Throwing Caution To The Wind: Uncovering What You Really Want

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Wayne Vriend

You may want a better job, or a more reliable car, or a car that says you are really cool, or the latest smart phone, or some new clothes, or a new friend, or your spouse or mate to change in some way. But if you were to take a look at whatever it is that you want and to ask yourself if there is a deeper need underneath the surface want or need, what do you think you might discover?

As you ask this question, try not to judge the the surface want or need as either vainly superficial or justifiably necessary. This way of judging your needs, both approving or disapproving of them, is all part of hiding from the desires and needs that are at the root of them.

Maybe the deeper want or desire is something like hunger for approval from others, or being noticed. Maybe it is a sense of self importance that you are craving. Maybe it goes deeper still to a need to feel Divine approval or love. These are all real human needs. I like being noticed and feeling that my life is important, and being approved by others I respect feels really good too.

What you and I really want is our lifeline in a sea of drowning humanity. Your deeper desires are keys to who you are at a deep level.

I’d rather feel genuinely important than rely on a physical object like a smartphone or a car, or an emotional object like my role or status in society, that does such a poor job of affording me any consistent feelings of self love.

Genuine human need is what underlies vanity and even hideous barbarism. All of us would behave the same way if our needs were being unmet in the same way, and if our present life and past life experiences were similiar.

So, what is that YOU really want?

It’s hard to know isn’t it? If you knew what you really wanted, you wouldn’t stumble along pursuing lesser wants whose fulfillments seem so short lived, and oftentimes cause deep hurt? Would you?

Most people do what they have been enculturated to do with this “problem” of desire. That is to kill it, or control it, or to manage it, so it doesn’t cause problems and pain.

We’ve made desire itself to be the bad guy. But the truth is that the very essence of being human and being alive is to have wants, is to desire, and being the most alive is to have the strongest wants and desires. What condition is your ‘wanter’ in? Dead people are people who no longer need or want anything.  Dead people don’t look longingly in storefront windows and they can’t be sold sex, or ice cream, or a career.

I sincerely believe that the root problems of our aches and pains in life, physically, emotionally and spiritually can be traced back to having a wanter that has been neglected and is in poor shape. Just as it requires a healthy metabolism to shed the weight your body no longer needs, so it requires strong healthy desire to let go of the things that you need to, and are ready to, in order to make room for the new things you really need and desire.

Maybe the definitive expression of vulnerability itself, is to feel the need for something that you don’t yet have access to, or control.

You have to in fact work to get it. You have to do the work of drawing it to yourself. This isn’t actually as hard as it sounds though. Doing work that is fun is what you did as a child without realizing it. You called it ‘play’ in fact. You gave all that you had in terms of time and effort and resources to get what you wanted, and you did it for the fun of it. Your parents may have questioned the appropriateness of your passion, or feared you ending up in a pile of disappointment, but not you. You went all out. You couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t. Any hurts you encountered along the way, you were sure to recover from. You threw caution to the wind.

So what happened since then? You were told a host of things, in language and tone that was foreign to you, such as: ‘that isn’t really a responsible way to live; money doesn’t grow on trees; you need to care not just for yourself; work should come before play; responsibility is being grown up.’ You were told a whole bunch of things designed by nearly dead people with nearly dead wanters who needed to dim the light of your wanter; who in fact needed to sacrifice your alive reality on the altar of their dark deadness. They needed you to tone down in order to not feel the pain of their chosen deadness. They needed you to live as a medication to their deadness. Hence the gospel of putting others needs before your own.

What happened is that you just had the permission to be childlike in this way robbed from your adult reality. I’d like to see it given back to you. I’d like to be around more people like you who ache to return back to this authentic way of being human. Humanity is depending on people like you to take back what you had, what is in fact native to you, but that you lost.

This is the harder work, but it too can be done with all the seriousness of a child at play, with Divine help and guidance, and with deep and lasting rewards that no man can ever take from you.

If my words resonate with you, and you know that getting help with this kind of a life change is part of what you really want, I’d be honored to help you. I’d get to have a lot of fun helping you and uncovering the parts of you that hold your deepest desires. But only if that is what you really want! The deepest cost isn’t the time, or the money, or the effort. The deepest cost is enduring the process as well as finding the willingness to let go of what you in fact don’t really want, but are only presently attached to.

I know of no greater bravery, and I see its’ potential in you!

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Emotionally Conscious Education: What’s Possible Between Adverbs and Algebra

Published on by Gabriel HeartmanLeave a comment

By Chris Tydeman

I was invited by Jillian to write an article about emotionally conscious education and how our current school system supports or does not support it.  I am a third grade teacher.  My experience for several years has always been with children between the ages of 7-11.  An age I feel is ripe for setting a foundation for the turbulent world of the middle school years.  In this age range, children are more open to be honest and receptive to authentic emotional guidance.  If they like their teacher and see them as a real human being rather than an authority figure alone, they will “hear” us rather than just listen (if we are lucky!).  In this case, “hearing” is an aspect of feeling what I am saying.  You feel me?

