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What I am doing, others opinions and acting versus reacting

The past couple of years have been really interesting for me. I have done a lot of things that are right out of my comfort zone. I have been allowing myself to try new things and new things always bring challenges, but they are all good. I am learning to love challenges, because I got that they all teach me something and have some purpose.

One big challenge for me – as silly as it sounds – are other peoples opinions. I spent a big part of my life trying to fit in somewhere and seek acceptance / approval and I guess in some way or form I am still doing that to some degree. I guess everyone wants to belong somehow / somewhere. I have also noticed that I often pay more attention to the negative comments I get, than to the positive ones – the strange workings of the monkey mind of mine.

So with stepping out of my comfort zone naturally some people question my decisions. I question them myself all the time with endless dialogues in my head.

I guess it comes down to wanting approval for what I am doing – the thing is I really don’t need approval, as long as I know that what I am doing feels good, right and rings true. And I am getting a lot more comfortable these days with living to my true values. A huge part why this is relatively easy for me now is, that I have a loving and immensely supportive husband. I am so grateful for / to him, because I know how it feels if you don’t have loving support at home from previous relationships. It makes a huge difference.

It also really helps to have the awareness of taking inside thoughts and outside opinions for what they are. Just thoughts / opinions / outside noise – they are not necessarily my reality. Here are a few I have heard in the last couple of weeks that stung somehow, been worked though in the head and chucked in compost bin to create some good mature soil for the future:

– you seem a bit all over the place – first homeopathy now yoga, there are so many yoga teachers around already. (Mhh yeah I know I have actually done my research, but I am doing it anyway, because it makes me feel good. By the way as far as I can remember you have tried a few things in your time too make a living. – I just thought that afterwards – I didn’t say it – was too gobsmacked)

– Oh, you had good marks for homeopathy, well done. (And in the same breath): Oh and by the way xyz has just finished their degree with an A plus with distinction. (Aehmmm meaning what – is my above expectation not good enough for you??? I just thought that afterwards – I didn’t say it – was too gobsmacked. What are people thinking or am I just jealous???)

– And another goody from a so called empowerment leadership male who’s programme I signed up for and resigned after a few weeks, because I decided I wanted to turn off the all the outside noise and listen to myself instead of to others ” You aren’t a leader hun…run scared run away and forever never meet your potential…good luck” (Mhhh is that supposed to be empowering me, just because I don’t feel like doing your program anymore? How immature and unprofessional. I might not be a leader, but I will meet my potential without you, thank you very much.)

In actual fact those comments are quite funny, because they reflect my own insecurities and I have been half expecting those or similar comments from the ones who said them – or have I even been manifesting them….

I don’t know that what I am doing is right. For once I am trying to listen to my heart – is it right or wrong – who knows and unless I am trying I won’t know either. I am trying to honor my values and live by them. I am so immersed in so much outside noise (peoples opinions / advise, books, social media, articles, workshops etc.) that I have quite forgotten how to access my own inner wisdom.

I want to ACT instead of RE-ACT. I think studying yoga (and I don’t mean bending the legs behind your ears yoga alone / I am looking more forward to the inner work and giving myself time to do so) will help and push me in the right direction, because if I want to teach this one day my students will know pretty soon if I am just a bullshitter in pretty leggings or if I actually know what I am talking about. – I have to find my own voice again and learn to speak my own truth.

So here is my intention for the next few months and it will take a lot of discipline – I AM GOING TO TURN AS MUCH OUTSIDE NOISE OFF AS I CAN MANAGE AND LISTEN TO MY OWN INNER WISDOM. I AM GOING TO FIND MY OWN VOICE, REACTIVATE THAT THROAT CHAKRA AND SPEAK MY OWN TRUTH. YEEEHAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

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Self-Love, Self-Respect and Self-Forgiveness

23rd July 2015

I went to a self-development course over the weekend with Kate and Henare O’Brien for 2 days. There were about 50 people from all walks of life, looking for inspiration, help or just being curious like me. I have read my share of so called “self-help” books and follow a good lot of people who make their living in this field, but its always nice to rethink, refresh, reconnect and be inspired by other peoples work.

