STOP WORKING SO HARD!
posted by Lissa Carter, LPCA
I met her at the Farmer’s Market. I was apprenticing on a farm at the time, selling bouquets of fresh flowers I’d been up since 4 am harvesting.
She paid for her flowers and looked at me with sharp eyes.
“Are you a hard worker?” she asked. “Do you take outside jobs?” I assented to both, and I was hired on the spot. We agreed that I would work in her yard weekly for the remainder of the summer.
The following weekend I showed up at the agreed-upon time and address and found a list of tasks pinned to the door. The hedges were to be pruned, the potted plants repotted, the vegetable area tilled and sown, all landscaping mulched and weeded. I rolled up my sleeves and managed, barely, to get it all done by the afternoon. It felt good to have cash in my pocket—the first I’d seen in a while—so I disregarded my exhaustion, and the anxiety and scratched-up arms I’d sustained in the course of trying to prove myself by getting everything done.
But when I showed up the next weekend, there was no note pinned to the door. I knocked, and when she answered she assessed me with those sharp eyes.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
Confused, I stammered “to do the yard work—we agreed Sundays?”
“Yes,” she said, “but that list of jobs I gave you was for the whole summer. You’ve finished them all. You’ve worked yourself out of a job!”
The door closed. Finis.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have you ever done this to yourself? Dug in your heels, rolled up your sleeves, and thrown yourself deeply into the task at hand, only to find that in the end, all of that hard work actually took you away from where you wanted to go? Have you ever thrown all of your time, energy, and resources at a problem, only to find that your attempts to resolve it only made the problem bigger?
We’ve all been there. We’ve been taught that hard work is the answer to most difficulties, and so we dutifully put our nose to the grindstone and plug away. But there’s an essential ingredient missing in that formula.
Herb spiral design by Toby Hemenway, from his fantastic book Gaia's Garden
DESIGN.
Yes—design: the application of intelligence and strategy. The creation of a plan, a blueprint for not only where you want to go, but how you will get there.
When we panic, we forget our intelligence. We jump right in and throw any solution we can find at the problem. That moment to pause, to wait, to plan, feels impractical, even dangerous. And yet, unless we take the time to design the most practical strategy for arriving at the solution we want, we will be wasting a great deal of time and energy in trial and error.
Had I taken just five minutes before plunging into that yard work job to create a strategy, I could have devised a sustainable, ecology-based plan to guide my work. I could have focused on one task at a time, using the clippings from the hedge to create a wattle fence for the vegetable beds; throwing all the weeds from the landscaping into a bucket to make weed tea to fertilize the potted plants; creating mulch from the spent leaves of last year’s plantings to protect the soil and hold in moisture for the delicate seedbeds.
I would have done a much better job, and yes, it would have taken me more time—but my pace would have been sustainable, and the end product would have been far more integrated and satisfying. I would have earned the money I needed for my hard work and my employer would have received a healthier, more resilient garden.
Before I became a counselor, I was a permaculture designer. Permaculture distills the laws of ecology—the most elegant system of sustainable design on the planet—into a few solid principles that we can follow as we design our own lives. I applied these principles time and time again to gardens in every state of neglect, and watched them thrive. When I began to study psychology, I found that permaculture principles work just as beautifully in the design of human lives and relationships.
One of the principles that translates best is this one: use the least effort to get the greatest effect.
This flies in the face of "no pain no gain" that our puritanical culture preaches. But consider:
Bertolt Brecht said “Grub before ethics.” Maslow said there is a hierarchy of needs: a person must first have food, shelter, fire, and water before she can focus on self-development or creativity.
If certain needs are not met, we stop developing.
This is as true of gardens as it is of people. If the soil on your land is depleted, no amount of backbreaking tilling, planting, or weeding is going to ensure a good harvest. But a tiny investment in building the soil will yield spectacular results.
If you are deeply exhausted, investments in education, nutrition, and exercise are not going to pay off. But if you give yourself a bit more sleep— everything transforms.
The principle of least effort for greatest effect has a beautiful assumption at its center: you are already moving toward self-realization. Everything is. You do not have to work and work and work to achieve perfection. Your only job is to discern what obstacles are hindering your natural perfection, and remove them.
By perfection, I mean a living, breathing balance, such as we see in a climax forest or a well-nourished, well-loved child. In natural perfection there is always room for growth, but there is nothing actively hindering that growth.