I spend many hours a day with a population of children who come from a wide range of family dynamics. I chose not say cultural or economic dynamics because both of those, in my opinion, are included within the family dynamic as a whole.  At this age, they are beginning to form the early stages of their relationship to the outside world.  Their assumptions and feelings of themselves and others begin to take shape.  These formations are greatly impacted by their family dynamic.  If a child is neglected emotionally at home, they come to school depressed, angry, or needy.  What they need more than math is love.  More than cursive, is a place where they feel safe to express themselves.  Others come with a “what’s in it for me?” formation.  What they need is to feel empathy for others and the joy received from lending a helping hand or an encouraging word.

As a teacher, we call these “teachable moments”.  Unfortunately, they are not units or even lessons.  Just moments.  As someone who is becoming emotionally conscious, I find it my desire to be as authentic as I possibly can.  Just doing that, I hope to provide a model for being an authentic human being, not a robot.  If all teachers could be that, it would begin a shift toward an authentic respect from the students.  They would “buy” into us.  From that point, I try to provide a space where the students feel comfortable to express themselves in a way they ache for.  To be heard, understood, and felt.  Not judged or punished.  I let them know they can come to me if they need to.  The more students feel comfortable with me, the more willing they are to share.  It is imperative I be there “with” them during these times or I lose that trust.  When they do come, it is a great time to get the children to express their feelings.  This takes a long time, as it is foreign to them and to most of us.

During the school day, I have my students applaud other students for being brave at sharing their writing or math problem.  This hopefully supports and acknowledges self-worth.  When they have to cooperate, I must continually act out how they can respectfully communicate and how to bridge differences.  This is REALLY hard!  Probably the most difficult lesson to teach.  Their opinions of each other are so definitive that it is a challenge to deal with sometimes.  But with any challenge comes opportunity.  However, by this time, most teachers are so emotionally drained themselves, we lose our own patience.  It is a daily workout, but one that can bring the gift of a child hugging you for no reason other than the desire to show you that they love you.

As I began to write this, I was prepared to conclude that emotionally conscious education is a false hope.  But after reflecting on what happens on a daily basis, I feel it is possible and have experienced myself in moments.  For it to truly have legs, there would need to be more emotionally conscious teachers and administrators.  The curriculum doesn’t need to change, just our relationship to ourselves and our students.  It is possible because emotionally conscious education is what can happen in the moments between adverbs and algebra.

Note from Jillian: Children represent the young parts of ourselves. In loving and feeling them (whatever our role in their life is), we are also loving these young part of ourselves. Also, the more we create an emotionally conscious relationship with young parts of ourselves through journaling and having them felt by us and during sessions, the more our self love overflows to the children in our lives. Chris, who is engaged with the SoulFullHeart process, is growing in capacity to love and feel his parts, which opens up his heart to feel and care for his students in a deeper and more emotionally authentic way  beyond just teaching them academics. What shifts internally impacts our external world as well.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Beyond Making The Body Bad: Healing Our Ingrained Inauthenticity

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Wayne

We live in an age when inauthenticity has been deeply ingrained and conditioned in our society and relationships, including the relationship that we have with ourselves. We seek pleasure, but settle for distraction. We hunger for life’s sweetness and nourishment, but settle for the supermarket lies of processed food. We long for passionate engagement in life, and settle instead for a job offering security.

If you are like the old version of me, you rate yourself on how well adjusted and good at coping you are with an enduring lack of fulfillment. You pride yourself on how you don’t lash out at others and how you seek God and character attainments to find your way through life sanely. Or maybe, unlike the old me, (but arguably, a step healthier,) you are angry and pissed, and you don’t try to hide it, but, on the downside, remain stuck there in a frustrated loop of settling.

This managing of our desires instead of embracing them for the lifesaving signposts that they are is at root of so much agony in our lives and society. Where did it come from? How did we get here? What brought us to this mutual buy in on such a wide scale as to call this suppressed state normal? Why do we reward those most well adapted to this strategy?

A bit more of a mental answer is that both science and religion came to an agreement, (underneath all their appearances of being at odds with each other) and that agreement is that the body cannot be trusted; that your body is bad.

Religion’s alarm is that your body ‘fell from grace’ sadly through no choice of your own, but held against you none-the-less, and eternally at that. The alarming message is that the untrustworthiness and evil of your own body, (though originally created by God), now fallen, is that you must not rely on it in any way. The message is that the body’s desires are tainted, sinful, and will only lead to more pain and punishment.

