Fruits of Flexibility

A Flexible Mind Brings Ease, and Needs Curiosity and Patience.

We know that flexibility is good to have in the body; less likely to break. This principle holds in architecture, against winds and storms. I think I have a certain flexibility in my demeanor. Someone wants to change the restaurant for a dinner plan; no problem! (👋🏼 Enneagram 9)

The opposite is Rigidity. Stiffen as you brace for the car crash? More likely to get hurt worse. Most of my rigidity is in my mind. I used to come UnDoNe when a plan was broken. I had a plan; someone bailed, and it would feel like a punch. Depending on the circumstances, who was involved, my disappointment level, felt like the world ending.

I imagine one could view that as overly dramatic; and yet, now I have so much understanding, compassion and grace for that sweet scared version of myself.

She needed a Flexible Mind.

A flexible mind is where ease resides.

Developing Muscle

Any singer, dancer, or artist in training; anyone learning to play an instrument or sport, knows the frustrating and rewarding learning cycle that comes with developing mental and physical skills to do the thing. The mind has to have an awareness of what the body is doing (sometimes commanding it) as we build new motions into the muscle fabric.

In the dance between doing, and noticing, and re-directing and doing again, we are often battling our psyche (“is it okay though? is it right?”) and our nervous system (“this seems scary” - i.e. muscle grabs in fear).

I’ve done this my whole life as a singer; taught it for 20+ years, and just recently saw how these lessons apply to creating a flexible mind - being aware, noticing, not judging, giving comfort when it doesn’t go my way.

Developing Flexibility of Mind Muscle

The mind requires the same flexibility that benefit our bodies. Dare I say, maybe even more important.

Sometime in the last year I started explaining to new clients that one of my roles as a coach is to bring the subconscious to the conscious mind.

YES is the simplest answer to the very common question:

“Can you really teach anyone to sing?”

The reality and more complex explanation is that I’m helping people make conscious connections in their brain to their other body parts; showing them the way they couldn’t see/hear.

As I’ve been doing my own personal transformation work, I can see how my therapist and coaches (and 100 books/workshops/lectures) have been showing me the way to tap into my subconscious, make meaning, and then moving passed the what, why and what now? How do I create the life I want to live? Just like my clients are discovering how to create the sounds they want to make.

I can see now, how the practice of letting go, of needing to be right all the time, and finding compromise in relationship, have created this more flexible mind that I’m housing and how much easier and nicer it is to be in my own head. 

Remembering moments of enlightenment along the journey of the last several years, I wonder - like muscles building - did I retrain my brain how to think; how to feel? Yes, I think that’s how it works. I’m seeing the results of rewiring in the brain that comes with healing from trauma.

What does a Flexible Mind look like?

I’ve just started working on my 3rd EP of original songs.

I made my first two in the last year, and I didn’t know what I was doing. You know when you’re new at something, you don’t know what you don’t know? That tends to make me more rigid, timid, risk averse. I don’t know something = anxiety. 

I learned a lot! Of course, this is why I decided to record this way - 3 projects with 3 producers… to Learn!

I noted a shift when answering questions for this 3rd project. I was more open, and could take in the imagining and wonder of not knowing. 

So, in this one thing, the projects of recording my songs, I increased my flexibility.
I loosened my reigns of expectations.
I opened myself to risk of trying more new things.
I learned to trust my babies in the hands, hearts and minds of others. 

(by the way… EP #2 Into the Light comes out March 1st. 🤞🏼)

Long Season of Curiosity

Sometime in 2022, I became more curious; about everything. That feels like the key to my flexibility and openness. Well, that, AND getting some relief from the barage of grief and stress that came with the couple of years before.

I don’t think I could have come to this place of curiosity, if I hadn’t had to go through the mourning, the agitation, the giving up, the letting go, the tear it all down to the studs, and finding self-acceptance and self-compassion tools, looking for the light; figuring out how to play.

Curiosity asks questions… why do i feel this way? why am i crying? why am i getting hot (peri-menopause aside 🔥)? Asking what is behind the thoughts and feelings? I’ve been strengthening my curiosity muscle, and it’s brought flexibility. 

The last 4 years each felt like they had their own season. 

2023 was like spring - a year of blooming for me.
2022 was like summer - Awakening.
2021 was like winter - Enduring & Grieving…
2020 was Holding On for dear life! The enigmatic undefinable season.

And, here we are back to hibernating and resting season and I feel like bursting and blooming all over. My spring is not done.

I had an odd, unexpected period of hibernation at the end of July; hence my seasonal mixed signals. It was like my own personal mid-winter, and here I am eager to sprout.

Tulips and Sunflowers in Winter! 🌻 ❄️

What are the Fruits?

I see the fruits of flexibility in recording my music. I see them in my intimate relationships. I see them in the work with my beautiful clients. 

Knowing that I will be safe and secure when I don’t know something has made me more flexible, which makes it easier to say “I don’t know”, or “let’s figure that out together”, or not get shaken when someone disagrees with me.

I see the fruits of flexibility in noticing my feelings and in being able to identify and process them and move forward. I don’t get stuck as often, or as long as I used to.

I notice the flexibility in my singing!

I notice it in my nervous system, as I’ve continued to educate and embody the experience of regulating between activated (triggered) and calming states.

I’ve found a grounding in the nervous system work, that has spread my roots deep and wide, so when the winds of conflict/discourse and uncertainty come my way, I am able to bend and shake it off, creating more ease in my life. 

And since the hard things don’t stop coming, the world is full of dumpster-fires all, and bountiful injustice and pain are everywhere, it feels necessary to do this healing work, to weave my thread into a healing blanket for the world. 

I guess the fruits 🍎 are the rewards; the results. 🌴

What season are you in? 

Are you ready for hibernation? 

Or, are you itching to bloom too?

I’m often hiding under the covers this time of year. But, here I am, wide-awake and excited for what’s to come.

If you’re ready to jump into something now, what is it? What’s got you bursting?

Let me know if you’re curious about the nervous system work I’m doing, and especially if you’re curious how voice work plays into it!

Whatever the season it is, or the one you’re in… remember to REST. And, if no one has told you yet, you deserve it; you don’t’ have to earn it.

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