Sometimes the obstacles are blindingly obvious: racism and poverty and other inequalities jump immediately to mind. Other times they are more insidious: we think we need to work harder when really we need to relax and be more receptive. We think we need to explain when really we need to listen. We think we need a cup of tea when really we need a relationship. We think we need a relationship when really we need a cup of tea.
If we can somehow open ourselves to the idea that we are intrinsically fine just as we are, the obstacles start to reveal themselves. What, then, is hindering us? Do we need shelter? Water? Fire? Food?
Do we need someone to listen to us? Do we need an hour more sleep per night? Do we need a room we can be alone in? Do we need a schedule that allows us to sleep late, or rise early?
Do we need to be working in a field that utilizes our natural gifts rather than ignores them?
Do we just need a freaking cape?
So: how do we learn what our natural plan is, and what our obstacles are?
When you take the time to build an intelligent design for your life, you look at the areas of overlap between your talents, your training, your passions, and the needs of the world. You find the sweet spot that encompasses all four, and THAT is where you put any extra energy, time, or money.
Tiny efforts in the area of this sweet spot will yield exponential effects, because your passion and education and talent line up to push your ideas into the world.
Think about this for a minute: what if you don't have to DO MORE....what if all you have to do is remove the obstacles that hinder you from what is already happening?
Ahhhhhhh. Did you feel that? That's the power of least effort for greatest effect.
If this sort of ecology/psychology overlap is exactly your cup of tea; if you want guidance and structure to help you create that intelligent life map for where you want to go, join us for Permaculture and the Psyche in April. And, as always, I love to hear from you in the form of questions, comments, or emails!
Self-Care and Selfishness
Posted by Lissa Carter, LPCA
If you have spent much time in the field of healing or therapy, you have heard these words:
"Taking the time to do this stuff just seems so self-indulgent!"
When I experienced yoga for the first time, I was 17 years old. I was working on a farm, I was a dedicated activist, and I believed in the therapeutic value of hard work and Just Getting Over It Already. I secretly rolled my eyes when my friends took "a self-care day" or shared about what they'd learned in a counseling session. I thought that asking for help was a demonstration of weakness.
And there I was, at 17, on the floor of a barn, sitting in pigeon pose, tear after tear rolling down my face. For no reason at all.
I was embarrassed. I felt weird and emotionally weak. I had no idea why I was crying. The yoga teacher was very wise; he did not push me, simply held space for me to cry and let me come to him in my own time to ask him about my experience.
That was the beginning of a shift in me, a shift toward the understanding that, to be an effective activist, I need to embody the changes I wish to create. I can't undo pain by overworking myself to the point of pain. I can't fix injustice by hurling my own anger and imbalance into the mix. And I certainly should not go anywhere NEAR trying to help someone else heal if I have not engaged in my own healing.
Here's what I have learned about the way that true self-care works:
When someone laughs at your idea and tells you it's unrealistic; when someone asks you who do you think you are to do that?; when someone criticizes your work, your appearance, your efforts; tells you that you aren’t talented enough, or young enough, or old enough, or strong enough, or smart enough; when someone hits you, or pushes you, or locks the door between you and what you want: that HURTS.
When this happens, a part of you takes note. And that brave, protective part decides NEVER to let you get hurt again. So this part of you notices every time you make yourself vulnerable—every time you stick your neck out, venture a new opinion, decide to play larger—and it shuts you down. Because if YOU demean, belittle, and constrain yourself, no one else will have the chance to do it for you. And you will be safe. Miserable and muzzled, yes, but safe.
What you need to understand is that this part of you, the part that undermines your efforts to soar, is doing it OUT OF LOVE. This is a sweet, fierce part of you that doesn’t want you to hurt. You can’t make it stop by hating yourself, getting frustrated with yourself, questioning yourself, or criticizing yourself, because these are the very actions that kick it into protective gear.
But imagine this. Imagine if, every time you ran into a roadblock or a criticism, you thought it over while taking a slow walk on your most beloved mountain trail? What if, when you didn’t have the answer somebody wanted, you lit candles and treated yourself to a gentle meditation session? What if the next time someone was mean to you, you took yourself off for a weekend of art-making with friends?
When you choose self-care instead of self-criticism, when you start filling your life with the things that make you feel incredible, when you make your decisions from joy instead of guilt or fear, that part of you that has always tried to keep you from hurting is OUT OF A JOB.
It takes time, and repetition, and commitment, but eventually even the most anxious, guarded part of you will see that you are serious about self-care instead of self-sabotage. And then that part will relax. And the creative energy released by that final, tiny surrender is torrential.