Science presents us with a strangely similar message.  For all of its’ vast knowledge of the human body, science tells us that matter is all there is; no higher purpose; no higher design. None. Not within or without, beyond the mechanics of that body. Only cause and effect. In other words, the body itself possesses no innate loving and guiding wisdom of its’ own. Again, the message is that the body’s desires are not connected to anything loving. Instead, the body’s selfish desires are to be will-powered over and disciplined into submission, lest they leave you deprived of all health.

In other words, the message has been that the world of spirit and matter are two separate worlds. Purposeless and despairing, both science and religion have stripped us of our noble and lofty sovereign state of feeling the blessing of our own bodies.

A more feeling and less mental answer to the question of how did we get here, would be to simply open your heart and look at any body part of yours.

Try your hand, for example. Really look at it, feel it, study it, listen to it. Yes, it has a voice and it can talk to you. Give your hand the gift of your full undivided attention for a few moments. It can tell you what it likes and what it doesn’t. Ask it if it feels like matter and spirit are in fact separate, like it is just a blob, a machine, with no innate wisdom or guidance, or purpose.

What if it is a lie that matter and spirit are not the same? And what if it is this lie that is at the root of both past wounding and present lack of fulfillment in your life? What if it is at root of your inauthentic expression in your life?

Soulfullheart begins with a feeling knowledge of divine goodness of your body and your emotions. And, not off sometime in the future after you’ve resolved a few pressing issues, but now, you can turn to your body’s innate wisdom for guidance on where to go next.

Coming back to loving and honoring our body is a huge step towards seeing more of your authentic self, or what we call your soulfullheart self, express into all the areas of our lives.

Be good to yourself though. You are biting off a big piece, and one thing will lead to another.

This writing was inspired by the thoughtful words and spacious energy of Charles Eisenstein’s The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process and here for more articles about the body.

The Body Beautiful: A SoulFullHeart Way Of Relating To Your Body

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

By Jillian Vriend

It’s not about powering your way through to finally be healthy; it’s about feeling your way through to finally be healed.

​The human body is the vehicle for our Soulfullheart expression, therefore it is meant to be cared for and nourished. It is meant to experience and express sexuality with a committed, loving, monogamous bond offering the most healthy opportunity for this expression. Rather than transcending the body as not being “spiritual” or judging the body’s needs as “sinful”, Soulfullheart embraces and honors the body and it’s needs as being sacred and a reflection of the Divine in human form.

​”Diet” in greek means, “way of living.” Soulfullheart advocates for a balanced way of living related to food that is rich with vegetables, fruits, other superfoods, sustainably raised proteins (or vegetarian), vitamin supplements, and whole wheat grains. Processed foods, refined sugar, high quantities of salt, and “concentration camp” raised meats don’t provide the nutrients and energy that your SoulFullheart body needs and wants. Soulfullheart also recommends regular exercise, including cardio, hiking, running or fast walking, resistance training, etc. A healthy way of living is about feeling what your body really needs to thrive and maintain a healthy body weight, versus providing what a part of you craves and needs as a medication to numb out your feelings.

​If you struggle to care for your body and maintain a healthy weight, there is an emotional and/or spiritual wound at the root cause of your struggle. Rather than focusing on just “changing your exercise and eating habits,” the SoulFullHeart process invites you to feel parts of yourself and how they relate to food, your sexuality, your physical appearance, your desirability, etc. It’s not about powering your way through to finally be healthy; it’s about feeling your way through to finally be healed. Sometimes weight gains and fluctuations are a necessary part of the phase you may be in, especially if you are focusing strongly on your emotional healing process. You just may not have the “energy” to exercise or focus intently on what you are eating. SoulFullheart offers to be self-loving with yourself as you move through these phases, even as it offers the perspective that your body’s health mirrors your emotional health.

​Physical illness in the body has many layers of cause beyond what the medical profession acknowledges. While you may need to continue a medication longer term, Soulfullheart offers that as you heal your emotional and spiritual wounds, your need for the medication decreases and may disappear all together. Emotional wounding and spiritual wounds held in your energy body or chakras contribute greatly to your physical health. In Soulfullheart, we provide chakra clearing and balancing, in addition to removing toxic objects and codependent cords that may be stuck in your aura and energy bodies, as a catalytic part of your process. This would be done after you have felt and processed emotionally around your physical issues first and negotiated with your parts, so that the energy work has a chance of lasting because you can subconsciously accept it. Just doing energy healing doesn’t address the deeper emotional wounds causing the illness or physical issues.

​As an example, a SFH client who has suffered with asthma since she was a little girl was asked what she felt emotionally was going on that caused the asthma beyond the physical reasons. Her answer was that is how part of her reacted to stress, to not being heard and seen, to not being respected, and to being told what to do by others in a way that didn’t honor her own desires. I asked her if this is how she experienced herself being treated as a child and she said yes. She can now negotiate and feel this with the part of her “stuck” in this childhood wounded reaction and provide her a loving, SoulFullHeart parent presence which will see, hear, honor, and not tell this part of her what to do without taking her needs into consideration. This should greatly dissipate her asthma symptoms.

