mobile-menu
mobile-menu

Make Yourself Sacred

Make Yourself Sacred Web
SHARE

It took me a long time to realise that what I was most yearning for was not more baths, yoga classes, meditation and walks in nature (although all those things are good).

What had been missing from my life - and what I now see is missing in many hungry women’s lives - was a quality of reverence and a tone of sacred adoration towards myself.

Dr Martin Shaw – writer, teacher and mythologist – put it beautifully when he said:

“It may not look like much, not with all these other distractions, but we make things holy by the kind of attention we give them.”

The dictionary tells us that Holy = dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred.

We make things sacred through the quality of attention we give them.

You can ‘self care’ until you’re blue in the face, but if the tone of your attitude and attention towards yourself is one of frustration, resentment, believing you need to fix yourself, despair or even disgust … well, you could sit in the bath and do yoga till the end of time and you won’t find what you’re looking for…

You might notice I called the women hungry. Let me tell you more about hungry women.

Hungry women are everywhere in our modern world.

Starving for something, that they can’t quite articulate.

You can look at a hungry woman and not know that she’s that – she’ll be ticking off the things that she needs to do and take care of for her work and family, showing up and going through the motions. 

But she’s looking for something. She’s searching for a feeling of being satiated or satisfied or something, that she can’t even explain to herself.

She’s busy, and tired, and likely a bit stressed.

Her nervous system is probably a little frazzled, she might have dealt with burn out.

And she’s looked for it – whatever it is – in meditation and yoga and podcasts, and wine and Netflix and likes on social media, she’s looked in her career and tried to find it in success and her marriage and her kids…

And she couldn’t scratch the itch she can’t explain in any of those places. Not in a lasting way, anyway.

 

Being emotionally or spiritually hungry like this, is kind of like pouring water through a sieve, or putting good food into someone who’s body suffers with malabsorption. The ‘goodness’ that goes in doesn’t stick and get the chance to feed and nourish the system.

So the reflections of your greatness, potential and beauty come in and swirl around and feel good for a while but don’t really fill you with that same belief.

The successes you achieve professionally come in and feel uplifting, but you have to keep chasing the next one; moved by anxiety instead of passion.

The love your spouse wants to pour into you bounces off where it doesn’t match your self concept, or you attract a partner who doesn’t appreciate you…

 

I was hungry for a long time.

I sought insights, success and power through personal development and business and professional sport. 

Those things were all things I loved and were genuine expressions of my passion, but there was always something missing.

And it wasn’t until I learned to embody a tone of warm care and attentive listening for myself that those holes in the sieve began to shrink.

When I began to build the capacity to hold myself with presence, and inhabit a posture of approval for myself – even in my hardest to approve of places – I also stopped needing the approval of others, I began to be able to truly relax and know there wasn’t anywhere I needed to ‘get to’.

I began to feel and see and know that I was enough right now.

I made myself sacred through the attention I brought to myself, and I began to feel much less starving.

 

Now – this might seem like a whole lot of words to describe a shift in belief in myself.

BUT, this is the difference between growth and change from the mind and growth and creating change through your embodied reality.

And, in particular for women, change through the mind alone is a short lived bandaid on a deeper matter.

See you can change your thinking in an instant.

You can magically insert whatever narrative you like into your mind.

But if you want that new, improved narrative or belief in yourself to become your lived reality, to turn into something you know in your bones and therefore carry with you and see reflected back to you from your life, you need to learn how to embody it.

And to capture the possibility of a new embodied reality through the language of the mind – words – can be a tricky thing…

If you’ve tasted something through this post that resonates, here are my invitations for reflection and exploration …

  • Where do you abandon yourself and become harsh towards yourself or need to check out completely? Is it when you feel confronted by not feeling good enough, or when you’re scared or anxious? Is it when you want something really badly and you’re scared you won’t get it? Or do you have trouble feeling your own disappointment? Or anger?

 

  • Practice bringing warmth and an intentional attitude of affection for yourself in small bursts when it’s easy. Put your hand on your belly or heart, close your eyes and take a deep breath, turn your focus inwards and say kind things to yourself. If this is challenging, slow down and practice more, you need to grow this skill.

 

  • Put one song on each day that you enjoy and move your body in ways you normally wouldn’t! Move your hips in big slow circles, stretch and wiggle, shake your body out, relax your jaw and tongue, and touch your body in ways that feel good and caring!
SHARE
Never underestimate the power of your past. Because it’s not in the past. It’s here in this living moment with you – woven into your responses, choices and perceptions; baked into your nervous system and psyche through and reinforcement and repetition.

That doesn’t mean your past has to define you, not at all.

Though, you’re lying to yourself if you say ‘its in the past’, yet have done no work to clear the ripples of that past from your system to create space for something new.

Yesterday, in a session with my coach, I went ‘back in time’ to the end of 2020, when I went through an experience that was somewhat challenging for me.

Here is a sublime example

Despite acknowledging the challenge at the time, I realised looking back that I hadn’t fully resolved or digested what happened there.

Part of me stayed frozen in that experience, and on the subtlest of levels, I have gotten in my own way unconsciously ever since.

That past experience was with me in every moment. It informed my capacity and energy levels, choices and perceptions.

And this is how the past shapes us – you have experiences that your system ‘learns’ from, and you then – often completely unconsciously – adjust accordingly to avoid repeating painful or difficult events.

We are such clever adaptive creatures.

But, those ‘adaptations’ will inadvertently shape your behaviour, attitudes, thoughts and feelings in a way that can begin to inhibit your ability to fully show up for your business or career, relationships, and life in general.

If you bring the process of ‘learning’ from these past experiences into consciousness, you gift yourself the chance to mine the gold from the past, get the learnings and gifts link example: and then move forward with your life.

„ QUOTE DESIGN: I CALL THIS PROCESS ‘DIGESTING’ YOUR PAST EXPERIENCES, AND HAVE SPECIFIC PRACTICES I TEACH TO SUPPORT YOU TO DO THIS.“

I call this process ‘digesting’ your past experiences, and have specific practices I teach to support you to do this.

The challenges of the past – and your adaptations – can become like a cage you find yourself living in if you’re not aware, but this digestion process ensures your continued liberation…

Which past experiences do you need to free yourself from?

And this is how the past shapes us – you have experiences that your system ‘learns’ from, and you then – often completely unconsciously – adjust accordingly to avoid repeating painful or difficult events.

We are such clever adaptive creatures.

But, those ‘adaptations’ will inadvertently shape your behaviour, attitudes, thoughts and feelings in a way that can begin to inhibit your ability to fully show up for your business or career, relationships, and life in general.

If you bring the process of ‘learning’ from these past experiences into consciousness, you gift yourself the chance to mine the gold from the past, get the learnings.

More Insights