Acupuncture, Life Coaching, Ashtanga Yoga in San Francisco
292 Douglass St., San Francisco, CA 94114
Acupuncture  Traditional Chinese Medicine is all about restoring balance and circulating energy. more » | Leadership Coaching  Lead more authentically and effectively so you can do big things at work and beyond. more » | Life Coaching  Learn to tap into your inner wisdom to make profound and lasting change in your life. more » | Yoga & Meditation  Develop a personal meditation or yoga practice to take wherever you go in the world. more » |
Have you ever met anyone who fulfilled your expectations and lived up to your intentions all the time? While it would be wonderful if you could honestly say yes, the answer is likely no. So the only predictable result is that your expectations will be unfulfilled and your intentions will be thwarted. Wherever this occurs, you end up disappointed. Again, this is natural and to be expected. Since it is virtually impossible to stop having [...] Read more »
Trust is one of the most critical components to experiencing deep, profound and lasting connections with others. The word trust comes from the Old German word, troost, which means comfort or consolation. When you have trust, you sense that you can lean into another person with 100% confidence; you can be at ease; you can completely be who we essentially are. Without a Shadow of Doubt And when you sense trust in another [...] Read more »
Just who is everyone? Read more »
This summer, I was asked to model some basic asanas for the November 2011 Yoga Journal magazine: As someone who has been practicing Ashtanga for 20 years, I expected the shoot to be an interesting experience, but fairly easy. These are fundamental poses that I’ve done thousands of times. The two-day photo shoot in a San Francisco Mission District studio turned out to be even more interesting than I anticipated. I worked under the direction [...] Read more »
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, [...] Read more »
Once the pain of the emotion has passed, once we have completely and compassionately descended down to the bottom of the rock, we experience a sense of relief. We begin to widen, deepen, and expand to include the wound. It isn’t that the wound has disappeared. The point is not to disappear the wound, and it isn’t a one-time-fix. This is a lifelong journey of compassionately holding the wound so that wisdom, love, generosity, and [...] Read more »
The real gift we have to offer to others is our compassion. Likewise, the real gift we have to offer ourselves is compassion. The place we often go to when we feel the pain of our wound is “beat-up.” We often let our self-sabotaging voices run the show. We think, I feel this pain and then decide, “Indeed, I am stupid, ugly, or worthless.” The etymology of the word compassion is ‘com-’ with or together [...] Read more »
However unnerving the experience, we need to bring a moment-to-moment awareness to the wound. It’s important that we not get lured too much into the past or future storylines until we have completed the descent. A bit of past or future thinking can heighten and deepen the feelings so that the descent can take place; however, the descent into the wound is not a story-based experience. The story can help deliver us into the energy [...] Read more »
The transformational shift that can occur around the sacred wound feels a whole lot like a descent. It has a downward quality to it. It often feels heavier, stickier, thicker, and more difficult before it ever starts to feel better. In 12-step programs, they often say that one has to hit ‘rock-bottom’ before any real change can take place. When we acknowledge the emotion around the wound in a deliberate, conscious way, we take ourselves [...] Read more »
Oftentimes the starting point is just numbness, like there is nothing there to access. We can’t feel ANY emotion. We just sense a wall or a barrier. Instead of regarding numbness as bad or something to breakthrough or overcome, if we can regard the numbness as “good news,” and be with it, it can start to unravel. Usually, the numbness is there as a defense, something that we unconsciously put in place in order to [...] Read more »