​I’ve also encouraged this client to someday journal directly with the voice of her asthma to find out what it was trying to tell her and feel with her. We’ve offered this assignment to another client who was having pain and mobility issues with her right arm, which is the masculine side of our bodies. This client wrote to her right arm telling it that she frustrated at not being able to work and wanted to feel what was going on with it. Her arm pain was then connected to a young inner child female part of her who wanted attention and felt that making her arm hurt was the only way to get it. Her arm pain is lessening and recovering as she’s now being with and feeling this young part.

​I spent over five years in the medical field, half of that time as a nurse in a radiation oncology department. I was fascinated by the biology and physiology of the human body (all those systems and cells automatically and without our conscious involvement working together), plus I was drawn to working with people in a nurturing capacity. As I talk about in my story, I eventually felt very frustrated with traditional medicine’s approach to treatment, which doesn’t acknowledge the emotional, spiritual, and energetic causes of illness and benefits of healing in these areas. Also, the emotional needs of the patients were not addressed, with each patient becoming their illness, as in “she’s a breast cancer, stage four”, rather than felt as a heart and soul being going through an intense journey. I feel how the experience in traditional medicine woke me up to my healing capacities, and yet I’m also grateful to have a deeper, less myopic, and more holistic view on body illnesses now that acknowledges the emotional and spiritual causes. A very touching book that I’ve read that explores the emotional and spiritual aspects of cancer is Grace and Grit by Treya Wilber, Ken Wilber’s late wife.

​My commitment to  emotional healing over the last ten years has directly manifested in my physical health with greatly decreased skin breakouts, steadier weight, higher energy and fitness level, increased orgasmic capacity, and overall more youthful appearance. Also, I haven’t had a cold or illness in over two years. Wayne talks about his recent journey with emotional conscious weight loss (close to 30 pounds in less than three months!) in this blog entry. Soulfullheart offers that linking our body realities of weight, health, and stamina levels to our emotional and spiritual health allows us more possibilities of balancing our way of living related to our bodies and of truly healing and transforming our physical health. Our bodies are truly temples; their form holding our sacred humanity. Worship at yours and you’ll experience the gifts.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

​

​

​

​

​

​

On Sacred Romance: An Introduction

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

By Jillian​

​I have always considering myself to be a romantic person, drawn to love and relationship. I intuitively felt that I needed intimate romantic relationships in order to heal my deeper heart and soul wounds. As a woman, I’ve experienced both incredible and difficult moments during relationships. I’ve been both adored and resisted; admired and disdained. And I’ve had my own draws and resistances to the men and the relationships in my life. I have truly experienced that romantic intimacy offers me and you the most powerful and catalytic opportunities to see ourselves (both our strengths and our struggles) and to grow, learn, and change. As a healer and intuitive guide, I’ve experienced in working with people that nothing seems to be more challenging and threatening, and yet more desired, than a meaningful romantic relationship.​

​I feel that it is our sacred humanity which holds a desire for connection, romance, intimacy, sexual union, resonance, companionship, and attraction. Our soul holds a desire for these grounds to feel sacred and connected to our soul calling and purpose for being here. The desire for another soul to mirror our biggest strengths and our most tender struggles. We hold a desire for the love to arise in each moment offering a deeper invitation into the ultimate mystery of our beloved’s hearts, souls, and bodies. And, in exploration of this dance, to feel the beautiful mystery of ourselves unfold in response to a commitment with another.​

This, to me, is the possibility of sacredness that romantic relationship uniquely offers the human species. The realities of these dense earth dimensions create a necessary separation that invites us to explore intimacy without the safety of the overriding sense of being One and part of All That Is, even if some souls have some access to these frequencies. Sacred romance invites us to feel the desires and physical needs of our bodies; that special “tingle” that only catalyzes in alchemical response to our mate; that chemical reaction that only human bodies can produce in response to the person that is uniquely there to trigger it.​

Sacred romance invites us to heal our childhood imprints about romantic relationship, marriage, gender differences; it triggers up the messages and conditioning that we received from our parents and our culture. These distorted messages that our defenses/daemons and our young parts got about relationships could be: You can’t really trust men/women; Love doesn’t really last and, if it does, it can only be a love based on security, boredom, and routine; Sex isn’t supposed to be hot and regular and intense in long-term relationships. In fact, it’s ok if it doesn’t happen for years and years!; You can’t have everything that you want from your relationship, so just settle for what you have; It’s not ok to want more, so you need to stay in the relationship for the sake of your partner/your kids/your mortgage (I have actually heard this excuse before!)/your assets/your security, etc.​