The thing that touched me most at this workshop is how all sorts of different people opened up and shared their stories, their hurt, their successes, the skeletons in the cupboard. There were tears, there was laughter. It made me realise again how quickly we judge people from the outside, trying to squish them in allotted boxes and we really have no idea whats going on on the inside. It made me realise that deep inside we are all looking for connection, direction, pupose. love…. We all have the whole rainbow of emotions, successes, failures, mistakes and learning going on.

Unfortunately one of the things that came up several times was the very high suicide rate in New Zealand and Australia. Kate and Henare both grew up in Flaxmere, a lower socio economic area in Hawke’s Bay, and there have been 5 suicides in the last few weeks alone.

I have had my ups and downs in life, but I really can’t imagine how desperate one must be to choose this option. There are so many people out there who simply can’t cope with life, with our society, with all the pressures, responsibilities and negativity. I myself have my moments when I look at this world and think what the heck is going on here – how could anybody be happy with all this s#hit happening all around us.

In actual fact I have stopped watching the news and reading the paper, reading thrillers or watching movies and TV programmes with violence / bad vibes years ago. I just can’t cope this this constant stream of negativity and stupidity, violence, rape, natural disasters etc. I now choose to focus on all the nice things that surround me, my children, my husband, our lovely house and garden, the yummy food we have access to, the beautiful nature that surrounds us, inspiring books, learning new things, spending time with lovely people who inspire me, doing yoga – in short my own little universe. I try not to waste my time doing/watching/reading things that make me feel bad or sad. I want this to be a beautiful, happy world, because I want my children to have a beautiful, happy future.

What transpired for me in those 2 days is how important it is to love, respect and forgive – no not others – yourself first of all. I would think that this is the single most biggest mistake I have made in my live. I have not taken enough time for myself, I haven’t given enough love and respect to myself and I haven’t forgiven myself for all the mistakes I have made and I haven’t invested enough time in myself to find out what I really want to do and be. I was always too busy in the outside world, trying to please others and to fit in. In the last few years however I have started to learn how important this is and made lots of changes, one step at the time.

In my early adult life I had my share of unpleasant relationships with men. In the first ones I messed up, caused hurt, was stupid in search of something better. Then karma kicked in and I got it all back. From where I am now I can see that I was desperately searching for somebody to love me, but I didn’t even like myself, how could anybody else love me, respect me if I didn’t have those feelings for myself. In actual fact the very last lovely man that I “interacted” with in Germany told me that he didn’t like how I put myself down all the time and that I didn’t have any self-esteem. On top of this I spend most of my adult life doing things I didn’t thoroughly enjoy from my heart, that I was passionate about. I grew so unhappy, that just packed my household into boxes, quit my job, left my apartment in Berlin and set off with my backpack to have a breather, to re-evaluate who I was, what I wanted, where to from here.

I suppose this is a really important lesson to learn for all of us. If we really all loved and respected ourselves and forgave ourselves – this world would be a much better place. We could be better role models for our children, we could go out into our communities with confidence and find and create connection, we could have truly touching, open and honest friendships. We could change the world by giving more love, respect and forgiveness to self and others. However from my own experience I know this is not easy, because most of us are to busy in a mindless state of affairs and its hard to poke the head out and have a good look around.

While I was pondering all this in my lunch break at Kairunga Gardens among the trees I found this leaf in front of my feet. How appropriate 🙂

So here we go: Love more, forgive more, open up, let all the old baggage out – look at it, evaluate it and let it go, learn the lesson and move on, focus on the nice things in life, smile more, do silly things, dance, laugh, watch children and imitate them.

My children have been the best teachers I have met so far. They push all the buttons I never knew I had, they inspire me, they push me to learn new things, they drag me along to try new and old stuff, they beam when I am silly and happy,they give the best kisses and hugs, they hold the mirror up to me, they laugh a LOT,  they are unapologetically honest, they don’t judge, they love and forgive freely – themselves and others and they speak the truth (mostly ;-)). This is how we are all born – innocent and lovely. We are taught and we learn how to be the screwed up people that we end up to be by the surroundings we grow up in. Lets all unscrew a few things and get back to the good basics.

