Tag: fear

Where are You Rooted?

Yesterday my six year old son asked me if I knew about the “walking palm trees of the rain-forest.” He told me that these trees were able to “move their roots” if they saw a spot that looked better to them. I told him that was incredibly cool, and that I did not know about these trees. Of course, I had to go Google it, because palm trees walking around the rain-forest seems like something I’d have heard about somewhere along the way. So it turns out the Socratea exorrhiza, or, “Walking Palm” is native to tropical Central and South America, and it has stilt roots that allow it to grow in swampy areas of forest. Some people think their roots exist as an adaptation to flooding, and others believe the roots allow the palm to “walk away” if another tree falls on the seedling and knocks it over. If this happens, the palm produces new vertical stilt roots and rights itself, the original roots rotting away.

I think life asks us to do this very thing again and again; to start over, to respond to the ever-changing nature of things, to move our roots when we need to and right ourselves. But a lot of the time we resist. We cling to the dying roots that don’t sustain us or nurture us anymore, that cannot support our growth any longer. Sometimes we do this out of desperation. We love someone, or many “someones” and can’t bear the thought of hurting them. Or we’re afraid of all that is required to pick up and move toward the unknown. In relationships, it’s incredibly painful. The roots grow down directly from our hearts. But if you aren’t growing, you’re dying, and if you’re dying you can’t nurture anyone else because all your energy is going toward your withering and quiet destruction. Without living, healthy roots, you just won’t have the strength to rise up and reach the light and so life becomes very dark indeed.

I know so many people who keep feeding those dying roots, though. It’s all swampy and murky and nothing new can grow there, but still, they try to shore the thing up, to feed it whatever they can. Sometimes it’s old stories that have become rooted. They’re poisoning the tree, the branches are hanging low, the leaves have mostly fallen off, but the roots of blame, anguish, fear or sadness, of bitterness, shame or guilt keep the person rooted in the Forest of What Was. I spent a good decade in that forest, so I can tell you the main thing that grows there are weeds. The kind that climb up your trunk and strangle your branches and steal all the light and all the nutrients, until you are just this Tree of Blame with sour fruit. “I am this way because this happened, and then that happened, and then this other thing happened, and so now when you say you love me I don’t believe you because everybody leaves and everybody cheats and I’m just going to stay rooted here in the darkness.” Or something like that.

Fear will keep you paralyzed in that forest if you let it, but it’s such a shame because old stories are old. They don’t have to control your present or your future. They may have created some grooves in your trunk, but they don’t have to overtake your ability to produce the sweetest fruit you can imagine; the fruit of, “I Got the F&ck Out!!!” for example. That is some sweet fruit. You may feel stuck and powerless. You may even be rooted to those feelings; there may be some pay-off for you in staying stuck. Attachment to sympathy or attention, a reason not to do the brave and difficult thing so you can stick with what you know even if it doesn’t feel good, or an excuse to numb out are some possibilities. But I have to let you know, the pay-off of digging deep, to the very bottom of your soul, gathering up your courage and your stilt roots, and moving your a$$ to the Forest of Life is Freaking Amazing has a much greater pay-off. If a tree can do it, I have zero doubt you can do it, too.

Sending you a lot of love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

How Are You Walking?

howwelluwalkthroughthefireI think there are really just two choices in life: you live in love, or you live in fear. Either way, you walk through the fire. Yesterday I posted some thoughts on Monday’s bombings in Boston. Someone wrote in that she was angry. Of course. Anger is a completely sane and valid response. None of us want to live in a world where we have to wonder if it’s safe to watch our loved ones cross the finish line at a marathon or drop our kids off at school or go to a movie. These are all things we’d hope we could take for granted, but we can’t, not anymore. There’s violence all over the world, perpetrated every single day by people of all political leanings, nationalities, religions, colors, genders and ages. It’s a border-less, sadly human condition. The real question isn’t who’s at fault. The real question is, does violence exist within me, personally? Am I a peaceful human being, or am I participating in the cycle of violence? That’s what you can work on.

Trying to blame the state of the world on any one person is absurd. On any one political party. On any one country or religion or race. This is a human, global issue. We got ourselves into this mess together, and we’re going to have to get ourselves out of it together. You cannot solve it with more violence. That’s what we’ve been doing, and I would hope at this juncture we could all agree it’s not working out too well for us. We’re hurting each other and we’re hurting our planet, the place where we live.

There’s the home within us, right? The home you’re going to live in for your whole life, your body. Your internal dialogue is going to be your constant companion. Whatever you grow inside yourself is what you’re going to spread as you move through the world around you. If you’re in fear and anger, that’s what you’ll be spreading. If you’re in love, you’ll be spreading love. What do you think we need out there? More anger? More violence? More separation? The same person who said she was angry also refuted my assertion that we all love our children. She said some people strap bombs to their children and that isn’t love. I’ve never heard of a parent strapping a bomb to their child. Not ever. If that’s happened, that’s a parent who is so full of anger and hatred they can’t see straight. Who’s lost that deeply rooted evolutionary, biologically-induced determination to protect and nurture his or her child. I’ve heard about parents raising their children with the belief that Americans are terrible people who deserve to die and that life on earth is not important, it’s the after-life that matters, and I’ve heard of American parents who teach their children that people of other colors and religions who speak different languages and pray to different gods or no god should be hated and also deserve to die.

Sometimes these kids grow up to become young adults who strap bombs to themselves, under some false idea that it honors their country or their god or their parents. If you’ve raised your child to believe there’s something honorable in taking his or her own life and the lives of others in a brutal, senseless, violent way, then I’m very sorry, but you are blowing it as a person and a parent. You’re blowing it because you’re choosing fear instead of love and you’re feeding that diet to your open-minded, openhearted child and you are participating and prolonging the violence. If you didn’t teach that to your child, but you gave birth to someone who came to believe that due to circumstances, events and conditions no one could prepare for, see coming, or manage, then you did not blow it. You were given a set of circumstances no one should judge from the outside and you deserve a lot of compassion.

Fear closes us off and shuts us down. Teaching hatred is the sign of a very broken heart, and it will only perpetuate the cycle of alienation, destruction and violence. The idea that there’s an “us” and a “them.” The only way to understand where someone is coming from is to truly try to see things from their perspective. To drop your own highly ingrained beliefs, opinions, projections and assumptions for just a few minutes, and really listen and truly consider a different point of view.

How might you feel if you grew up in a completely different environment? Most people can’t listen deeply to someone with a different set of core beliefs because it’s scary or it feels intolerable to drop their viewpoint, even briefly. Who am I without my highly ingrained beliefs? Without my opinions and projections and memories? You know who you are without that stuff? You’re me. I’m you. That’s the point. You want to identify yourself as Democrat. Republican. Christian. Muslim. Jew. Palestinian. Black, White. Male. Female. American. Saudi Arabian. Chinese. Try this instead. You are a human being living on planet earth and your anger and your labels will not save you from the very vulnerable experience of being human. Of violence and loss and grief and pain so deep it makes your head spin. Of heartbreak and confusion and shame and despair. It also won’t save you from having your heart opened in ways you couldn’t imagine until you felt it happen. It won’t save you from the crushing gratitude you’d have to feel if you were awake and alive to all that’s encompassed in being a human being on planet earth. For every one person who seeks to create death and destruction, there are thousands who go running toward people in pain. To offer a hand. Their coat. Their phone, their home, the food in their refrigerator. People are good.

I don’t know who put those bombs at the finish line, and so far, neither does anyone else. It could be an American. It could be someone from another country. It doesn’t matter. Whoever it was, it’s a person in a lot of pain. Someone who’s very confused about life. About how to be a human being on the only planet we all share. As someone else said yesterday, “We aren’t okay until we’re all okay.” Please don’t go to anger and stay there. If you’re angry, I get it. Use that anger to bring yourself back to love, to get fired up about how you can help to make the world within you and around you a more peaceful place to be. Teach your children that the space between them and anyone else is sacred and shouldn’t be polluted with hatred and judgment. With anger and blame. Choose love. Again and again and again. That’s how we heal ourselves, each other, and this beautiful but hurting world we live in. That’s how we become nothing more and nothing less than what we are: Incredibly gorgeous human beings on a spinning orb. Wishing that for everyone, and sending love in all directions,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

Choose Hope.

choosehopeI watched some raw video from the Boston Marathon yesterday, instead of just reading about it, which is what I’d intended to do, and so I heard the awful screaming of people in shock and dismay. The shaking voice of the man taking the video and the way his breath was shallow, and my own heart-rate went up listening to him. We all sound different in that state. I learned that the one and only time I watched the birth video a girlfriend took during my labor with my son, which was scary and violent and full of moments I wasn’t sure we were going to make it through. All you can hear after the birth is me sobbing and asking again and again, “Is he okay?” in a voice I do not recognize as my own. But it’s the exact same voice I heard yesterday in someone’s video footage and it went straight through my heart. Panic, fear, despair and shock take such a toll on us and we really are all the same in our humanness and vulnerability.