The conditioning in our culture around romantic relationship is very pervasive; based in a defensive, security-driven picture; and encourages a conforming our needs, desires, and bigness to fit the relationship. The “Usness” of any romantic union- that alchemical creation that arises out of the connection between the two individuals- is a dynamic, ever changing, and fluid thing. Even if our defenses put the usness in a compartment and try desperately to keep each partner invulnerable, stuck, and numb- the usness, in its essence, is still an alive and arising entity. Just as we are!​

When Wayne and I meet with clients, if they are in a relationship or marriage, we can feel the usness between them, even without meeting their partner (although it is always our deepest desire and recommendation to serve both). We feel together how vitally held the usness is; if it is being nurtured and nourished; and how the person (and their daemon!) relates to it. SoulFullHeart wants to serve the love between the couple, to serve the usness ground that is still alive on some level, and to blow love on the embers of it to possibly ignite a new passion, desire, and intimacy between the couple that is based in alive frequencies rather than dead ones based in security, familiarity, and routine. And, SFH also wants to serve to explore the possible necessity of completing the relationship if that is the couple’s sovereign choice to do with honor and respect for what has been, while not denying their desires for more.

In meeting with couples, we emphasis the need for them to connect to themselves “vertically” rather than overly focusing “horizontally.” This means that many partners have fallen into a habit of overly obsessing about the relationship, how to fix it, and feeling they just need communication strategies to make it better. In SFH, we feel that it is each partner’s individual emotional and spiritual health that most impacts the “usness” in the relationship. The degree of codependency, triggers, mom and dad projections, and non productive turmoil is the amount of wounding that is in the partner as an individual. The relationship is mirroring to them that they need to heal themselves in order to contribute in an emotionally healthy way in the relationship. We support for couples to meet with us individually for a little while in order for them to have a safe, non charged ground in which their parts can share and express their feelings about their partner and the relationship. Eventually, we encourage couples to meet in typically three hour sessions in which each partner primarily shares their individual process and parts with their partner witnessing their sharing. This allows the couple to feel each other more compassionately and with less charge as the focus is on the individuals, not on who was “right” or “wrong” in the relationship.

(Note: this blog entry is the introduction from an article about sacred romance posted on the SoulFullHeart Website.)

Your Most Courageous Story

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Leonardo

(Wayne’s Note: Leonardo is the part of me that Soulfullheart recognizes as our daemon, or our soul guardian. I feel Leonardo as the part of me eager to express and lead others into more of themselves. I felt his desire today to express around a favorite theme of his and share it with you, which is an aspect of his and my most courageous story.)

A deep thing about you is that you subscribe to a story. The story you subscribe to has everything to do with your hopes, dreams, desires, fears, and passing moods, and ultimately, the fun you are having or not having.

And there is an even deeper reality to you than the story you currently subscribe to. Many stories are capable of being played out in your life. You are a story player, like a record player. You are capable of playing a different story than the one you currently tell. You, as an experiencer-of-story itself and a teller-of-story is much closer to who you really are, than the chosen or inherited story you presently tell.

Your story could be about love or hate, abundance or scarcity, control or trust, adventure or guarantee, knowing or not knowing, fulfillment or boredom, competition or co-creation.

What’s more, you are also the writer of your story, whether you realize it or not.

It is most common that the story you grew up in is the story that you will play out for your entire life, and in turn pass on to others. This is because your needs for comfort and familiarity often trump your needs for love and learning new ways that life can be. In this way, it will strongly seem that you simply inherit your story, rather than lead it. To many, there will not even be any awareness that they are captive to story in their lives. The feeling that you are responsible for your story is one that many don’t want to feel, and work hard to live their entire lives as a testament to that chosen belief.

Stories are what we try on in the search to find out who we really are. Stories are ultimately what we let go of, but only when we are done with them, and when they are done with us.

Being engaged in seeking our truer stories is much more fun than mindlessly living out stories passed on to us.

We resist when others try to force their story on us, or advance their story at our expense. Your right to your story is one of the most sovereign things about you, and when others disrespect that, you do well to part with them, and feel the loss in it as well.

But when others simply live their story for us to see, without superiorizing, we are often attracted to their story. It hurts when others hold their story as more valuable than they hold you as a person, because the message they send is that your story is more real and more important than you; that people don’t really exist, only stories do.

As a soul being, after any given lifetime, you will probably awaken from your unawareness of the story you played out and assess that you would like to choose a different story in your next life, and awaken to your creative role in your story.

Some of us, through personal crisis, change our story mid life, and go on to explore more than one story in a given lifetime. This often hurts to let go of the people so dear to us who are not ready to explore in the same way you are. It often feels like being disloyal or disobedient to God to try on other stories in your lifetime. But it is actually, being loyal to yourself that feels so strange and uncomfortable.

