I’ve been on Substack too !!

Transfigured

The Ending is Sweet

Friends, if we are a small human with no concept of history and battles, no concept of kairos time, we will find ourselves powerless living in our heads — where the past and future are stored, conveniently. In this headspace, we are not required to come down off our cross, off our high horse and serve the real world. No, we are too busy– busy judging and worrying, busy planning and ruminating. We have no energy to serve our souls or those we encounter. We are exhausted.

Sound familiar ?

It’s in our incarnation that we embody the spirit. In this teeny tiny body that is finite we uncover our capacity to carry the infinite. This is not something our brain can hold and so we must feel it with our hearts. We must draw close to God and one another and feel each other for our humanity depends on this sensing function.

When we do draw close- what do we see with our one eye open and one eye closed? We might see fear, or grief. We might also see ‘sin’. It is only with our growing awareness that our surrender to God’s vision for humanity might save us from ourselves.

And so this sweet and happy ending comes to mind. This long- awaited homecoming into the arms of Creator. Let’s not wait until after we’ve left these teeny, tiny messy bodies, ok? Let’s allow the kingdom of heaven to impact us in the world. That will require vulnerability and courage. For each of us, it will be very different.

Sometimes life/reality/God gives us our medicine watered down. And other times we have no capacity to take in the diagnosis, the accident, the abusive voice, the cheating, the lies.

Our inner child is part of how we grow capacity. We refuse to self-abandon. She’s always included– this innocent one. This creative one. This one desiring fun and connection. He draws close to adult me and wants to feel safe. Will I allow their safe expression?

So if you are like me, you are trying to take your medicine (nutrition, balance, strength, tough conversations, cleaning out the closet for gosh sakes!) and you are not giving yourself enough moments of awe and wonder. Let us walk in nature and allow the largeness of the universe to right -size our worries.
And once again we will draw close to our friend and hug them with genuine care. We will bake those cookies, singing our song into the batter. We will shoot off that encouraging text. Because we matter. Each of us really matters.

The Ending is Sweet.

I am Word made Flesh

I’m often contemplating the shape of the cross. What does this vertical “On earth as it is in heaven” goal mean?

What does the horizontal truth of a wide and gracious

energy or spirit that is far-reaching east to west?

What feels prescient this week is the humility of embracing energy healing that is pure grace.

I went to a Biofield tuning session a few weeks ago and I literally FELT the restoration of water being poured back into my guts, my solar plexus.

I didnt’ have to do anything but believe and in faith trust the practitioner of this amazing frequency healing through the use of tuning forks.

But that’s not the whole picture of course– in these bodies are charged with all the movement, all the nutrition, all the connection to our neighbor. There’s action!!

It’s not all rest and digest

It’s putting legs on our faith in a way that is ordinary (weights, service, fasting, cardio, sweating, cold showers, journaling etc)

And the cross will always be the shape which informs my living in harmony with Christ. The doing, the being, the not bypassing…

The healing is a restoration of immense magnitude!!

We are Word made flesh.

#incarnation #embodiment #kamikaze #anchor #pentecost #HolyGhost #MindBodySoul

Walking Upright

I had a dream I was on vacation with a huge group of people last night. We were now an hour from our rental house and nearing the airport to fly home. I had left my car (read; Soul) at the house thinking we’d be going back. When I realized anyone who had a car (soul)among us, already knew and didn’t need to be told, was prepared, I was so angry!!

I went around yelling and asking– why didnt anyone warn me?? Why dont you care? Don’t you see that I have no way to get back– I have the keys!! and the husband of the homeowner cannot bring it here because of this.

No one would listen for more than a moment before going back to their vacationing fun and laughter. I was soooo distraught!!

This morning I came upon a rejected part of my psyche. A former ‘bent over woman’ like the one in Luke 13 crippled by her afflictions (trauma). But when she encountered God’s care,she was straightened.