When things like this happen and we look around at the state of the world in general, it’s easy to say, “It’s just too much. Everything is broken and violent,” and to feel hopeless about it all. I went to a screening of a powerful film I’ve seen three times, “Children of War” by filmmaker Bryan Single. He spent the better part of three years in Northern Uganda, filming the work of Jane Ekayu (you can check out her website, childrenofpeaceuganda.com) and other counselors working with children who were abducted from their homes and forced to become soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army. They targeted children 5-15 years old because they’re the most tender and the easiest to control. I can’t tell you what these children have been through. Some were forced to kill their own family members. But human beings have an incredible capacity to forgive and heal and people like Jane who care and take action make all the difference in the world.

I realize when we see violence like this it’s natural to want to crawl into a hole or distract ourselves. I saw people yesterday getting angry at those expressing sympathy and bringing up other places in the world where violence is a way of life. One is no more or less distressing than the other. I experienced some of that myself in December, when I wrote about Sandy Hook Elementary and someone said there’s no reason to weep if it doesn’t affect you directly. It’s all direct. Sometimes people don’t feel the impact of how awful something is until it hits close to home; there’s no reason to have contempt for someone who suddenly realizes the heartbreak of violence and destruction. Realizing is the thing, whenever and wherever it happens. What’s happening in Iraq directly affects us all. And what’s happening in the Congo. Do you want to know the truth? It doesn’t matter where it’s happening. Borders are meaningless and something we’ve made up. Skin color is meaningless. We are one people on one planet, and we are all connected. The root of almost all of our problems is that we’ve separated ourselves from each other. If one of us is suffering, we are all suffering.

The thing is not to give up. Not to decide it’s broken and too much, and what can one person possibly do, anyway? You can’t fix everything, that’s for sure. But you can do something. I mean, anything, really. Any way you can extend some love and some hope and some care, matters. It can be the smallest thing. You can hold a door open for a stranger, that matters. You can let someone merge while you’re driving, that matters, too. You can treat everyone you encounter with kindness. If you feel really inspired, you can pick one organization and volunteer. Give your time and your energy and your heart. A secret thing you might not know is that spending your energy trying to uplift someone else will make you feel incredible. Like your life has some meaning and that won’t just be a feeling you have, that will be the reality. We can heal and we can care about each other, and we can impact the way the world around us looks and feels. But hatred won’t get us there. “Us vs. Them” won’t get us there. Demonizing people who are severely troubled or mentally ill won’t get us there, either. Focusing on what’s different won’t do it. But do you have any idea how much is the same? We all love our children. We all breathe the same air. We all have dreams and hopes and fears and nights we cry ourselves to sleep. We could all use a hand reaching out in the darkness sometimes. And we could surely use a lot of people who don’t give up and numb out. I think we have a whole bunch of them on this page.

Sending love to all of you, and to anyone, anywhere, who is suffering,

Ally Hamilton

Don’t Give Up.

A few weeks ago, someone messaged me on the fan page and said he was going to end his life. I can’t really explain the panic I felt, especially because his message was a few hours old by the time I saw it. He shared some details of his life over the last few years and why he’d come to the conclusion that it just wasn’t worth it. He’d suffered some devastating losses, enough that it was understandable he felt hopeless and defeated. I wrote back immediately and gave him the Suicide Prevention Hotline number (800-273-8255), my number, and also contact information for three therapists I know and trust. I begged him to write back and let me know he’d received my message and also told him there have been times in my life when I’ve felt like giving up, too. Not for many, many years, but I certainly entertained those thoughts at one time in my life. When things feel so dark you really can’t think of a reason to lift your head off your pillow, the thought, “What’s the point of it all?” is natural and understandable.

Yesterday, someone wrote in a thread, “Why can’t we talk about the miraculous sometimes, too?” and then she wrote back and rescinded her question, saying that it “all leads back to joy.” But it’s a legitimate question and there are days when I just write from my heart and send out a hit of love. Or I hope I do. I write about the shadow emotions a lot because I feel in the spiritual community there’s so much focus on being positive and spreading the light. I think it’s alienating for many people. There is so much light. There’s a limitless well of love within each of us, but to uncover that well there’s usually some digging required. A lot of people feel alone in that digging, like there must be something wrong with them and sometimes they give up. Numb out. Run, deny, try to push it all down. Or they become bitter and think other people must have it easier. The truth is some people do have it easier. We don’t all go through the same experiences. There are some people who will suffer losses that are so knifing, so brutally painful you have to hope they’re going to be able to put one foot in front of the other, and that’s usually when some well-meaning positive person will come along and smugly assert that, “everything happens for a reason,” and forget that the foundation of a true spiritual practice is compassion. There’s nothing comforting in telling a person who is trying to remember how to breathe in and breathe out that their loss has happened for a reason, or that they should focus on all the good things in their life, or that one day they’ll understand why. Some things will never, ever be okay. Some things will never make sense. There are some lessons that will never elicit gratitude. Growth, yes. If you get through it. Deeper understanding, insight and compassion? Yes. Gratitude? No. Not for some things.

It’s my belief a spiritual practice ought to be there for you whether you’re moving through beautiful, joyful, miraculous times in your life, or you’re going through blinding pain that makes you want to give up. I don’t worry about those of you feeling gratitude. I love you, but I’m not worried. I do want to reach out to those people in darkness and say you’re not alone and offer a hand. A blog post. A yoga class, a hug. An email. Whatever I’ve got. Because I really think that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to love each other, support each other, and share and grow together and I think that is pretty miraculous. When I look at my life today, it’s hard to imagine I ever wondered what “the point of it all” was, because it’s very clear to me now. The point of it is to love your heart out. To connect. There’s an insane amount of joy in all that. I’ve been emailing with the man who was feeling desperate a few weeks ago. He’s talking to someone and getting support in many areas. Sometimes we need help. It’s not easy, this business of being human. But it is pretty amazing.

Sending you a ton of love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

What’s Up, Monkey?

Sometimes life can be brutally painful. We lose someone we love beyond our ability to put it in words, way too soon. Loss like that is violent and shocking, even if it happens slowly. Or we have our hearts broken in a relationship, sometimes over and over again by the same person. If betrayal is in the mix, it’s even more painful. Or we lose a job we really loved or wanted. Or we simply can’t seem to get any traction going in any direction in life, with relationships or work, or even with how to be in this world. Maybe there’s an abusive background. A family of origin with addiction issues. A history of broken promises, emotional or physical violence. You get the picture.

Whatever you’re coming out of, you have a choice. You have the choice to ask for help if you need it. Healing is often confrontational and painful and lonely and confusing, and having someone there to hold your hand or offer an ear or a shoulder can really make all the difference. Someone who will kindly hold up a mirror for you, and make sure you’re examining your inner landscape clearly and thoroughly, because you can’t let go of those things that are blocking your ability to give and receive love without understanding them first and without allowing yourself to mourn and to grieve for what was, or what could have been. Your understanding is your path to liberation, your willingness to open to all of those emotions we’re taught to push down is the key. You actually want to pry the lid off and invite them all to come flooding in so you can swim in that stuff for awhile, and scream your heart out if you need to, and shed your tears, and exhaust yourself until there’s no denial and no fighting of reality left in you. There’s just facing it, as it is, and as it was, so you can open to how it could be. Your awareness and acceptance and compassion for yourself clear the path toward a new way of being.

Starting over is also lonely work. The old way doesn’t work, and the new way hasn’t become clear yet. Some of your closest family members and oldest friends may not like your new adventure. They may feel threatened and angry, like you’re rejecting them in an effort to take care of yourself, which really has to come first if you plan on being happy in this life. Socrates has a beautiful quote, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

Even if you’ve been hurt and disappointed, neglected or abused, abandoned or ignored, you have the choice to live in fear, hardened and bitter and full of rage and blame, or to do the brave thing. To let go of the old handlebar you’ve been hanging off for far too long. The one that burns your hands with its heat and its pain and its why and its unfairness, and to reach out for love. To make yourself vulnerable in that space between the one and the other. To use all the strength and hope and courage you’ve got to propel yourself forward and reach out with your open hand and your open heart for that bar in front of you that’s full of promise and something new. Something different. To open to the possibility that you might do all that and slip right off the bar and land on your face and have to get back up again and start over. But that if you keep reaching and you keep trying, eventually the way will become clear. And then my dear monkey, the bars become rather fun.

Wishing you the courage to let go and reach out, and sending love, as always,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

Throwing Pans is Not Your Only Option

Last night in class I ended up with a roomful of people who had clearly been doing yoga for a long time. When we got to the first Warrior I, I said, “You all look like you’ve done this pose a million times, but you’ve never done it before in this moment. Don’t take it for granted, because that’s how people end up divorced.” Everyone laughed, but I was serious. (Not that I minded the laughter one bit). It’s so easy to think, “I know this person. I have their number down,” and stop paying attention. Stop learning and listening and being open to the evolution of the person next to you on your path. As if they’re frozen in time. As if there hasn’t been any growth or change since they said, “I do.”

