH process that I was doing more harm than good by not actually feeling my emotional reality and pain. I was powerless to change anything in my life for good. Even the body that I achieved from a combination of yoga and other physical activities didn’t last, despite my best efforts. Ironically, though yoga is supposed to help you to find balance (and I do believe that it can potentially) I actually ended up quite out of balance. My Daemon, Itsan, offers me that he feels if more yoga teachers were empathic and honoured the emotional journey and healing that yoga can actually help you access, then their students would have a real opportunity to become their most balanced selves – a goal that many people have when they engage in their practice.

“In fact,” Itsan says, “though many would disagree because at this point they have not been taught any differently, it is impossible to achieve the sage-like balance that most students seek without learning to feel and honour your parts and their emotional realities. For you to feel ‘at one’ with the Universe, you must be in better touch with your psyche and what it holds, not trying to master it. It cannot rest, just as your parts cannot rest, until it is felt. This is honouring your life – past and present – and is a step that cannot be skipped no matter how hard you try. This is especially true in western culture where people are riddled with wounded parts, mostly because of the harsh ‘doing-ness’ reality that they all must live in. ‘Being-ness’ means being with what is…and that includes whatever it is that you are in that moment.”

In other words, it does not feel realistic to expect yourself to become more naturally serene or meditative while you refuse to heal to that place. It is time for a yoga offering that embraces emotionality.

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Living Into Your Dreams

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Photograph taken by Kathleen on the Sunshine Coast, BC

By Kathleen Calder and Itsan (Kathleen’s Daemon)

You won’t dream. Dreaming is scary to you. It allows for you to imagine a reality better than the one you are living and better than what the status quo can offer you. Actually admitting that you desire something or someone better means that you are discovering your unhappiness. If you dream but have never lived into your dreams, you have yet to take off the covers and ask for guidance to your next step. You have yet to say “yes” to risk. Nothing in this life is a given. Nothing is a guarantee. Yet, everything is possible. You increase the odds in your favor by believing that you can and by healing towards your desires and even daring to desire in the first place. And feeling the pitfalls and firewalks along the way.

Your life becomes alive when you raise the stakes. When getting what you want matters. When you say “yes” to the next step or call to action. The Divine wants your heart felt dreams to come true, even the ones you haven’t dreamt of yet and always takes you were you need to go if you just say, “yes”.

I want to be a testament to all the dreamers out there. I want to be a pillar of where courage and risk can take you. Look at me. You do not know me or much about my journey yet, but I have come very far. I still struggle at times with allowing the Divine in. It is scary and yet relieving to relinquish control and simply hold your desires as precious and sacred, which they are. All of them. Every single one.

Being part of SoulFullHeart has helped me let in the love I have desired and deserved to have all along. I am still living into my dreams and allowing them to happen.  I am still allowing my new soul mate relationship with Christian to come in fully. Having a love that has moved so much for me, so quickly, is scary to parts of me and yet is what I’ve always dreamt of. Now we’re living together. This is a living into of a dream that I never thought would be possible at this pace. I am in love with a mate I felt in my heart must exist somewhere even though descriptions of him that I had in my heart seemed impossible to ever find. To boot, I was consistently told by other members of my gender and birth family that finding a man like this was impossible.

I can feel my surrogacy with the Divine Mother, especially in the form of Magdalene, is what is helping me to let my mate in. She is helping me heal my relationship to my body, an important crucible for me in this life and a wall that has actually been blocking my mate’s love from coming into me and into my heart and body. For the first time in my life, I can feel my sense of worthiness healing and the more it heals, the more goodness I can let in and the more dreams I can allow to come true.

I can feel the Divine Mother in all of Her forms- Mary, Kuan Yin, Magdalene, and Kali– wanting to go into you and be an energy of fluidity and flow in your life as well as mine. We have only to say, “yes” when She comes knocking at our door offering us our dreams.

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What Our Food Cravings Are Inviting Us To Feel

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By Kathleen Calder

Yesterday I came across yet another sign advertising “guilt-free” food options at a local fast-food restaurant. For a moment I felt into the feeling of relief that comes from knowing you’ve just eaten something that was “good for you” instead of what you really wanted to eat. Then, I felt into how cravings can be attributed to our parts and how we can make much better strides to eat in better moderation and portions if we negotiate with them first. That being said, I feel that “guilt-free” eating is actually impossible. Some part of you that was asking for the fries instead of the salad may feel guilty that they even asked for the fries in the first place and will think something is wrong with them since their request was ignored for not being “good enough”.

