December 18, 2024

PACE YOURSELF

When I was fresh to the world-at-large in my 20s, I somehow ended up making the leap from sheltered suburban life in the Northeast to West Hollywood. I had spent the first two decades of my life (at least from my limited perspective) within fairly homogeneous social spheres. Suddenly I found myself living off Melrose Ave and working in the corporate world. Life had gotten very colorful, at times uncomfortably so. Very diverse. I was surrounded constantly by people with whom I felt I had zero in common. I drained much of my energy attempting to understand how people could make choices so different from my own, at times judging them to the extreme. It was overwhelming to witness so many different lifestyle choices that made no “sense” to my very heady young self.

A number of internal shifts have unfolded in the years since. Primarily, I have been living my life in greater alignment with my truth and authentic voice, which has correspondingly magnetized people into my life who share many of my values. In line with this, I have come to trust much more implicitly in the divine timing and orchestration of all humans and opportunities that cross my path, recognizing the opportunity for growth and transformation available with each one.

A slower shift for me - a major portal for inner and external healing my entire life - has been my capacity for patience with other people. When I was less embodied and grounded, and lived primarily in my head, I barely had the facility to fully listen to another person. In conversation I often interjected, my mind always quick to fabricate what could be said next. My mental body was very frequently living in the anxiety spin of the future. Because being present did not feel safe to me off and on throughout my childhood, my internalized coping system was for my mind to work quickly to assess & read environments. I needed to constantly “digest” the energy of everything and everyone around me to judge my own perceived safety and respond quickly. This was so exhausting that I often chose solitude over a crowd, attaching “introvert” to my identity in efforts to both validate my loneliness and calm my nervous system.

My personal and professional work in recent years has focused on energetic sovereignty. If someone nearby is projecting anxiety and insecurity, that energy is their responsibility and not mine to absorb or transform on their behalf. I continue to do deep inner child and parts work to let my young, scared self within know that I do not need to consistently “read a room”. I can just be in a room, just be with other people. I can be a sensitive empath while also very consciously not absorbing energy that’s not mine, essentially holding safe space for myself without needing to constantly to do so for everyone else.

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The greatest gift we can give to another is our full attention. I have realized this through my life’s own trials and tribulations deeply enough to shift my capacity for patience and presence. When we are fully present, in our body, in one particularity of time and space (within boundaries around how we give and receive energy), we are able to hold space for another human being and their process. This allows each individual to be a mirror for each other and true witnessing and growth to occur. The more grateful I have felt in receiving presence and listening from others in my life, the more honored I have felt to be a listening safe space for them as well. Just being listened to by a dear one has been such a potent outlet for me to move my own energy, rather than get stuck in it.

Presence and patience are definitely deeply interwoven abilities. While I exist in my heart and body as well as my head these days, my mind still operates very quickly. Often this is manifested in my words to others, and an ungrounded expectation that others are operating at the same pace I am. My mind + my senses are highly observant, which is at times challenging because my emotional and mental wellbeing can be easily tipped off-balance by an unnecessary need to energetically discern any potential “threats” to my systems of order.

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When we are in intimate relationships, we need to “show up” with our full presence for a loved one whether we want to or not. We need to hold space, with as much grounding and compassion as possible, to their own processes, particularly how they move through the awareness and healing of their own wounds and the timing at which they do so. The patience required to navigate healthy communication, harmony, and ultimately deep growth in close relationships can be grating. I’m noticing the need to step out of myself and witness my mind not only still processing at lightspeed, but expecting those around me to do the same. Most saliently, I’m recognizing that every human processes - ie, mentally and emotionally digests their inner and outer world - at very different rates.

When two people are sharing the majority of their time and space with one another, witnessing each other’s methods of operating may be challenging. It took me some time to recognize how my impatience can still manifest with quick and potentially dismissive comments, as I energetically project my own pace of inner movement onto those around me. I am being pushed to take greater accountability in these moments, and allow a void of not-knowing-ness to exist as the pace of my loved one's inner movement and my own come into harmony. I recognize that when someone is pushed to process what’s moving within them faster than they are equipped for, fear and defensiveness are easily provoked.

Safe space is not just presence - it is not just attention and listening. It is not just patience - for ourselves and for others. Safe space is allowing another to be exactly where he or she is at in a given moment, without any thought, need, or desire for anything to be immediately different.

This may be anger, annoyance, grief, or anxiety - all energy that needs to be allowed to move through a person. This e-motion, energy-in-motion, may be in response to the present moment, but is likely very old stored emotional debris from the past, when the individual didn’t feel safe to release it. What may be most important is allowing the other the space, quiet, and stillness - without needing an immediate shift or resolution - to recognize what they are working through and consequently take energetic accountability, so that neither party in relationship is projecting or absorbing to or from the other.

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I am so touched and humbled by the opportunities I’ve been granted to hold space for many of you, both privately and within larger group containers. Moments of witnessing the transformation possible when many of you carve out the time and space to truly connect to yourselves and digest your inner and outer world inspire and teach me in so many ways.

I look forward to supporting you more. This Sunday I’ll be facilitating A Journey Through Breath & Sound at Mountain Heart in Taos, returning to offer favorite combined modalities of active breathwork and a deeply restorative Himalayan sound bath. I continue to offer Sound Medicine, Conscious Dialogue, and Breath + Sound private sessions in Taos and remotely to provide you spaciousness for your own growth and processing.

Here’s to everyone doing the work - at their own pace.

Much love,

Christie

December 4, 2024

A RETURN TO LOVE

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment - or unlearning - of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life…

…Fear is our shared lovelessness, our individual and collective hells. It’s a world that seems to press on us from within and without, giving constant false testimony to the meaningless of love. When fear is expressed we recognize it as anger, abuse, disease, pain, greed, addiction, selfishness, obsession, corruption, violence, and war.

Love is within us. It cannot be destroyed, but can only be hidden.

Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

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Moments of utter aloneness are perhaps the scariest and saddest times and spaces we as humans can sit with. We find ourselves in unfamiliar situations, “othered” from those around us, disconnected from those we love. Moments of fear and anxiety - often based on the past & projected onto the future - keep us in a bubble of separateness that seemingly no one can relate to. In all frankness, physical pain can seem surprisingly bearable in comparison to the suffering of disconnect.

In recent years, I’ve found myself able to discern quite rapidly when there is an energetic disconnect between myself and a close relation. Within this space of growing discernment, it has become quite evident that, in spaces of disconnect: 1) I am disconnected from myself and that is reflected back at me by a felt-sense of disconnect from my loved one, 2) my loved one is disconnected from his or herself and I am reflecting that back, or, the most ungrounding scenario, 3) neither of us is centered in our relationship with self and feeling that mirrored back exponentially.

Where is the line between reflecting and projecting? I’ve found myself musing recently.

Feeling separate from the world around you is parallel to feeling separate from the truth of your being. The truth of your being is love, self-love, that of an infant untainted by the world. If someone is not showing you love, they are undoubtedly are not showing it to themselves as well. As Marianne states it, fear is our shared lovelessness, our individual and collective hells. When it comes to intimate relationships, and the feelings of disconnect that arise, what do we trust? Do we give credit to the perception of fear as the truth of the moment, merely because existing in separateness can feel temporarily easier than coexisting in unity?