All of us will eventually come to see that we must recognize and take stock of the story being played out in our lives. We must go on to take responsibility for our stories, and see if the story we played out is a worthy one or not. Would we like to live that story again? How fun was it really? Is it a story that will get told over and over again for the beauty and lessons of it, or is it a story preferred to be forgotten?

What the entire world is actually waiting and aching for is for you to live your most courageous story.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Emotionally Conscious Weight Loss

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Wayne Vriend

Never has there been better weight loss information than what is currently coming to light about how our bodies relate to food and exercise; about the depletion of nutrients in our food supply; and about how obesity rates are rising in our society.

Why is it that at the same time as we are getting more help with the situation, that the problem keeps getting bigger, slowly, but surely, like an expanding waistline?

Most people have been advised, (rather unfeelingly, I would add) that you need to think positively if you are going to conquer your weight problem; that if you look, sound, and feel hopeless, you are most likely going to stay that way.

So then if thinking positive is the key to getting in control of one’s way of life in relation to food and exercise, then why is that approach such a dismal failure? Do negative people prefer being negative?

It is only when we consider our emotional body that we gain some insights into these questions. By ‘Emotional Body,’ I mean who you are as an emotional being and how we emotionally feel about our life. Changing our eating habits to more alive foods and letting go of habits and foods that are actually a form of slow self suicide, has all to do with self love. Our inability to let in love is getting much closer to the real issue underlying our weight struggle.

In SoulFullHeart, we offer that you have way more to your emotional body than you have acknowledged. Sure, part of you wants to lose weight, but have you ever considered or felt the part of you that feels safe or comforted by being overweight? This part of you wants to, ‘leave the weight right where it is thank you, and take all your self righteous health crap out of my face!’

You are left being at war with yourself; with the part of you who wants to lose weight and is trying to gain power over the part of you who wants to keep things the same.

It is only by getting to know both of these parts of yourself intimately that real and lasting and wholesome change can be let in to your life. Letting in is very different than powering through.  If part of you is strong enough to pave over the part of you addicted to crap food, is that really the kind of healing you are after?

Recently, I got to the place where it feels like the tide had finally turned in my own life. Despite good health and a physical line of work, I have gained around 10 pounds each decade or so of adulthood to where, at 51 years old, I was 35 pounds over my ideal weight, actually in the obese category.

Then, 3 months ago a friend invited me to be his guest for an afternoon hot tub and sauna at the local gym. The front desk staff put all ‘guests’ through a few minutes of sales intro and a tour of the facility, and before it was complete, I surprised myself and signed up for a years’ membership. Something in me said ‘go for it.’ I signed up for sessions with a personal trainer as well.

The sessions were intense, but also helpful in terms of engaging in a real workout. I don’t recall ever sweating so intensely. I was amazed by the simplicity and the intensity of the simple exercises, several of them using only body weight, and others only simple equipment. An exercise ball, a few dumbbells, a bench. The trainer helped me also assess my food habits and make suggestions.

I’ve lost over 25 pounds in just under 3 months, have gained a noticeable change to my muscle mass, and I feel quite different about my body and well being. I’m looking forward to reaching my goal weight, conditioning and deepening vitality.

The amazing thing is that it has been relatively easy and fun. While it has taken the necessary time commitment and changing eating habits, I’ve found doing all of that desirable instead of a drudgery and sacrifice. I’m not feeling deprived.

I recall being in a gym membership a few years prior where I struggled to get engaged and find a rhythm and exercise routine that opened out for me, and eventually it all fell by the wayside (as it does for so many other people). Now, instead, I found the whole experience with getting in shape motivated by a conscious self love that wanted to learn about healthier habits and food choices, and then in turn wanted to give myself those gifts. I found myself naturally enjoying letting go, one at a time, of foods that don’t enliven me.

So what made the difference this time around?

By engaging in the kind of work that Soulfullheart offers, I have gotten to know the more hidden parts of me, the wounded parts of me who sought and needed the comforts of my old lifestyle habits and the weight blanket around my body.  What’s more, I’ve been able to show up for the needs of these parts of me and that brings change on a much deeper level.

It’s interesting the root meaning of the word diet is ‘way of life.’ The foods we eat are very deeply about our way of life. Who we presently are as emotional beings is also most deeply about our way of life.

Your ‘way of life’ is a sacred journey in this life and it has taken you to where you are now, including your struggles with weight and food. Each habit you’ve been given to and each pound of weight gain is also a part of this sacred journey. It’s not less sacred because part of you doesn’t like the downside of it. Because you are a sacred being on a sacred journey, the good news is that, it’s all sacred; your choices, your weight gain and loss, your health decline and improvement.

These are all gifts to you this life that you ultimately control the direction of, but the path there involves getting to know and embrace yourself in a way that you haven’t known up until now.

