Growing with the Flow
Greetings Dear One,
Rose here, making contact, on a new Squarespace email platform that is integrated with my website, after several months of radio silence.
A necessary and unplanned break from all things business, sharing, and community. A much needed integration period as part of my deep practice of self-inquiry, which transformed naturally into deep sense of self-awareness and spiritual awakening, which I allow to be a continuous “blooming”.
The integration that naturally flowed after a year long intense rendition of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.
After 10 + years of treading lightly on my path of sharing what I was learning on a 3rd dimensional level through school and life, I have arrived at the 3rd stage, the Mastery of the 2 Worlds (inner & outer) and the Freedom to Live.
I have a new perspective on life and purpose. I am no longer afraid of vulnerability, my power, my voice, my capacity to love.
I’m here to share, in a big bold way, the messages I receive from my Soul.
I have learned to trust my inner guidance and have become a huge fan of automatic writing. When a message comes through from my highest self and spirit guides, I stop what I am doing and trust. I write as it comes through.
Here on this new platform, I will be sharing these messages. I invite you to be open in your mind and curious in your body to any inner sensations.
Question your thoughts, words, actions and emotions. Travel within, in quiet contemplation, somatic exploration, and possibly even a willingness to explore your multidimensionality, your spirituality.
If this content resonates with you, welcome to this safe and sacred space. If not, I understand, we are all on unique and wondrous journeys of the self. I wish you many blessings on your journey.
BLOG POST
Now for this month’s topic of “Growing with the Flow”, which I am sure I wrote about years ago and titled “Going with the Flow” but now, that I have discovered a deeper understanding and truth within myself, the view is birds-eye.
It’s so easy to say “surrender to the flow”! But for some, those with a highly dysregulated nervous system, just the thought of surrendering can turn up the sympathetic nervous system’s volume.
The body begins to brace against the flow as if preparing for white water river rafting down the Colorado. Surrendering feels way too vulnerable and scary.
When the Autonomic Nervous System is leaning heavily on the Sympathetic side, possibly due to complex trauma, the guard is always on duty.
The body is saying “ If I drop the guard, we are exposed to danger, harm, hurt. Surrendering is not an option.
The mind may say…”Awww, that sounds amazing..Just let go”. As much as the mind wants to go with the flow of life, the “Body-Mind’ has taken the reins and stays braced against the flow.
After years of gathering, storing, and filing away, in the tissues of the body, all the experiences of physical pain, emotional pain, betrayal, loss, failure, rejection, abandonment (I could go on but I think you get the jist) that hasn’t been acknowledged, heard, seen, felt for what it is, the body has gained authority over the little red ‘FIRE THE ROCKETS’ button.
We hear this phrase a lot…”surrender to the flow”, I’ve said it many times in my career over the past 10 years. And as dreamy as it sounds on a surface level, on a deeper level it’s a foggy vision of freedom clouded over by a deep underlying fear of lack. Lack of control, lack of safety. Making it virtually unobtainable if the body’s filing cabinet stays locked.
For 10 years I’ve preached “let go of what no longer serves you.” “Let go and surrender to the flow.”
I taught self-care practices to literally hundreds of people, thousands of hours of yoga classes and yoga nidra meditations to help people surrender. And perhaps just as many for myself…because it is very important to practice what you preach, right?
But I still suffered from ‘jumpiness’— startled by sounds or seeing something out of the corner of my eye. I still had hyper-awareness of my surroundings and a need to have an OCD-level of organization and control over my circumstances, my schedule and my life.
”You create your own experience of life, your own reality”. Another popular saying that came out of my mouth. It was just this past year that I asked myself “How am I approaching this ‘creation of my experiences’”?
The answer was, “With unconscious fear and control so that I know that I am not going to be vulnerable to harm.”
I created my reality with a day planner, reminder alarms, and organization with a sprinkle of well intended affirmations. Scheduled self-care practices, and pre-planned prepared-ahead-of-time meals.
My mouth was saying “surrender to the flow”. My nervous system was saying “DON’T DROP THE REINS!”
GROUP SELF-CARE & HEALING
Going to group classes, workshops, and self-care practices always sounds magical. Being together in community, healing together sounds powerful and amazing.
But what happens when you get there and social anxiety takes over? You walk into the room and feel like you’ve been smacked with an energetic baseball bat, and not a rainbowy glittery feeling energy…“How is this ‘trauma release class’ or ‘inner child healing workshop’ supposed to work as intended if my nervous system has locked up and thrown away the key for the filing cabinet that contains those old stories from ages 3-17?