Are you wondering how anything ever gets done in a world of leisurely hikes and meditation sessions? Are you thinking that there are problems far too serious to confront with art-making and writing exercises? I mean, how are we going to solve global warming and famine and racism with this kind of self-indulgence?
Well, I have noticed this: hatred is pretty rare among joyful people. Most joyful people I know would rather take a walk with a friend than engage in internet trolling or bullying behaviors. When I’ve taken the time to meditate after a difficult day, I am far less likely to yell at my kids. And I know that the things I use to comfort myself when I am stressed tend to be consumer items that perpetuate the problems we face. When I am relaxed and joyful, I comfort myself with long talks with friends, home-cooked meals, time in the garden. The problems we face require a lot of focus, commitment, creativity, and flexibility–all qualities that overflow in me when I am relaxed and happy, but shrink to nothing when I am stressed and anxious.
And most importantly, when my life is full of pleasure and joy, I do not bitterly deride another person’s dreams. I do not become the voice that stunts another person’s growth out of my own personal pain. I have the energy to walk the streets for my beliefs, to reach out to others who need help, to fight for what I know is right. The energy I invest in my own well-being comes back tenfold in my ability to defend the things that I hold dear.
So: is self-care self-indulgent?
I'd love to hear what you think!
Chrysalis: Art of Being Winter Retreat
Posted by Maeve Hendrix, LPCA
Chrysalis ~
1. The process of developing, the journey between the cocoon state of a caterpillar through to the transformation of a moth or butterfly.
2. a protecting covering; a sheltered state or stage of being or growth
Last weekend, a wonderful group of women gathered in community to celebrate embodiment and bravely invite their VOICE to be expressed through art, movement, speech, rhythm, song, and play. Deeply immersed in the belly of the pulsing forest during the New Moon in Pisces, we created a safe container to dive into the depths of our own birthing process. The symbology of a silken chrysalis inspired our process in utilizing art, movement, and community to contain and support our experience as we unfolded deeper and deeper into our inner world. Learning to sense deeply and listen to the wisdom of the body, we used expressive arts processing to explore and discern what qualities and truths were emerging and what misperceptions were dropping away.
Honoring Movement as Medicine
Yoga, freeform movement, somatic inquiry, playing, feeling and holding shapes can settle the body into its natural state of being, bringing balance to the nervous system, which enables the body to activate its own self-healing mechanisms. Exploring the subtle articulation of movement, breath, and letting go invites an internal focus of centeredness, balance, and attentive movement. Softening energetic straining or effort towards an end-goal is of primary importance. Learning to allow, learning to unwind, learning to listen deeply to the language of the body and opening to symbolic messages attunes us to our intuitive body and somatic (body) intelligence.
Ritual is marked by intention, focus, and meaning.
Expressive arts processing celebrates connection to self, community and nature through RITUAL. Ritual can be infused into the tiniest, seemingly insignificant interactions, re-framing the way we relate to ourselves and the present moment. Tending to, and embracing ordinary activities with reverence and intentionality automatically transforms the experience into a SIGNIFICANT and MEANINGFUL interaction.
Exploration: Personal Ritual
Consider carefully, the ordinary personal rituals in your life. Which of your daily habits could become a ritual for you? How would your attention shift to make this practice a more intentional part of your life? Write or draw about a ritual experience in your life and imagine what it would be like to have ritual become a daily experience for you.
Tasting the Moment.
We are the meaning makers, the magicians of our lives. Every breath, every gaze and expression through our voice and movement is a work of art, an expression of divine manifestation unfolding and rippling out in this very moment. What happens when we engage in the divine discipline of tasting the moment? Through anchoring our attention to this moment, we heighten our senses and discover delight in the simplicity of savoring our breath. We feel the vibration of music and song in our body, see the deep richness of color, texture, movement; smell the temperature of air; feast upon light and the mysterious beauty of shadow.
The Gift.
After a mere 24 hours spent together, we parted ways with a deep bond of sisterhood that will continue to carry and sustain our integration process and evolution. We bring back many gifts to the community, more gifts than we are aware of or can give a name to.
The gifts I feel coming forth include a heightened awareness of my body as a divine instrument through which I have the joy of infusing presence into; creating a precious work of art through every breath, every word, and every movement. I feel empowered to embrace my voice, gaze and body language as sacred symbols that express the raw beauty and agony of being alive. I am discovering that seeing beauty in the dark, rich murky depths allows me to integrate all of my parts, leaving no part disembodied, rejected or ignored. Those dark and shadowy parts are exactly what I have been seeking. They are the diamonds in the rough. They are allowing me to claim my truth more fully, to remember my intrinsic wholeness and see the world through the eyes of my heart.