Yesterday I received an email from a sweetheart of a guy. I asked if I could share his story anonymously, because I get emails like this all the time. He said he’s in love with this woman, but he’s not going to pursue it because his parents got divorced and he just doesn’t want to go down that road. He said he knows he’ll never find anyone as perfectly suited to him, that they have an amazing time together. There’s laughter and love and affection and intellectual compatibility, but he knows how it will end. I asked him how he knew. He said he just knew. That’s just fear, and I so get that it can be paralyzing. We only have the frame of reference we have, and our experiences shape us and inform the way we think about the world, romantic partners, friendships, and “our place in the family of things,” as Mary Oliver says.

Your past does not have to own you and neither does your pain. Your pain is running the show if you let go of someone you adore because you’re too afraid that someday you’ll be throwing a pan at her head the way your dad did at your mom while you watched in the grip of fear and powerlessness and rage. You do not have to live your life as that scared kid and throwing pans is not your only option. (Whatever “throwing pans” may be for you). You are not the same person you were last year, and neither am I, and neither is anyone you’re going to encounter today. We are always in process, everything is process. You respond and you grow, or you react and you suffer. A reaction comes out of your past. It happens when you feel triggered and your heart starts racing, your breath is shallow, and the whole scene, even the air between you and the other person, is charged. We get triggered when a current situation brings up a painful past experience. When someone says something or does something that’s the equivalent of stabbing a searing knife into the most tender place we’ve got. If it isn’t healed, it owns your a$$.

It’s easy to underestimate our capacity to grow and change and embrace new ways of thinking and being, but we are all capable of those feats. We’re built for them, because everything is in a state of flux, it’s the nature of all living things, of life itself. You are not your mother or your father or your wounds. You are not your thoughts, either. “You are the sky, everything else, it’s just the weather,” as Pema Chodron says. If you’re willing to walk right into the center of your fear and have a seat and open your hands and open your eyes and open your heart, you will find that it won’t kill you. It will hurt. It will be wildly uncomfortable and confrontational and if you allow it to, it will open you and soften you so you’re ready to give and receive love. It’s not easy, but it’s a lot easier than watching someone you cherish walk out the door because you did not believe in your own ability to forge a new path for yourself. To use your past experiences to inspire you to move in a different direction.

You are capable of incredible love. It’s the very essence of your energy in my opinion. It’s the real “charge” in all of us. You may have static in the way of fear and abuse and neglect and heartbreak and disappointment and despair and rage and bitterness blocking your channel, but that stuff is your path to freedom if you explore it. You can’t get to the love if you’re not willing to examine the pain. You’ll never outrun the pain and you can’t numb out enough to deny it. Or you can, but that actually will kill you. It will kill your spirit and your yes and your ability to continually uncover your gifts and share them. It may even kill you in a literal sense if you try numbing out to the degree that’s required if you really don’t want to feel the reality that you’re owned by your fear. Move into your fear so that eventually you can wrap your arms around the people you love without entertaining the idea of pans for even an instant.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

The Person You Decide to Be

I’ve had two weddings, but only one marriage. My first wedding was to a man who kept the antique mirror I (painstakingly) had restored when I was nineteen years old, the one that belonged to my grandma whom I adored and lost long before I met him, and who also kept the vintage diamond necklace that belonged to my great-aunt, which I’ll never be able to pass along to my daughter. I call him Mirror Guy. I didn’t love him and I can’t tell you what I was doing with him because it feels like another lifetime and because I was in a fog fueled by outrageously painful migraines, percocet and a stubborn desire to cling to stories that didn’t serve me, to blame my parents and my childhood for my brokenness, and a general sense that I had no clue what I was doing here. I was coming off of some of the darkest times of my life and I was very young and totally lost. I’d been in that damaging victim mentality for too many years, blaming other people for my poor choices and behavior, numbing out, denying, running. I wasn’t an awful person or anything, I’ve always been kind, I was just a bit of a mess.

You know the syndrome, right? I am this way because this happened, and then that happened, and then this other thing happened, so when you leave the room, I think you’re leaving for good and that’s why I’m freaking out. As if that makes sense. This thing that should have happened did not, so I have fear that no one will love me and nothing good will happen, so I’m just going to sleepwalk, okay? Because I don’t know how to do the ‘awake, I’m-going-to-take-responsibility-for-the-way-my-life-unfolds-thing yet, so if you want to marry me, sure. Sounds good.’ Or something like that.

Of course I thought I loved him or I wouldn’t have worn the Cinderella tulle dress and gotten myself to the beach club on time. But you can’t love if you’re sleeping. You can stick your arms out in the darkness and hope you run into something good, but you probably won’t. If you’re in darkness, you’re most likely going to fall in a ditch and break something, like your heart or your ability to keep sleeping. Something will give, that’s for sure. Nor can you see that the person you’re about to marry is incapable of telling the truth in any form about anything or of being honorable or kind, or of loving you in any capacity at all. I should have known because he told me he was separated when we started dating, but actually he wasn’t and it took two years to sort it out. Somehow I became fixated on that and never realized I didn’t love him and it would have been just fine if he’d stayed married to that other woman, thanks very much. I should have known because my therapist at the time asked me what we did together that was fun, or what it was that I liked about being with him and I literally could not think of a single thing. I should have known because too many of the things he said to me did not make sense and often came back to bite him in the arse later. It’s not like there weren’t signs. I begged for signs. Do you realize if you’re asking for signs that’s a sign? I didn’t.

I have to share about the signs because it’s comical. I’m going to the store to try on wedding dresses with my mom weeks before the wedding and she has to wait in the car because I’m throwing up. I’m throwing up. Nauseated at the thought of buying a dress to marry the man who turned out to be Mirror Guy. I can’t get the song, “You Don’t Know Me” out of my head for weeks. The morning of the wedding it is sunny and gorgeous and I think, “At least that’s good,” because we are getting married on a deck overlooking the water in front of 250 people, most of whom I’ve never met. At 4pm the sky turns black. I’m not exaggerating. Black, and then the sky opens and there’s rain like I have never experienced in my life, not before, not since, not anywhere, even in the jungle of Costa Rica. Torrential rain so thick it sounded like someone was an inch over the roof of the minivan with a thousand power-hoses. Giant frogs dropping from the sky would not have surprised me. Oh, did you catch the part about a minivan? My wedding party left in the limo I was supposed to be in because the makeup artist wanted to do me last so my makeup was fresh, but she ran so late they had to take off, so I went to the beach club in a minivan with my parents and my little brother and his best friend.

More signs: Because there was a weather alert with a red stripe across the bottom of every television telling everyone to get home and stay indoors, the traffic on the highway from the hotel to the beach club was nuts. Like a parking lot, people racing out of the city to make it to their homes. This is in New York, mind you, where this kind of weather simply does not happen. So my step-dad drove on the shoulder of the highway for six miles. So pretty much, on my way to getting married to the very wrongest person, hundreds of people gave me the finger. How many signs do you need before you turn the minivan around? That’s like a punchline, isn’t it?

When I got to the beach club my mom and I raced to the bridal room, and my best friend and bridesmaids shoved me into my dress and someone handed me a glass of champagne because I said I thought I might pass out, and of course champagne is the answer when you feel faint and are about to make one of the worst decisions of your life. So I went down the aisle like a wind-up doll, done up like a princess, vacant eyes. Worse than that. Deer-in-the-headlight eyes. As if I hadn’t said yes to all of it. As if it were just happening to me. When the justice of the peace announced we were man and wife, there was a crack of thunder and lightning so loud you can hear it on the wedding video and everyone laughed nervously and I thought,  “Well. You can’t ask for more signs than that.”

I say he didn’t love me and I know I didn’t love him, even though I believed I did and I believed he did in my sleepwalking state. But he didn’t want a wife, he wanted a mother. Someone to make dinner and read his screenplays and rewrite all the dialogue because people don’t speak like that. Who speaks like that?

More signs:

Him: Hey, why don’t you leave your dog at the kennel this weekend, because actually, I don’t like dogs.

Him: I need to go shoot this commercial, so drop everything and come, okay? Even though it’s in Canada and you’d rather stay home since I’ll be shooting all day and sitting around a set isn’t all that fun, and I don’t want you off exploring by yourself because you’re too young to be off on your own like that in a foreign country.

Me: Um. Canada? I think I can get around because I speak English.

More signs: It was never consummated. I’m not saying we hadn’t had sex before the wedding. I’m saying there wasn’t any after, and there wasn’t much before because he preferred porn to an actual human. But I didn’t know that then, so I was busy thinking there must be something wrong with me and feeling rejected all the time. Anyway, I had the thing annulled. I should say, I woke up several weeks after this wedding and had it annulled. And Mirror Guy is actually the perfect name, because that’s what happened. I looked in the mirror and thought, How? How did I land myself in this mess? How did I not stop, at any of those burning red flags and turn myself around?

