Breathe by Anna Nalick
“2 AM and she calls me ’cause I’m still awake,
“Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?,
I don’t love him. Winter just wasn’t my season”
Yeah we walk through the doors, so accusing their eyes
Like they have any right at all to criticize,
Hypocrites. You’re all here for the very same reason.”
After a major transition in my life, and I’ve noticed in my mid-forties there are a few of these transitions in life, I decided, on a whim, to get on a plane and go to Australia. Because it was an impulse decision, none of my friends were available to go with me so I just decided to go by myself. It was a journey half way around the world from my native California. I’ve always been compelled, much like what Eleanor Roosevelt once said to “do the thing that scares you.” Further, if I am having a challenging time I always like to do something that will offer me a new perspective.
After landing in Sydney and enjoying the goings on there in the capitol city of New South Wales, I got on another plane and headed for Cairns, Queensland in the far north of Australia, nearly 2000 miles away. Fortuitously for me, the pilots invited me to sit with them in the cockpit (pre-9/11 of course) as they regaled me with lore from the Queensland jungle.
Quickly following my disembarking I decided to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef. I had never scuba dived before, but it seemed like the thing to do. The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest reef system and is composed over 2,900 reefs (wiki). Of course it is also famous for being one of the seven natural wonders of the world. I settle into my hostel, found a resort’s course that would allow me to dive after a 30 minute or so tutorial right on the boat and my new roomie, who was visting from Brisbane in the south, generously made me a Vegemite sandwich to take with me. She drove me to the dock and soon the instructor gave me the moniker “Little California” because the crew had a hard time locating a wet suit small enough to fit me.
At the end of the 30 minute overview, nearly all of my fellow newbies, about 15 people, decided not to scuba the reef. As it turned out, when it came down to it, they were afraid of breathing with the respirator. The Canadian girl to the left of me had a panic attack as she tried the respirator and the Irishman to the right of me sucked so hard on his respirator he nearly hyperventilated.
I too, seeing my mates go down like a house of cards, felt scared. However, I didn’t want do go back home not having had this experience. In a decidedly compulsive fashion I kept telling myself, “Just breathe. Just breathe. Just breathe.”
The remaining group partnered up and because I did not have a partner, naturally, my partner was the instructor. We held hands and swam around like the characters from the Blue Lagoon movie. We gave each other lots of enthusiastic “thumbs up” and happy exaggerated gestures. Even when we swam through a group of little sharks, I felt at peace and trusting of the experience. I knew as long as I kept gently and rhythmically breathing, I’d be okay.
Many times during my life I have remembered this sweet experience. Once I decided to breathe easily and calmly, much of the rest fell into place. A great deal of possible worries transformed into effortless flow. As in the first chapter of my Alma Answers e-course and in almost all spiritual traditions and cultural narratives, we begin with the breath.
(c) 2012 Jeanine Marie Austin, Ph.D., C.Ht.
Doctor of Life Coaching, Certified Hypnotherapist
Simply Divine Solutions
Life Coaching and Hypnosis Worldwide
It was about 15 years ago that I was first introduced to the Hindu deity Ganesh. As it turned out, my across the street neighbor in New Jersey came over to apologize for her son who had dented my garage door with a baseball. Although I had lived there for several years, we had never spoken to each other. Within five minutes of speaking, however, we found out that we were both born on the same month on the same date and even in the same year (albeit she in Bangalore, India and myself in Opelika, Alabama). This bit of coincidental information began a wonderful friendship.
Lucky for me, I became the frequent beneficiary of Amita’s mouth watering Indian dishes. I was amazed at her garage full of imported aromatic spices, quite a departure from warming up frozen meals in the microwave! Amita and I would be playful and laugh about the intersection of our two cultures. When she told me that her husband was from the highest caste in Indian and her caste was one below, I reminded her that she could date and marry anyone she wanted because she was hot stuff.
I had always been interested in Hinduism, which is Amita’s religion, but I often felt confused by the many nuances, social structures and references that comprised this ancient religion. I was very blessed to have Amita to ask questions of and who was in appreciation of my interest. One day I noticed a statue of an elephant in Amita’s front garden. I had seen this representation before, but was unfamiliar with its meaning.
The elephant deity Ganesh is the great remover of obstacles. When we are feeling trapped by our circumstances, we might choose to call on Ganesh as a symbol of inspiration. Ganesh is often portrayed as dancing or enjoying day to day life activities. Ganesh reminds us that we won’t be able to move beyond our circumstances if we are weighed down by the heaviness of our day to day burdens. Ganesh’s playful appearance reminds us that if we would like to remove obstacles in our life we must step into an expanded and hopeful consciousness to absorb and move beyond our life challenges.
A Course in Miracles (ACIM) reminds us that miracles can change physical laws. Miracles, according to ACIM, are shifts in perceptions. Perhaps a representation of Ganesh in our life can help us to remember that shifts in awareness are always possible and available to us. My friend Lauren has a statue of Ganesh is her kitchen behind the sink. Ganesh is always there for her to offer encouragement.