In relationships such as those with family and partners, trusting the capacity of love is not always an easy thing. Fear, particularly that arising from old triggered wounds or a neglected inner child, can feel like a drug that’s easy to cling to and hard to put down. Holding on to anger and grief to the point of distancing oneself socially can become addictive behavior, as our ego slips so unconsciously into the realm of victimhood. Sometimes we want our wounds to be so “right” that we get lost in the illusion of fear, and completely lose track of the truth that our partner/parent/child/friend deeply loves us, and is trying their personal best in the moment at hand. Can we unlearn the fear so that we may return to the truth of love?

Relationships are the most exquisite mirrors into the depths of our souls. It doesn’t take long, when sharing significant time and space with another, to have long buried pain surface. If you were young and felt that you needed to be more attractive to be fully seen and received by your parents, or were consistently accustomed to caregivers not showing up to meet your needs, it certainly won’t take much from your partner to feel like an ugly human who is unworthy of love and being abandoned once again. We can shift from the trusting container of loving intimacy to fabricating stories of personal inadequacy in the blink of an eye, potentially sabotaging not only our relationship with ourselves but with others as well. Isn’t it easier to adopt the false belief that our lover has cruel intentions toward us, rather than dig deeper into the awareness that we have not healed fundamental traumas from our childhood? What does it take to TRUST enough in the connection with another, in the knowing that love is all that is real, to be able to be held in tending to the fundamental wounds of separateness harbored within?

It takes a lot of patience, a lot of communication, a lot of vulnerability, I am learning. It takes work. It takes remembering what is true and what is not in moments of acknowledged ungrounding. Sometimes it can take alone time, silence, and stillness. Our minds believe what they want to believe, whatever is in accordance with the prevailing inner belief system. Committing to another human in a container of partnership is as much a commitment to trusting the foundation of love present as it is a commitment to personal growth. At its root, committing to oneself can at times be the most challenging feat there is. We grow attached to facets of an identity, of a lifestyle, of ways in which the world around us reflects who we are and who we are not. We are used to the buried parts of us staying buried, our wounds staying covered in band-aids so thick that they seemingly don’t exist. In safe containers, within which we trust the endless - even if at times unseen - flow of loving energy, the bandages can be removed, the wounds exposed.

Love can be a regenerative flow of energy. When we fully receive another’s love, we can allow it to unlock our own reservoir of self-love within.

We can admit to our loved one that we are actually in pain, and acknowledge that the root of this pain has yet to be determined. We can arise, fueled by the strength of our own vulnerability, questing to dive in deeper to resolve the illusion of our own perceived inadequacy. We can return to love, again and again, by remembering that only love is real. That projected disconnect is what leads to war and genocide, while united love only leads to peace and calm. We can receive an extended hand, a hug or a kiss, even when we feel unworthy, allowing another to help us remember what is real and what is not. We can reach out to another when he or she is in a dark place, reminding them that love is the light always shining within, and not taking their suffering personally. We can continue to prioritize our self-love above all else to set an example for our world around us, rewriting our stories and healing our wounds.

Cheers to all you brave souls doing the work,

Christie

November 18, 2024

CLEANING HOUSE

This year has been one of major release for me. I’ve gained so much insight and clarity in regards to the stuck energy in my system - and how much of it not only does not serve me, but is not mine to hold. It must go. Back into the earth, to source. Transmuted for the greatest good of all.

As cleansing and revitalizing it is to release, the clearing out of toxic energy can also be a wildly intense portal. The spiritual healing path can be a bit like Pandora’s box at times - the more we move forward and dive in to connect with our deepest self, the more old pathogenic shit is exposed to us. The path of transformation can be such a joyride at times, and at others, completely overwhelming, as if we’re drowning in our own struggle to love ourselves. I can feel like I’ve come so far, only to be floored by all of the wounds, old stories, and corresponding work I have yet to address. This path is definitely non-linear, and non-hierarchical.

So it has unfolded for me this year. These past few months, I have felt my being physically and energetically holding on to excess baggage. There’s been this inner knowing that I have the capacity to walk through this world more lightly - that old stuff in my system has just gotta go.

When my go-to juice and water fasts did not get me to the internal physical clean slate I craved, I needed to investigate more deeply every aspect of my energy field. My higher self guided me to finally sit down with my dear friend Amy, who focuses on supporting individuals holistically through regenerative integrative health. I’ve known of Amy’s radical-momentum health quest for years; divine timing leads me to sit with her now.

I’m determined to shake from me what is not of greatest service to my being. Often when we sit with a healer or health practitioner, whether they are a bodyworker or a ceremonial guide, part of us wants to hand over our work to the “human in charge” at the moment. Here’s the thing - expecting or holding any other individual accountable for transforming your energy from stuck to free is actually spiraling you backwards on your healing journey. When we show up with another in a space of support and expect to do no work, we are disenfranchising our soul from the opportunity to be more sovereign.

Others shifting your energy for you = victimization + codependency.

Taking full accountability for your own transformation + healing = empowerment and freedom.

Knowing all of this, I was still eager for some immediate external help as I sat down with Amy. Somewhat to my surprise, she intuits that the main root of inner fracturing I need to address is at the emotional level. She helps me determine that I haven’t felt safe since I was born and that I haven’t fully loved myself since the age of 8. Fuck. I thought I was further along than this, I felt to myself, as tears pooled in my eyes. Beyond any dietary changes, my immediate instructions were to rewrite my internal stories via some daily meditative psychological reversal practices. As we dove in deeper, it became clear to Amy that (once again) I have parasites in my body that need to be detoxed out of my system. Dark entities feeding off of inflammation and acidic terrain. Quite literally, as I dive more deeply into cleaning the house of my soul, I see how remnants of old fear-based stories are holding me back from freedom at every level.

I came out of the session with Amy feeling empowered on my journey forward. I already feel that my morning meditations, seated in the depths of the woods, are unclogging energetic & physical debris in my system. I’m reminded quite vividly that if I don’t love any one part of myself, self-love is not present for me. If I have any lingering mistrust that plays out in current spaces and relationships, I don’t feel safe entirely. With this in mind, I have found myself sharing even more intimate and vulnerable details of my adolescent upbringing with my partner. Recognizing, as tears flow old emotion out of my system, that I must allow myself to be continually witnessed to rewrite my stories of self-love and safety. The journey never ends, and it remains a conscious choice to remember that vulnerable moments are a sign of strength. In moments of deep healing portals, with the potential of major release and renewal, I may need to turn myself inside out to examine areas of old ingrained fear. It’s not always pretty what’s stored within, but the awareness that closer examination provides empowers me to cleanse and clear out the pathways for my own growth ahead.

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Meanwhile, I have been in a space of MAJOR purging in my house, having no trouble giving away and selling furniture, clothes, and even my old teaching resources to my community. If I’m not using it, not in love with it, it’s gone. To be loved by another. I am opening up spaces in every room in my house, for loving energy to flow through with greater ease and support. It’s a lot of work and not always easy to literally clean out the closets and investigate everything I have been holding onto, but wow does it feel good to be aware of my own home’s contents. I will only hold and tend to what supports the greatest alignment with my higher self, and from there all sentient beings around me. The rest has gotta go. I remain in process, and am forced to be patient with every step.