I’m not saying or even feeling that we should necessarily just give in and have the fries, but I do feel the need to look for another option to satisfy their craving or negotiate with it. You could offer to share fries with your friend or even offer that you will make healthier ones that are just as tasty at home later. Sometimes you do just need to give in though, which could also trigger guilt for the part that asked for the fries when another part comes in to punish it for doing so (it can get quite emotionally violent in there!).

It feels to me that cravings are clues and hold just as much valuable data for getting to know a part as an emotional trigger or reaction from them. For instance a desire for certain foods may come from a desire to feel “loved” and eating that particular food holds that vibration for them somehow, which is definitely something you can work with them to get to the bottom of.

This practice of conscious eating with parts is something I’m working on even as I write this. Both of my young parts know full-well that there is part of a yummy chocolate bar in my desk drawer, just beneath where I am typing this! They know, because I have told them, that we may enjoy a small piece of it after supper as a treat at the end of the day. This makes it a bit easier to ignore the chocolate… for now at least!

The thing that I feel I want to impress on you as an overarching concept here, is that any type of urge or craving, be it for sex, alcohol, shopping or food, need not be quelled with a fear of feeling guilty for indulging, but instead needs to be held, loved and cherished for the clues it holds for getting to know and LOVE yourself on a deeper level. Making a craving or urge “bad” does anything but help us stop doing it. Chances are that even if you do manage to give up a habit, dependency, or “addiction” you will not be able to for long without digging deeply enough to find the reason (and it’s bound to be a very good, very valid one at that) for the “medicine” to have been self -prescribed in the first place.

Also, in SoulFullHeart, we look at the relationship that our parts have to the substance, thing, or person that they’ve been using in a medicative way to numb out or suppress their feelings. In that way, no substance is bad or evil- except maybe toxic or self punishing drugs or food- just that it can be used in an unhealthy way by parts of us.

To our ever-growing love and understanding for ourselves!

Love,

Kathleen

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Discovering ‘Social Softness’

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By Marge in Kathleen Calder

Kathleen hasn`t yet written directly from any of her parts. I am happy to be the first.

My name is Marge and I am one of Kathleen’s more obvious parts in this phase that she’s in. I am also known as Kathleen’s “mom” part. In other words, I am the part that best represents and embodies the voice of Kathleen’s mom, much to the dismay and yet sometimes comfort of her younger parts. We are working together to heal this dynamic and bring Kathleen more compassion towards her mom despite their necessary separation during this phase of both their lives.

This weekend at group I was “outted”, as we call it in SoulFullHeart, for playing my usual hiding tricks. I hide my true feelings behind Kathleen’s ability to intellectualize any conversation, even if the conversation is about or during her process. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hide for long, but when Jillian called me out of hiding I felt very embarrassed. Weren’t we still getting the answer right even if I wasn’t connected with my feelings at the time? The simple answer is “not exactly”. It has taken a lot for me to let go of the way in which I answer questions or hold conversations in a group setting. Kathleen wasn’t aware of my tactical way of socializing through her until this weekend. She thought it was all normal…key word being “thought”. I “thought” it was it the way humans were meant to socialize. This whole idea of being in your heart and communicating what you are discerning through your emotions and feelings instead of using your head to discern and disseminate has been so foreign to me.

Until this past weekend, I never realized just how conditioned I was. Suddenly I had memories of being embarrassed for the opposite reason…for trying to communicate my feelings, only to have them invalidated by those who “loved” me.

Now I’m being taught that I am allowed to feel again. Yesterday when we were in the company of Wayne, Jillian and Christian, we were felt to be “softer”. Indeed, both Kathleen and I felt an emerging “social softness”, as it were. Ah, it felt so much nicer to choose stillness instead of words! Stillness allowed me to access my feelings and for Kathleen and I to speak directly from them for a change. Discovering the virtue in being this way in a social environment has helped me to feel what I truly feel about relationships that Kathleen has, including her relationship to social media. Together, she and I can move through life with a genuine and useful method of discernment about, well, everything. I no longer wish for us to simply exist and find ways to “get by”. I now desire for us to work together and find ways to LIVE.

With love and gratitude for you allowing me in through this writing,

Marge

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Offering An End To Seeking Approval From Family

By Kathleen Calder

One of the hardest things to digest is disconnect from family. It’s not a secret that in North America and some other cultures as well there is a huge emphasis on what essentially boils down to “staying together for the kids”. The term “kids”, in the case of this writing of mine today, refers mostly to the young parts within each of us. I have put myself into some very dishonest places within my family for the sake of keeping everything peaceful and not causing any sort of upset. My feeling about doing this is that it has led me to a sort of “caretaker” role and actually created a lot of co-dependency between myself and other family members. Likewise, I have been the one on the receiving end of the caretaking and as a result I have felt such an intense pull to find approval with family members that aren’t even my birth mom.

