Discover Your Inner Strengths

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.
Lao Tzu

I often hear yoga teachers say when the class is supposed to hold a difficult pose; “don’t give up, you can do it,  you are a lot stronger than you think.”  I wonder to myself as I continue to hold the pose: are they sure, I don’t want to hurt myself, how do they know, I am tired . . .

What these teachers are talking about is our inner strength. Inner strength is the strong personal belief that you CAN accomplish a task or master a situation.  It is  expressed through will power, positive attitude, belief, and confidence in yourself. A healthy amount of Inner strength makes us feel good about ourselves, capable and courageous.The key to inner strength is the phrase “I can.”  When we start to stumble into the area of I can’t we let go of or ignore our inner strength.  There is a wonderful quote by Henry Ford that is often repeated so please forgive me as I repeat it again:

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”

Before I was born, my mother showed an incredible amount of inner strength when she decided to get her master’s degree as a single mom recently divorced.  She went up to New York City from Philadelphia for three days a week for two years to study at NYU while my aunt took care of my sister. My mom shared an apartment and went to classes in a different city in order to get the degree she felt was necessary to provide the life she wanted for herself and her daughter.  She didn’t say I can’t go because I am a mom, or recently divorced, or live in Philadelphia, or don’t have any money.  Mom said I can and she did. She also had the support systems that made this possible: a wonderful and dedicated sister.

My mother successfully got her master’s degree from NYU and became a much respected professor of nursing at Temple University where she developed many programs.  She got married for the second time, this time to my father and had two more kids:  my brother and me.

My mother’s story is one of many stories about people tapping into their inner strength, believing in themselves and doing what they think is necessary to make their lives better.

One way to tap into your own inner strength is to be positive.  This may be easy to say but difficult to do.  Start by listening to your language.  Is it positive? Do you give up too easily? Do you put yourself down?  How do you talk about others?  Are you positive?  If you find your words are negative and harsh start to shift them.  If this seems impossible, take baby steps and do this gradually. Remember, don’t beat yourself up if  you stumble and get off the path, just brush yourself off and start all over again.  Remember, we all have incredible inner strength. Our inner strength is already present within us.  It’s there just waiting for us to tap into it. We must believe, learn to say I can and stay positive.

Excavation 1:

Journal about time in your life that you showed a great amount of inner strength.

 Excavation Question 2:

Journal about a person you admire that shows great inner strength.

Discover Your Limitations

“I admire how she protects her energy and understands her limitations.” 
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

All Artwork is by Kathe Kollwitz

Since I came back from Europe this summer, my body has been very different. I attribute the change  to the nine days I spent sick in bed with a bladder infection that I thought was heat exhaustion. During my illness, I went from being freezing cold with uncontrollable chills to being excruciatingly hot with fever and sweats so intense that my sheets would be soaked.  In a strange bed in an unfamiliar country, I felt alone, helpless, exhausted and scared.

Now back in Los Angeles, in my yoga practice I am less flexible and not as strong. My ego is distressed because it wants to always improve, go forward.  But my body is not willing.  Many yoga poses that came easy to me before my trip I can no longer perform.

Holding standing postures like warrior two is not something I can not do in the same way as I did before. My balance is off in tree pose and warrior three.  I am weak in plank and sun salutations.

I have lost a lot of flexibility in my hamstrings and hips. I realize I have to start again building my strength, flexibility and balance. I have to accept where I am now, not where I was or where I think I should be. This is humbling. This is frustrating. I took so much pleasure my progress and now I am not there anymore.

In my frustration, I keep coming back to why I began yoga: to heal pain, to de-stress, to feel relaxed, to be healthy. . .  All those things are still there.  I just have to honor my body and my limitations and be in the present moment: not the past - how I use to do the pose, or the future: how I want to do the pose, but where my body is right now.  I need to find out where my limitations are and honor the edge, and remember that everyday and every moment our limitations change.

Excavation Question for Discovering your Limitation:

Explore through Journaling, Art or music what are your limitations.  You can also explore why you meditate and/or practice yoga.

Discover Your Boundaries

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others. – Brene Brown

Ansel Adams

Once in a intuitive reading I was told that I was Personality Type Number 9.