Maybe it was compounded by the fact that the much older guy I dated had come before Mirror Guy and by this point I was just wrecked, but I got the message. I got it hard and ugly and in the face. There was no one to blame but myself, because my mom didn’t like Mirror Guy and said as much, and my dad and step-dad didn’t think much of him, either. All my fingers pointed back at myself and I thought, I’d really better turn this sh&t around, now, or my life is going to be bleak and dark and very painful. No light. I’d been doing yoga for a couple of years at this point and that’s the light I used to find my way out of a nightmare of my own making, without the mirror or necklace, but you know what? Such a small price to pay. Because in the years after that I started planting the seeds that sprouted into the life I have today. I look at my life now and I’m blown away. Two amazing, healthy, happy kids. A man who is everything I ever could have hoped for and so, so much more. Friends who know how to show up, a few of whom have been there through everything with me. A community of yogis locally and around the globe because the internet is pretty amazing. And all of you.

You get to decide who you’re going to be, you really do. I’m not saying everyone has equal opportunities or that the playing field is level. I’m saying you have the power to decide how you’re going to do your life, and what you decide makes all the difference in the world. You get to decide what to dwell on, what to emphasize, what to cling to. You get to decide whether to forgive other people and forgive yourself and move forward. You get to decide whether the past is going to determine your future, or be something you grow from. You get to decide whether you’re going to blame and moan or get busy working. I hope you decide to be your best self. To own your story. To refuse to let your past dictate your future. To get your hands filthy with your pain so it doesn’t control your life, because there’s no need for that. Your life can be so beautiful. Even with heartache and tragedy, there’s still so much beauty to be found if you open to it. Wishing that for you, if it hasn’t happened already.

Sending a ton of love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

Your Capacity for Change

Endings are hard, especially endings between people. I’ve never had an easy time with them; I must have missed the day when they taught “clean break.” Whether it’s a relationship, a job, or a way of being that needs to come to an end, loss is not easy. Soul-searching is important if you’re thinking about making big changes especially when other people will be affected, but there are certain times it’s just clear that change is coming and needed. A friendship is not what you thought it was, your boss is abusive, your landlord goes through your underwear drawer when you aren’t home — time for a change! Everything living grows, blossoms, peaks, and dies and something else is birthed. Resisting that reality is futile, you may as well head to the ocean and try to hold back the waves. This doesn’t mean all relationships die, it means we must be willing to shift and grow together and also accept that sometimes we’ll grow apart.

Growing up I had a friend I adored, I’ll call her Mary. We met in kindergarten, and were in school together all the way through our junior year of high school, mostly because I would not hear of going to any school where she wouldn’t be. I was at her house so many afternoons and weekends, her mom walked around in her underwear in front of me like I was one of her own. Before the start of third grade, my beloved best friend told me she didn’t want one best friend anymore. Now that we were almost eight she planned on having lots of friends. I went home and got in bed and cried my eyes out for hours. At some point my mom called Mary and asked what had happened and told her I was inconsolable. Mary said I misunderstood, which I wanted to believe but knew was just a thing she was saying to my mom to not be in trouble. I was sick to my stomach the first day of school, but Mary sat next to me and we played at recess, and I went to her house after school like always. It went on that way, but she did start spending time with another girl who wasn’t very nice to me, although we are now in contact and Mary and I aren’t. Life is so funny, and can you believe this stuff starts so early? This one likes me, but this one doesn’t. I love her, but she loves someone else.

When she was in preschool, my daughter announced one night that she didn’t want to go to school when a certain three year old boy was there because he never wanted to play with her. I asked her how she felt when he didn’t want to play and she said it hurt her feelings. I told her I remembered feeling that way when I was little and that grown-ups feel that way sometimes, too. I told her it did hurt, but if he didn’t realize how totally great it was to hang out with her, he was just missing out on all the fun he could be having and that was sad for him. I told her to play with the kids who love to play with her. Problem solved for a three year old, but this sh&t never ends. I have a bursting inbox of emails to prove it.

Depending on your personality, your life experiences and the context, dealing with change and loss can be very challenging. The end of a job you’ve had for years, even if it isn’t inspiring you and hasn’t been for far too long, is still a loss. It’s a loss of your comfort zone, of the familiar. If it’s imposed from the outside, of course it can also involve the loss of security, income, and if you have it wrapped up together with your identity, self-esteem. Even if you quit, if you’re in the driver’s seat, if you’ve decided it’s time to go, it’s still the loss of something old and the beginning of something new. The end of a relationship that isn’t growing anymore is still the loss of what was, what had been. The end of self-destructive patterns that are causing your suffering is still the loss of the familiar coping mechanisms and ways of denying. Now what?

Life is so much about transitions. If everything is in a state of flux, how do you open to the changing reality? Most of what stops us from embracing change is fear. We all want to be able to count on something. This is my house. Out on my lawn is my tree (it’s not your tree). These are my shoes. This is what I do on Mondays. Here’s where I put my mat in my yoga class. This is my partner. I know this person. (Do you know them, or are you assuming you know everything there is to know? Because your partner is changing just like you, growing, opening, thinking about things in different ways, evolving as life brings new situations and events, some wanted, others not.) The only thing you can really count on is that everything is changing all the time and that fighting that truth will cause you to suffer. Open to it all, invite it all in. Let it wash over you. Take action when you need to. Don’t expect to blossom if you’ve planted yourself in soil that has been stripped of all its nutrients, that hasn’t been watered for far too long. Nothing inspiring will grow out of that. Mourn when you need to. Be enraged, lonely or confused. Let your heart break. That way you can also open to all the gifts. All the wonder and joy and surprise and love. All the beauty and growth and expansion of your heart. Accept the endings so you can also embrace the beginnings. Sending you so much love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

Grab Your Inner Tube

onlyinastormSometimes life brings a huge storm our way. We lose someone we cannot imagine living without. We’re fired from a job. Our spouse walks out or has an affair. Our child is in pain. Other times we choose the storm, we walk into it head-on knowing there’s a need to leave the familiar shore and head into unchartered waters.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 2001, I really didn’t know anyone out here. I moved with a guy who also taught yoga and liked cheese a little too much and when it all fell apart I ended up three thousand miles away from home with a few people I called friends, whom I was really just getting to know. And, of course, I had my dog. The ex had a serious road rage problem so for the six months we’d been out here, I’d tried to figure out some kind of reasonable solution. We had one car and would often leave for our own Ashtanga practice at 6am and head together to all the classes we were teaching the rest of the day. If I drove, he screamed at me to go faster, to take a different route, to cut this or that person off. If I took a right instead of a left he went ballistic. He became this insane person in the car, instead of the hilarious and kind-hearted person I knew, and it was jolting, because it would happen right after our yoga practice, or after a peaceful hike, or really, anytime we went anywhere.

When he drove it was generally a 90-miles per hour blur, involving the “traffic fingers” of many other drivers, blaring horns and screeching stops. Neither scenario was appealing or safe, but I truly feared we’d have an accident if I drove while he raged, so he drove and I would hope we’d get wherever we were going without a problem. Of course I spoke with him about it and he always promised to calm down, but never managed to pull it off. Then he was gone and I had no idea where I lived. I had to start from the beginning and remind myself, that way leads to the mountains, and that way to the beach. I went on a dating detox because I was alarmed I’d missed the cheese problem and some other stuff. I’ll explain the cheese thing in another post, lest you think I actually broke up with someone who liked Gouda too much. I say that as a friend of said ex. He still calls me every Thanksgiving because of a funny and crazy holiday we shared that involved his sister, my dog, and a pair of pajamas with bunnies on them. We check in from time to time. Grab a bite when I’m in New York. But when it ended, I just felt bereft and confused, like the rug had been pulled out from under me by my own hand because I’d ignored my intuition. I felt pulled to retreat and regroup, and thus began what we call in yoga my “Dark Night of the Soul”.

It’s a storm you choose because your way of being in the world hasn’t been working out too well. Friendships, relationships and jobs that don’t feel authentic are left behind, but it happens in an emotional hailstorm. When you start to change your inner wiring, the system is going to revolt. The tendencies, patterns and coping mechanisms that have been keeping all that raw emotion at bay are going to rise up. They’re going to beckon. If you have the strength and determination not to repeat a pattern you recognize gets you nowhere, not to numb out or run or deny, you’ll likely find yourself in a state of depression, which is generally confusing when you know you’re moving in a healthy direction. ‘”Shouldn’t I be feeling better?” you’ll think in despair, “I’m doing everything right.”

That’s the storm, and if you want to come back to yourself, that’s where you have to head. In many ways it would have been easier for me to move back to NYC where my family and friends were, or to throw myself into another relationship. Instead I meditated and practiced yoga and taught my classes and hiked with my dog and wept a lot. I felt lonely and allowed myself to open to that. I felt scared and heartbroken and sometimes I wondered why I didn’t just make it easier for myself, but somewhere I knew I needed the pain. I needed to finally lean into it and swim through it so it wouldn’t own me anymore. So I could come back to myself. It is a storm. Sometimes you get pulled under and are thrashed into the rocks and you can’t see the surface, but if you want to really know yourself, you have to embrace everything. You have to accept and integrate all parts of yourself. It’s not easy work, but when the sun emerges and you take a deep breath and know you’re home, the kind of home that’s with you wherever you may go, it’s so worth it.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If You Have a Pulse, You Have a Chance

paulnewmanchanceJust a quick hit of love for you, today. Don’t ever give up on yourself. Not ever. Don’t give up on life, or love, or the possibility that you might forge a peaceful path for yourself. No matter how big a mess of things you might have made, no matter how incomprehensible a loss you’ve endured, no matter how confusing and lonely things may be right now, don’t give up. Life is going to bring everything.

