A safe harbor where beliefs are respected and kindness prevails.

Surrender Robbo—

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I have been studying astrology since the late 1980’s. It was in 1989, when my partner Steve and I stalked our guru Linda Goodman and became her personal assistants. We helped her copy edit her last published book, Gooberz. In the process Linda taught us astrology on a daily basis, either sitting around her kitchen table or at a small cafe in downtown Cripple Creek Colorado. She taught us by using our own charts. It was she who explained that I had a stellium (four planets) in Capricorn and one planet in Cancer. So all in all, I have 5 planets in Cardinal Signs which in lay terms means CONTROL.

Control issues are something I have come to know I have. As a kid I tried to control the people around me. The best descriptive word for that is BOSSY. Being bossy does not make you popular and if you are honest with yourself, it doesn’t make you very happy either. Trying to be on top of everything and everyone is exhausting and futile.

I remember in my early teens thinking that I wanted to be nicer to the people around me. I wanted to treat them with love and get that same treatment in return. I remember consciously softening my approach to people and if felt good.

But somehow I was having trouble being nice to myself and letting up on the control issues as they pertained to me. I was labeled the “perfectionist” by teachers. For a long time I thought it was a good label until I realized for me personally it actually meant “neurotic”.

Don’t misunderstand me, there is nothing wrong with being thorough and wanting to create the best and be the best you can be but there is a fine line between doing your best and tearing yourself down with self criticism because the end product is never good enough. “I could have done more; I could have put more time into it; It’s not as good as theirs”   These are all too familiar phrases that circulate through my head.

Linda’s advice, on having five planets in Cardinal signs, was to loosen the grip on whatever I was holding on to. I love this advice from a woman who was a quadruple Aries— another of the four Cardinal signs. She knew what she was talking about for sure.

I went through periods where I thought I was giving up some control. I thought I was mellowing out. But down deep I knew my need for or dependency on “structure/control” was still there. I had to know what was happening next or I would start to freak out.

Then there is all the praise and reinforcement for being structured and getting things done from everyone around you. “Wow, you are so efficient.” “You can get so much accomplished”

People come to expect it of you and you start to feel trapped by your own behavior. Even in my early education I felt their were intense expectations on me but nothing was as heavy as the expectations I put on myself. My internal father (Capricorn) was a tyrant and I did not have the courage or the tools to stand up to him. Somewhere along the line, I had come to expect perfection from myself. It was not imposed on me from my easy-going Libra Mom. That is for sure. My whole childhood was filled with Dottie, my mom, telling me to relax, to calm down.

My mom told a story of about a time when I was about eight years old. We were at a party. Libra’s, especially Dottie, could be very social. I kept saying, “it’s getting late Mom we should go.” After about the third or fourth time she said, “Ok Rob, will you stop being the parent here.” I looked her in the eyes and said, “Well one of has to be!” I was probably indignant and had my hands on my hips. They got a good laugh out of it. I was frustrated. She and her friends were lovely. I was just extremely uptight.

At some level I thought I was controlling my world and keeping it all together by my actions and efforts. Somehow I was keeping the Earth in it’s orbit and the stars in their right place in the sky.

Of course that was only in my head. Eventually the stress of life, my fear of everything not being perfect began to get in my way of happiness. I have been journaling since I was 14 years old. The reoccurring topic from my very first journal and still today is about seeking Inner Peace.

So much of our inner peace comes from letting go internally. We have to surrender. Surrender to ourselves. Let go of our expectations and internal demands. Ask ourself, “Is there a different way to do this, that is easier, less stressful?” “Can I be kinder to myself?”

The reality is, there is very little in our control. Very little!

We never really know what is going to happen in the next moment. We can try to control our world by shutting out everything and cocooning ourself in a small room. Besides being really boring, at some point Kali, the goddess of time, or Saturn the god of Karma and time or the Grim Reaper would get into your room and take you along with them at your appointed moment. A moment you have no control over.

You probably know the scene in the Wizard of Oz, where the wicked witch of the west rides over the emerald city and writes “Surrender Dorothy” in smoke. I keep writing “Surrender Robbo*” on inside front part of my forehead when I feel the control monster rearing its ugly head.

It is a monster because it robs us of the true joy of the moment. When we worry and seek perfection from others and ourself we are not living fully. Our culture rewards winning. But winning is not always possible. And sometimes it is in failing that we learn so much.

Take a deep breath. Let go of some of the constriction that keeps you in knots inside. You are not holding the world together single-handedly, even though it may feel that way.

Surrender! Allow yourself to be less than perfect and at the same time love yourself fully no matter how much imperfection you feel surrounds you or is inside you.

You are good, You are love. Surrender my friend. Lay in the field of wild flowers of life and relax.

Rob

(*A nickname I acquired in Greece, 1991. When my partner Steve and many friends use it, I feel deep affection. I use it here, lovingly towards myself.)

What Age Are You In Your Heart?

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IMG_0760Yesterday we were having a conversation with our friend Nina as we wrapped up our Key West Healthy Living Retreat. The conversation was about birthdays. Some people love them, some people dread them but most of us reflect a little deeper when there is a “zero” involved.