I want to offer to you the Soulfullheart path to getting to know yourself in a much more intimate way than you’ve ever imagined, including finding who you were meant to be on a physical level just naturally arising as part of the healing.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Dying in Submission or Thriving in Surrender?

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Wayne

Here’s an important question when it comes to relating to a any group or leader, or religious organization: Are they asking for my submission or my surrender?

If you come to a mentor, or a leader, or a group, whether it’s in the realm of spirituality, business or even family, for support, guidance or direction; putting this question on your radar can make or break your allegiance, as it should.

This question has been a guiding light for me over many years even when it was more subconscious than it was something I could put more words around as I will attempt now. 🙂

When a client comes to work with us in Soulfullheart work, we need them to lean into us, to see us as able to help, to see us a resource. This is true whether you are going to a dentist, an auto mechanic or a priest or pastor, or joining a group of any kind.

But how we, and they, relate to that ‘leaning in’ makes all difference in the world.

A leader who says that they have the truth; energizes that they have deeper knowledge; the path to your truest growth; and that if you lose sight of that, you will have to live with the penalties of being on the outside of their blessing, is using fear to bring and keep you under control and is asking for your submission.

A leader who offers what they have to offer, who even makes a bold claim as to what it can do to help; and invites you to consider it for yourself; who acknowledges that you are a sovereign being; who acknowledges that the healing gifts he or she offers don’t get to go anywhere without the participation of the client or seeker; who energizes no disdain for your choice to say ‘no,’ is asking and waiting patiently for your surrender.

One suppresses your power, the other enlivens it. One is afraid of your bigness, the other welcomes it. One sees your strength as a threat, the other sees it as an asset.

The difference here though is usually not so obvious, or we wouldn’t keep stubbing our toes or breaking our hearts over this question. Here are a few ways to look deeper and ascertain for yourself if the frequencies the group or leader are emitting are more about seeking submission or surrender:

How does the group or leader relate to those who are no longer a part of it? Does it hold more respect or more disdain? This is an important question because ultimately we end up leaving every group we join. And this question you can easily find the answer to before you join.

The other big one is how does the group feel on a transparency level? Most of us are now suspect that the politeness of politicians is a cover for lack of transparency and designed to gain and keep power. This way of being in the world is of course nearing it’s end as more and more of us can see through that for what it is.

Does the group come off as having more of the proud answers to life or instead the humble questions? Are they in the realm of knowing all the time or can they breathe in not knowing?

But let’s say, you’re already in deeper, have been for a good while, with many parts of your family and social and even possibly your financial life tied in in deep ways, and you are increasingly chafing at what feels like leaders being controlling and working to maintain your submission, and even masking that as asking for your surrender. What do you do with that? You might already know that there is no space within the group to openly question the leader without being labeled as disloyal or having a bad spirit, or just not ‘getting it.’ If that’s the case, the question for you isn’t whether the group is healthy or not, but more about how to find the courage to leave.

And that’s the kicker, because the time spent in submission is designed to erode the spine you would need to leave and say ‘no more.’ Alternatively, the time spent in healthy surrender is designed for you to see and determine when the growth you came for is achieved and that you are being called to move on, that you are ready to move on, with some sadness, sure, but not with any implanted fear of failure, lingering trauma, or feeling of being destitute.

Submission erodes your power and takes it from you. Surrender awakens you to your power and enhances your relationship to your own power. Surrender can never be demanded, it can only be freely and powerfully given. Surrender breeds powerful equals, submission breeds underlings.

Soulfullheart would take this question a step farther by asking a couple more questions that look at this same issue as it relates to our relationship with ourselves as well as our relationship to the divine:

“How has a more controlling part of me demanded the submission of the more vulnerable parts of myself?” and a second part to that question: “how has that process enabled me to stagnate in groups that no longer serve me?”

and:

“How has a controlling submission picture inside of me to the divine affected me with allegiance to a false god or an atheistic ‘f-you’ to the divine?”

We create in our outer life what is true in our inner life, and then our inner life moves, and our outer life follows.

If You’re Miserable In Paradise…

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

“Wherever you go, there you are” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn

By Jillian

I’m feeling blessed to be in a natural paradise on a warmish, sunny day in May. I’m on Gabriola Island, a remote feeling island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada that is only a 30 minute ferry ride from Vancouver Island yet feels like a world away from the hustle bustle of the lower mainland. In March, Wayne and I decided to rent a cottage here and divide our time between being here and our condo in North Vancouver.

It was a decision based on desire, not practicality, although we trusted that the financial means and the lifestyle changes would work themselves out if we followed our hearts. It was a decision from our souls with both of our daemons urging us to claim this piece of “paradise” where they could unplug from the frenzied and full grids of a metropolitan area and breathe in the quiet, natural beauty, and lighter population base.

