For a while I have been engaged in a process of creating the life I want and deserve. I realized that, for years, I’ve been living in ways that perpetuated anxiety, tiredness, and pain. And so I left my life in the US, a life of professional success and apparent security and stability, but filled with stress, fear, and disconnection. I came to Spain with the goal of creating a life based in trust, pleasure, sense of community, and abundance. As you can imagine, it hasn’t been easy, specially with a pandemic accompanying me along the way.
The presence in my life of people whose love and wisdom reflect constantly an alternative reality is what helps me keep going. People like my beloved friend and amazing colleague healer, Isha Vela. Her wisdom and love help me to recognize the ways in which I sabotage myself by living by the old patterns of scarcity and mistrust and help me to continue the path of reprograming myself into a greater self-intimacy, self-care, and self-love. In short, with the support of Isha, I relearn that taking care of myself is ok, that I deserve all the pleasure I can access, that love is there, at my and everyone’s disposal.
This is why this month, Isha and I offer a workshop on this very topic, self-care as devotion.
We have been socialized in a patriarchal culture that venerates hard work, competition, and productivity. Pleasure, self-care, and even caring for others is undervalued and despised. We have been intergenerationally programmed in an attitude of scarcity, on the belief that there’s not enough for everyone and that success is, not only the only way to survive, but the only way to be worthy. If we look at history, it’s easy to recognize where this comes from. To recognize how these patterns come from times of fear, necessity, and scarcity. From times in which the goal was survival and, hence, an attitude of producing at all cost, protecting what’s owned, defending and attacking from any threat. From times in which strength and aggression where valuable and necessary currencies. From times in which hierarchy, abuse, and injustice defined the structure of things.
When reading these words, pause for a moment, and feel your body. What sensations come up? How is your breath? Where do you feel tension? In writing these words, I feel my chest as an armor, my breath is short, there’s a nut in my stomach, and my spine is rigid as a stick.
I breathe…I open my chest…I allow my stomach to drop…I soften my back.
Suddenly, I feel my weight on the chair, I feel my breath expand, and a sense of calm and fluidity begins to open it way through my body. What a relief, right? But I can do this only when I bring consciousness to the energy of my words and thoughts, and to the body sensations that accompany them. Only if I do this can I recognize how I’m and allow a different pattern.
The work of changing these long-held patterns is not an easy task. Doesn’t it happen to you that as soon as you allow yourself to rest a sense of guilt crops up? or that, after you enjoy something a lot and feel the pleasure of it, a self-imposed pressure wants to bring you right back to work? And I’m not suggesting ignoring the reality that we need to produce, that scarcity exits, and that inequality and injustice persist around us. The suggestion is that, to create a new reality that is more equitable, healthier, and uniting, we can only do it by letting go of old patterns and creating new ones based in trust, in love, in pleasure, in supporting ourselves and others.
In this month’s workshop, Isha Vela and I Will explore how to break down the rigid patterns and dive in new models of relationship with ourselves and our bodies. We Will work on reprogramming our cells towards love, selfcare and pleasure. Are you up for it?
For more information and to register in the workshop, go to events
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