Get real!

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Nearly one out of three women struggle with being overweight*. While statistics typically are regarded to hold a degree of reliability, in this case the conclusion is perceived to be so judgmental to all concerned, that is it either ignored or questioned and inevitably put by the wayside.

And yet it is exactly what you see in society when you look around you. And the result you live with, and you are not even aware of it. Oh yes, you enjoy reading the ‘how-to-be-fit-in-three-months’ articles, or even cut out those pages with summer diets from that magazine, with the intention of pouring some serious effort into those exercises as off next week.

..oh, I'll cut that out..

But somewhere in the back of your mind you already know that it isn’t going to happen. Because next week you are extremely busy or invited to a wedding, a birthday- or farewell party. But the week after that, you are definitely going to take it on!

And this has become your life, always planning for one or two weeks ahead, constantly haunted by the thought that it is really time “to take some action”. That being non-committal in nature, deep down you know perfectly well that this isn’t going to produce any results.

You know you want to break out of this vicious cycle, but somehow you never seem to get there. Why oh why?

Escape by diversion

It is possible to train your unconscious mind to automatically create a hunger-feeling every time you are confronted with actions, thoughts or feelings that you consider uncomfortable (whether from your environment or within). Or to avoid really looking at yourself in the mirror, by bringing up an image of how you looked X years ago. Intellectually you know very well that those clothes don’t fit you anymore, but your mind perceives you still as that slim twenty-something. So there is no problem, is there?

What lies underneath?

Most people still fight against the demons of their childhood. Are you still hiding from a non-existing monster? You don’ know? Isn’t it time then, to start identifying those triggers and patterns?

Start with baby steps

Come up with one little thing that you can do at least once a day to move towards a solution. For example:

1. Drink water

When you feel the urge to eat between meals, drink a large glass of water instead. 80% of the time your body is not hungry but thirsty! Keep a large bottle within easy reach to take away any excuse.  Switch to a Thermos flask with hot water and a slice of lemon every now and then, and create a cleansing effect.

2. Breathe

Draw a couple of deep breaths, along the rhythm 1:4:2**. You can do this almost anywhere for five minutes: while waiting in line at the supermarket, walking down the road etc. (Note: don’t do this when you are driving a car, until you get used to it!)

Build it up slowly, you are not supposed to get out of breath. That funny tingling in your head and hands? That’s your body saying ‘thank you’!

Pull your head out of the sand

When you are ready to move to a “toddler step”, here’s a good one: Stop yourself every time your hand reaches out for the door of the refrigerator or kitchen cabinet, and ask yourself: what do I feel right now?

The feeling in thát moment is key. Thát is what you are running away from. What is it? Do you feel lonely? Hurt? Angry?

Stop yourself and ask "what do I feel?"

Have an egg timer handy, set it for ten minutes and allow yourself to feel those feelings completely until it rings.

After that, write down what happened. And: be honest. Admit to yourself that you might need help in shedding that old problem.

There are hundreds of self-help groups where people share experiences and support each other. Or call me for an eMMatrix session (click here for the counsellingpage).

Don’t be a victim of your habits. They have been learned and you can unlearn them.

Treat yourself to more in life, you deserve it!

**inhale for 1 count, hold your breath 4 counts, breathe out over 2 counts. Built is up: inhale for 3 counts, hold for 12, breathe out over 6; inhale  for 6 , hold for 24, breath out over 12, etc.

*click here to read obesity studies for USA or UK

Everlasting Beauty

500 years of Feminine Portraits in Western Art

Light, Sound, Camera, Action!

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My windows can’t read the Mac DVD.. It’ll have to be a picture of the label for now then!

Cast Mirror of the Moon Goddess. Above: Fanny Embregts as Amanda, Liseth Horsten (music) and Cheta Urmila, below: Charles Waagenaar as Male Reflection and Pauline van Hoek as his female counterpart. Photo: Mariska Chardet, Amsterdam

This is it

The doors open. The room looks mysterious with the blue light on the mirror and a veiled moon in the background. The audience slowly take their seats. A late visitor leads to a small delay. As soon as he arrives, I give the sign to start. The lights go down… Liseth appears in the spotlight and embarks on the opening song.