Yesterday at pilates with my friend Irene leading, she had me do an exercise back against the wall and it’s very awkward: I feel hunched. She said “You don’t have kyphosis but you are compensating from a lifetime of this posture”. I understood that ‘this posture’ was a protection for my tender heart– an attempt at holding myself from further harm.

my first years practicing yoga in Colls at YogaWood with Beth Fill, that was the number one noticing– I left feeling taller, upright and straight. This alignment was the beginning of healing my gut-brain axis; my courage center. I’d been ‘crippled ‘ by the spirit of powerlessness and emotional instability for decades. I even went to a neurologist complaining of early Alzheimers and was told I ‘was a bored housewife”. The truth that was relayed was my brain was inflamed and reading Gabor Mate’s “Scattered Minds” and then “Brain on Fire” by Susannah Cahalan were pivotal in healing through a combination of east meets west– faith and practices. Discipline and surrender in order to enter flow state and enjoy meeting Jesus face to face.

Restoring wholeness to MIND is the most difficult embodied path because we are challenged by the culture every step of the way but the Kingdom of Heaven as I understand it, is much more merciful and grace-filled. Still human of course but infused by the divine. It’s not ever been two. It’s simply the original design before the infection of shame and the wound of separation.

What It’s Like to Be Incredibly Unrealistic (me)

Today I went on an audition in Phila. South Philly to be exact– a block from the restaurant Stogie Joe’s. Maybe 11 years ago, I was there enjoying a drink with girlfriends and noticed a sign advertising “Sinatra Sundays’. Well, My Uncle Benny adores him so I told them, I’ll be back with my family for that!

Fast forward a few months and there we sat, all 12 of us, enjoying some of the city’s best pizza and a fine rendition of “I did it My Way”. When I got home I turned to FB to ‘like’ the Stogie Joe’s page and there was the last name Iovacchini. Mary Iovacchini ‘liked’ Stogie Joes. Hmmmmm. I was supposed to grow up with that name. I’d found out about 8 years prior that was my birth father’s name– and you don’t see it too often. At this point, I’d met my half-brothers, their children but no one else (and certainly no one near Philly).

I decided to write to Mary I. Hi!! We might be related. I’m an Iovacchini too. Mary replied right back– cool! She’d married one and didn’t I know that the restaurant which brought us together was owned by her husband’s cousins. Maybe they were my cousins too? I was so hungry for information, for family connections, for pieces of the puzzle. Mary, would you have coffee with me?

Our two hour long conversation was like water for my parched soul. It was as if this divine appointment was part of an unfolding story that only God could write. Dad had left before I was born and I’d created quite the realistic yet unhelpful story of my own for decades–this story now percolated in my subconscious mind and felt a lot like unworthiness and shame with words swirling around like ‘bastard’ and unwanted.

Let’s circle back to today and that audition, shall we?

I was so so brave.

On my walk from the car, I heard in my spirit about how all of heaven was supporting me. And by heaven, the Lord meant my ancestors. I also understood that heaven was below my feet and was rising up like a geyser of love or I was the rocket ship hovering over the base of fuel ignited and preparing the vessel to take off. I felt powerful!! I felt that my soul was charged and the art that I made yesterday tittled ‘Voltage’ was hard at work– propelling me toward goodness, fun, connection, and success.

My ancestors (first, I’ll speak about the 2 paternal grandparents that I didn’t meet) were alcoholics and abandoned their 3 boys to the Philly orphanages…separated into three facilities. Breaking up their brotherhood forever. And My Oma who helped raise me, never seemed to get out of survival mode. Her own husband divorced for being alcoholic and working full time– peace came in the evening with a cigarette and her crochet needles. But mostly I saw her struggle, anxious…secretive.

Did any of these people live in anything but a realistic way I ask you?

So today, when upon returning home to my loving, supportive husband, he asked me to be realistic about the likelihood that I’d get a callback when the others were professionally trained actresses and me, well I had a few classes of improv under my 59 year old belt. My initial response– my very ordinary response was “You are right. Of course I should be realistic.” but my words were hollow.