Love from here x

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The Wall, trapped emotions and freedom

4th May 2014

A friend put up a post on facebook about the wall coming down in Germany 25 years ago.

It always gives me a bit of a shiver, because I think, gosh where would I be today, if that wall had not come down. I was 16 years old when it happened, so it was still soon enough for me to adjust easily.

I have been doing a bit of thinking about my childhood and my life in East Germany lately and how it might subconsciously still effect me. I have been reading books about behavior & believe patterns and subconscious thinking. Our subconscious mind takes up 98 percent of brain, only very little do we do with our conscious mind. Lots of our behaviors are “programmed” before the age of 7 in our subconscious mind and without really consciously knowing we apply those behaviors again and again in our life. Subconscious patterns and behaviors / beliefs are hard to change.

I have been battling with a negative mindset for so long now. I didn’t really know where is was coming from, as I lead a happy life really. Some of things I don’t like that come up consistently are anger, negativity, guilt, worthlessness, not deserving, not being good enough, underlying tension and worry about everything on the planet, fear etc etc

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I have been experimenting a bit with EFT / tapping and went to a session with a EFT practitioner and I told her that I didn’t really know where all this is coming from, as in general I am happy and have nothing much to worry about. When we were tapping it transpired that those things are more than likely related to my childhood and my upbringing in East Germany.

That got me thinking, because I always said when questioned about it, that I had a happy childhood and had everything I needed. Life was simple, I was looked after well, fed well and my parents worked their butts off, to give us everything we needed / wanted. We all had our own room, 2 gardens to roam in, dad even build a swimmingpool for us, lots of yummy food that grew there etc, we had clothes to wear and my parents had jobs and we had a huge house to live in and lots of family  and friends around. So what – I have got nothing to complain about really…

But to get back to those emotions – I had a think about where they might have been generated. From when I was little I was told, we had to be careful what to say to who, because the secret service was everywhere.  As I learnt later after the wall came down and people got to see their files, there were husbands spying on wifes, kids on their parents, close relatives, friends and colleagues. There was a constant underlying fear, of being busted by someone you trusted. And who could you trust anyway – you never really knew. My mum worked in the research part of a film factory, so she knew she was being monitored, all of them working there were, so they could not leak the research to the west. Mail was checked, parcels opened. She knew she was being watched. She refused to view her file after the wall came down. She said it wouldn’t make any change now and she didn’t want to be disappointed with people who might have been close to her. So here are the first 2 Fear and Trust. Two emotions I have always struggled with in my adult life. I have been pretty much taught from a very young age, that I could only trust myself.

Other memories are of school life. Every morning we came to school the teacher said “Are you ready” and we had to respond “we are always ready” along with a weekly school gathering by the flag in our uniforms. We had regular military trills, marching through the village, running around with gas masks on carrying our teachers on stretchers around the school preparing to be ready for inevitable attack of the evil capitalistic countries that surrounded us. All that along with the brainwash that only the Russians and Cuban’s were our friends, along with a few other ostblock countries. I remember we were not allowed to wear clothes that sported advertising slogans from the offending countries like Nike, Addidas or other brandnames. I remember one child having to go to the principal’s office and having a Nike logo cut out of his jersey. I remember having to go to the principal myself because I was reading one of those leaflety trashy love stories that one lucky classmate got from west germany

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I remember one year our little school from the tiny little village had the honour to being driven in the bus all the way to Berlin in our uniforms to have the huge pleasure to march past the president and wave and cheer and look happy. I remember waiting in a side allay for hours and hours until it was our turn to walk past him with strict instructions as to what to do and what not to do. What a performance, what a lie, what a staged dishonest display of untruthfulness so they could show the capitalists how happy we were and how we loved our president. Lots of us knew it was bollocks, some were into it, but no matter what we thought about it we had to go along with it. Here are a few more emotions– Dishonesty, the feeling of being used, fear, sarcasm…