LET GO + LET FLOW.

Warmly,

Christie

PS: Amy Krynicki is amazing. Check out her work + book a virtual or in-person session now here.

NOVEMBER 3, 2024

HONOR YOUR TRANSITIONS

While teaching young children years ago, I witnessed the challenges they faced moving from one part of the day to the next. As one of their primary caretakers, it was paramount to prepare them for what was next, easing them perhaps from a space of big energy to one of quietude. In addition to daily routines of spaces and time, they needed a sense of what was coming to feel grounded and safe.

As adults we don’t have caretakers maintaining our schedules and establishing our routines. We don’t have any respected authority figure preparing us for whatever life changes may come next, easing us in and out of spaces new and unfamiliar. It is entirely our responsibility, as sovereign adults, to tend to our own health. We must honor our transitions.

Life changes can come suddenly, at times dramatically. My home life, intimate relationships, and work life have all been undergoing dramatic shifts. I have felt excitement throughout my moments of exerting energy into these changes, feeling wild expansion unfolding in multiple layers of my existence. In the days preceding the recent New Moon, the complexity and cumulation of my own transitions energetically took the rug out from under my feet. My body has been physically feeling the change in weather, the cold and dry of incoming winter, in ways that have been surprising me and slowing me down. Frankly, having the patience and self-compassion for my increased need for rest has not come easy. I am shifting my home space in subtle but major ways as I make space to share it with others for the first time in many years, which requires much-needed purging and reorganization. I am transitioning into new modes of work for two different businesses of my own that require quite a bit of behind-the-scenes effort and new skillsets. The evolution of my personal relationship is gifting me mirrors to old stories and self-critical thought patterns that no longer serve my growth.

A lot has to die to make way for the new. And the new is coming full-on, all at once. The felt-sense experience of moving through these transitions has me questioning who I am and at times losing track of the process of becoming who I want to be. I am noticing the moments of attachment to certain aspects of my identity that have already ceased to exist, and at times forgetting my own North Star - the guiding light of my own intention manifesting what is yet to come.

Slowing down may always be a wise solution, but sometimes it just doesn’t feel possible. I’m sure those of you who are self-employed (or parents) can relate to the challenges of maintaining boundaries between times of productivity and times of rest and pleasure. When to stop? When to go-go-go?

In my state of overwhelm this week, I felt myself emotionally numb and energetically disconnected, both from myself and dear ones in my life. Aspects of my being literally needed to shut down for me to slow down. Within this space of ungrounding, my mind swarmed with self-critical thoughts, doubts, and questionings about my current process. In actuality I lost track of the process I am moving within, as well as the progress that I’ve been making. I got stuck in the moment of doubt and lacking trust, and lost sight of the bigger picture - that all of my energy is flowing in hugely creative ways. That self-improvement is not something to be measured quantitatively, or by others. That each time another mirrors back at me my own perceived inadequacies, I have an opportunity to release toxic inner mental illusions based on old thoughts and patterns.

In yoga, the movements between each pose are as important as the poses themselves. And within each pose, our in and out breaths have the power to stretch us further where we need it, and release tension where we don’t. I am being forced to trust my heart, the truest core of who I am, to continue to carry on with my own life changes. And breathe through it all, honoring the temporary nature of all feelings and thoughts. It’s so easy to get stuck in a moment, and attach to stories of not-good-enough. Sometimes it feels like we actually need a slap in the face or a bucket of ice water dumped on our head to, quite literally, snap out of it. The only constant is change. All growth is change. We grow till we die. And just like the trees in my yard dropping gold and crimson leaves to preserve energy through the winter for Spring growth, we have to let expiring parts of us die away to make space for the next version of us to be birthed.

I am not always sure if I am doing my best. The most self-critical parts of me certainly question if I’m going in any direction at all. We have to pause and step back from the doings to truly witness ourselves with compassion. We must investigate and allow what is beneath our moments of disassociation and numbness, without labeling any of it as positive or negative. We also must take a break from our own moments of self-absorption and step into connection with others to get back on track. Maybe, when you’re feeling a bit lost and fragmented, don’t cancel your plans with your friends. Maybe, when you’re not feeling as jolly, allow yourself to be infected by the laughter and smiles of those who are. Maybe, as you begin to compare yourself to a close loved one who may seem “further along” than you in one way or another, you can choose to celebrate them instead…and in time recognize how this supports you, too.

When my thoughts swarm with tasks and unknowns, I can lose track of my guiding light. I forget the layers of expansion, personally and professionally, that I’ve been calling in throughout prior life chapters. I realize that to ground myself in the transitional place of being in process, I need to form new prayers to hold me as I move forward. As well as rest more, smile often, and be kinder to myself.

Like I’ve said, these changes really do ignite me with excitement. I’m now holding my private offerings at my beautiful studio space, Mountain Heart Collective in Ranchos de Taos. My latest private offering is called Conscious Dialogue and it’s been brewing within me for quite a while as an opportunity to support others in their personal alchemical process more deeply. I am co-hosting some beautiful New and Full Moon events with heart-opening Cacao medicine, integrative Sound Healing, and astrological discussion - check out the flyers below to join us! If you’re not in Taos, know that Conscious Dialogue + Breath & Sound Sessions are always available over zoom to reach you.

Have compassion for whatever space you’re in. When you notice your centering shift from your heart to your mind, carve out space for silence and stillness.

And remember - caring for yourself IS caring for those around you.

Much love,

Christie

October 18, 2024

FROM ME TO WE

We live in a culture where it can feel not only possible, but necessary, to exist on our own. Hire someone to help; outsource a task to get it done. Be alone to relax rather than step into an unknown social container with potential anxiety. Dive into our devices for false engagement and awareness of what the world is up to and perhaps intel on how we can be better, cooler, healthier, more beautiful individuals.

Frankly, life on the Isle of Me can feel easier than that on the Isle of We.

I’m the first to admit my love for solitude - most of my life I’ve adventured on my own. Always having dogs and a wildly active mind, as well as living on gorgeous outdoor terrain, has certainly supported my relationship with myself. I’m grateful for my years of fierce independence, even though, in retrospect, I easily view the dense stubbornness I upheld against letting others in. I held myself within a fairly rigid identity structure of “independent” and “introverted” to assuage and validate my vacillating alone-ness. I tended to my needs mostly on my own, which cemented the toxic idea that I didn’t need anybody else.

A major marker of my own growth in recent years has been a softened sense of self - an embodiment of deeper humility. My mother died very alone, largely in part to unhealed trauma that led to extreme isolation and estrangement. One of the many deep learnings as I processed her passing was that I didn’t want that to be me. That I want my life to be full, of life, of love, of humans, of interactivity and engagement, of shared experiences. That I wanted to receive and give companionship - deep mutual witnessing - and grow with others. Because really, what’s the point otherwise?

Humans, like herds of animals, are meant to evolve together. Coexistence ought not to be some bumper sticker ideal, but rather the tangible unity of all consciousness supporting each other. In some parts of the world still there exist indigenous villages where many grandmothers tend to many children, where women are honored during their monthly cycle, where the whole community rises in action to an individual’s illness, poverty, or homelessness. I don’t as yet have children but I know from my own witnessing that it truly does take a village to raise a child.

