Your power is alive in you

Your power is alive in you.

Even if you block it, or soft pedal it, or just don’t recognize it, your natural power is alive in you.

The knowledge of who you are and your ability to impact our own experience,

To influence others,

And to make a difference in the world around you…

That knowledge is your birthright.

Only you have the power to keeping yourself from using that power.

Each chakra or energy center is the home for a different aspect of your power. In our meditation on Saturday, we visited each center and gathered a circle of symbols or touchstones for accessing your power in each center. Here’s a reminder to job your memory:

The floor of your core: This is where your sense of power has roots. It is grounded here in the knowledge that you belong.

Gut: The power of your creativity resides here. Fan the flames of creativity from here.

Belly button or diaphragm: This center fuels your sense of identity and purpose. Allow yourself to grasp more fully who you are and what you are about in this life.

Heart: The center of connection to yourself and others. This opens up your power to love yourself and others without reservation, without conditions, without giving yourself away.

Throat. Your power to express yourself and be heard sits here. You have the power to use your voice as soothing music or strident warning as the situation requires.

3^rd eye, in the middle of your forehead: This is the center of compassionate wisdom, supported by all that sits beneath it.

Top of your head. Here is the center of your power that comes from your connection with your Source. With Spirit. With That Which Gives You Life. Your awareness of that connection can be ignored, buried under busy-ness, fear, or arrogance, but it can never be severed. As you are, It Is.

A Day of Standing in Your Power

Want to own your power more fully?

Experience it with us on Saturday, August 22nd

When we are standing in our power, we can access all that we need to create change, make a difference in the world, and speak from our heart.

Yet we all have ways of “protecting” ourselves from our power.

• Maybe it's scary to experience our power,
  
• maybe we've been told not to assert ourselves,
  
• maybe we've tried before and gotten shot down.
  

So many powerful women like you have so much more power available to them. But something stands in the way.

How do you hide your power from yourself? Do you:

• hide behind illness or fatigue
  
• hold it in with a stiff, reserved exterior
  
• tell yourself you don't deserve to be an instrument of God's Grace
  
• equate being powerful with being aggressive, being separate from the group, being a target, etc
  
• feel shame about your assets
• cover up your intuition by being overly analytical

Would you like to be more comfortable knowing you are a powerful woman? Would you like to experience expressing your power in a safe, receptive environment? Would you like to understand the difference between traditional masculine concepts of power and feminine expressions of power?

Then the Circle of Extraordinary Women is the place for you! Join us on Saturday, August 22 from 10-3 for a Day of Standing in Your Power.

Explore what holds your power hostage. Find out how you can access your natural personal power. Enjoy the company of other extraordinary women.

The fee for the day is $115, which includes a healthy lunch.

To register or get more information, email Marcia (marcia@stepbystepcoaching.biz) or Annie (annie@fullcirclecoaching.net) or call us (Marcia: 865.521.7759 or Annie: 865.256.9388)

Emotional Self-Care

Emotional self-care involves feeling and expressing all of our emotions appropriately. Sounds easy, right? But somehow it isn’t. Expressing all of our feelings means the negative ones as well as the positive ones. And don’t forget that all important caveat ‘appropriately’.

We’ve all seen or heard obnoxious people who loudly express their anger in public, yelling at their children, flipping people off from the safety of their cars. This is definitely expressing your negative emotions, but it isn’t what you’d call ‘appropriate’.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who are unable or unwilling to give voice to their feelings. When we keep things inside, they don’t go away. They tend to manifest physically, as headaches, stomach pains, stiff necks and other discomforts.

So what is the happy medium? Recognizing an emotion as it arises, figuring out how to express it in a way that feels respectful to you and others, and then letting it go and moving on.

Expressing positive emotion is important too, especially gratitude and self-love. It’s easy to focus on the things we don’t have and forget to be thankful for what we do have, unless we make an intentional effort to do so. And loving ourselves isn’t something that we’re usually taught to do. But it’s key to being able to live a healthy life.

Observe your emotional responses in the next few weeks. Look for appropriate reactions to both the positive and negative things that happen to you. Pay attention to any physical symptoms and ask yourself what the emotional connection could be. Looking at that kind of connection can be scary, but a good Life Coach can make the journey a remarkable learning experience.

One of the best books I’ve read on emotional self-care was written back in the 1980’s by Harriet Lerner, called “The Dance of Anger”. Dr. Lerner does a great job dissecting the ways that women help or hinder themselves when they express their feelings, and gives good suggestions for finding ways to do so appropriately.

Mental Self-Care

Mental self-care involves stimulating your mind in ways that make you reach, grow, and develop. And it also means relaxing your mind in equal measure.

My personal routine consists of a day of seeing coaching clients ending with an hour of my favorite television show, Reba. I stretch my mind in order to assist clients who are longing to create sacred spaces and relationships, then I spend an hour laughing my behind off at the antics of Reba’s loving, dysfunctional

family.