So I climbed in the hot tub to pray. I’d asked a dozen people to pray this specific prayer– that I’d have a door opened to be surrounded by like-minded creative people. So when one of those friends texted me with “what did you discern about the like-minded people’…this is my response.

My mind is like this– unrealistic

I understand that those who break free from generational patterns of trauma might lean into this magical way of thinking. Not in way that disregards all the hard work but that counts the emotional labor and prayers as the hardest work we do. To believe again.

To believe in possibility and breakthrough — not necessarily that we end up on stage performing but that we live from tenderness. That there are no more monsters under the bed. That my inner child is safe to be completely and utterly unrealistic. Dreaming and planning and enjoying her little funny silly self.

And that ‘big me’ has plenty of space for her to play. Because the opposite of trauma just might be play.

I know my ancestors unlived life in me is cheering today– Go, Anita Go!! Keep

up the unrealistic expectations that God is real, the spirit of God grows us way beyond

living realistically.

A life of faith is oh so unrealistic — thank God for that!!

My Friend in Prison

I have a yoga client.

I guess you could call her that. She lives at the Federal Detention Center for a crime I know nothing about.

And I don’t really care. Let’s call her Dee.

Dee shared an experience in class today about how she has been practicing with several other inmates and me a couple of times a month since October and how, honestly, she never really understood what the all of the fuss was about.

She had no idea if yoga was just stretching or something more, she just wanted to participate and stay active.

The women at the FDC are stuck in a high-rise in the center of the city and never, I repeat, never get outside.

They eat, sleep, exercise and exist on one floor of a 10-story building.

They have a rec-deck on the third floor where they can see the sky out of the top of a two story space, the top 10 feet of which, is covered in bars.

A slice of sky and a few birds flying in several times a day—that is the extent of their experience with nature while doing their time. It breaks my heart.

I am fortunate to offer a chance to embody a yogic connection once a week.

(If you have never practiced, I would describe yoga as the chance to merge with the divine that is alive inside of you, inside each and every one of us.)

I leave after each session with the women at the FDC only hoping that other than relaxation, yoga will work its magic in its own time.

As Dee shared her story, I realized that she had experienced some of the magic that yoga had to offer.

Dee told us that the day before as she bent over to tie her shoes, she was overcome with the wave of an awful memory of her abusive boyfriend’s face and denigrating attitude.

Dee was filled with just a moment of self-loathing that after a year of daily exercise, maybe she had not come that far after all.

You see, every time she would simply tie her shoes in front of him, he would remark that she was fat and worthless: just look at you, all out of breath just from bending over.

She started to tie her shoes in a room where she could be alone—a room away from him.

Well, on this day, in this moment, she acknowledged the old feelings of shame and looked them straight in the eye and then took a deep breath.

Within that breath, she held a new voice, a new memory.

It was of me telling her to just exhale and go a little lower, a little deeper into the expression of the pose.

As she folded over to tie her shoe, she exhaled and within that place of surrender, she felt a new emotion arising:

worthiness.

Dee told us she had never felt such a strong sense of worthiness emanate from her own body before.

She often hated her body but on this day, she loved what her body was relaying in no uncertain terms: you are enough.

Her tears seemed to mix with our tears as we acknowledged the truth in her exclamation, “I feel like I finally know what yoga is about and for”.

I can’t help but notice that in all the articles we read about yoga’s benefits and life-changing qualities, one could just as easily replace the word “yoga” with “God”.

>> Yoga is making me a better mother, friend, daughter and wife

>> Yoga has been a savior to reduce my stress and relieve my anxiety

>> Yoga helps me feel more connected to myself and others and less depressed

>> Yoga helps me manage my eating disorder

>> Yoga eases my desire for my drug of choice and has impacted me staying clean

Some people say going to yoga feels like going to church.

Again, I will repeat, our yoga practice is meant to connect our mind, body and spirit in a way that God meant for us to operate.

It is out of wholeness and connection to our authentic self that we can truly understand how much we are loved, how we could never do anything to separate us from God.

That which we are desiring, is desiring us.

What are you yearning for?