Many individuals in modern Western society have a hard time asking for help. There is so much conditioning around people-pleasing that false stories of shame and weakness can delude the minds of those who truly need to resource their wellbeing by calling in external support. We live and learn by example. The more that we soften into vulnerable spaces of connectivity by communicating our needs with compassion and honesty, the more others are inspired to do the same. The more we all help each other, the less we feel alone, and the more clear it becomes that support is available always, even from those we’ve never met. It feels good to help someone else out - actions of service, even just showing up to give your company, take us off of the Isle of Me.

The greatest transformational work lies in relationships. While those years of being single may cocoon you in a form of self-love you’d forgotten (perhaps while seeking it externally), at last the work of intimate romantic partnership may very well feel worth the time and energy. While the years of being childless may allow a type of freedom for spontaneous choices, relaxed limitations, and easy movement, the years of parenting (from all I’ve heard) provide a depth of regenerative energy exchange and profound love that likely exists nowhere else.

I began this year with a clear impulse to expand my community in all ways, and have never felt more held by a land and its people. I energized my prayers beyond community, calling in a partner that met me on every level and business opportunities that allow me to expand my offerings. Now it is mid-Fall and I am in the depths of nurturing both a profoundly synergistic intimate partnership and a new business venture in tandem with a co-owner. I am beginning to hold events with new relations, trusting that the work involved in collaborative production efforts is more than worth the beauty of the resulting offering.

I am feeling into how we can all hold each other, and how delicate this work can be. For those with whom we have a depth of trust established, the honesty and bravery of consistent communication can come much more easily. When love runs so deep between two individuals, giving and sacrificing comes with great ease, even excitement. When you are just getting to know someone and striving to stay on the same page with them as you create together, you may need to work on refining how you show up in the world. All of this is constructive, internally and externally. And extremely humbling.

Within community lies the word unity. A child comes to Earth within a family unit, the family unit exists within a community, and the community is connected to the land and all other sentient beings living in cooperation there. Caring for oneself is caring for others, caring for others is caring for oneself.

Admittedly I have been going a little too fast and at times feeling a bit depleted with the energy I am giving towards these new relationships and creative efforts. It takes an extra diligent level of discernment to be able to pause and tend to me - cultivating and maintaining balance while self-employed is no joke!

That being said, I am feeling so held, so nourished, and so connected - to self, to source, and to other. I am seeing and knowing myself more intimately via these relationships. I am recognizing more the areas where I can surrender control and where I may be limiting myself from continued expansion. I am trying to listen better, ask questions (and for support) more clearly, and apologize authentically.

The energy of interconnection is buzzing within and beyond me as the first snow dusts the mountains of the ski valley. I yearn to find balance within this new space, and stay open.

The divine in me honors the divine in you ✨

One love,

Christie

October 3, 2024

YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL

And so it is Fall. I’m grateful for the change of the seasons as it seemingly validates the depths of change occurring in my life. I’ve been experiencing moments of such deep bliss and gratitude that I’ve questioned the veracity of my own reality. I strive to go beyond fully accepting every aspect of my life right now - I want to give myself credit for authoring it as well.

It’s shocking at times how new moments - particularly in relationships - can illuminate a unique perspective on old stories. Maintaining such a balanced energy exchange within my relationships right now, I feel fueled throughout my days even on minimal sleep. A new brick-and-mortar healing space, a deeply blossoming and nourishing new partnership, and a continually redefined sense of self are all wildly holding me through an unexpected metamorphosis.

As I live fully into the beauty within my days, I recognize vividly how much I have ‘settled for less’ in the past. I’ve been challenged over the last few weeks to fully rest into my own shifted reality. How is my life so juicy, so full, so expansive? It’s easy to just want to thank others in my life for the unfolding shifts impacting my own experience - handing over all credit as if I am a passive participant in my own life. I have to pause, and sit with the recent chapters of my own evolution. I have spent decades draining my time and energy, investing in relationships with individuals and pursuits that truly did not meet me. These relationships, whether professional or personal, trained my mind to believe that I was not worthy of anything better. That I was not worthy of being fully seen, felt, received, heard, honored. Mentally and emotionally, I teetered a thin line between knowing that more was possible in my future - that I could dream big - and feeling stuck in the space of I don’t deserve more.

As I mentioned recently in my writing on prayer, I’ve had to push myself to go beyond what my mind knows to be true. To believe without reason or previous knowledge that, as I more deeply honor and value myself and all I have to offer, I will attract individuals and circumstances who will meet me at that level of respect & appreciation. It is only within this space of elevated perseverance that I can rewrite my own story. I want nothing more than to support others to do the same.

Look around you at your peers, your family, your loved ones. Who do you know who is settling for less? Who is thriving in a space of joy, ease, bliss, expansion? Are you being held in a soft and supportive way by those you rest in relationship with to grow, or being pushed beyond your edges in ways that feel unsafe and jarring to your heart and soul?

Are you listening to your emotional responses within each of your moments? What is your body telling you? Your soul, your own inner healer & teacher, may not actually be in support of how others or you are treating yourself. Your internal body system is actually pushing you in the direction of greater self-love.

You are worthy of living the life of your dreams. You are worthy of having it all, professionally and personally. Coexisting within a community that supports you as much as you support it. Thriving in a romantic partnership that meets you in shared values, with someone for whom supporting you every step of the way is easeful and organic. Business opportunities that fully honor your gifts and capacities, with outlets to shine out to the world who you are and what you have to offer. Gentle yet firm nudges from your relationships to grow and blossom toward your greatest potential. An undercurrent of love forming the foundation of all activity and relationships.

Over the past handful of years I have learned to notice - to bear witness without value judgment on what I am calling into my life. I use this to gain clarity about what I want, what serves me most, as well as to recognize my own creative power in authoring my own life. I see everyone as a teacher, and allow relationships to flow dynamically to celebrate and mirror my own growth. How does this individual, this relationship, my inner compass, teach me how to clarify more articulately how and with whom I want to live my life?

We grow until we die. The only constant is change. My life at the moment vividly pushes me to dream even bigger than I ever have. That I am worthy of having it all - for whatever I discern the meaning of that to be. Love is all that is real. All else is illusion. As we push through the illusions with grace, we navigate toward a world ruled by the heart rather than the mind. It’s a beautiful place to be.

Here’s to the courage to grow, to believe in yourself and your heart’s full potential.

You are limitless.

Love,

Christie

September 17, 2024

WHAT YOU SEEK IS SEEKING YOU

Dreaming is easy. Whether it’s within our sacred sleep time or in the mental realms of our waking hours, it doesn’t take much to envision spaces beyond our current reality. Spaces where tension and trauma do not exist, where our prayers of expansion and connection and reaching our greatest potential play out with ease. It is not hard to dream because the dream is not real. We are not placing the dream within our current energetic framework or literal life context. None of that exists in dreamland. The beauty of dreaming is that there are no limitations. Anything is possible.