Another way to take care of your mental health is to read books or magazines that make you think and argue and learn, interspersed with absorbing novels that don’t force you to think about anything except the next belly laugh.

Getting out of a rut that you my not have even realized you were in is another mental exercise. Take a different route to work. Buy a shirt in a color you would normally pass right by on the rack. Even figuring out what mental self-care means to you is a form of mental self-care! You have to engage your mind to figure out what works.

Your ‘call to action’: spend some time in the next couple of weeks experimenting with the concept of mental self-care. What stimulates you, makes you think, challenges your set ideas? What combination of working and resting your brain provides you with maximum mental self-care?

Radical Self-Care - Physical Aspects

Physical self-care seems self-explanatory, and it probably is, but it is also easily overlooked in a busy day. Yep, I said 'day' b/c taking care of ourselves needs to be a daily occurrence, not something we tend to only weekly or quarterly.

Here are some ways to think about taking daily physical care of yourself:

*Get at least 8 hours of sleep

*Eat your fruits & vegetables

*Drink plenty of water, before you feel thirsty

*Move your body in a way that is fun and feels good

*Rub good smelling lotion on your body

*While rubbing the lotion, tell you arms, legs, etc. how much you appreciate all they do for    you

*Do your Daily Energy Routine

Greetings, Extraordinary Women Who Take Such Good Care of Themselves!

Thank you again for participating in the Day of Radical Self Care. We had a blast, and we hope that you did, too.

Here are the links we promised to send you:

This blog, but of course, you are already here. The link is www.circleofextraordinarywomen. blogspot.com. Please post your Radical Self Care intentions in the comments. You can also post your wins, struggles and questions if you like.

Gary Craig's EFT site: www.emofree.com . There is a free manual you can download with EFT instructions.

Donna Eden's Energy Medicine site: www.innersource.net . You can also watch a video of Donna reviewing the Daily Energy Routine.

The more you practice EFT, the easier and quicker the process will be. We use it for acute symptoms (headaches, menstrual cramps, anxiety and such) as they occur. For more chronic things like nearsightedness, money issues, weight stuff, long term career goals, etc., Annie taps before meditating. After meditating, she goes straight into the Daily Energy Routine. Marcia taps in the shower. Find a time and place that work for you.

As with EFT, the more you do the energy routine, the more natural it becomes and the quicker it flows. It is easy to come home from a day like the Day of Radical Self-Care and feel good, but then forget to do the things that help you continue to feel that way. Don't let that happen to you! Jump right into these new habits while they're still fresh on your mind. And don't hesitate to contact us or to post on the blog if you have questions.

We will post on the blog about once a week. If you like, you can subscribe in the box to the left and each new post will show up in your email inbox. Isn't technology grand?

Take radical care of YOU!
Marcia and Annie

Step Through the Portal to Radical Self-Care

Creative, successful women are often pulled in many directions, with a never-ending list of interesting and obligatory things to do for work, family, friends and community. They may be taking care of aging parents as well as their own children and grandchildren when they are at the peak of their creativity and career. With all that on their plates, they crave quiet reflective time. They long for conversation on a deeper level. They need to play and laugh and renew their spirits in the company of other extraordinary women like themselves.

If you are such an extraordinary woman, you are cordially invited to a Day of Radical Self-Care on Saturday, May 2nd in the wonderful, nurturing environment of Migun TN (next to the Fresh Market in Farragut) from 9:30-4:00.

What will you get from The Day of Radical Self-Care?
Relaxed muscles
Renewed spirit
Re-energized vision for your life
New connections with like-minded and like-spirited women
New techniques for taking care of yourself
What will happen at The Day of Radical Self-Care?
You will explore what radical self-care really means and what keeps you from focusing that level of loving attention on yourself.
You will experience the wonderful, deeply relaxing Migun thermal massage beds. All you have to do is lie down on it and soak up the relaxing warmth and gentle massage.
You will experience Reiki, a simple, gentle form of energy healing
You will learn a technique to shift your emotional and mental state quickly
You will have a chance to do a creative project, just to play and express yourself
You will leave renewed, with a touchstone from the day to remind you to take radical care of yourself, and new skills to use to help you do that.

Here are the details:

Saturday, May 2nd

Gather from 9:30-10:00

The Circle opens at 10:00 and The Day of Radical Self-Care begins

A light lunch will be provided.

The Circle closes at 4:00, but you are welcome to stay around for a little while to sample more of the marvelous treats that Migun TN offers.

The fee for the Day is $108. To provide the best possible experience, there are limited spaces for the Day. Please register early.

Register by calling or emailing Annie Wills at 865-256-9388, annie@fullcirclecoaching.net or Marcia Walker at 865-521-7759, marcia@stepbystepcoaching.biz .