We want the stuff that feels good — the love, the feelings of joy and delight and passion and excitement, and we resist the stuff that hurts; the pain, the confusion, shame, grief, loneliness, rage, guilt and doubt. But it’s all coming at us. Unless you’ve worked on it quite a lot, you’re probably going up and down with external conditions; happy when things are going the way you’d like and depressed, angry or bitter when they’re not. Life is under no obligation to give us what we want, to unfold the way we expect it to, to cooperate with our plan and there’s no power in being a victim of circumstance. You have the tools you need to figure it out. To put it back together again.

Underneath all the fear and resistance is love. You might need some outside help. There are some losses that are so knifing, just getting out of bed is a feat. Just remembering to breathe in and breathe out. I get that. Compassion for yourself is the thing in those instances when your heart and spirit are crushed and you think there’s no way it could ever be okay again. And, listen. Some things will never be okay. Accepting that is the key to moving forward, even if everything in you wants to head back in time to the before of the thing. For awhile, just brushing your teeth and taking a shower is a big deal. Just getting dressed and giving yourself time to feel all your feelings without rushing yourself to feel better.

But short of those losses, which are real and devastating and very difficult to comprehend, much of our suffering is coming from our thoughts. The ability to quiet the mind so you can get in touch with your intuition is so liberating. So you can tap that inner yes of yours. So you can live with your heart wide open and have the courage to say no to the things that don’t feel right. The mind is like a washing machine, spinning around and around, recycling the same thoughts, loud and full of shoulds and can’ts and there’s no way I can do that’s. It will keep spinning and spinning and send you in circles or keep you paralyzed by fear, feeling overwhelmed by all the noise. It’s relentless if you don’t gain some mastery over it.

When do you lose yourself? When do you feel that feeling of being so immersed in something there are no thoughts? For me it’s yoga, but for you it might be something else. Hiking, wind-surfing, cooking, singing or skiing. Whatever it is, make time for it because those are the moments when your intuition rises.

Have you made mistakes? I’d be shocked if you hadn’t. I’ve made plenty, some big. Mistakes are part of the growth process. Some of the biggest growth I’ve experienced has come out of some of the worst choices I’ve made. Sometimes you have to screw it all up so you can put it back together the way that feels right. The way that opens your heart. Did you ever take something apart and realize you can’t put it back together? You have no idea how the parts fit and the directions are lost somewhere very safe you put them so you wouldn’t lose them? And you sit with pieces in your hands and think, how do I do this? How do I put this back together so it works? The answers are inside you. You may need someone to kindly hold up a mirror so you can find them. To reflect back at you your own darkness and your incredible light so you can see yourself. So you can know yourself. So you can find your way. So you can sort through the pieces and let go of the ones that are blocking your ability to give and receive love.

It’s never over in this life until your final exhale. My feeling is, if you can do one thing, even one tiny thing like hold a door open for a stranger, your day was worthwhile because you contributed to a happier, kinder, more thoughtful, caring world. Start there if you need to. But don’t give up.

Sending you love and wishing you peace,

Ally Hamilton

Throw Some Luggage Overboard!

losingsomeofthebaggageOne of my oldest girlfriends, I’ll call her Sue, is incredibly self-aware when it comes to identifying her “stuff” and owning it when she doesn’t show up the way she’d like. She started going to therapy when she was thirteen years old due to her parents’ ugly divorce, and as she got older, for her own relationship issues. She had watched her parents tear each other down directly and indirectly, through her. Her mom said horrendous things about her dad and her father said awful things about her mom. When they each remarried (which they both did, more than once), the bitterness was quadrupled.

Her stepmothers made snide remarks about her mother, her mother couldn’t stand her father’s new wife, either time. Her father thought her first step-dad was not very bright, and her step-mom said he laughed like a woman. I witnessed a lot of this myself, as did all our friends, at sleepovers and afternoons at her mom’s or dad’s house, and once, sadly, during Sue’s sweet sixteen. Her dad got drunk and took the mic to toast Sue, but it somehow deteriorated into a tirade about Sue’s mom. Not so sweet, and Sue ended up in the bathroom, with a bottle of champagne that she downed and then threw up all night. And so it went.

In high school Sue struggled with an eating disorder and I watched her turn herself inside out trying to be perfect, to control the little bit she could. She was smart as a whip, but sometimes she’d play dumb because she thought guys liked that. Her family has a lot of money, and Sue would often buy lunch for a whole group of us. Or more accurately, she’d pay for lunch with her American Express and her dad would pick up the tab because her parents believed throwing money at the situation would somehow make it okay. We went to college together as well, and as we grew up, a pattern emerged for Sue that was no surprise to any of us who’d watched her struggle over the years. She kept picking guys who ended up hurting her. Not the typical stories of ways men and women can misunderstand each other, or not show up all the way, but deep, “I just realized he’s been stealing money from me for months” kind of pain. The relationships were usually high-drama, and there were many times Sue showed up at my house unexpectedly, eyes puffy and red, sobbing in the middle of the night.

Sue started drinking heavily, first a couple of nights a week and then most nights. Eventually she cleaned that up. If you were to talk to Sue, you’d know within minutes you were speaking to an awake, aware person. She’s intelligent and funny and kind. She can tell you exactly why she’s done the things she’s done. She can give you the whole road-map to explain all her choices and all her behavior. But so far, it hasn’t helped her resist the pull of acting out these dramas. Sue wants a happy ending, but she keeps trying to go back and carve one out of her past as if she could rewrite history. As if she could change her parents into people who were mature enough and loving enough to put her first, to love her well.

Time and again, Sue ends up crashing into the brick wall she keeps choosing, even though the crashing part sucks. A few years ago, I really worried for her. She’d hit such a low point I wasn’t sure she was going to be okay. I went back to New York to teach and I saw Sue for the first time in many months. She was gaunt, and her nails were bitten down to the quick. Her eyes were dull and so was her spirit. Through it all, Sue has always been a force. So I was really disturbed to see this lifeless person who looked like Sue sitting before me. She’d just had another painful breakup and I could see this time she was taking it particularly hard. She started to relay all the details of what had happened. What she’d done. What he’d done. What she said, and why she felt the way she did. I listened as I had so many times before and when she was done, I looked at her and said, “Sue, I love you. You’re an incredible person with such a beautiful heart, but you have to put the baggage down now, or it’s going to destroy you. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re as lovable as a person gets. Your parents did the best they could but their best kind of sucked. You have to stop letting this own you.” And Sue started sobbing, right there at the restaurant. People looked over at us and Sue apologized to me for making a scene. I went to her side of the table and hugged her, and told her to go ahead a make a scene. Because sometimes you work your sh&t out on a rainy Tuesday afternoon at a Thai restaurant downtown. Sometimes you’re just sitting there sobbing with chopsticks in your hand deciding it is finally enough.

Carrying your old, painful stories around with you wherever you go is exhausting, back-breaking work. At a certain point, it simply drains the life out of you. Everybody has pain. Everybody. Some people have more than others and some are better equipped to deal with the everything that life brings. The heartache and disappointment. The trauma and abuse. The neglect and loneliness. The confusion and shame. We’ve all experienced at least one of these, some people have seen all of that and so much more. I once met a girl at a workshop I taught, who told me she had to stay angry at her father so he’d pay for what he’d done to her. I asked her how that was making him pay, since she never spoke to him or saw him. I said I was pretty sure she was the one paying. Your past will shape you and inform the way you think about yourself and the world. If that way isn’t loving, you’re going to have to unlearn some stuff, which is, of course, harder than learning it the right way the first time. If you think people suck, for example, you’re going to have to unlearn that. If you think you suck, you’re going to have to unlearn that first. Have some compassion for yourself. Be kind. In some way or another, we’ve all been Sue, collapsed on the bathroom floor, throwing up our pain all night long. If you want to travel back to your past in a productive way, go back there and give yourself a hug. Re-parent yourself if you need to, but put some of the heavy stuff down. It does not have to own you. The destination that really counts is your journey to inner peace. You’re going to have to throw some bags overboard to get there.

Wishing you strength and love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful you can find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

Mirror, Mirror

When I was thirteen I had a ballet teacher who was incredibly hard on me. He’d shame me in class and never offer a kind word, no matter how hard I worked. One day as I stood on my toes and twirled and twirled, he yelled out, “You could walk into any company, Hamilton, and they’d take one look at your body and hire you. But as soon as they saw you dance, they’d fire you!’

I remember the feeling of shame and the heat that rose up and stained my cheeks as I kept twirling and trying. Tears escaping the corners of my eyes, heart crushed. One of my friends twirled by and brushed my arm with her hand, a gesture of sympathy, and I had to work harder not to break down. I danced that day with a fire raging inside me until he finally asked if I was okay. That shocked me, and made me wonder at my rage and his behavior. How could he think I was okay?