I believe in the power of prayer. I believe that when we let go of perceived limitations to envision the future we long for, we are placing trust in the unknown, the yet-to-be. We are surrendering to forces unseen, to an awareness that some energetic force of creative power is listening to our longing.

We only know what we have experienced. Regardless of how patterns and routines have served our personal evolution, our habit life and tendencies become preferential just by their familiarity. We crave what we know, yet we dream - consciously or not - of all that we don’t. The creative power an individual can hold in prayer is belief. Belief that life can change, because he or she can change. Belief in the possibility of all that is not becoming all that is.

This past Friday I celebrated my 37th birthday. I am still reveling in the radiant beauty of the evening, of loved ones around the fire under the moon and the stars, of deep belly laughs and music as healing as medicine. At a certain point in the evening, a dear friend taking a video pulled me aside and commented on the scene being recorded: look at your life…you created this. In that moment of awakened presence & receptivity, I fell in love with my life in every way. I thought of a year earlier, when so many components of my current reality felt impossible. I felt into all I have been consciously calling into my life, passionately and with fervor. A year ago I was growing restless with my limitations, and begin to call in expansion on every level. I chose to believe that nothing is impossible, which has gone against all the logic and ration my mind contains. I continue to relinquish attachment to all I have ever known to make room for all that I am dreaming into being. It’s no small task, and very unfamiliar.

Here’s the thing about dreams becoming reality (some call this manifestation): as the surreal becomes real, you must be ready to receive all that is wildly unfamiliar. What happens when the present moment, and all the people and opportunities within it, reflect back a vibrant wellspring of love? What happens when all of the love that is coming towards us actually equates with the radical self-love we have been generating within? What happens when we are asked by life to be one with our dreams?

I am being pushed by loved ones and my life to receive. To trust that I am deeply worthy of love on all levels, and to feel that fully without needing to do anything. I haven’t known this before. I’ve never asked so clearly to be met by life, and here it is, meeting me full-on. I’m facing my own edges as I take time to let love in, and valuing the softness and patience of life as it allows me to do so. We can’t rush our healing, but we can certainly acknowledge the steps along the way. As we look around at the world, we can shift from jealousy & envy to inspiration & admiration, giving ourselves creative power and honoring others rather than comparing and diminishing ourselves for the work we have yet to do. We can live into our dreams most fully by recognizing that we are completely worthy of receiving them.

Yes, love others and be of service. This is beautiful. But until you recognize the value of all that YOU are, and take a break from doing & giving (especially if your goal is to please others), the life that you want may stay at arm’s length away.

Everything is always subject to change. Stay open. Release what you have known & accept possibility of all you have yet to experience. The only constant is change. If your desires are true and aligned with your heart, the universe will conspire with you to bring them your way. Set yourself free. Trust love. As the Sufi mystic Rumi wrote: What you seek is seeking you. If it’s not there yet, it’s on its way. Have patience, notice what demands your attention, and use discernment in your choices. Prepare yourself! It is within our creative power that we together create a more beautiful world. Start with yourself, and reach for the stars.

Here’s to letting love in,

Christie

photo credit: Leah Lipson @leah_lipson

September 8, 2024

HEARTS ON FIRE

What does it mean to be open?

It is so interesting how we humans can put ourselves in boxes of identity & individualism. Like little self-contained prisons of our own making. Wrapped up in who we think we are, and who we think we aren’t. Who we (think we) want to be perhaps cancelling out the possibilities of who we could be. The more we think we know, the more we actually thicken the veil of disconnection between ourselves and other humans, environments, and opportunities. To me, this spectrum between individualism & unity parallels the spectrum between victimhood & sovereignty. Until we recognize our own limitations, we can’t consciously move toward freedom. We must feel ourselves hitting our own edges to collapse the walls that make them.

I’m in a process of unknowing. Frankly, it’s blowing me away. I commenced my recent journey to Burning Man a few weeks ago with a continued intention to be more open, to expand and engage more deeply, and to witness myself more fully in how I am showing up in the world.

I listened to my inner knowing, my heart, my true north. I held safe space for myself and others, and found resonance in others who could do the same for me. I recognized moments when I had a clear choice to step into greater authorship of my own life experience. This wasn’t easy.

I danced till I was dizzy. I cried dusty tears.

I stopped questioning where my heart was taking me - particularly as it stretched my own previously-established limitations. I felt and witnessed beauty in more shapes and forms than I’d felt possible. I glimpsed more vividly my own eternal becoming through my process of letting go.

I found myself hugging burners I’d just met as they melted in my arms, sharing vividly their recent journeys and desires for self-care and deep shift as I asked how I could support them through an individual session. I watched them melt into healing rest as I played my bowls around and on them, despite the ceaseless stew of loud music and noise surrounding us.

I witnessed my own boundaries arise with grace and an inner strength that reminded me how easily love can erase fear when I stay aligned with my truth.

I’m still simmering in all of this as I land back in the mountains I am so grateful to call home. I pray that I integrate my experiences and transformed awareness and spread it out into my world here.

Thank you for being a witness.

-|-

EXCITING NEWS!

In one week, Mountain Heart Wellness Collective opens its doors to the Taos community. I am thrilled to begin offering weekly Breathwork & Sound Journeys (two separate classes) in addition to the private Sound, Energy, and Breathwork sessions I continue to facilitate out of my home. I’d love to have you join our Opening Day September 15th - please see the events page for all of our FREE offerings and my upcoming schedule!

Note: My FREE Breath + Sound Journey at Mountain Heart next Sunday will take the place of my usual Full Moon event.

In humility and grace,

Christie

August 15, 2024

INTERDEPENDENCE

We are all just walking each other home.

Ram Dass

Like a pack of wolves, we humans have not been created by source to be independent entities. We thrive in togetherness, in spaces of mutual support. We grow as we see a different facet of our own reflection in each of our relations. We are invited to transform our own energies when our wounds are activated by another, particularly those closest to us. We are taught how to communicate more clearly, and express our boundaries more saliently, by those we live amongst and share time and space with. We are gifted safe spaces amongst those who accept us unconditionally in the moment, to allow movement of all that needs to be fully witnessed and released. We are made aware of our own growth edges, time and time again, in community.

Community certainly begins within, as we cultivate our relationship with ourselves and unpack & transmute internalized, stuck energy in our own fields. We must be able to look at ourselves in our most vulnerable state - naked of all masks and perceived protection - before we can let others in to truly witness us. In order to be seen, we must show ourselves. How can anyone be held fully by the network of people around them, if not in every aspect of their truth & imperfections? How can we receive loving support if we don’t ask for it - or contrarily support those in need if they do not make open requests?

With over 8 billion (!) people in this world, it is absolutely not necessary to suffer (and thrive!) in silence. You have a right to take up space with the fullness of who you are, wherever you are. The flip side of that right is the capacity to compassionately receive those around you, wherever they are. I applaud those who ask for help - their strength has encouraged me to do the same. Equally do I admire and respect those who, within appropriate conditions, lay their own process out on the line for others. Honesty cultivates intimate connection. Intimate connection fosters inner security. Individual safety allows a person to let more and more people in, to their heart and their world. Allowing others to hold us through our trials and tribulations reminds us that we are not alone. We are one.

-|-

My heart grows more connected to my Taos community with the rising of each new day’s Sun.