There might be some excitement about “20” as we feel we are “coming of age” but after that there is the intense feeling of time running out as we climb to 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90….

I wrote all those decades out because I have friends and clients in them all. And the ones at the top of the ladder look at the ones below as “kids”.

Yesterday as we spoke to Nina, Steve asked her, “How old are you in your heart?”  Without hesitation she said, “ In my 30’s.” Chronologically, she is older but in her heart she is as old as she feels.

Nina is retired from her first profession. She recently moved to an Island and changed her life dramatically. She reduced her stress, exercises her body, mind and soul regularly and now works with an attitude of love for life rather than working to find a life she loves.

Even with all this, she was having some issues with an upcoming birthday. It is understandable. Although our calendar and birthdays are man-made ways of categorizing time, they are milestones in our lives that give us cause for pause. In astrology, your birthday is considered your personal New Year. The sun is back to the place it was on the very day you were born and took your first breath. It is a great time, a natural time to pause and reflect.  It’s a time to ask yourself, “Where have I been and where am I going?”

Taking a little personal time each birthday to reflect and either set your course or reset your course, can make facing a “zero” year less intimidating. It can make facing any birthday less intimidating.  It is when we live in denial of time and the inevitable that we eventually “freak out”.

In Tantric Yoga Philosophy it is said that five things cause us suffering as humans: Ignorance, Ego, Attachment, Aversion and Fear of Death.

BINGO!!!  Birthdays can activate all of them if you think about it.

Ignorance – when we don’t know or acknowledge that we are more than our bodies and that our spark of divinity is eternal.

Ego- – when the fear of getting older is about loss of youth rather than the celebration of our new role as we become a wise elder.

Attachment— to our life.   Aversion— to its inevitable evolution—see Ego above.

Fear of Death- For many of us- this is the unspoken bogey man for sure. And that comes down to being afraid of the unknown.

Who knew birthdays had so much deep stuff buried beneath them. But they do.
We can help each other out with the “birthday dilemma”.

Never ask any one their age. Ask them how old they are in their hearts.

Do not send birthday greetings with tombstones or the color black as the most prominent feature. That doesn’t make anyone feel good.

Ask each other what “newness” we are adding to this phase of our life and what negative thoughts we are going to leave behind.

Celebrate what you have learned through your life and plan for the next adventure.

Take time to reflect on the goodness you have experienced and all the incredible people and experiences you have had and are still having.

Allow your self to be shining example of how to continue to Live Life Fully rather than merely just existing.

Our generations are the vanguard of change about living life fully and with as much meaning as we can handle. Most of us have the advantage of being able to work on raising Consciousness like no other generation before us.

Let’s encourage each other to live our life and forget our age.

Let’s raise each other up with each birthday milestone to see our lives as having purpose no matter what man-made number we are celebrating.

We can help and encourage each other the most by teaching through example as we experience and  express our lives fully through our heart as well as our head.

Happy Happy Birthday to us all.

The Experiement

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IMG_1041I am not a scientist but I am conducting an experiment.

I have been living with a limited sense of myself for most of my life. I am not sure where the deep sense of insecurity and self doubt came from but I am exhausted by it.

Yogic philosophy, Enneagram and Astrology, all tell me that my deep sense of personal growth is contingent on me letting go of my control issues and deep seeded insecurities.

I keep reading about it and playing with the idea but I think its time to do the experiment 100%.

If I let go, really let go, I am told that I will be able to channel the energy of the Universe and I will Know Truth. I will be more relaxed and I will feel a deeper connection with everything- the Universe, with humanity.

Sounds like bliss right? So why am I not doing it? This is a very good question.

One student said to me last night, “I think I am afraid to ask for what I really want because once I start that process there is no going back.”

Right on !!

My friend, teacher and fellow yogi, Sianna Sherman calls it “the magnetic point of radiance”, when we dare to follow our truth, when we dial in, listen deeply, go for it and then surrender. Let go of any clinging to the outcome and just go for it!

Once we move away from the Known to the Unknown or into the area of possibilities, we open up to an energy we may never have experienced. Maybe we feel like we won’t be able to handle it or that we are not worthy.

But you know what? We won’t know until we try.

What stops most of us is not a lack of desire to be free and liberated but rather the anxiety and self doubt that resides in the deepest corners of our being. We all have that nervousness that holds us back.

Isabel Hickey says,
“Nervous tension is the person in the body, giving the body a hard time”

Amen Isabel!!

Sound familiar? The reason it is said that happiness is an inside job, is because we have to give it to ourselves. No matter what our outside circumstances may be—- we have to let go of that inner control of the self with the small “s” and let the S-elf with the BIG “S” teach us to fly.

So the experiment starts today. I am looking for my core values and what it is I truly want to do in my life and I am going to go for it 100%.—- not 90 or 95% but full on.

Join me!

We inspire each other the most when we live our lives and our purpose at 100%.

I will let you know how it goes. Share your experiences with me.

Come on! Let’s go!!