Sudden uncertainty

In the moments after I have taken my place in the control room next to soundman Bas, a sudden shiver of uncertainty hits me: Did I structure it right? Will the public get the message? Will the storyline be clear enough? I take a deep breath and let go: it’s going to be exactly what it should be tonight!

It works!

Fanny steps on stage and the story of Amanda unfolds. At the first sound of laughter from the audience I feel my shoulders relax: it works! The eruption of emotions in scene four comes as a complete surprise and the audience roars with laughter. Charles, for whom this is his first ever performance, convinces as the male reflection, and entices during his monologue. Pauline is funny, seductive and radiant and Fanny elevates the play to a higher plane with extraordinary facial expressions and theatrical poses. There is a real spark in her interaction with Pauline, it’s a joy to watch. Liseth’s spotlight fades up for each song and she appears and disappears each time like a fairy. Her presence is powerful en feminine, her voice melodic and dynamic.

It’s the end scene already

The end scene – newly thrown in the day before – is worth studying, the audience applauds and I am running it over again in my mind. It takes a few seconds before I realize that the actors will invite me on stage in a minute – oops! – I grab my gift bag and run to the entrance-doors. In my rush I can’t get the bag to open, so I throw it on the floor somewhere. Fanny is already making her way over – gee it’s dark on these stairs ….

This is the moment

Out of the corner of my eye I can see that some people are standing. Wow, they do have their standing ovation, great! As soon as I step into onto the stage, the applause intensifies and the rest of the audience rises up as one. The penny drops … they were waiting for me! I fill exhilarated, make a bow, goose bumps run from head to toe …

I point towards the actors, towards the control room, the applause continues. I congratulate Liseth, Pauline, Charles and Fanny with their success. The audience continues to applaud. After another bow, Fanny and Pauline turn to leave the stage. Those girls – they are such a support, have been from the start!

Whirlwind

After that, the events roll on in quick succession: my best friend congratulates me; Zeus-with-camera demands an initial reaction; I suddenly tremble all over; left and right people stop to tell me what it has meant for them; Liseth is praised for her voice, Fanny for her great achievement; my parents and sister congratulate me and hand over a bottle of pink champagne; amidst all that a radio interview – I am enjoying myself tremendously.

Part of a bigger plan

An animated conversation springs up with Marian Smolders & assistants, like Zeus ambassadors for the arts for the town of Middelbeers. I leave them to go and find Zeus to make the formal introductions. Zeus then proudly calls his assistants: all MoonScouts present line up next to him. It feels like such an honour to stand with them and be part of this!

End of a special project

The doors close at 23:00. A final drink in the local cafe, then it’s over. A clear and bright crescent moon, high in the sky, guides us home. Deeply grateful I drift into sleep ..

My Silent Walk

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Cor Stehouwer, our guide, uses clear non-verbal communication to point out certain things to us: how wide the landscape is – listen to that woodpecker – smell the delicious air – try and taste this… Although I often walk in nature, his way of looking at it adds a different dimension. I am enjoying myself very much, feel happy and grateful.

The variety of landscape in this area called Kampina is huge; there are natural lakes, sand dunes, as well as a dark forest, a very old stream, and so on.

Trust and Surrender

Just how much my sensory perception has increased becomes clear when a distant humming sound appears. Agonizingly slowly is comes closer, yet the direction is untraceable. Anger rages through me. I let it be there. After a few moments is just disappears again. I follow the tiny plane above me with a smile. I do not have to get distracted, I can always choose how I react to something. Cor signals to take off my shoes and follow him. I hesitate. With my bare feet on the coarse grass, that takes some courage  hmmm… trust … surrender …

It turns out to be the best part of the hike.  Silently I stand up to my ankles in water. Here. NOW. We perform some Tai Chi movements, the energy rings in the air. Emotions come and go. In the distance a deer jumps out of the bushes. Wow ..