The question I’m exploring today is, what is it about our need for “mom’s approval” that keeps us clinging to unhealthy relationships? It’s easy enough to try and take this on a purely psychological trajectory, but I’d like to actually explore this in a SoulFullHeart (heart-based) kind of way.

Since realizing all of the unhealthy aspects of my relationship with my own mother a number of months ago, I have also noticed the unhealthy ways in which I have tried to let others in as surrogate moms, even people the same age as me, at times. It’s funny how the same personality traits appear in just about every woman who tries to mother me in some way…right down to the things they choose to worry about (including me). This has led to me seeking approval from them subconsciously. If I wasn’t in constant contact with my young parts, I wouldn’t be able to put my finger on why  I’m feeling triggered in a given moment or what it is about someone that seems to rub me the wrong way. When unhealthy relationship pieces have been felt out once, they have been realized by your consciousness and that makes it easier to recognize and take note when the same circumstances happen again. Without this mechanism in place, it would be that much harder for me to know how to cope with certain people that I draw into my life.

The danger with choosing to separate from your family, especially your mother, is that your young parts will draw in others to substitute for them in your life if you aren’t in active dialogue and feeling with them. When I first asked my mother for space I didn’t do this actively enough. Sure, I already had a relationship with my young parts that was juicy and beautiful, but I didn’t work diligently enough at the time to keep feeling into their deepening reactions to the “mom” situation. As a result I drew a lot of substitute caretakers who would speak to and treat me as if I was my young parts. They had a hard time seeing me as an autonomous young adult and especially had a hard time taking in that I was 25 years old and not still in my teenage years or even my early 20’s.

Realizing this now, I feel more compassionate and appreciative towards them and their efforts to love me the only way they knew how…which happens to be the same reasons why I have had to ask my mom to not be in relationship with me, at least until she can start to show up for herself and her own young parts so that I no longer feel like I have to. The same goes for the rest of my family. I feel I have more than done my part with regards to uncovering a more adult, heart-centred me that can be in deep, vulnerable, heart-based relationships with other adult, heart-centred selves. Of course I am still working this piece, and, you know what? Asking for sovereignty from my family and even being as forthright as I’m being in this writing is all evidence of that.

I can sense how this could easily cause uproar with moms everywhere. I do not mean any disrespect to the role of “mother”. I am very grateful for where my relationship with my mom has led me, even if it has resulted in fallout. None of this has been easy for me to take in and digest and I want to express that from the bottom of my heart. I simply had to feel my way into leaving the nest completely and I know that despite protestation from a part or parts of you, somewhere within you that need of mine will land. We have all felt it or will feel it eventually in some way, shape or form whether it’s in relationship to your immediate family or even your work family. You have my love, support and respect for whatever you sovereignly decide to do when these feelings come up for you on your own journey.

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A Call For Heart-Based Leadership: Less Game Playing, More Vulnerability

By Kathleen Calder

Of all the battles that I have fought in my life, one that remains constant for me is a drive for leadership and recognition. Even as I write this I am coming from a place of desire to be recognized as some kind of new “leader” in this field called “personal/spiritual development”. It has been a struggle to try to let go of that desire, mostly because my Daemon (protector-part, guide, best friend), Sasha, and another part of me named Steven, hold this desire in their hearts. They want me to do what they cannot physically do themselves. Steven is a great scholar and thinker (who is learning to become more of a feeler as well) and he and Sasha have often conspired and brought me opportunities to “prove myself”. Being a guest author on this blog is one of them and I can feel their growing pride in me whenever someone pays attention to what I have written.

The challenge for me, and I feel the same challenge stands for all who wish to be (or already are) leaders, is to stay humble and grounded. To be able to place myself in the trenches with those who I wish to be a sort of “tribe-leader”…or I guess “Shaman” for. To be able to feel what they feel so that their needs are felt, heard and honoured, whether or not I can physically do anything to help them. Instead what I find myself and other leaders doing, is playing to the masses in a way that doesn’t really touch the real heart of the problem we are facing. It becomes a game of popularity and care-taking instead of feeling into what the real issue is.

Let’s look at the recent US federal election as an example of what I’m talking about.