Special guest, Virginia Rosenberg joined us for the retreat. Virginia is an Intuitive Astrologer and Sacred Movement Artist. She offered a Silk-Reeling Spiral Power Qi Gong session to our group, which is a moving meditation practice that is gentle and fluid, opening all the major joints in the body from top to bottom, inside and out. She offers individualized Intuitive Astrology and Akashic Records Readings in Asheville as well as Qi Gong classes in the community.
To check out her current offerings, visit:
http://virginiarosenberg.com/classes-and-workshops/
Sleeping in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
-Mary Oliver
The Problem is the Solution
Posted by Lissa Carter, LPCA
When mental or emotional discomfort enters my awareness, I have a choice: I can view the feeling as a problem, or I can view it as a solution.
How can a problem be a solution? Because discomfort engages the awareness. When I notice that something is wrong, for the first time, I can take action to change it.
In the name of efficiency, whenever we take in information that doesn’t fit our previous experience, the brain simply disregards it. It is only when this information reaches a critical mass, or induces a certain level of emotional discomfort, that our brain is willing to even “see” it at all.
Our brains aren’t bad—they do this to protect us. It’s important to be able to process information quickly.
But it is just as important to be able to perceive true information about the world around us, rather than working with old ideas that may no longer serve our development.
To do that, we have to be able to feel discomfort, the discomfort of being WRONG. We have to be able to notice and face the information that tells us we are incorrect, rather than avoiding it. We have to be willing to revise our opinions of experiences that have felt true in the past.
In short: we have to have PROBLEMS!
So: how do we use our problems to create solutions? How can we use our awareness that something is wrong to reshape our brains?
According to current neurological research, there are two ways you can create new brain circuits as an adult. One is through overwhelming emotion. For example, if you have always loved chocolate cake, and then one night as you are eating a piece of chocolate cake you get the terrible news that a family member has passed away, your ideas about chocolate cake are going to change. You won’t associate eating cake with happiness anymore, you’ll associate it with grief. Now, when you think about chocolate cake, you'll feel sad instead of happy. Overwhelming emotion can rewire our circuits instantaneously.
The other way to make new circuits as an adult is through repetition. This entails laboriously repeating a behavior or thought again and again until the brain takes to it. For example, last year I undertook a challenge to eat completely clean for 30 days. Every morning, for 28 days, I reached for the sugar bowl to stir sugar into my morning tea. And every morning, for 28 days, I remembered that I was not eating sugar, and put the sugar bowl back.
On the 29th morning, I did not reach for the sugar bowl.
Slowly, through repetition, my brain changed its circuitry and learned not to reach for the sugar bowl in the morning.
The Permaculture and the Psyche group that will be starting in April is a deep dive into these two life-changing skills: emotion and repetition. It will be a hands on exploration of transforming problems to solutions by building new circuits in the brain.
This is what I so love about the Expressive Arts: if you want your life to transform, deep emotion and repetition have to be engaged. When the emotion is evoked by lovely music, by delicious motion, by moving and heartfelt words, by brilliant colors and lines and brushstrokes and shapes; when the repetition is engaged by exploring a theme first through art, then poetry, then movement, then music; the transformation happens seamlessly. And it is passionate and powerful and safe and lasting.
Process from a previously held Permaculture and the Psyche workshop
I love this about permaculture too. Yes, the world is full of terrifying and desperate problems. But as we learn from nature and repetitively, with deep passion and emotion, apply her solutions to the land around us, we gain agency and hope. As we transform problems into solutions, again and again, we find that we are transforming not only ourselves, but also the world around us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you are interested in joining the Permaculture and the Psyche group that starts on April 3rd, contact me below. Sign up with a friend and I'll send you a special discount code for 1/2 off the series registration price!
Self-love
posted by Lissa Carter, LPCA
Self-love (especially these days, with narcissism parading itself all over the news) can get a bit of a bad rap. If we love ourselves, where is our motivation to change? If we pay attention to ourselves, where is our compassion for others?
The decision to love yourself can be greeted with disdain, with accusations of greed or pride or self-centeredness. And that’s just in your own mind! The accusations from others in your life can be even louder and stronger.
So—is it worth it? Or will self love merely morph you into a navel-gazing hedonist?