I remember limitations / the feeling of no possibilities – once I told my mum I would like to be a jewellery maker. The answer was that there was only one apprenticeship a year for the whole country and that you had to be a party member and very special to get that. My parents were not party members, so we had none of the privileges. We had no phone and no car. One had to wait for 25 years until the application for a car was approved. One had to get married to be able to apply for your own flat. I wasn’t able to go to ballet, because that was in the next town and mum wouldn’t allow me to take the bus after school all by myself. The only activity that was offered in our village was shooting, so I leaned shooting on paper goals instead.

I remember the artists having limitations as to what to sing about, a certain percentage of their songs had to include praise to the state and to the system. Here are the next emotions – negativity, hopelessness, not deserving, not worthy, impossible, limitations everywhere, no free expression of creativity. My children go to a waldorf school now and it makes my heart leap when I see what possibilities they have, all the things they get to try and to be able to express themselves and be themselves freely. The world is full of possibilities for them and that’s how it should be.

 

I remember my dad telling me how he became a chainsmoker. With 19 he had to enter the military service and was stationed on one of the watchtowers in Berlin by the wall. They had guns and were instructed to shoot. If they didn’t shoot they would go to prison or worse. He said he smoked one cigarette after the other, because he was so scared that somebody tried to escape while he was on duty. He said he prayed every night that nobody would try to get over the wall and he is an atheist. He said he kept thinking what he was going to do if somebody came along. He said he thought rather than shooting he would have run himself which meant more than likely being shot himself, he couldn’t kill one of his own people being desperate to get out of there. More emotions – More fear, being shut in behind that wall, being forced to do things that one can’t comprehend.

I remember those precious parcels from West Germany. When they arrived the whole family felt as if it was Christmas, birthday and New Year in one day. Those 2nd hand clothes were treated like treasures, the chocolates saved up for special, the pens only used on special occasions. I remember one parcel arriving with a note in it that I still have – they removed some balloons at the boarder because they had a coffee brand name on it. I remember advertisements on TV of all the fabulous things they had in the west. I remember my first visit to my penfriend who took me to clothes shops in a real shopping mall – it felt like fairyland and paradise in one and I didn’t know where to look first. I still remember buying my first real jeans and a flash green fur jacket – my mum didn’t recognise me when I came of the train.

I remember Christmas time when they imported real oranges and bananas. Every family was only allowed a certain amount. I remember people standing in long lines in front of the shops when they arrived and I remember my dad going off on his motorbike to another village to get another kilo of oranges, standing in a long line again. I remember mum putting them in a big bowl under the bed and sharing them around in the evening. Oranges and Bananas were special once a year treats.

I remember being told that people who had phones, cars, nice things, money were either involved with the government or secret service or had wealthy family in west germany.

Here is the next emotion/ belief: there is a lack of things, I don’t deserve nice things, the people who have nice things must be bad.

I remember after the wall came down very distinctively the feeling of worthlessness and being scared. Every family was given $100 welcome money. Reluctantly my parents packed us all up and we went in the train like pretty much every other family to West Berlin to pick up our $500. I remember the train being so full, it couldn’t actually leave, because it was on a lean. I remember going over the border and the first shop was a petrol station shop. We all went in and had a look around. A lady shop assistant asked us if she could help us. Before we had a chance to answer the male shop assistant said “you can’t help THOSE people” with the most disgusted look on his face.

I felt like a beggar, like sinking into the ground. In those days it was pretty obvious who came from where, just from the clothing and lost looks. I remember standing in a huge line at the bank, waiting to get this precious money with my parents suffering, because they felt like beggars too. I remember walking down by the Brandenburger Gate, where a big boarder strip was there with the barb wire and security installations. Little did I know that I would walk through that gate many more times without giving it a second thought.