From a space of gratitude and honoring of all of the transformative work happening here, I’m excited to announce the opening of Mountain Heart Wellness Collective this September!

Mountain Heart is a cooperative, membership-based space, where practitioners and clients alike support one-another with classes, events, and individual work within a fair-trade value system. This historic, light-filled space, next to Mountain Monk Coffee in Ranchos de Taos, will host a variety of movement and wellness classes weekly, including upcoming weekly Breathwork and Sound Journey classes held by yours truly. My business partner, Lacy, and I are currently seeking Wellness Practitioners & Movement-based Facilitators to guide weekly offerings. We are now opening memberships at very affordable daily, weekly, and annual rates to the community at large.

I lovingly welcome all of my Taos friends to sign up for our newsletter on our site, www.MountainHeartTaos.com, and encourage all interested in membership (whether as a facilitator or student) to contact us at MountainHeartTaos@gmail.com

We will open on September 15 - stay tuned for more!

-|-

I depart this morning on the road to Black Rock City, where I’ll witness myself and 70,000 other wild & free humans hold a very unique community in the desert. I appreciate that Burning Man’s guiding principles include not only Radical Self-Reliance, but also Radical Inclusion, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, and Participation. If you or your loved ones will be on the Playa, I’d love to support you! Check out my offerings below.

)'(

In love we trust!

Christie

August 1, 2024

THE SPEED OF LIFE

Return, like the salmon, to the place of your origin. Birth your moments only in love. You can root your life in fear and know the predictability of granite, the strength of marble and what security there is in limestone’s patient changing. Or you can root your life in love and join us in helping to ease the human world through the awesome changes of these times.

As the sun rises, the shadows become sharper and more clearly defined. As the energies of love grow stronger, the shadows of fear grow more visible than before. To some it may even appear that they have grown in number and in strength, but this is not so. What was hidden has simply become revealed - that it might be healed and brought to peace.

You are all god beings in potential with no reason not to become God beings in reality. Trust yourself, trust your natural response to each new situation. The action arising from within your heart is not going to be destructive, it is going to suggest the most creative path to walk in answer to your situation and your world. When you trust yourself, you are trusting in the Wisdom that designed you. This is how you trust in God. It is not an abstract thing.

You have only to make the choice to shift the center of your motivation from fear to love. Make the choice. Begin to identify the working of fear in your life and recognize it for what it is…Compared to the historical state in which fear has been the keeper of your power, fear’s true role is a small one indeed.

Too much thinking about oneself is the greatest thing that keeps human identity from being fully present, for when you are constantly self-reflecting you are too caught up in past and future to notice the presence around you. You are doubting your own power. You are not vibrating fast enough to channel the immense energies of creation because your attention is scattered and you are closed to the one moment where the love that would quicken you exists: the moment where you are.

Excerpts from Return of the Bird Tribes, Ken Carey

-|-

Chills rereading those words. Whewwweee.

This Summer has felt busy, juicy, simmering, cleansing, moving, fiery, loving, fast, fast, fast, full, full, full, expansive, prayerful, nourishing. I am only able to truly notice and honor the beauty way that is my life - the life that I am co-creating - with such reverence and gratitude because of presence. What is happening now, today, not what is happening next, tomorrow. Consciously making every choice in freedom. Negotiating my energetic exchange with myself, with others, with the universe. Stepping back whenever possible to acknowledge that all of the movement, the doings, the places and faces and events and spaces I’m showing up to, are all exactly what I am choosing. That all of my choices are energizing my greatest dreams. Giving myself credit for continually shifting my life. For being available to give and to receive such deep nourishment in service, in nature, in community, and with myself. For attracting relations and opportunities in alignment with my core self.

The less I exist within my own mind, the more present I am to the gifts that stand before me. I don’t have anything figured out. I don’t know how my doings & responsibilities will all actually fit within an upcoming day, or hour for that matter. I’m okay with that. The “how” is occupying such minimal mental space for me that I can find serenity within the now. For years I’d hear my mother’s wisdom, that worry energizes what we don’t want to happen, but not truly live it out. I worried. I was stressed. I had major anxiety about the what ifs and the fears of what lay ahead. I’d be stuck in my mental renderings of the past or the future. I was often preoccupied by thinking about myself and my image and some imagining of what the world might think of me which truly just reflected what I thought of me (what a headache!)

I don’t worry so much these days.

I TRUST. I am safe. I am protected. I am creating my life.

I’ve had moments recently when I’ve felt that if I blink Summer will be over and I’ll be putting my ski gear back on. So I stay awake. I witness it all. I say no when I need rest. I ask for help when I need it, and am honored that my relations do the same with me.

On the last Full Moon I not only held my Breath + Sound Circle in Taos, but also played a Sound Healing Performance for a group of people in one of Ra Paulette’s manmade caves. I actually had to take myself back there the other day (see photo above) to fully receive the space and give prayers and blessings of gratitude for all that is my life right now.

A month or so earlier, with my hands planted on the parched Earth, amongst cacti and sagebrush, Source spoke to me: Expect the unexpected. It’s going to get wild.

Thanks for being along for the ride with me.

I’ll be available in Taos and virtually next week, and then am away through early September. Find me on the playa, and stay tuned for more exciting updates. I love you!

Ciao bella,

Christie

Art credit: Darren Thomas Magee

July 1, 2024

CAN I GET A WITNESS?

The Summer before I began as a lead teacher, an experienced grades teacher gave me a tip:

The children need to feel seen, feel heard, and feel safe.

Out of everything three years of Waldorf teacher training instilled in me, these words stuck with me the most saliently as I set out to guide my first grade class on my own. This task was the biggest responsibility of my life thus far, and was considerably amplified by the global atmosphere of 2020.

Love is the most powerful force in the universe. I believe it’s the realest, truest, most supportive healing energy that exists. The love cultivated between my students and I was a force to be reckoned with. We held each other in implicit trust. I loved the heck out of those kids. But during my years with them, it grew vividly clear to me that they were not the only ones needing to feel seen, feel safe, and feel heard. The energy that they brought with them every morning to school, the blockages that limited them from being the freest young spiritual beings they could, many of their inner anger and fears and frustrations which they presented and projected onto each other and myself during our days together - so much of this felt beyond my scope of influence. In showing up to cultivate my garden of young ones, I needed to show up to support their families as well. Many of my students’ parents did not feel seen, heard, or safe - and/or historically had not in their lives. The best intentions for parenting notwithstanding, the wounds of these adults were deeply imprinted upon their children. When I transitioned away from the sphere of teaching young children, I felt a clear calling to work with adults.

-|-

My dharma, my path, my calling, my purpose, my drive, my dream, my life, my offerings - all remain centered around one personal ideal: to hold safe space for individuals to transform their energy, and from there heal themselves & achieve freedom. I do not call myself a healer. I do not proclaim to be solving anyone’s problems, or curing them of any imbalances. I am here to witness. I am here to listen. I am here to facilitate processes of growth & shift, using tools and methods that can empower an individual to heal him or herself.

When safe space exists between two individuals, neither has an agenda for the other. Neutrality, humility, presence, full attention, and listening are key practices. All of these serve to expand one’s capacity for compassion.