Years later, after I’d stopped dancing, I ran into him on Broadway. He called out to me. He seemed much older, but his gait was unmistakable. He asked me how I was, how my little brother was, and where I was dancing. When I told him I’d quit, he was stunned. He said he’d always thought I’d been special, that’s why he was so hard on me. The fact that he was so hard on me was one of the reasons I’d quit, though I decided not to share that with him. He wasn’t teaching anymore, so his brand of tough love wasn’t likely to have a painful impact on any other thirteen year old. I could see he’d meant well, even if his methods were lacking in compassion or understanding at the time.

If you’re a certain kind of person (people-pleasers, take note), and you sense someone doesn’t approve of you, the disapproval is a hook. Once you’re on the line you can dance like a clown, but you’ll never get the affirmation you seek unless you affirm yourself. I’ve had people roll up their mats and leave my yoga class, I’ve had people write nasty posts about this blog. Not everyone is going to like me, or you. The main thing is being able to look yourself in the eye at the end of the day when you’re brushing your teeth in front of the mirror. The only opinion about the kind of person you are that truly has an impact on your well-being is your own opinion.  If you live your life trying to please everyone else, you’re going to be miserable. You’ll be coming from a place of neediness and desperation. There’s no power in that, and you can never make everyone happy.

I’d argue you can never make anyone happy. People are happy or they aren’t, that’s inside work. But if you’re living in alignment with what’s true for you, if you’re honoring your intuition and following the pull of that yes, you really can’t go wrong. That yes is your connection to your purpose and your gifts. Your gifts are yours to share. If you’re coming from that place, you’re coming from love. People who are angry or bitter may not like that or understand it. It’s hard to be coming from a place of pain. Wish them love, but follow your heart, so when you see those “I want you to like me stickers” on your mirror at the end of the day, it’s a no-brainer.

Sending you so much love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, please find my books here and my yoga classes and courses here.

Are You in a Cage?

bytheoceanposterWhen I was 26 years old, I stopped into a pet store one day to buy dog food for a friend’s dog, and I saw this tiny, sickly puppy in the corner of an enormous cage. His brown, pink-rimmed eyes were huge in his tiny head, and he was shaking uncontrollably. And although I’d never seen it in a dog before, he had a runny nose. He was one of the most pitiful creatures I’d ever seen, and of course I fell in love on the spot. On the front of the cage there was a sign. They’d originally been asking $2500 for him, but then he’d been slashed to $2000. Then $1500, $1000. By the time I got there, they were asking $500. They sent him out the door with me for $250. Two days later I had him at the vet, who told me to take him back to the pet store. He had bacterial pneumonia, and the vet didn’t even want him in the office, because it’s highly contagious. I begged him even though he was adamant. Said I’d already fallen in love with my dog, and taking him back to the place that had neglected him wasn’t even an option. I think I even appealed to whatever it was within him that had inspired him to be a vet in the first place. I know I cried. He put my dog on intravenous antibiotics in the basement, in a cage between cardboard boxes full of puppy pads, and dog food, and Frontline. There was a leaky pipe nearby, and it was pretty dark down there. I know because I visited my dog every day for hours, for the 10 days he was there. The vet told me not to get my hopes up because he was almost definitely a lost cause, but I brought my dog home on the tenth day, and he was my best friend for the next ten years, until he died suddenly one morning, two weeks before I had my son.

Pretty frequently I get emails from people who are in the corner of a huge cage, shaking with a runny nose. Not literally, of course, because that would be weird. But metaphorically. Sometimes the cage is a relationship, or a job, or a way of thinking about themselves or the world. Whatever it is, they’re in there, shaking, as their light dims. Their belief in themselves dwindling like the price on the front of my dog’s cage. Sometimes the person says nothing is really wrong. The job is not bad. The partner is loving and kind. The way of thinking is what they were taught, and how they’ve always been. They think they must be crazy. But. There’s something inside them that’s saying no. No, life should not feel like a cage.

All kinds of things keep people shaking uncontrollably as their light dims. Fear. Guilt. Shame. Sometimes it feels like people are asking permission. Is it okay for me to go to the basement with the leaky pipe (because healing is lonely, dark, painful work) and heal what needs to be healed so I can get out of this cage and live a life where I get to breathe, and it doesn’t feel like there’s this huge weight on my chest, smothering my heart? And I mean, of course it is. If you don’t leave the cage, you die. Maybe not literally, but your spark dies, and you may as well be dead at that point. But, other people will be hurt. Yes, that sucks. That’s brutal, and it would be a beautiful thing if we could all live our truths and never cause anyone else pain. Except, I’ll tell you, I’ve learned and grown the most from the painful times in my life. We can never ever know what another person’s journey is supposed to look like. We can only manage our own, kindly, honestly, and with compassion. And if you don’t follow the road marked My Truth, your heart breaks and you lose the will to do much of anything.

No one will ever thank you for your pity. No one deserves to be loved half-way, or even most of the way. Including you. The road marked My Truth is hardly ever well-paved and well-lit. You have to cut through the brush with no map, and the only thing you can really carry with you is belief in yourself. You won’t be stuck in the basement forever. But you do have to get out of the cage. Sending you love and a huge hug, Ally

Go Straight at It!

I-believe-half-of-theFear is the steely cold vise grip around the mind that bellows, or sometimes whispers the words “can’t” and “shouldn’t.” Fear will stop you in your tracks if you let it, and fill you with doubt, insecurity and shame, and all the reasons why not, until you literally cannot move. Nothing will crush your soul and dim your light like being in the grip of fear.

If you want to feel fulfilled, if you want to find your purpose here, you’re going to have to feel your fear and move forward, anyway. You’re never going to be able to shine as brightly as you could if you allow yourself to stay stuck in an environment that’s crushing you. If you’re trying to make a shift, it’s almost guaranteed fear will show up to play. Because even when we’re moving in a positive direction, if that’s an unfamiliar course of action the system is going to feel stressed. You’re trying to re-format your hard drive, and there’s going to be resistance. Coping mechanisms are habits, or ways of being we develop to face the challenging aspects of life, or ourselves (or frequently a combination of both). If you want to follow your heart, and I hope you do, you’re going to need to ditch those crutches so you can run straight at the thing, you know? Because the idea is to be living every day you’re alive, but so many people end up numbing out and sleepwalking instead because the fear overpowers them. Convinces them they’re not enough. You are more than enough and you have an incredible amount of light within you. You are not here to dim it or repress it or sacrifice it for any reason. You know this intuitively, because it’s the truth.

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations we could never have planned for, that feel so complicated. This can happen in the personal or professional realm. And the mind starts working over-time, trying to problem solve, or manipulate the situation, or control its outcome. You already have the answers in your heart, even if fear is making it hard for you to hear them. The voice of your intuition is quiet but always truthful. The mind screams back with all of its ideas and judgments, worries and obsessions. Get quiet and accept what’s true for you, and then go straight at the thing and don’t let anything stop you. Certainly not fear. It’s just a feeling, after all, it’s not going to do you in!! Sending you love and strength, Ally Hamilton

Worrying

Worry-does-not-emptyThis is the thing about the mind: If you don’t get a hold of it, it will head into the past or into the future, and pull you right out of the present moment. Worrying is nothing more than creating a state of anxiety about an event that may or may not come to pass. Worrying will not magically add money to your bank account, or have any effect whatsoever on any situation in your life, except that it will make you sick. Sick with tension. Being tense doesn’t help anything, either. It just makes it hard to eat or sleep. Sleep deprivation will also wear you down and make your thinking muddy. So why do we do it?

When we worry, it’s an attempt to control or predict a future outcome, or it’s an attempt to manage another person’s path. We run every awful scenario through our heads and rehearse our possible reactions. And in so doing, we both over-estimate and under-estimate our power. Of course if you love someone and they are in trouble, worrying about their well-being is natural, but it’s not going to help them. Using your energy to be a source of strength is a lot more helpful. Extending an ear, a shoulder, a hug, tangible support if you’re in a position, are all much more useful than your worry. And sometimes we can love people who are on a path to hurt themselves, and at a certain point, if they’re determined enough, there’s not much we can do but be there. We can’t save other people.
There are times we get ourselves completely worked up over a non-event, a non-issue. Obsession has a very similar set of side effects as worry. When we boil ourselves over a past event or a predicted outcome, although the event isn’t taking place in the present, it might as well be. Because when we fixate on something like a conversation that didn’t go the way we wanted it to, or one we’re anxious about having, we create a set of circumstances in the body that are not much different than they would be if this feared or unfortunate thing was happening right now. Or than they were when the past event happened. Your blood pressure doesn’t differentiate between an actual event or an imagined one if you get yourself worked up enough. Next time you’re “boiling yourself”, notice your shallow breath, your tensed shoulders, your clenched jaw, your furrowed brow. Your body is in a state of stress, and your mind has created it.