Or, walking into a room filled with 15-20 other strangers wanting to take out their energetic trash feels like walking into a GWAR concert?
“Release what no longer serves you”
If you are anything like me, you FEEL things in your body, in your heart, in your soul when you’re around a lot of other people. It can be overwhelming and uncomfortable.
I learned that I am a highly sensitive person. For many years I had no idea why I had such high social anxiety and at the time, I didn’t know how to protect my energy the way my soul needed it.
I was like an energetic sponge absorbing others emotions, even their dance moves!
I found myself drinking until the feelings of anxiety would go away. I stopped drinking for several years, hermitizing. Then I concluded that it wasn’t anxiety, it was energy.
I learned that I’m not an alcoholic, I just need to be aware of set and setting and feel into my soul signals before deciding to go to loud & crowded places and if having a drink is what I will give myself or not.
I call this connecting to my somatic yes or no.
YOUR UNIQUE HEALING RECIPE
Healingcan happen quickly for some. For others, like myself, it can take years of experimenting, practicing and experiencing before you get the recipe just right.
The key is to stay curious and open to trying different modalities sans judgement.
And noticing when the self-saboteur starts talking for you... “I don’t like that modality, it’s just too weird for me.” “ This isn’t going to work for me.” “I have to go do this other thing first.” “I’ve already healed that.”… I could go on.
The self-saboteur is a bedmate to the Sympathetic Nervous System. When you hear the voice for what it truly is…a safety mechanism, you can change the narrative to “I had a thought that…I’ve already healed that.”
When prefacing a statement with “I had a thought” you are recognizing that you had a thought and that it’s only a thought, and that the mind doesn't know as much as you think it knows.
What worked for me was to be open to trying anything for a handful of times and if I still didn’t feel like it resonated with me I would try something else until I found the ingredients to my recipe of healing that I could feel like I was flowing positively with.
FAXES FROM THE SOUL
The most important and effective practice I opened myself up to for preparing for my authentic float down the river of life is a spiritual one.
I’m not talking about organized religion. I spent years rewiring my conditioned mind and releasing the concept of “Sin & Punishment”, of being struck down by lightning if I did the slightest thing wrong.
I also started to question and believe, around the age of 15, that I didn't need to talk to someone else through a screen in a tiny cubicle to communicate with a power greater than myself.
I’m not knocking anyone who resonates with the path of organized religion, we are all unique in our spiritual beliefs and that's the magic of this incarnation into Third Dimension.
If you find organized religion resonates with you, that's respectable and I honor that.
GRATITUDE FOR MY JOURNEY
Here, I am talking about a deep desire to purposely connect with my soul, my highest self and my spirit guides for guidance.
The willingness to believe that my body is the 3rd dimensional aspect of my soul and to know that we are all multidimensional beings, not just human beings, really got the raft floating!
After a couple of years of reminding myself of this multidimensionality and believing that the higher dimensions of my soul, my higher self, wanted to connect my body consciousness with the collective consciousness by way of an internal fax machine (Hahahah, dating myself here!), I was onboard.
Last year when I stepped onto this Hero’s Journey it’s almost like I was climbing aboard a raft. I committed to being open to “surrendering with the flow”.
I fought it for about 6 months. It was a subconscious self-sabotage, but the more I let go, the scarier it got.
Until I just got used to the scaries, sat in the unknown, and chose curiosity over control. Faith over Fear. Self-trust over Self-judgement.
I learned to love myself for all my idiosyncrasies because I know that each one is a doorway of healing.
I am well versed in my energy protection practice. I am content with my level of self-awareness, knowing that my consciousness is always rising even through the rapids.
I have learned that I like having faith and going with the flow, knowing that every experience is a gift from my highest self and is for the greater good for me and the collective.
I have minimal alarms on my phone now. I have a day planner that is not dated so I only use it sporadically for goal setting that doesn't yell at me. I go to the grocery store more often for less stuff and I always ask my soul what it wants to eat while I walk the isles.
I continue to do the somatic work required to become the best version that my soul intended upon arriving on this planet.
I am Free, I am Me, I am Love, I am Joy.
Thanks for reading! Thanks for your contribution to this world. I love you!
P.S. Keep an eye out for Somatic Truth Living Workshops that are in person, and may include online in the future and are held mindfully for sensitives.
Open for hire at retreats and events and willing to travel to share my gifts and graces.
I am also inviting you to check out my newly branded website Somatic Truth Living , Instagram, Facebook and coming-soon YouTube channel. My socials are in their infant stages so please visit, like and share to get the word out!
In Much Gratitude
Namasté & Jai Bhagwan,
~🌹Rose
Somatic Truth Living LLC