 Type 9 is called the Peacemaker but what was more interesting to me was that number 9s meld  very easily. 9s have a rather diffuse sense of their own identities. They often merge with their loved ones and through a process of identification take on the characteristics of those closest to them. Or in simple speech, we don’t have good boundaries.

What exactly is boundary?  One definition is a boundary is a limit or space between you another person; a clear place where you begin and the other person ends.  It is like a wall around a castle with one entry and you are the gatekeeper.  As the gatekeeper, you decide who you let in and who goes out.

Ansel Adams

We need to set boundaries in order to protect ourselves. Creating healthy boundaries does not always come naturally. As children, boundaries were put on us and we watched and learned as other people in our lives created boundaries. If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you may have not learned about setting healthy boundaries.

Ansel Adams

Learning to set our own healthy boundaries means getting to know ourselves, deciding what and who is important, who and what we want in our lives, and acting on these decisions. It may mean letting go of the unhealthy people in our lives so that we can grow into the healthy person that we want to become.

Ansel Adams

The decision to set healthy boundaries can be seen as an empowerment exercise in the journey towards self-realization.   When we create boundaries, we are taking a stand for ourselves, and declaring we are worthy of all the good things life has to offer.

Ansel Adams

Excavation Questions for Setting Boundaries: 
Write five boundaries for yourself. Begin with five of your most painful behaviors. You can always add more later.

Ansel Adams

Discover Your Identity

“Identity cannot be found or fabricated but emerges from within when one has the courage to let go.”
― Doug Cooper, Outside In

Van Gogh - Self Portrait

We all have beliefs about who we are and what we can do.  But as humans we also have enormous capabilities and capacities beyond what we think is possible.  Growing up in the 80s one of my favorite TV shows was the Incredible Hulk.  In this show Dr. Banner was consumed by the idea that we can tap into a superhuman strength when we need it. He was also extremely distressed that he could not tap in this strength when it was needed to save his wife.  He creates the Hulk in an experiment to understand this primal super human strength. The Hulk becomes a curse for him and it was the product of an accident during his experimentation.

Incredible Hulk TV show of my youth

The power to tap into our tremendous potential comes from our identity.  Our identity is where we ask the questions: how do we define ourselves and what do we believe we can achieve? Often we have all kinds of ideas about what we can’t do and why we can’t do it and they are simply not true.  When I practice yoga, sometimes I come up with elaborate stories about why I can’t do a pose: my thighs are too big, my arms are too short, etc. And then months or years later, I may get to that expression of the pose (that I had previously deemed impossible) and I realize my story just wasn’t true; it was in fact just a story.

Self Portrait - Artemisia Gentilischi

Identity is the most powerful aspect of the human personality. Once we define our identity we are determined to remain consistent with our definition no matter how limiting the definition may be. If we want to transform ourselves we have to be ready and willing to expand our identity.  We can expand our identities by building new, empowering sets of beliefs, letting go of our stories and being open to all possibilities.  A great way to do this is by doing yoga, meditation, reading, journaling and exposing ourselves to new ideas and experiences.

Self Portrait - Artemisia Gentilischi

The Key Principles of Identity
1.  Identity determines our actions. We act according to our views of who we are—sometimes these views are accurate and sometimes they are not.

2. Once we know who we are, we must try to accept ourselves. If we attempt to live our lives in a way that’s inconsistent with who we are we will live from a place of frustration, stress and disappointment. We need to embrace our  needs, desires, strengths, fears, values and beliefs in order to tap into our tremendous potential.
3. Don’t maintain the illusion that a single behavior decides who they really are.
Sometimes we experience moments of anger, anxiety and/or defeat, and that result in saying or doing things that are inconsistent with who we are.  These Inconsistent behaviors are not parts of our overall identity but instead momentary lapses. We should investigate these behaviors, forgive ourselves and move on.
4. When you take responsibility, you restore your identity. When we create unfavorable or hostile situations, we should take action to repair any harm that we may have caused and again forgive ourselves and move on.
5. Expand your identity by doing something that is out of character.
We grow when we try things we might find strange or out of the ordinary. It is the because  these activities are uncomfortable to us that we have the possibility to learn more about ourselves.  It is by doing these new things that we can expand our identity and grow.
6. Our personal identities are always evolving. We have the power to reinvent ourselves at any moment. We can create new, empowered, expansive identities that are consistent with our beliefs and desires if we want to.