Sometimes logic helps. If you catch yourself spiraling, see if you can pull yourself out of it with a few questions: Is the way I’m thinking going to help in any way? Is it a productive way for me to think? Is it going to help me grow and open and learn something about myself? Am I in a state of resentment and blame? Is this a good use of my time and energy? If you come to the conclusion that no good will come from your train of thought, then you have to break out of the groove of it. Something physical usually helps a lot. For me it’s yoga, the movement and the breath, the awareness of sensation, the quieting of my mind, and the opening of my heart. But for some people it’s running, or wind-surfing, or gardening, or hiking. I do think moving your body and breathing deeply are key. If you can’t move your body because you’re stuck at work, then breathe deeply and consciously. If you can get out in nature, or even walk around the block, that is almost always soothing to the soul. Sometimes a dance party to the right song in your living room, or behind the wheel of your car is enough to shake the obsession off. But try to stop the tape and come back to now.

If you’re worrying or obsessing, put your hand over your heart so you can feel it beating, sit up as tall as you can, and take a really full inhale. Hold it in, and then let it all out. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Because you are so beautiful, and you have so much love within you, and that is available to you right now, in this moment. If you’re struggling to keep a roof over your head and food in your refrigerator, I fully get that asking you not to worry is not only unrealistic, it lacks compassion. And if you’re in that place, my heart really goes out to you. But short of that, I just thought I’d invite you back to now. Because we could hang out here together, recognizing that life brings all kinds of ups and downs, all kinds of joy and pain, all kinds of darkness and light, and worrying about any of it won’t change a thing. But being present for the ride is exhilarating. Wishing you a gorgeous day, everything that you need, and the knowledge that you are not alone. Sending love, as always, Ally Hamilton

Falling

Sometimes-when-thingsWhen you’re in the midst of things that are falling apart, whether they be jobs or relationships or a way of being, this is a tough concept to embrace, but things fall apart so they can fall together in a different way. That doesn’t mean “everything is happening for a reason”, it just means that this is the nature of all living things–people, emotions, situations, and the leaves on the trees around us. Everything is always in flux. If a relationship ends and your heart is broken, of course you’re going to grieve and examine what happened, and depending upon circumstances, you may have a lot of healing to do. Those times when I’ve felt desperate, or paralyzed by fear, or heartbroken because I couldn’t see a path in front of me and realized I’d have to cut through the brush and create one, have also been the times when I’ve learned the most about myself and have grown in ways I never would have otherwise. That doesn’t mean you have to put everything in a box marked “thank you”, it just means we always have the choice to create beauty out of our pain.

Sometimes the thing that’s “falling apart” is you. In yoga philosophy and practice, you might come upon the concept of “The Dark Night of the Soul”, which is not a yogic concept, but rather a poem (and later a treatise about the poem) written by the Roman Catholic mystic Saint John of the Cross. In the poem, he narrates the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God. In the yogic context, we have something called “isvara pranidhana”, which has a few different translations: devotion to the divine, devotion to the Ultimate Reality, devotion to your True Self.

It’s basically that time that comes when the old way of being in the world isn’t working anymore, and the new way of being isn’t clear yet. The old way may include relationships, jobs, coping mechanisms, the way you see yourself…anything that feels inauthentic, that just doesn’t “fit right” anymore, that will now have to go. It’s an extremely uncomfortable, lonely, painful, and scary process…and it takes a lot longer than a night. For me I’d say it took about five years. Any spiritual path (and there are many), will hopefully lead you to your own truth, your own peace, your realization of the incredible and limitless well of love within you. But in order to get there, you’re probably going to have to sail away from the shores you know, and head out to sea for awhile, waiting for your internal compass to kick in.Knowingly plunging yourself into darkness doesn’t usually sound appealing to people unless they’ve tried everything else first.

I’d feel comfortable saying that if the path you’re on isn’t making you a more compassionate person, it’s probably not the right path. Because ultimately, we are all so much the same. All grappling with life’s big questions: What’s the meaning of it all? What am I doing here? What happens when I die? We all breathe the same air, all live off (and on) the same planet, all love our children, all have fears and doubts and hopes and dreams and places within ourselves that need healing. So whatever you believe, I hope it opens you so that when you meet people, you really see them. And so that you realize that although they may be smiling at you, last night they could have cried into their pillow until they finally fell asleep. Because maybe everything is falling apart for them right now. It’s not easy, this business of being human. Things do fall apart. We will never know for sure if our answers to those big questions are right. And one day we will die. For me personally, I feel I’ve grappled with those questions and come up with answers that feel right to me. But you may answer those same questions with completely different answers, and you know, you may be right. We’re all just doing our best here.The only thing I’ve come up with that I believe in my heart is universal, is that we are made of energy, and that energy is love. Anything else is taught and learned. When things fall apart, whether it’s your way of being that isn’t working anymore, or it’s a relationship or a job, and you just can’t envision how things will possibly work out, see if you can open your hands and your heart and your mind instead of clenching your fists. We cannot control circumstances. We cannot control what other people will think, or do, or say. We cannot manage anyone else’s journey. But we can manage our own path, and we can keep heading toward healing and love.

What I want most in this world is for my children to be happy. I want them to live in a peaceful world. I want you and your children to be happy. I truly believe we are all family. Your children are related to my children, even if you live on the other side of the world. The only way I know to a peaceful world, is one person at a time. One person at a time taking the journey inward and doing the work to heal. One person at a time being willing to let things fall apart if they need to so that something strong and beautiful can emerge. If your house is peaceful, if you model loving behavior for your children, if you teach them what it means to be compassionate by being compassionate, they will do as you do. And if you don’t, they will also do as you do. That’s how we change the world, I’m pretty sure of that. I believe almost everyone is capable of healing. I realize our culture encourages sleepwalking but I don’t underestimate the power of a growing number of people who are awake. Engaged. On fire. When things fall apart, the desire to go to sleep, to numb out is understandable. But I’d rather be awake and in pain than asleep. And I’d rather be awake for all the incredible joy, too. Aware of all the gifts. Open to all the love. I’d rather accept that everything is always changing, and that one day I’m going to die. I hope it’s a long long time from now. But however long I’ve got, I want to use every minute to spread love. I won’t succeed. I’m a human being. I’ll get angry, or discouraged or tired or cranky or depressed sometimes. But I’ll do my best. And I know you will, too. And I hope we all live long enough to see the impact of a bunch of loving people doing their best and coming together. Wouldn’t that be freaking awesome? Sending you so much love, and a very big hug if things are falling apart for you right now, Ally Hamilton

What Are You Doing?

The-difference-betweenThere’s no doubt that a train of thought will affect the way you feel. If you’re in a negative frame of mind, that’s going to create a set of circumstances within you. Some thoughts will affect your physical body–the way you’re holding yourself, the way you’re breathing, the degree to which your muscles are “holding on”, your jaw is clenching, or your brows are furrowing. Some thoughts will affect your ability to sleep or eat well, and some will have an effect on your emotional body, and lead to feelings of listlessness and hopelessness. But nothing is going to have a greater effect upon you than your own actions. At the end of the day, you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror while you’re brushing your teeth. You have to be able to live with yourself. And that’s not going to be easy if you’re acting in ways that are hurtful to you, or to other people.

Having said that, we are all going to hurt other people at some time or another. Sometimes two people grow in different directions, and there’s just no stopping the reality that someone is going to be crushed. Sometimes we’re young and we don’t know what we’re doing. Sometimes we’re selfish and immature, and don’t understand the ramifications of what we’re doing. I’m not talking about that, though. I’m talking about those actions we take even when we realize somewhere deep and real, we shouldn’t. Feelings can be powerful, but they’re just feelings. They come and go, like everything else. You don’t have to act on every feeling that comes over you. Sometimes pain is just brutal, relentless, exhausting, and it’s natural to want a break from it, an escape. But if you’re in pain, the pain is there to teach you something. I know that isn’t a pleasant reality, but it’s the truth. Again, I’m talking about the kind of pain we create for ourselves, not the kind life brings (although frequently we create pain for ourselves because we haven’t healed a wound from the kind of pain that life can bring). Avoiding it or trying to escape it will not make it go away. You can try drugs, or alcohol, or sex, or shopping, or eating or not eating. All you’re doing is prolonging the inevitable. There’s no permanent escape that’s appealing, there’s no lifelong distraction that is going to bring you peace. At a certain point you’re going to have to walk right into the center of your pain and sit your a$$ down. Your pain is your path to freedom. Avoiding it is a jail sentence you’re imposing upon yourself, with the key in your pocket and your mind full of can’t.

I don’t say this without compassion, because I certainly avoided dealing with my own stuff for many years, but it’s really self-indulgent to desist from dealing with your issues. It’s an act of ingratitude. We don’t think of it that way when we’re in the grip of fear, thinking our pain will destroy us; we think of it as survival. But that’s flawed thinking. That’s your real, actual work here–healing yourself, filling yourself with love and compassion and kindness and inspiration, so you can spread those things freely. I realize fear is a big factor. People often feel overwhelmed and defeated by their past, their past behavior, and the idea that they might be able to do anything about it. Not doing anything about it is the thing to fear. A lifetime of emptiness and loneliness and quiet desperation, or not so quiet rage is the thing to fear. A life where you want to numb yourself or distract yourself constantly is something to fear for sure. A life where no one can get close to you because then the real work has to start and you’ve chosen to bow out of that, is something that ought to make you feel a little sick to your stomach. When you refuse to plunge in, your soul gets sick. Soulsickness. Like seasickness, but it’s your heart that’s getting thrown against the rocks.