To witness another is to be fully present. This means that no part of you is busy being elsewhere (ie, your mind) in time and space. You are fully grounded in the moment, and completely receptive to what the other is presenting, sensorially & energetically. If someone is speaking to you, you are listening without other thought clogging your perception. If you are present enough, you are attending to whether responding to another’s words is truly supportive to them. The greatest gift you can give to another is your full attention.

Feeling fully seen and fully heard can lead to immense trust-building, imperative work for most humans on the planet as we walk our paths towards freedom and unity consciousness. When we are holding space for others, not wanting them to be any different than however they are in the moment, we allow them freedom. Freedom to be. Freedom to unwind. Freedom to relax, and settle. Freedom to come as they are - to not need to be any different. Freedom from proving oneself, from trying to gain favor or likeability. Freedom to express themselves authentically. Freedom to cry, to laugh, to scream, to sing, to be silent. Freedom from judgment. Freedom from projection. Freedom to unpack the fear, the grief, the anger, the joy, the laughter, the loneliness, the excitement - whatever lay within. Freedom to not need to be anything or anyone else.

Energy gets stuck in the body when we do not feel safe to allow it to move through us. Whether emotional, mental, physical, or spiritual - all energy must stay in motion. If we didn’t feel safe in our childhood (or anytime since then) to release emotions or words that arose within us in response to our environment, that energy is internalized. This unresolved energy cumulatively accrues within as layers of mistrust - a generalized lack of safety that stays with an individual until that energy is transformed. This lack of trust displays in spaces, in relationships, in certain settings, in abundance, in the universe, in the mysteries of the unknown that lay ahead. Most healing work revolves around building trust, from the inside-out.

A salve for these wounds can be found within the bare witnessing of another in everyday relationships, as well as that of wild, natural, outdoor environments. Sitting by a body of water, in the woods, or on the mountains, and allowing oneself to fully be wherever you’re at. Being with a friend who can just listen to you, receive you, see you, wherever you are at. The more we practice holding safe space for others, the better we get at holding safe space for ourselves.

For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be

Pink Floyd

Touch the world with your love!

With grace and compassion,

Christie

June 16, 2024

THE WILD UNKNOWN OF RELATIONSHIPS

Out here in the Land of Enchantment, one’s perception of time gets a little mushy. My two years in Taos feel like a decade of personal expansion and reinvention - so many shifts continuing to occur that I often need to carve spaciousness to keep up with myself. What do I need right now? What am I clear about? What do I need to sit with, to let simmer within me, a bit longer? What am I calling in?

As we approach the Solstice later this week, Summer is already feeling full-on. There is a flurry of activity within and without - sometimes all the moving parts feel like floating jigsaw pieces in my mind. Sometimes I feel minor overwhelm not knowing how or where each part may land. But I am recognizing that, in fact, I don’t need to know. Provided I take my own space to discern my needs (even if this is just a few moments of stillness and silence), I can stay present & grounded to assess the moment before me. If the external energies, possibilities, and responsibilities to be met before me cannot slow down, I know that I still can.

We humans love feeling a sense of control. There is a false sense of grounding in “knowing” what will happen each day in the week ahead, where one will be, and who one will be with. I am recognizing that the more that I release control of what’s happening now - let alone what’s happening next, the more I actually expand the possibilities of my entire life.

Recently, themes of surrender & non-attachment have been unfolding for me most saliently in the realms of relationships. I have organically let go of attaching any one person or relationship as having more or less value than another. Life is truly a fabulously colorful, non-linear, tapestry of interwoven personal connections. Each individual at any given moment rests at a particular point in their own growth process. When threads of the tapestry begin to weave a beautiful design, those individuals may be resonating energetically, learning lessons with and through each other. Sometimes, the lessons we learn via relationship are so deeply personal, and challenging, that we grow content with that person no longer being in our lives. Sometimes people leave our lives, and we don’t know why. (Other times we most certainly do.) But the truth remains the same - we are all mirrors for each other. The emotional rollercoasters that we ride through waves of ecstatic bliss, deep disappointment, anger, frustration, sadness, and joy in relation to our shared experiences are much more a reflection of our current state of being and processing than they are that of another’s.

When we hold onto emotions from our past, we not only clog up our own system energetically, but we also unconsciously limit others from growing with us. What do I trust more - the way that I felt in regard to someone 6 months or 5 years ago, or the way that I feel right now?

When it comes to relationships, our minds and our hearts can be at battle. I have experienced great pain and hurt, within romance and friendships, the responsibility for which I have often put onto the other rather than myself. I have friends who, over the years, continue to give their time and energy to maintaining an exchange with me - friends who are more present to their heart’s truth in a given moment than past realities of pain and suffering that their minds could be holding instead. These are individuals who have held space for me to grow, change, and reinvent myself. For me to get lost time and time again, so that I may continue to find myself. We don’t need to put each other in boxes of limitations, attaching past thoughts and feelings to names and faces forever in our internal inventory of self-protective mechanisms. As we set each other free - open each day to the possibility (probability!) of change and growth - we set ourselves free as well.

My ability to surrender, to release control, to let go of what “I know to be true” and open myself up to the unknown, requires less and less effort as I accept myself with more unconditional love in the present moment. My heart is open to the most wildly unexpected of possibilities. Old friends and new friends continue to surprise me. As I strive to thrive in freedom through my individual choices of self-love and compassion, I allow spaciousness for the world around me to do the same. You really never know what - or whom - is going to show up next.

Here’s an invitation to release your grip on life. To hold on a little less tightly to your perceptions of who others are - and remember that everyone is just showing you who you are in a given moment.

Let go of that lifeline of predictability. See what happens.

Thank you, friends,

Christie

June 2, 2024

BREAKING OPEN

Ain't nobody messin' with you but you
Your friends are getting most concerned
Loose with the truth, maybe its your fire
Baby, don't get burned*

🌹

I have spent the majority of my 36 years with a fortress built around my heart. After many decades of fear, hiding, playing small, shrinking away, social comparison, self-deprecation, and trust issues -these walls are crumbling down. My mind is tethering me less to illusions, and my heart has broken open. Only love is real. I trust this now.

We cannot get around what we have to go through. From the time we are born - even if our caregivers are extremely conscious & present - we are imprinted upon by them and our society. If one of your parents had deeply internalized fear & suffering that had yet to be alchemized into love & beauty, your child self absorbed this. Add to this any moment in your life when you felt unsafe to express yourself emotionally - rather than the emotion moving through you, it’s become stuck inside of you. For the average individual, this accumulates to a heavy load to carry. Stuck energy manifests as deep feelings of unsafety and mistrust, even (or especially) within the most intimate relationships.

These fortresses around our hearts calcify over time if we don’t attend to setting ourselves free. This is work, for sure, and not always comfortable. Internalized emotions, from decades or even several generations (or past lives) ago, must be released. There is a sense of deep personal accountability in recognizing what you have been holding, and letting it go.