 

Falling Off The Healthy Wagon

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IMG_0041 I’ve always been a thin guy. I’ve never really had any issues with food (except maybe peas, ugh!), and for the most part I’ve been very active, but skinny. My partner, Rob, on the other hand will tell you that he was a fat kid. He ate anything he could get a hold of and was never much into being active. Becoming an adult changed that for both of us and we can now say, eating right and working out have been an important part of our lives for more than 35 years.

For the past three years, Rob and I have been working for ourselves. We are both Licensed Massage Therapist and Personal Trainers.   Rob is a Registered Yoga Teacher who also teaches Meditation and I have a ‘Certificate in Nutrition’ from The American Council on Exercise. We work out with a trainer three times a week and try hard to get in two if not three sessions of cardio each week. Our diets are clean, with no red meat. We buy and eat as much organic foods as possible and we drink a fresh fruit & vegetable juice each day.   With us being advocates for “Healthy Living”, we feel it’s necessary for us to walk the walk so as to inspire our clients to incorporate our “talk” into their lives. By being healthy and active people we feel we help our clients be the same.IMG_0053

A little more than two months ago, something shifted.   We found ourselves at the gym only twice a week with an occasional visit to the fat-burning cardio machines.   While our diet at home remained pretty much the same, we found ourselves skipping meals and eating out more than usual.   Snacking on hummus and crackers was almost an everyday thing and we began to ‘treat’ ourselves with a glass of wine or a beer almost every night.

Enabling each other in our “treats” and irregular habits became easy. A typical rational was – “Ok, its 7:30 pm and we’re just finishing up a massage client, I don’t feel like cooking so let’s just go out and grab something. And since we’re out, let’s have a beer with dinner.”   One beer easily turns into two, and after a couple of beers and getting home around 10:00 pm – well, now it’s too late to set the alarm for 6:30am to make it to the trainer, so let’s cancel. And the cycle continued.

It’s easy to fall into a cycle that feels good in the moment but is not supporting your overall plan for your life. That is exactly where we found ourselves.

We work mostly from home with our massage clients coming to us.  Originally, we were good at keeping up with our meals and our workouts, but as we got busier, scheduling clients started to become a problem. Not a problem in the sense that they were not welcomed and we didn’t appreciate the business (we welcomed all the business) but the problem was in blending the client’s needs and timing with our established healthy habits. Some days, one or two clients would book mid-afternoon and we found ourselves missing lunch or grabbing a handful of nuts. Then, a yoga teacher would call needing a sub for their 5:45pm class. So we’d end up in a restaurant having dinner……and the cycle continued.   We began to teach from one side of our mouth while we were eating a grilled turkey sandwich and having a cold beer with the other side. And the pounds started to accumulate.

UGH, did we ever fall off the healthy wagon!

The weight gain was noticeable – especially to us. We knew that something was up but we just didn’t see or feel it at first and then couldn’t stop it.   We talked about our lack of attention to our lifestyle and knew that something had to change…but nothing did. We had less energy and doing the things we wanted to do become harder and harder to do. Then one day while preparing for an upcoming retreat that we were hosting, called Personal Training for the Body & Soul – we stopped and said, wait a minute, this is exactly what we need! It made us stop and say; “What in the hell are we doing?” And more than What are we doing, Why are we doing this?

We both knew we were medicating ourselves. There had to be something deeper going on within us. But what? And–where do we go from here?

With our notes for our Retreat in hand we began asking ourselves a few questions. “What is really important to us? What do we value?” We made a list. Then came: “Are we acting in accordance to what we value and deem important?” The answer this time was a resounding, No! Then to bring it back around, we asked ourselves, “What do we need to do to get back on track and get back to our core values?” With new dedication and determination we began the process of getting back on our own wagon – we know what it takes.

We never did come up with a particular “ WHY” we fell from the Healthy Wagon. It is usually a combination of life situations that hit at once. In our case we let ourselves get overwhelmed about our life. Sound familiar?

Life is a spiral and we keep coming back to the same place. The trick is to see this place with new eyes, with a clearer vision because of our past experiences. It is never exactly the same. As with all things in life there is ebb and flow, a crest then a wake. This back and forth, is our True Self seeking balance – a natural process from moving away from center than back again, like walking a tight-rope, or staying grounded and balanced while doing Warrior II in a yoga class. It’s like knowing when to work hard and knowing when you need a vacation. We come and we go, we move this way and that – all in an effort to find our midpoint or quite spot. Falling off the Healthy Wagon and getting back on was part of our evolution. It made us more aware of what is important to us and therefore a little easier this time to climb back up and get back on.

“It is not so much about changing the pace of our life as it is about changing the pace of our mind”, Rob said to me one day!

The mind is a wonderful tool but it can also be a force that pushes you fast and furious off the wagon of your life. Take a little time each day to step back from yourself and take a look at what you are doing. Do you feel good or do you need to make some alterations? Take a look at your daily routine. Are you living according to your values and what is important to you? This self- check in can become a healthy habit which makes staying on track easier.

It’s your life. Be Happy. Be Healthy. Be in love with you!

Steve Bolia & Rob Dorgan

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