ACIM also offers, “There is no order of difficulty in miracles.” While this idea may be challenging for us to get our minds around, I find it to be very empowering. The idea is that If you can shift your mind about anything, for example, forgiving someone who has been unkind to you, it is just as possible (no more difficult) to heal illness, to eradicate poverty, to stop hatred, racism or war. Some people may feel this to be a naïve perspective, however, many will give testament to the validity of this law.
Next time find we are feeling trapped by life, perhaps collectively we can look to Ganesh to remind us of our Divine truth.
(c) 2011 Jeanine Marie Austin, Ph.D., C.Ht.
Doctor of Life Coaching, Certified Hypnotherapist
Simply Divine Solutions
Life Coaching and Hypnosis Worldwide
Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle Philo of Alexandria
When I was in my early 20s, a bright eyed and eager social worker just out of college, I took a job in a skilled nursing facility. The nursing facility took patients from its nearby mother hospital who had long term care needs. The job was previously held by two mastered leveled social workers but had been narrowed to one when they couldn’t get along with each other. Unbeknownst to me, the facility was in economic straits, they saw energetic, bubbly me coming from a mile away.
This was not my first social work job, I had worked in a community child abuse center and had done other volunteer work. However, this was my first job dealing intensely with death and dying and its consequent suffering to date. Clearly, many patients were there to die. We served every walk of life including prostitutes, the chronically drug addicted (mostly long time heroin users) and the homeless. Although completely mired down in psychosocial assessments, I made it a point to do rounds everyday.
Many days I would get calls from patients who were dying and the most I could do was literally run upstairs, dressed in a white medical coat and be with them as they died. One woman I remembered so well struggled for months before she died with unrelenting bitterness and a deep desire to forgive. We talked and talked about the power of forgiveness. Although I was young and green, the gravity of the healing process was not lost on me.
Because the facility was near gang territory, it wasn’t unusual for us to hear gun shots being fired. One day we admitted a young man, about my age, to the facility. He was a John Doe who had been dropped off at the entrance of the mother hospital two weeks previously by his fellow gang members. He had been beaten in the head with a baseball bat. Hauntingly, even two weeks after the attack, no one came to claim him. Somehow, it became my job to see if I could find out who he belonged to and where he was from. He wore nothing but a diaper as I checked his body for tell tale tattoos which might give more information. I knew that a young man my age would be mortified to have a young woman see him in a diaper. I sat in his hospital room staring blankly at him for hours wondering how someone could be discarded without anyone to mourn him. We never did find out who he was. He died after his second day with us.
As I contemplate this young man and so many others who I’ve worked with over 25 years, the developmentally challenged, the abused, the elderly, the chronically drug addicted, the incarcerated, decades later, I wonder about alleviating suffering, both existential and “naked” (chronic or abiding).
As a teenager, I started off working in classrooms and later parlayed my experience with children into child abuse focused social work because I wanted to work with problems of suffering in what seemed to be a more direct way. I later pursued life coaching because social work seemed to take place only as an adjunct to the big institutions (the church, the school system, the welfare system, etc..). It seemed to me those institutions with their red tape, mind numbing bureaucracy and lack of belief in the value of the individual seemed to cause as much, and at times, more problems than were there in the first place. Presently, it seems life coaching gives me an opportunity to help clients utilize all of their natural strengths, use tried and true tools or philosophies such as positive psychology, personality measures and hypnosis and even the clients own spiritual perspectives to ameliorate existential suffering.
However, as someone who wrote her dissertation on suffering, I am often haunted by whether or not I am doing enough to ameliorate it. Certainly, life coaching is not associated with deep suffering. That is psychotherapy’s domain. However, I once read a story whose origins I don’t remember, about a therapist who traveled to a war ravaged country. She felt inadequate to deal with such depth of suffering. To her surprise, a majority of her client’s angst had to do with the same things she dealt with her clientele back at home: romantic challenges, self loathing and feelings of alienation.
After contemplating over two decades in people helping professions, I have come to somewhat of a conclusion. We can all strive to help that person in front of us, whomever that might be. It is obvious that some people are suffering and we can and should do what we can. But it was Henry David Thoreau who acknowledged that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Certainly, it is important to help all who suffer and surely that is most of us. Mother Teresa offered “We cannot do great things on this earth, only small things with great love.”
Some people ask me why I would sponsor children from other countries (presently I sponsor children from India and Ecuador) when there are children that are impoverished in the United States. My response is that to me it doesn’t matter where kids are from, they just happen to assign me those children. I try to serve who shows up including those who I become aware of in seemingly random ways.
I am so moved by Father Gregory Boyle who started Homeboy Industries. He didn’t speak Spanish when he started working with gang members from Boyle Heights, California, but he showed up for them. Initially, when he was assigned to that parish, he felt hugely inadequate but he has brought untold healing to that community. Just like Father Gregory, right here, right now, may be the place you can do the most good in alleviating suffering.
(c) 2011 Jeanine Marie Austin, Ph.D., C.Ht.
Doctor of Life Coaching, Certified Hypnotherapist
Simply Divine Solutions
Life Coaching and Hypnosis Worldwide