I invite you to take data for yourself. Below, I have written out a practice for self-massage that includes a meditation on self-love. Here’s the challenge: for the remainder of this week, at the end of each day, write down honestly the answers to each of these questions:
- On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being abysmal and 10 being delightful, rate the quality/depth of your interactions today with your family and friends.
- On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being abysmal and 10 being delightful, rate the honesty and authenticity of your interactions today with your family and friends.
- On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being cruel and 10 being exceedingly kind, rate your interactions with strangers today.
- 1 being all day and 10 being practically no time at all, rate the amount of time you spent today feeling grumpy, moody, or self-deprecating.
- 1 being all day and 10 being practically no time at all, rate the amount of time you spent today feeling lighthearted and positive.
Then, next week, make time every day to engage in the practice below. It’s self-absorbed! It’s completely self-centered! It will appear to squander a full ten minutes of your precious time! Do it anyway. Engage in this practice every day, then answer the five questions above each night. Then compare your answers from week 1 and week 2.
If you are anything like me (and you may not be; we are all wired so differently!) your numbers on week two will have shot upward (except for question 4, which will have dropped).
Why is this?
Because you, my dear, are a person. You are the person with whom you have the most intimate relationship of all. And the way you treat yourself cannot help but have an influence on the way you treat others around you.
There is also a sneaky way in which, when we are not filling our own cup, we begin to expect others to fill it for us. We grow needy and angry and frustrated with other people. Filling our own well with self-love means we lessen our expectations on the people around us. And that is a very loving thing indeed.
SELF-MASSAGE PRACTICE
- Begin by sitting quietly in a place that you have made sacred through lighting candles, burning sweetgrass or palo santo, or spritzing an herbal mist. Take a few deep breaths to calm and center yourself in your body.
- Take a massage bar or place some warm oil into your hands and cup them, warming it between your palms. Close your eyes and think of something or someone that brings you deep joy. As you inhale, pull the sensation of joy up your spine. As you exhale, pour it down your arms and through the palms of your hands into the massage bar. Continue breathing in and out, visualizing joy like light pouring into the bar, until you can feel a radiance between the palms of your hands. Allow this radiance to fill your mind and heart, thinking only thoughts of love, joy, and acceptance throughout and toward your body, for the duration of the massage.
- Deep in the center of your heart, ask yourself: what are the words I am always longing to hear? What do I most wish someone would say to me? Whatever it is that you most long to hear, begin to whisper it to yourself internally. It doesn’t matter if you believe it at first; simply repeat it internally as a mantra.
- Continue to warm the bar with your left hand. Stroke the fingertips of your right hand across the warmed bar to gather some balm. With these fingers, using small, concentric circles, start at the nape of your neck and very slowly press your fingertips side to side along the back of your neck, working from side to side and down toward your shoulders. Work very slowly, using your inhale to massage and your exhale to press deeply. With each touch, visualize the radiance of the bar soaking deep into your skin, energizing and nourishing your cells.
- When you have reached your shoulders, return the bar to your right hand, gather some balm on your left fingertips, and use side-to-side motions down the right arm, continuing to massage on the inhale and press deeply on the exhale, all the way down to the wrist. Continue to send a sense of radiance and joy into the body through your fingertips. Clasp your wrist gently for a full breath.
- Repeat this process using the right fingertips on the left arm.
- If you have time, repeat on both sides working upward from the sole of the foot to the groin, cupping the hands over the pubic area for a full breath to finish.
- Take the bar itself and press it gently into the skin of the stomach using the fingertips of both hands. Massage in gentle concentric circles, moving in a circular motion clockwise around the belly button. Finish the belly massage by placing both hands palms-down on the belly, pressing gently inward, visualizing radiance and joy flooding from the palms of your hands into your belly.
- Finally, gather some balm on the tips of the left fingers and massage the right hand, pressing deeply into the palm and gently pulling each finger outward. Concentrate on the feeling of giving the touch, the sensations that your fingertips encounter as they stroke and press on the hand.
- Gather balm on your right finger tips and massage the left hand. This time, concentrate on the sensation of receiving the touch, both in the skin of the hand and in the heart.
- Complete the self massage by pressing the palms of both hands together at your heart. Breathe deeply, allowing the inhale to swell your heart into your hands, and as you exhale, visualize the light and warmth from the massage swirling throughout your body. Whisper the words to yourself one final time, or speak them aloud. Close the space by blowing out the candles or smudging a final time with sweetgrass, palo santo, or herbal mist.