We were following our growing desire and clarity to offer our SoulFullHeart work and felt that being away from it all would inspire our creativity, alchemy, and codification of this work. Oh, and it has! While being here, I’ve designed most of our website soulfullheart.com, received the name SoulFullHeart and our slogan, “Become Who You Were Meant To Be”, have placed an ad for SFH in the local paper, and we both find that writing comes fluidly and easily here. Wayne and I have both felt significant movements with our daemons here- feeling the transition for us to offering SoulFullHeart as our main source of income and passion work. We’ve also been synchronistically blessed to be offering our SoulFullHeart work to the couple we rent the cottage from here on Gabriola.

So, for us, this place is paradise.

Yet, for many people who live in places such as this one, it doesn’t feel like they live in paradise; instead it feels like they live in hell. If they are unhappy, struggling, and miserable in their lives, the physical location doesn’t impact this emotional reality. This is the wisdom inherent in the saying, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

Although you might feel temporarily relieved and even inspired by a beautiful outdoor surrounding, the deeper feelings that you’ve subconsciously buried will bubble up and express eventually. Also, many of the parts of you that are in pain and suffering aren’t in this physical reality and time anyway. They are stuck in a time and place that captures their deepest cause of wounding and don’t feel much improvement or relief from settings or environments, even if they have favorite places to be. There are definitely environments that can help you feel yourself more; that are free from toxicity and negative associations. However, the environment alone can’t offer healing at the deeper subconscious levels where the source of your pain lives.

This is why unhappy couples on vacation may only temporarily relieve the state of discontent and resentment between them before it explodes into fighting, contention, and disagreement. As much as they would like the trip to paradise to alleviate and dissipate all their issues, the truth is that the reprieve is temporary at best and their issues merely follow them there.

Similarly, this is why you can go to a place to attend a “healing retreat” for a brief period of time and feel temporary movement from it. Yet, long lasting transformation may not accompany such a sojourn away from your daily routine. True transformation happens when it becomes your daily life, when your sense of yourself comes from within, and when parts of you have been felt in the realities where they emotionally live. It can be confusing, baffling, and even shameful to feel that you’re miserable in paradise. Yet, this is a reflection of your emotional reality and it’s difficult to deny or escape from for long.

Any physical place can feel like paradise when your sense of paradise comes from within yourself and then is reflected outward. When you truly and deeply love yourself from the worthiness place that arises through feeling these wounded parts inside you, you’ll be more naturally drawn to gorgeous places, yet you don’t need them in order to feel life is good, blessed, and beautiful.

The Cost Of Finding You

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

Image

By Wayne

If you already know that much of your true and deeper self as well as your soul’s purpose for being here is threatened to remain unfulfilled this life, and you’ve felt how the conspiracy to keep it that way starts inside of you, and only secondarily and at your authorization is that conspiracy’s power held by others over you, then you know that changing it will require choice and action on your part. Right?

But this awareness in you didn’t start just last week, it goes back a long way. You can probably recall and share stories about this awareness arising in you and the choices that followed. The teachers you embraced; the groups you joined and left. But the ache comes back to you to live inside of a bigger context, and in deeper meaning, and in greater joy and depth in your daily experience. Which is surprising really, given that much of your previously esteemed paths are not so valuable to you now.

This creates a push-pull in the spiritual seeker. These paths held you for a time, and were even a part of your sacred journey, but something you expected them to deliver, didn’t happen, or you’d still be there, right?

What are the one or two things, if you found them in a spiritual group or leader, that would reawaken your soul journey and compel you to come back on board? Conversely, what are the negative things, if you found it below the surface in a spiritual group, that would be a deal breaker for you? Do you know? Knowing what you’re looking for will save you from unexpectedly being taken again by the next shiny object in the form of a spiritual group or teacher.

You may want to pause before reading the next paragraph where I mention what mine are, so you can ask yourself what yours are before having mine in your head.

For Jillian and I, the big ones are about how far does the respect for individual sovereignty go. Or said in reverse ‘how much pressure is there for you to come under subtle forms of control?’

Any offering that purports to help you find you by putting you under control has obvious integrity gaps, just not so obvious to you and I while we were invested in them. Falling back into conformity is so understandable given our need for love and to hold an identity, but what we conformed to obtain is diminished by the inauthentic way we obtained it.

I think the reason you are taken like me with these questions is that you know something about you. You know that you expended a lot of time energy and money in the past seeking this deeper you. You know that given the right conditions, you are likely to do it again, even as you are feeling your reluctance to do just that.

I want to offer you a new path that promises to find your sovereign self in a deepening way, and let’s you self-validate the results.

And, what’s the cost of that?

The cost is the willingness to let go of what you find to be not you.

How far would your current group or spiritual teacher support you to truly live that?