In one corner we have President Obama and in the other, Republican candidate Mitt Romney. I know from my Canadian perspective that many people in my own country were feeling that Obama was the obvious and more progressive choice. Ok. In comparison to Mitt Romney, who desired to take America back to some old-fashioned ways of doing things, yes, Obama is more “progressive”. However, there’s a reason why the election was so neck-and-neck and why so many people that I spoke to actually had no idea who they would rather vote for since neither seemed to be competent enough in addressing any of the real issues. I feel this is a sign of the times we are in. People’s parts, namely their Daemons, are shifting to a place of, “this isn’t good enough anymore” and are longing for something better. That “something better” is the world I desire to help create. It is a world where leaders learn to feel and embrace sensitivity and therefore tap into what the real issues are for their people. The real pain that is buried underneath their desire for marriage equality or for the legalization of marijuana, just to name a couple of recent news items.

There seems to still be an intense fear of empathy instilled in anyone who wants to lead or manage anything or anybody. I learned the other day that Hilary Clinton once cried on camera and it caused a wide-spread panic and sparked questions about her potential ability to lead. I feel that the new way in which we need to be led in this world is through empathy and heart-based vulnerability. It would be a lot to hold as the leader of a country, so it’s possible that leadership would have no other choice but to be more collaborative in its approach. There would need to be multiple leaders in the highest rung.

I can hear and feel some doubts you may have about the potential for that. You and I both feel the danger of the human ego and its’ desire to be the one in solo-leadership. This is the Daemon and other persona parts who desires this, normally. If leaders were in active communication and feeling with their Daemon and other parts, I feel this would be a manageable issue. It is (and has been for a while) a feeling of mine that the more people who embrace parts work, the greater the potential for World Peace. People would be more comfortable being in authentic emotion with each other and would work out their differences accordingly, taking all the steps necessary to be in empathy with each other and their parts, allowing them to be felt and to speak their minds in safety with no knee-jerk reaction.

I am training to become this type of leader for as many as wish to be nourished by the work and the gifts my parts and I would love to bring to them. I am in training and I do not do this perfectly, nor is it about becoming perfect some day. There is no end-result that I desire, except to become surrounded by more people who have surrendered to this work and have chosen authentic, heart-based feelings and relationships to themselves and others. I wish to become more like this and I work on it every day, even as I write this. It is not burdensome. In fact, it is ultimate freedom.

I hope that at least some of this has landed in you. If it hasn’t, that’s ok too. And if it never does, well, I in my imperfection can find ways to accept that, even though it hurts to feel into what that means to me and my parts that desire for me to lead.

In support and love for your journey and where it takes you,

Kathleen

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What The Legacy of Amanda Todd Invites Us To Feel About Ourselves

By Kathleen Calder

There have been many articles circulating around Amanda Todd’s suicide – a catastrophic (and very catalytic) incident that recently received lots of media attention.

To summarize, the story of Amanda Todd is about a teenage girl who was bullied by both men and women, to the point where she could no longer bare it all and in one last outcry for help, posted a video of herself. Here’s the link, if you wish to see it for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7afkypUsc

I just watched it for the first time and to say that my heart broke for her is a tragic understatement. I wanted nothing more than to reach out and hold her hand…not try to give her advice or tell her everything would be ok, but to just hold her and let her cry, or scream, or any outburst she needed in the moment. I would have sat with her for hours. I would have turned off my cell phone and bring every part of myself forward to meet her. To coax her own parts out to be felt. To just be with her.

It makes me wonder if she had anybody at all who could have done that for her. It feels as if no one around her knew how to offer her that. Or even worse…that they were afraid to even try.

On a personal note, Amanda’s situation could have easily happened to myself or any of my friends that I had in my pre-teen and teen years. Even when I was in university it could have happened to me. As women we sometimes become so fused with a part(s) of ourselves when a man showers us with “you’re beautiful”-s that the voice and feeling of our real, authentic, self-loving hearts becomes drowned out. Many a compromising situation could be avoided if we didn’t pounce on any ounce of male approval that comes our way.

I’m still working through this, namely with two of my emerged parts, Maria and Karrie. Maria was once known as my “seductress” part, while Karrie represents aspects of my teenaged self. They both have their own ideas and feelings around romance and attraction – how to attract and what they want to attract. I was never taught how to properly be loved by a man and what to look for. My parents themselves did not have a very loving relationship and I can actually count on one hand the number of times I heard “I love you” from my own father. My older sister never had relationships that could model for me either, but how could she when we were both raised with the same relationship model in place?

I feel this may be the root of Amanda’s own parts having caused so many issues with men and making so many poor decisions. Her real, Sovereign (aka SFH) self got lost in the shuffle while her parts called the shots based on what they themselves had been taught. I feel she may have experienced a similar past life to the one I recalled a week ago today, about having been persecuted as a witch a few centuries ago. It seems she may have unconsciously set herself up for similar persecution in this life…and when no one would do the killing for her, she did it herself…still attached to any guilt she may have had in that previous life around her gifts, feeling as if it really was all her fault that things turned out the way they did.