Frida Kahlo - Self Portrait

EXCAVATION QUESTIONS
Write of list of your likes and dislikes.  Write a list of things that are “out of character” that you might consider doing to shake yourself up a little and help to expand your identity.

Cindy Sherman - Self Portrait

Discover Your Family Tree

“Family, like branches in a tree, we all grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one.” – Unknown

When talking to my Yoga Teacher Training Class, Guru Singh explained that we have 256 people in our bodies, our ancestors: parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc.  Their pains and our joys directly affect our own joys and pains because all their emotions are written in our dna.  This is called the science of Epigenetics.

“According to the new insights of behavioral epigenetics, traumatic experiences in our past, or in our recent ancestors’ past, leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA. Jews whose great-grandparents were chased from their Russian shtetls; Chinese whose grandparents lived through the ravages of the Cultural Revolution; young immigrants from Africa whose parents survived massacres; adults of every ethnicity who grew up with alcoholic or abusive parents — all carry with them more than just memories. . . , our experiences, and those of our forebears, are never gone, even if they have been forgotten. They become a part of us, a molecular residue holding fast to our genetic scaffolding. The DNA remains the same, but psychological and behavioral tendencies are inherited. You might have inherited not just your grandmother’s knobby knees, but also her predisposition toward depression . . ..” http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes

This summer, while laying in bed extremely ill and hallucinating in Greece (the birthland of some of my ancestors), I felt these 256 people whispering, yelling and running around inside my body, as if they were playing a three dimensional highly competitive game of Shoots and Ladders.  Guru Singh prescribed in order to heal ourselves, we must heal the pains of our ancestors. I think before we can heal their pains we must learn who they are.

I spent my life piecing together my family tree. I have done this by talking with the matriarchs in my family over tea, playing scrabble, sitting in living rooms, and during walks on the boardwalk.  My story is complex and contradictory but there are some overarching themes: oppression, slavery and racism.

My ancestors are black and white, Jewish and Christian, city folk and country folk, and Northern and Southern.  My maternal grandmother Anna was a Black Baptist born on a farm in South Carolina, while my paternal grandmother Suzanne was a white Jew from the industrial steel city of Pittsburgh.  An unlikely pair they only met a few times.  What they have in common  is me and my brother.  They both came from oppressed peoples: Suzanne’s parents from the anti-semitic ghettos of Eastern Europe, Anna parents were slaves working the rice and cotton fields of South Carolina.

I know Suzanne’s parents came from the Ukraine and Romania, but I don’t know what city or a region. Their common tongue was Yiddish.  I heard the story of my great grandfather crossing Europe to escape the czar’s army where he wouldn’t have survived as a Jew. So he had to leave in order to stay alive.

I believe that Anna’s family were slaves on a plantation in Charleston.  I have deduced this because their odd last name Toomer which is also the name of a dutch plantation owner.  I found this out when researching plantation records at my University.   I don’t know where they come from before South Carolina, but my guess is Sierra Leone because most slaves from South Carolina coast were brought from there because of their skills cultivating rice.  I will get my DNA tested someday soon so that I can solve that mystery.

Guru Singh said we can heal the pains of our ancestors by two hours of spiritual practice a day.  For me that means yoga, meditation, writing, and art making.  I honor my ancestors by having an altar in my bedroom with some mementoes of them.  I try to never to deny my heritage even if it is complicated to understand.  By celebrating my personal diversity and complexity, I make sure that no one of those ancestors in my body feel left out or denied.

Do you know your family background? Are there any elders you can talk to to piece together your family tree?

Activity #1:
Draw up what you know of your family tree.  See what holes are in your tree and contact a relative that might help you make the tree more complete.

Activity #2:
Making an Ancestor Altar

Most traditional cultures understand that when you celebrate your ancestors, no matter what they were like or how they treated you, you will find forgiveness and compassion and break free of karma and samskaras.