The world distorts

Deeply touched I walk on, slowly. It feels like my reality gets more and more distorted. I let myself fall behind to experience what is going on.

Slower, I want to move even slower…

When at the end of the walk Cor breaks the silence, it feels far too early. This evening could have lasted at least another three hours.

Nature’s Paint box

After saying our goodbyes we drive back to Tilburg. Mother Nature adds her comment to the eXperience by colouring the sky in the most beautiful shade of orange.

CLICK HERE FOR THE STORY IN IMAGES

Trust and Surrender

As I felt I hadn’t been playing as full out as I could in my relationship – somehow I wasn’t completely genuine – I decided to experiment with trust and surrender, two of the basic characteristics of the feminine essence.

Like I said in other posts, feminine essence doesn’t mean “women only”. I like exploring my relationship with the feminine and masculine  characteristics, even the ones I think I don’t embody (and not even based on gender); I believe that the ability to which I can embrace these qualities in myself, allows me to understand them  in other people.

The eXperiment

The day before we leave on a weekend city trip, I ask my partner Graham to support me by not sharing where we are going, departure-times, gate numbers, etc. Directly after proposing this, I feel a familiar cringe in my solar plexus. All the more reason to follow through! Here’s what happened.

Day 1: This is easy!

I wake up and check in with myself. I feel a sense of relief not having the burden of paying attention to where we are going, and uplifted and happy about having the opportunity to just be present in the moment. At the bus stop I watch people walking by, a cat jumping out onto the road, the blue sky above. I catch myself trying to read the numbers on the approaching busses, and deliberately turn my back on the direction they are coming from. Graham nudges me for our bus and we hop on board. This is cool!

...in awe of the structures...

At the airport I look around and find myself in awe of the huge steel structures of the terminal building. An unfamiliar surge of energy suddenly runs up my spine. Like Alice in Wonderland I feel myself shrinking: I break out into a broad smile and turn into a little girl again. My adult mind registers an amazing freedom of responsibilities; I don’t have a care in the world. I want to skip and jump, to run around, I point enthusiastically at colourful adverts with butterflies. Everything is interesting and worth looking at. After about 10 minutes the feeling gradually disappears. During the flight I indulge in the memory of it and wonder why I ever was afraid to do this…

Is it really that easy?

Fresh through customs, I step straight back into controlling mode: we need to get a taxi, we need to get money, we need to… Graham just stands there and looks at me, silently. I repeat my words. Silence. I feel SO annoyed. Then it hits me: I am not surrendering! Let alone trusting that he will take care of everything… Shoot!

The same thing happens a couple of times during the afternoon; the habit is strong. Graham is marvellous in either pointing it out to me, or showing me through his body language that I am doing it again. I am really frustrated! With great effort I have been keeping my mouth shut over and over again, determined NOT to take the lead and allow Graham to be there for me! The things I do say are weighed carefully and judged harmless. Apparently they aren’t …

Day 1 results: No, not so easy after all

Over dinner Graham recounts the 9 times (in 6 hours) where I took over. Then he shares very frankly how hurtful that is for him as a man, this constant declaration of mistrust. He is there to serve, and perfectly capable of taking care of what is happening.

Silently adding the number of times I consciously kept my mouth shut, I am embarrassed to realize how often I do step in. I feel the fear of losing control roaring inside of me and my hands tremble.

Intellectually I know I can trust Graham completely. During our time I have been his girlfriend he has proven over and over and over again how capable – and willing – he is to take care of things, if I would only let him… We agree to start over the next day.