I remember going to another couple of shops who had pretty much empty shelves, because everything had been bought by people who picked up their money and grabbed anything they could get their hands on. Later when I lived in Berlin myself friends told me that they couldn’t even buy bread in those days, because the shops in Berlin were just emptied by all the people coming from the east. We went back home without having bought anything, feeling down, insecure, little, poor and scared. I remember my mum having a good cry not knowing how she was going to feed a family of 5, not knowing if she was going to be unemployed, not knowing what was to come. I remember feeling paralysed – picking up on that fear. After all we had been told all those years that they are all bad people in the west and now they got hold of us.

I remember getting letters from my penfriend in west germany with photos of school trips to England and Spain. I remember looking at them and thinking I am not going to be able to ever get to those countries. By that time I was a teenager and beginning to consciously realise that I was actually living in a big prison. I could feel that wall, I knew I was different, I knew I was caught, I knew I did not have freedom.

I had buried all those memories and never really given them much of a second thought. I just got on with life and enjoyed my newfound freedom after the wall came down. But ever so often I have little flashbacks.

When taking my husband back to Germany and walking along the marked wall on the ground, my stomach turned. I knew I had a lucky escape. When crossing a river in Laos and standing nearby Mt. Everest in Tibet I had a sudden realisation how amazing it really is that I can have this experience. When I was pregnant with my second child I went for a short trip to Rarotonga because of my husbands’ work and turned the TV on while having a rest and seeing the celebrations of the 20 year unification of Germany. Wow what a flashback – now I was sitting in a hotel in Rarotonga with my second child in my tummy from my Kiwi husband. If anybody had told me that 20 years ago I would have declared them completely and entirely mad. When taking a homeopathic remedy called Granite that made me realise that I still had that wall inside me somewhere, a wall I had erected myself over the years to protect myself and realising that I actually didn’t need it anymore.

Freedom has a real meaning to me. Because I wasn’t free for 16 years of my life and because I think I made the most of my freedom, once it was available to me. For many people the change came to late or they were not brave enough to embrace it or too numbed by fear, doubt and worthlessness.

I remember going to an exhibition a few years after the unification about all the ways people tried to escape, how Kanu / Kajak sales were monitored, how people build boats, balloons, dug tunnels, tried to swim the baltic sea and got creative to escape. Lots of them lost their lives in the process. Lots of lives were destroyed or disrupted by this system. Some of the non-conforming prisoners where even “sold” to the west. I had a friend in Berlin, who wanted to change the system in the East for the better. He was imprisoned for a few years and then driven to West Germany against his wishes. West Germany paid money for those people to be released. He had a wife and daughter in the East. The wife had to certify not to have any contact with him, otherwise she would have been imprisoned too and their daughter given to an orphanage.  He has never been able to re-establish a proper relationship to his daughter after the wall came down.  It was a daily reality. If you weren’t doing what you were told you were in real serious trouble.

It also amazed me that after 25 years of the wall coming down its presence is still there. Not everybody would agree with me, but when I go back to where I grew up I can still feel the presence, I can still feel that there is no complete equality / transformation yet.  Lots of people living there have lived on a different planet for a big part of their life and that past is still present.

Next time I write about all the nice things in my childhood – this almost sounds a bit depressing, but it has all been part of my life.

 

*The images on this site were taken from google images/ they are not my own.

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Heartspace Yoga is opening 20th February 2017

It is happening… I am now offering regular sessions from my beautiful, purpose built yoga room in Aspyre Fitness, 208 Heretaunga Street East, Hastings.

 

 

You can check on our website heartspace.nz for class time tables.

 

You have free access to change rooms, showers and sauna at Aspyre Fitness before and after your yoga session and you don’t need to be a gym member to attend.

The prices for our classes are:

$14 for drop ins

$120 for 10 class pass (valid for 6 months)

$10 for pensioners / students

As a little treat for the opening I am going to offer the 10 class pass for $100 for the first 2 weeks. (offer finishes 5th March)

If you haven’t been to my classes before the first class is free of charge, so you can trial if you like my sessions.

 

I am looking forward to seeing you on the mat and practicing together.

 

“Do your practice and all is coming.” K. Pattabhi Jois.