Amanda Todd’s suicide has caused a tidal wave of emotion and a resurgence of “anti-bullying” messages. Her story pushes beyond bullying and enters well into the realm of the relationship between men and women. The story of the “Burning Times”, as the witch-hunts are called, is one that is still present today, though I would argue that it it’s remnants are felt not so much in a literal sense as they are embedded in the female psyche. The majority, if not all of us, were so barbarically persecuted that it left a branding on our souls forever. We unconsciously fear being hunted again and feel guilt for putting our sexuality and our gifts out into the world, reclaiming what is ours, feeling as if it is our own fault if we are persecuted for doing so and we have brought it all on ourselves.

History, even long-buried, will repeat itself again and again until it has been felt through those parts of ours that it remains with. If only Amanda had been given this gift…but you know what? Despite her tragic and heartbreaking story, she has given woman-kind a huge gift herself. She has highlighted the need to repair our relationship with men once and for all.

A pattern must be brought forward and healed. And I for one am jumping on board with all my heart.

Thank you, Amanda.

May you rest and find healing in the arms of the Divine.

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Heart-To-Heart Knowing

By Katie Calder

I invite you to take a moment and think about this: when was the last time that you managed to sit across from someone and feel into knowing them, to know their heart and how it operates, maybe even how and why it resonates with yours?

We assume we know someone because we grew up with them in our family or they’ve been our friend for years…but how often have we said once emotions are heightened, “wow, I don’t actually know this person at all”. I offer from my own heart-centered feelings that we go through our lives only thinking that we know someone. If we lived in our hearts we would feel the need to feel their hearts on a deeper level that transcends simply knowing facts or stories about those in our lives.

The majority of my family only knows stories about me. The key word is “know”…not “feel”. I imagine that if they allowed themselves to “feel” stories about me instead they would receive a lot more information about who I am than they have up until now. I do not fault them for their error for I’ve done the same to them. There are a lot of wounds that I still feel within my relationship to them that keep parts of me from wanting to reach out and offer this new way of being together and getting to know each other all over again on a much deeper level. A part of me feels that she does want me to waste any energy on them, for they wouldn’t try to do the same for me. There is a lot of assumption that they won’t “get it” and unfortunately I do feel that she is right…at least for now.

When I lost my father in January of 2011, it sent a huge ripple through my family and therefore through my life. It was my first year living in Vancouver and I had to promptly return to Ontario for a couple of weeks to be with my family. Thinking back on it now, the best and worst moments I had, happened when I could sit and cry and curse as loudly as I wished to a loving cousin who seems to “get me” the most. Being allowed to be fully in an emotion, no matter what the cause is a huge gift and one that we do not offer each other often enough…and seldom ever outside of crisis situations like the loss of a friend or family member.  What I realize now that I have been on my own SFH journey, is that one of the greatest gifts we could ever give another human being is to sit and be with them in vulnerability and emotion, no matter how raw the experience. If only I had been doing this “parts” work by then, I would have taken the time to mourn with each of my realized parts and helped them through it while no one else in my family could. Perhaps I still need to do that. In fact, I feel I should. There are many unresolved and unhealed aspects of my relationship with my father and they all shake and quiver in response to that in their own way.

The truth is, not allowing each other to live heart-centred and feeling-based lives robs each of us of a huge gift – truth and authenticity. I feel it is virtually impossible to step into your best, fully-realized self unless your feelings are felt out by those who love you. How can one grow into the magnificent human being they are meant to become if they are constantly emotionally neglected? It is like ignoring a child for most of their child-years and expecting them to still grow into fully-functioning adults with no major social or self-esteem issues. We need to stop telling people who are “depressed” that they need to medicate in order to feel better. We need to stop telling people that reframing their thinking and becoming more “positive” is the answer. Positivity will come and depression will be relieved with love, care and empathy. Unfortunately it seems that in a society that doesn’t believe in processes and allowing things to take time in order to grow and change properly, we will always be looking for a the “quick fixes” like meds and turning your thoughts around, even at the protestation of your parts that need to be held and felt before they can feel better.

The idea of leading with vulnerability is a daunting one and I can tell you from personal experience that it is one of the most difficult things to do. I’m still getting the hang of it and it’s definitely not something we are meant to one day do perfectly, of course. Or could it be that this is one of those many instances where it’s appropriate to say that  doing it imperfectly in fact means that you are doing it perfectly after all? I like that idea.

In love, vulnerability and support for your own SFH journey,

~ Katie

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