Day 2: Renewed commitment

Going down for breakfast I slip again, and yet again on our way out of the hotel. “Are you serious about this” Graham asks, “I am really starting to get annoyed!” I feel the tears burning behind my eyes as I re-commit. I have awareness now, it MUST become easier to do this! After biting off my tongue a couple of times, I decide to shift into acknowledging “taking-over” as soon as it happens. That creates some space. I start to understand what trusting really means: accepting that the other will be there to take care of things, even when they approach things their way (which by the way is all the f***ing time!); somehow that makes surrendering easier.

The next level

At the end of the afternoon, I feel something shift inside of me. It is as if a veil drops and a deeper reality reveals itself. I stop and sit down on a bench on the roadside. First I eXperience a sense of expanded awareness; then – almost instantaneously – I drop into a space in which I fully eXperience the moment. I have a clear sense of my intuitive guidance, am totally free and the potential of moving with whatever comes up right now is almost tangible. I  feel happy, free; free to be ME. Detachment of having to be in control also opens another space:  space to express whatever I want to express, whatever comes up.

...expanded awareness in the moment...

Day 3 and 4: BIG MAGIC

Over the next two days BIG MAGIC starts to happen. Instinctively I realize that all I have to do is take Grahams hand and follow along. In doing this, Graham and I start to flow together in a way that we have never done before. We don’t need words, we allow whatever is. He spots things, I spot things, he wants to look at the map, I admire the buildings, or the squirrel on the wires. I point out little details to him, that he says he would never have noticed otherwise. He gets me safely across the street when I get confused in all that traffic. Now we are BOTH having a richer experience. WOW!!!

At the end of day 4 Graham tells me how good he feels within himself to be called on like that. And how my surrendering over these past few days has allowed him to grow as a man. What a gift!

What I learned

One of my major learnings from this eXperiment was that in the end it had nothing to do with Graham at all. What it all boiled down to was that I wasn’t surrendering to me, because I didn’t trust myself. My controlling of the situation was based in my own insecurity; I was checking up on Graham out of fear, not out of interest, or my love of structure. I now know the difference. The question then is: what was I so afraid of?

I am still me

I found that my fear of letting go of control was based in another fear, a huge fear: the fear of losing my identity. And specifically the identity of the strong, independent woman with an I-don’t-need-anyone attitude. I have outlived this identity a long time ago, yet apparently it was still running the show. And as long as I had a sense of loss tied to this, it was very hard for me to even try it.

I now know that after the eXperiment I am more than I was before the experiment. Instead of having lost something, much more freedom has been ADDED, a freedom that is now readily available. Since I now have a reference to how it feels to be trusting and surrendering, I can tap into that feeling on a daily basis.

Surrendering to who I am at the deepest level also allows me to express more of me, as me! When I eXperienced that total trust inside of me, I couldn’t believe I had been afraid of it at all!

Waking up dormant parts

Through the eXperiment, I have re-awakened and embraced the energy of the carefree girl. Years ago I had put her to sleep, in a dorm to be precise. Cause guess what: “living in the moment” went to sleep as well that day, and that in turn sent “the magic of life” into hibernation!

...more alive with all your parts awake...

No wonder I was feeling empty, no wonder I couldn’t find my purpose. The carefree girl turns out to be an essential part of my inner core. And now she is back!

The polar opposite works as a catalyst

Having Graham there to support me on this quest has been immensely valuable. Even though in the end I realized it was all about me, I was able to fully open up and explore the dimensions of my femininity through the encompassing quality of his masculine energy. The polarity between the masculine force and the feminine force is an important catalyst to reach these results. So – although you don’t need a man to initiate this, eXperimenting within a context of polarity will allow the process to take off easier and return greater results – for both parties involved!

polarity acts as a catalyst

So, what is different now?

Does this mean I am now leaving everything to Graham? That I have given up making decisions, being independent, and follow along meekly?
Nope…

Do I never take control anymore, based on this?
Nope…

A month has passed since we went through this eXperiment, and as a result our relationship has shifted on several levels – and for the better.