Understanding God and the Human Nervous System

We see how God entered the human nervous system especially as we contemplate the cross of Christ. Did Jesus dissociate when he cried out– Abba, Abba why have you abandoned me?

I have thought so yes but in a sense, there was still a part of Him who understood the mission. Take the trauma of the people of the world and transmute it– once and for all. Turn pain and suffering into a creative new life force filled with connection and restored to a primordial power.

When the nervous system is regulated- the fear and memory of nervous system activation for survival has been healed ancestrally and personally. Can you even imagine this?

You must– you must 1st imagine and visualize this level of peace, safety and divine guidance. A God who breaks His own patterns and recollects us to the primordial system of the fascia. Yes, still physical– still in and of the body!!

Spiritual and harmonized while remaining in Her– the Source of all. In HIM, the placenta, the Lion, the Dove: All the metaphors apply here. It’s the best news about the sound of Heaven. The echo of the Ommmm. The frequency of Love and power.

Flowing to us and through us– uniquely singing our small part in the great Chorale — where the spiritual heart is able to be an open vessel for God’s mysteries.

This is my prayer over you today and in the season to come.

That all people everywhere trust in the consecration– you are a sacred and holy people.

Mental is Physical

Yesterday I restrained my ankle walking through Philly’s Chinatown in search of meat on a stick. Over a month ago, I went over it, falling in a shallow hole in the meadow across from our home. I thought it was healed and haven’t gone to PT as I should. That re-injury yesterday was the reminder from my 25 year old self that I still haven’t fully addressed her wound. And so today up before the dawn, I pray. I have been experiencing obsessive thoughts and that is my pointer. Who is doing all this thinking? and what needs processing. I know how to build the door to heaven. I’ve built thousands of them.

I call it breaking through the firmament. It’s a veil between upper and lower realities. the lower densities contain shame, memory, pain, trauma, grief, fear and so much more. The upper chakras hold the lightness of being and if we yoke ourselves to God’s ways we will find healing. God is merciful and so I am merciful. God is filled with creative solutions and so my soul finds them as well. We have never been separate and I bring this to her– the missing me. She was lost in a sea of worry and anger. Rage really. She wrote a bunch of fuck you letters this morning as part of her process. To all the wedding guests, the bridal party, family. No one recognized her disguise as one placed on her by God– no , she was ignored. Her pain, the abuse, all of it. Ignored. Maybe that is the way of the world after all. Maybe that is the path of liberation. Not human compassion but human ignorance that dives us into the arms of the Divine. Our heavenly Papa. Where our true power lies.

So if that ‘s you today. Know I understand. It’s a very painful journey of transfiguring the creature. Pope John Paul wrote in “Light of the East’ that the transfiguration of the creature would inaugurate in the coming of the kingdom of God. And so here we are doing the inaugurating. Some days that’s a party and a feast and some days it’s crying into our coffee mug and writing fuck you letters.

But it’s not like before.

No, it’s nothing like that. Those years of having to pretend and act nice and be a pretty bride on the outside while the inside rots….

My Hungry Ghost

What addicts get are relief from pain” Dr. Gabor Mate

When I was 23 I had my wisdom teeth removed and was prescribed a powerful opioid Percocet. When that script ran out, I was scared. I didn’t like going back to ‘me’.

I LOVED who I had become while ‘high’. You see we don’t know about trauma and the pain body. We only know about fighting our own selves with the weapon of shame.

You shouldn’t be so attached to that feeling, Anita. You shouldn’t desire something so harmful. What the hell is wrong with you?!?

I didnt’ know until about two years ago – when a friend said “Ohhhh, that was your first taste of freedom from the demons of your mind”. Why yes, how did you know?

How did I not know?

We do not know or understand ourselves. We are patterned for survival and thriving is not even in our daydreams I mean who is thriving? Movie stars and music makers? Finally their shadow is allover for us to see that their inner demons have been driving their addictions into the darkest places imaginable– human trafficking and sexual child abuse.

