3 Practices to Navigate Towards Your Dreams
There’s a path to creating your dreams that wont burn you out (Too many women struggle with exhaustion, adrenal fatigue and overwhelm as we try and live purposefully).
There’s a way of navigating towards your desires that’s inspiring and physically energizing.
Over and over we've been told to think ideas through logically, to brain storm, flow chart, mind map... BUT we need more - We must attend to our longings in a way that opens us to our felt sense where we feel the richness of desire, we open to questions like ‘what do I really long for’ .. and we allow the dreams to bubble up to inspire the planning phases - if we stay connected to longing we wont go astray in our plans - its VERY easy to disconnect to longing in the planning stage because we meet external and internal doubts ….
In my experience there are 5 obstacles to the realization of our dreams:
DREAMS START IN THE DARK
The idea of what we really want to do with our lives, our businesses, our projects can be amorphous, as impossible to latch onto and pin down as a blue morph butterfly (I am constantly trying to get a video of a blue morph butterfly because I see them every day in the jungle but they are impossible to catch on camera).
2. DOUBT
Self doubt, and external doubt (unsupportive voices) show up when we tell people what we want to do - and so we stop often before we really get started.
3. RIGIDITY, and over attachment to ideas
and this - is the absolute 100% guaranteed road to burn out and adrenal fatigue.
4. NERVOUS SYSTEM HIJACK
Not having it all planned out.. is scarey - our nervous systems often play out old patterns of fear and mini traumas and if you dont have tools to manage the old inner child fears, then you will likely get stuck
5. THE WORLD
Is in a stop and start state right now and unless you have incredible inner certainty you'll struggle against the external stop/start nature of the world.
So how do you navigate SO MUCH uncertain terrain?
It's a 3 part practice :
A 20 minute daily gentle movement practice (ok - sometimes daily isn’t possible but at least 4 times per week) practice to soothe and balance your body and nervous system to get clarity and health- Think of this as your recalibration time - the time it takes to dust off the stress that accumulates day to day and the bad habits we have with our bodies of sitting at our desks too long, driving too long and generally not moving all the joints in the body - movement is key to health.
A contemplative inquiry into what you are longing for - If step 1 (above) is recalibration - kind of like coming home to yourself, feeling centred - THEN - the important work comes - Now you can inquire into what you are longing for - you can ask yourself ‘is this really what I want?”, “what am I longing for?’
For many years I used to focus on teaching people just the movement and meditation work to come home to yourself - and then I realised it wasnt enough - it’s not enough just to get back to neutral - if we do that nothing really changes -sure we develop skills to maintain our health - but to really get clarity on how to live purposefully in alignment with our longings - we have to have a contemplative practice opening to the place of darkness, the delicious unknown, the dreaming place, the place of possibility…. And then… Naturally you connect to what you need to feel as though you are living your life purpose.
I’d recommend you have a contemplative inquiry - a time when you simply relax - you could lie down and close your eyes and drop into a place of asking yourself what you are longing for, or you could go for a walk and think…. do this at least once a month - ideally in the time a little before each new moon when the nights are at their darkest. When we align with nature we connect with the rhythms of the earth and that fosters better health.
A creative practice to discover solutions, possibilities and make plans - Your creative practice is yours to explore - but it has to be something that takes you into your imagination, and helps build your capacity to imagine and dream and start finding your next steps - that always - must be - in alignment with your longings. Trust yourself. Trust that your longings wont mislead you.
You dont have to break your life apart to live from your longings. But you do need to attend to your longings or at some point they will crack you open and give you no other option but to listen to them.
If you’d like to learn how to put this practice into action please take a class with me or contact me to do some one on one coaching.