First of all, Graham now knows that my “taking-over” has nothing to do with him; if I step in, he knows something is triggering my insecurity.

Secondly, with the reference for the new found freedom, I am now able to express my love of structure and making arrangements in a much more healthy way. Instead of sticking my nose in and demanding to know what is happening, we talk through our plans  and divide tasks between us. On the road, I now read signs for fun!

The third thing is not easy to describe. I have found that – through letting go of the need to control, of the fear that is - I actually am more in control of myself than before. I am more balanced, more relaxed, and have gained tremendous certainty in my day to day existence.

Now here’s a thought…

Gosh, I just had this interesting idea – what would happen if we would reverse roles and do another eXperiment? Graham exploring trusting and surrendering like this for a couple of days. That could be quite interesting. How about it, Graham?

You can eXperience this too

Which part do you need to wake up to come alive and feel the magic? I invite you to eXperience this for yourself. It is an amazing journey. What it requires is total honesty within yourself, and if you are planning to involve your partner, total honesty within the relationship. You have to be open enough to tell each other what is going on, without taking it personally.

Start with setting the parameters for the eXperiment, marking a clear beginning and ending. This is one of the prerequisites to make it work. Pick some days where you know you will have time to focus on yourself – or on each other. From the word go, start with surrendering to the situation. Give yourself time to get into this (or use the technique described in my post Learn how to eXperience the moment). Monitor your thoughts and feelings. Stick with the eXperiment for the whole of the agreed period. Allow it to unfold. Analyse the results and see what you have learned. Repeat as often as you like!

How will you know that you have hit bulls eye? When you surrender totally, you’ll drop into the full experience of the moment; that is your cue. And life will never be the same again…

Learn to eXperience the Moment

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For my contribution to NachtburgemeestersCafe last week, I decided to lead the audience through an eXperience of one of the 6 basic characteristics of the feminine energy; I chose “Experiencing the Moment”. The other characteristics of the feminine are: Trust, Surrender, Freedom, Spontaneity and Caring/Nurturing.

Just for the record: feminine energy doesn’t equal “women only”! Everyone has feminine energy, some of us more than others; and that is also true for the masculine energy. This has nothing to do with gender. One of the main areas of focus of femaleXperience is the balancing of your individual feminine and masculine energy, regardless whether you are a woman or a man.

Anyhow, back to the story. Zeus gave me the microphone right at the start, which was great – now the audience had the opportunity to try it out over the whole evening! Read more »

Women on the Edge of Evolution

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Katherine Woodward Thomas and Claire Zammit have initiated a succesful and interesting series, that certainly qualifies as a female eXperience!

Started as recent as October 2009, by now there are more than 40.000 women listening to – and participating in – a series of global tele-conferences. Speakers are well-known (and lesser known) women, who all have earned their reputation and are now sharing and applying their profound knowledge to define what a co-creative femininity actually is and looking for ways to develop it moving forward. This goes hand in hand with a beautiful awareness for the need of nurturing our planet.

Sofar the bi-weekly calls have featured women like Jean Houston, Lynne Mc Taggert, Barbara Max Hubbard, Diane Musho Hamilton, Marianne Wiliamson and many, many more.

The initiators have just decided to continue the series throughout the summer and with that they will be bringing us even more knowledge and inspiration. Their goal is to gather a group of 100.000 women, who will support eachother one way or the other in their personal development and growth. If this is something that appeals to you, I invite you to become one of them!

You can sign up for free at www.womenontheedgeofevolution.com

Once you have registered, an introduction to the speaker as well as date and time of the call will be emailed to you. If you can’t make it – or like me want to listen to it in your own time – you can download the recording of the calls for free afterwards. The archive contains all the previous calls; well worth browsing through. I’m sure you’ll find someone who appeals to you!

I am listening to a couple of calls at the moment, and even though I don’t agree with the somewhat “American Style” vision of Katherine and Claire, the information is amazing. I’ll soon let you in on my eXperience…