I suggest to everyone to make an ancestor altar is part of their healing and self discovery process. Find a spot an appropriate in your home where you can make a small altar. Ask yourself if this is a good place and the energy is right. Then, place a down a cloth or fabric arrange photographs or symbols of your ancestors on top of your altar.  If you don’t have a picture of an ancestor you can use an object s/he owned or a slip of paper with your ancestors’ names, or photographs of their home.
Place fresh flowers, fruits, vegetables or seasonal items on your altar to honor your ancestors, place fresh flowers in a vase on your altar.  You may also choose to burn incense or light candles.. Every time you change the offerings, thank your ancestors for the gifts they gave you. Do this no matter how difficult your relationship was with the ancestors. History is not what actually happened, but how choose to remember it.  The  ancestral altar provides an opportunity to can change your family story.

From time to time visit your altar and reflect upon your ancestors. Remember, at the same time that you are building this physical altar you are also building a spiritual altar inside of you.

Excavation Question 1:

Write down what you know of your family story.   Explore how the stories of your ancestors may be affecting you both spiritually and emotionally.

Discovering a Sense of Safety

Safety is something that happens between your ears, not something you hold in your hands.

Jeff Cooper

Safety is fundamental to our development in becoming a balanced happy human being. During this 30 day process of self discovery we may encounter an inner child who does not feel safe. As children, many of us did not get the nurturing we may have needed.  In these situations, the child within us may find it difficult to function as a healthy adult.  Safety, security and stability are essential to our mental health.  When we don’t have these basic conditions as children we can be emotionally stunted in our adult lives.

I never felt safe with my father.  Maybe it’s because I sensed that he himself didn’t feel safe. His mother was bipolar and the black sheep of her family.  She grew up as one of six children in a poor Jewish immigrant family in Pittsburgh. She was poorly treated by her mother and was generally considered big and dumb.

My grandparents were divorced before my father was three and his father basically disappeared from his life. My unstable grandmother wasn’t able to take care of my father. My father was passed from relative to relative and eventually spent much of his childhood in an orphanage.  He wasn’t up for adoption, he was just there because it was an affordable place for his mother to leave him.

As a result of these rejections and instability of his upbringing, my father had low self-esteem. To compensate, he had many expectations and plans for me. He wanted me to be a doctor, as I doctor I would have the success and recognition that he hadn’t achieved.   When I rebelled as a teenager and decided to be an artist he was devastated.

Years later my father accepted me as I even felt very proud of my artistic endeavors. He had done a lot of work on himself and his worldview had changed. He had learned about “following your bliss” and had wanted that for himself and his children.  Although, I was happy to be accepted by my changed dad, my wounded rejected inner child was still in need of its own healing.  I had internalized his hurts, disappointments and low self-esteem.

If you believe in the science of Behavioral Epigenetics as I do, you understand that I had internalized the hurts and rejections of generations of family members.I don’t know exactly where the transgenerational trauma begins in my father’s family.  I have heard murmurings of my great grandmother having had a miscarriage a year or two after my grandmother’s birth which led my great grandmother into a period of grief in which she could not parent my grandmother. My grandmother was sent away then and at several times other times as a child.  Maybe the trauma goes back to Eastern Europe and the sufferings incurred by being a Jew there.

There can be many reasons for my family trauma.  All I know is the trauma was there and it was passed at least from my great grandmother to my grandmother to my father to me.
  All of these feelings of familial inadequacy are part of my DNA.  But this story is not without hope. Through yoga, meditation and other spiritual work I have begun to heal my both personal and trans-generational hurts, grow my self-esteem and feel safe.

Our inner-child  wants to be unconditionally loved and feel secure, stable and safe. As adults, we have the power and responsibility to nourish our inner child. It is never too late to heal!

In the past, we may have blamed someone else (often our parents) but starting today we can take the role of caregivers for the child within. We can understand that some of our trauma may not be specific to us but may be transgenerational and we can start the transgenerational healing through yoga, meditation and other spiritual work.

Meditation and yoga have been proven to rewire the brain. Guru Singh, a champion of Epigenetics, once told me it takes two hours of spiritual work a day (yoga, meditation, journaling, prayer, art, music . . .) to heal the transgenerational trauma inside of us. 30 days of yoga and meditation will shift your perspective on the world and bring a tremendous amount of healing power to the mind, body and spirit. Let’s start this healing process today by recognizing all the goods things about ourselves and write them down.