Your pain won’t defeat you. Not dealing with it will, though. The ability to sit with your feelings without reacting to them is a tool you need to develop if you want to know yourself. If you want to be close to other people. I’m talking about real intimacy, total nakedness with someone else. Trust. The ability to have an uncomfortable, deeply painful conversation with someone about how you feel before you act on your feelings, even if the conversation terrifies you.

“Developing the witness” is something we talk about in yoga and meditation. The idea that you can have your feelings without identifying with them so much. Finding the strength to pause and consider and explore a set of actions before you do anything. That’s freedom. That’s also where character develops and strengthens. In order to change your behavior, sometimes you need to change your thinking. Creating space between yourself and your thoughts, recognizing that you are not your thoughts, is step one.

It’s going to be very hard to love yourself if you aren’t living up to your potential. Because somewhere inside, you’ll know you’re not. You’ll know you’re sleepwalking. And treating yourself and other people carelessly. And you’ll also realize time is passing. You could be shining, that’s the essential thing. You could be so full of love and consciousness and kindness and yes, that it would spill out all over the place wherever you went. Please don’t deny yourself that kind of shining. You could love your life if you don’t, already. You could love yourself and everyone you encounter. You could say, “Okay, Life, let’s dance”. I really hope you do. Sending you love, as always. Ally Hamilton

Please Do Not Feed the Fears!

Please-Do-Not-Feed-theUnless we’re talking about the good kind of fear that stops you from being reckless with yourself, or makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up because you’re in danger, fear is nothing more than a bully. I’m talking about the kind of fear that stops you from doing what you know in your heart you must. The kind of fear that tells you you’re not good enough, you don’t have what it takes, you can’t do it. That kind of fear can kiss my a$$, and it should kiss yours, too.

Fear puts the mind and the heart in a grip. It shuts down our vision so we can only see what isn’t going well, what could go wrong, all the reasons why we are stuck. Fear travels with doubt and resentment and envy, with a healthy side of criticism. Fear is not kind, and neither are people living in fear, because fear puts you on the defensive. Sometimes when we don’t get what we hope for, we become afraid. “I had a vision of how this thing was supposed to go, how I wanted it to go, and now what do I do?” And the mind starts racing with how awful everything is, how nothing is going right, how things are easier for other people (because fear feeds that comparing and contrasting mind). If you want to shut yourself down and close yourself up and do life in such a way that you’re always wearing blinders and feeding yourself can’t, then fear is the way to go. But, seriously, who wants to live like that? Shut down and numbed out and hopeless and frustrated? Alone and angry and confused, waiting for that magical time when “things will get better”?

Things are not going to get better unless you open to love. And you cannot do that if you are wrapped in a tight little ball with your fists clenched and your eyes scrunched up, and your head full of shouldn’t. Or stories about why you can’t. Why you’re incapable of change. Or so numb you really can’t feel anything. So addicted to distraction the weeks fly by, then the months, then the years, and oh crap, now it’s too late. Anyone who is not suffering from afflictions beyond their control can heal. I’m going to say that again. Everyone. Can. Heal. Love requires courage, participation, and ownership of your own experience.

Love is not for those who won’t be vulnerable, because when you open your heart, there is always the possibility you’re going to get hurt. But you know what? I’d rather have my heart broken fully, deeply, right through the center then live my life asleep and curled up in a ball in a corner wondering what, exactly, I’m doing here. I’d rather be awake with my heart open wide and my head full of Yes, than numbing myself out to avoid my pain. The pain is the path to healing. The pain is where you head. You walk straight into the center of it, and you do not come out until you have faced that sh&t down. Or it owns you. Those are your choices, there is no third, “Can it be a little easier because I don’t want to work that hard?” option.

I refuse to allow any person or any circumstance to rob me of my purpose here, and I hope you do, too. Because anything else is a pure waste of your time, and you aren’t given enough to waste. This is your beautiful, complicated, confusing, joyous, sometimes deeply lonely, other times amazingly incredible life, where sometimes you have your heart broken, and sometimes you feel it expand so much you think, it’s going to come right out of your chest. “This love is so much, so full, so deep it’s going to carry me up above the trees, and over the ocean, and oh, wait, it IS the ocean.” Why, why, why would you deny yourself love like that? Because of some fear? Totally not acceptable. I hope you got a taste of the love I’m sending your way. It has a side of a$$-kick, I know. But sometimes that’s the kind of love we need. If you just need a hug right now, I’m down for that, too.

Ally Hamilton

The Picture in Your Head

What-screws-us-up-theDo you know people who get married because they’re thirty and the clock is ticking, and that’s where they thought they’d be by thirty, and so this guy or girl will have to be the one? Or talk to people with rigid ideas about things, like, if they’re dating someone for a year and there’s no ring, it’s over? How about people who go to medical school because that’s what their dad did and their grandfather, too, and that’s just what people in their family do? When you have a picture in your head about how something should look or feel, you are rejecting things (or people) as they are. Sometimes the person you reject is you, your authentic self.

Life rarely looks like the picture we have in our heads. Sometimes it’s so much more incredible than what we had imagined, and other times it’s way more painful than we had hoped. But there are always opportunities to grow and to open, to dig more deeply and see more clearly. I don’t know why things unfold the way they do. I have theories and ideas like we all do, but who knows if they’re right? Some things are so incomprehensibly painful you just have to let your heart be broken open.

Whatever your feelings, the ability to be with things as they are makes the journey so much easier. To look at your life as it is, with curiosity and compassion for yourself and everyone you encounter, because it’s not an easy thing, this business of being human. To be awake and aware and engaged with what is, not with a daydream or a fantasy or a memory or a picture in your head. I’m not saying thoughts aren’t powerful. The chair you’re sitting on started as a thought in someone’s head. I’m just saying, don’t think your way into a box, where nothing but the picture you’ve imagined will do. Because it might not go like that.

I had a beautiful birth plan with my first, for example. Low lights, no drugs, just a few people to support me. I ended up with a respiratory team in the room, monitors blaring, fear like I’ve never known before or since, panic everywhere. But you know what? I have the most amazing son. Like, insanely amazing. Kind and sweet and smart and funny with a smile that could light up any room. He has incredible enthusiasm for life, hunger for information, a contagious laugh. There’s more love than my heart can hold. So much laughter, so many hugs, such an adventure. And we are both okay. And there has been more joy than I ever pictured or imagined or planned for. Open to what is. Be with it. Explore it. Maybe you’ll be surprised, amazed, heartbroken, head over heels in love. I don’t know. But I do know that whatever you take in as it is, is real, is full of truth, and its own particular beauty, even if it’s the truth and beauty of having your heart broken. This is the ride, this is the best mode of transportation I know. The rest of it is numbed out illusion, a dream, a sleepwalk, an attempt to control something that is really no different than if you woke up today and decided you were going to try to manipulate the tides of the ocean. Just get in and swim. So much love to you, Ally Hamilton

Expose Yourself (not like THAT)

The-strongest-love-isSometimes stealthy fear sneaks in using any and all of it’s cohorts–anger, bitterness, doubt, envy, blame, despair, loneliness, shame, or guilt, and puts the mind in a vise grip. Thoughts carry energy, and if you’re in the grip of any of these states, you’ll notice a tangible bunch of sensations in your body, as well. The breath shortens, the shoulders tighten, the brow furrows, and the heart actually hurts. It’s perfectly natural that you would feel alone in these moments, because you are now “outside the flow”, you’ve been tricked away from your natural state of love.

If at all possible, the heart is the place to go. All you can ever do is your best, and sometimes the terrain is rough and rocky, and the way is uncertain. Being human means being vulnerable. The more you embrace your vulnerability, the degree to which you’re able to be with these painful and uncomfortable feelings, is the same degree to which you’ll experience the flip side of all these emotions. When you feel overtaken by a painful feeling, you can also rejoice a little, because you are here, you are alive, you are aware of your feelings and engaged with them.

When we try to avoid the feelings that make our hearts ache, we also close ourselves off to the feelings that make our hearts sing. The pain is there to reveal something, to teach us something, to help us along our way, to give us something essential. And if you can be with that, if you can open to that, you will equally open to the flip side of fear: love, and all it’s cohorts~ trust, forgiveness, joy, connection, worthiness, ownership of your feelings and and knowledge about yourself. Circumstances are constantly changing, giving us an opportunity to keep growing, to keep learning, to keep opening and deepening. Love is always there, always waiting, always ready to spread some light, even in the darkest of times. So even when the ground is slipping out from underneath you, see if you can tap into that love. Let it deepen your breath, calm your mind, and open your heart once again. Then the way will become clear, the strength will be there for you, and a tiny little voice inside will say, “Yes, you can do it”, even if the path is dark and uncertain. Love always lights the way. Sending you some right now, Ally Hamilton