Do not look ‘out there’ for the answers my friends. The answers lie within the human heart. Do not even look ‘out there’ to judge. Let God be the judge…may we find our power sweeping our side of the street.

You will find the crack your demons have been feeding on and you will starve them. This is necessary.

Do not feel sorry for them. Let Christ throw them into the pigs who dive into the sea because they know their time is up.

Everyone has a pain body. You are not special– that is the worst and best news I can share.

Because what is special has yet to be expressed.

The hardest part will be when you enter creation mode and make stuff to satisfy your own Self. It might be shared or not.

It’s about being a creator now.

The shift in the nervous system is from consumer

to supplier.

You supply your hungry ghost with nourishment and love in the

form of creativity., connection and being an eye witness. You no longer look away into your addiction–

you take a good hard look at the pain and you create capacity

to feel it.

That

freedom

And you must want ti. Jesus comes for the sick, the poor in spirit and desperate. that was me…still is me some days.

Like today.

Madman or Magician

I’m listening to a podcast with Elise Loehnen (Fissmer) Pulling the Thread. SHe’s interviewing author and psychotherapist Karl Deisseroth Md, PhD. As they discuss what in the DSM responds well to meds and what rooted in childhood trauma does not, I had the insight– the download so to speak– only that which originated as a mismatch to the new life in relationship can be repaired in relationship– the same relationship– parent to child. Not in the natural but as an adult in the spiritual realm. The OT ends with the reconciliation of parent and child– powerful huh.

Well, we are part of God’s internal family system. We are a cell in the body of God so to speak. The micro to the macro. We look like our Abwoon (parents). Our natural life is aligned with the Great Mother and we operate like nature– letting go, growing, planting seeds of compassion. Letting go, expanding consciousness, growing a seed of mercy….did I say Letting go?

We have the innate need to connect with, rely upon, be supported by, guided etc. by the invisible Source of our Being. If we neglect this deep Soul Truth– we suffer. But we don’t recognize suffering if we look to the world. No, we look like the world when we are striving, grasping, complaining, worrying, gossiping etc. Abba does not judge this. This is part of being human and growing and maturing

Abba is the perfect harmony of meeting us in our messes and helping us up out of the pigslop and finding our way into better quarters. We MUST awaken to growing worthiness, growing in thriving and leave behind our old self. As a new creation we are constantly making stuff– encouraging others, building others up, connecting heart to heart. Then RESTING. deep soul rest which restores the brain.

But Trauma– light in need of mending. Light that’s chaotic, distorted in the nervous system, in the fascia is the suffering self . We despise her, she’s a stranger. Annoying. Demanding, too much– too horny, hungry and greedy. But you see– Abba knows she’s trying so hard to FEEL alive!! She’s doing everything in order to know she exists and can experience pleasure and yes pain. Contrast is needed. We often hear it called the life and death of Christ in us.

We need light and dark. Matter and energy. Spirit and dust. masculine and feminine. They dance– not compete. But when I was in my trauma brain I had an inner enemy…I was always hating on my self, my body, my behavior (or lack there of), but too much ‘me’ was the problem I needed to have children, be of service, get outside of myself and understand the law of karma. I needed to keep caring about others and bumping off them to see myself better, more clearly and see the ways I was NOT the woman I thought I’d be…I was on a collision course to divorce if I didn’t get my act together. And yes, I often created outer enemies too– projections.

ultimately, with nervous system regulation we are within ONE voice. and that voice is rooted in Love. Nervous system regulation is not ease, it’s not peace, it’s not anything but connection to Self. We remain. We do not abandon ourselves, or berate or shame for having human needs and desires.

Whether it is your own mind’s voice or when you hear from the shepherd, it is love. Your parts are organized and your intuition is organized and your Light is organized into a grand symphony playing– magical. Not madman. No fear of being crazy. It is a world who does not communicate with their Abba that is crazy. Every Child of God has access to their spiritual parent– unified. You are back in the arms of a sweet safe One.

John 3:5. It’s a brain wave pattern restoring that frequency from first year of life.