I just returned from an 8-day Breathwork Retreat with my amazing teacher, David Elliott, in the mountains of New Mexico. Safe space was established and held by 40+ bravely vulnerable men and women, all showing up to open their hearts and clear the toxic shit that has been limiting them from living life to the fullest. Often we don’t even know what’s there to clear, and we must first gain clarity, “connecting the dots” as I call it, to feel into why we are the way we are. Confusion precedes clarity, and clarity empowers healing. Over a week straight of daily breathwork within this transformative container, and I feel lighter in every way possible. There were moments when I was crying so hard, feeling so many emotions at once. I did not always want to be witnessed. I let out probably the first real voluntary big scream in my life, and fell to my knees afterwards releasing more. All along, I was cocooned in compassionate support.

Safe space is held when the individual(s) with you have no agenda for you to change. Within safe space, you are accepted and loved, without judgment, exactly as you are in this moment.

The safe space I felt externally, day after day, was mirrored internally. The more I witnessed others confronting all that has kept them stuck in their relationships with themselves & their worlds, the more we all became one, and I allowed myself to be witnessed more deeply. Spirit flowed through me. As the walls around my heart crumbled down with each cathartic exhale, I felt more able to trust myself, listen to spirit, and surrender to the universe’s path laid out before me.

As Gabrielle Roth said,

Do you have the discipline to be a free spirit?

Be brave, dear souls, and have courage. You got this!

So much love,

Christie

*Do yourself a favor and give Althea a good listen right now 😉

photo credit: Hannah Rapp @wildernessencephotography

May 15, 2024

WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER

Nearly two years ago, deep in the waves of a plant medicine ceremony, Pillars of Light entered my mind as the name for my company. There is no one fixed definition as to what these words mean to me - my personal meaning exists in a state of flow relative to my own process.

Right now, Pillars of Light feels like the gorgeously interwoven Maypole pictured above. More and more since this Winter, I have felt this within me - a sense of inner grounding and stability that brings me back to source whenever I sway into fearful spaces. The ability to resource myself from within, which feels both new and powerful.

I just returned back to Taos from a weekend outside of Philadelphia with family and old friends. For the first time in perhaps my entire life, I felt truly free in this space, with these people. I felt the meaning of sovereignty.

What do you mean when you say ‘sovereignty’? A dear friend asked me on a wet and woodsy hike Sunday morning. Whew! I will try to share a bit of my response with you all. This work remains a humbling learning experience for me.

-|-

We have opportunities to see ourselves more clearly via our relationships with others. Everyone is a mirror, with every experience an opportunity for growth.

It is easy to acknowledge that we are only in control of ourselves, and not of anything external to us. What does this mean, though? Many individuals choose - whether consciously or subconsciously - to relegate themselves to the role of victim, battered by everyone else’s choices, but never truly looking at their own. Playing the victim is disempowering. Taking full ownership and accountability for every aspect of your being is the gateway to personal power.

We all know the feeling of being “triggered”: a deep wound from the far or recent past is inflamed by another’s actions, words, or choices toward you. Often we don’t realize what is happening - what is true - until after we have already projected our pain onto our relation, essentially an effort to pass a piece of our own trauma off to another. Here, you go heal this for me.Words and actions stewing in fear and emotional reactivity can volley back and forth between individuals, causing extreme tension, often the ruin of many (especially intimate) relations. Our adult relationships will continue to play out and reinforce our childhood wounds, until we take full responsibility to alchemize our pain into our joy.

It’s like the image of two young siblings, one pestering the other: the one experiencing “annoyance” can choose to have her experience dictated by the sibling, continuing to share space with him, or she can simply ignore him, leave the interaction, choose to do something different.

When we take accountability (holding so much compassion!) for ourselves, power dynamics in relationships can cease to exist. If we can embrace that royal “pause” to recognize that our emotional reaction to another actually has nothing to do with them - that the experience of being triggered is actually an invitation to heal - we are sovereign. In this way we are tending to ourselves and our relations without judgment or blame. We can investigate what is really being stirred up within us, and, if we feel safe in the relationship, communicate what is coming up.

This work takes a profound capacity to bear witness, to oneself and to others. We must slow down - our thoughts, our mouths, our adrenaline, our bodies - to be able to observe what is actually going on. What is actually happening here? Does the energy of pain/fear arising belong to me, or to another? Am I absorbing energy that is not mine?

Human beings, for the most part, are profoundly sensitive, some of us so much so that we walk through life like energetic sponges for all of those around us. Taking on his grief, her fear, their collective anger. Allowing another’s energy to shift our own. I know much about this, having done it most of my life. Truly, it’s been in the last year alone that I have begun to grasp that I have a choice when it comes to being affected by another’s actions. A healer I have worked with in depth calls this the Solar Plexus swing. You’re on a phone call with someone, perhaps a romantic interest or friend, feeling great, content and present from the inside-out. Unexpectedly, something she or he says seems to energetically punch you in the gut, swaying you completely off-center, perhaps even physically. In the blink of an eye, you’ve gone from grounded and calm to anxious and agitated. Is it possible that you have a choice about how you feel here? Is being a victim of the solar plexus swing, where the actions and choices of others are directly influencing your energetic state, freedom?

Freedom is power, but not power over others. Creative power. When we step into our power, resourcing ourselves internally to stay grounded and clear, we are able to author our present moment. As we take full ownership of ourselves, we gain greater capacity to manifest the life of our dreams. This freedom relies on no one but yourself. It is the power to choose. This is sovereignty.

I won’t say that this is the easy path. But I can speak from the heart that the work does get easier. As our awareness shifts, taking full accountability becomes more natural. My sense of joy, my own pillar of light, is less easily swayed by the words and actions of others.

Do you want to decide how you feel? Or would you rather relinquish that power to others? It’s up to you.

One love,

Christie

May 1, 2024

ALL SHALL BE WELL

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

It’s May!

My excitement & lust for life right now is palpable. Do you ever have those moments, experiences, days…when you feel blissful and all jazzed up for no apparent reason? This is true joy - sovereign joy. It’s a cup overflowing of abundant vitality that others can bask in and ripple out into the world. It’s more real than the oh-so-fleeting high we briefly soak up with the acquisition of a new object or potential romantic partner. I’m deeply grateful to notice and honor being in this place right now. I hope you are feeling this May buzz a bit too.

-|-

A wonderful yoga teacher and friend, Mary Beth La Rue, often has said in her classes: Right now, it’s like this. Transitioning into this season of major growth, rising energy, and substantive transformation, trust in the process & dedication to myself have been major themes of my current process. There’s a delicate balance to discern between the fast-paced masculine energies of do, do, do, and the slower feminine energies of surrender & receptivity. I’m recognizing - choosing to recognize - that everything external that occurs, all that is beyond my control, may actually be positive. That the universe really does have my back. I listen to what is happening - what is available to me right now? - and clear the way for inner acceptance to meet outer shifts. I stay fluid, while true to the course. When I wake up to an unpredicted snowstorm a few days after planting vegetable and flower babies in my very first New Mexico garden, I notice my resistance to the present moment. And then I laugh in surrender.

The more I objectively witness my energetic response to the present moment, the more I recognize that the universe is, actually, always working in my favor. What may seem like a setback is informative feedback that I can lean into creatively. As I relinquish attachment to future fantasies, I allow myself to bend, like red willows in the wind. Right now, it’s like this. When we slow down, take that pause, and quite simply allow our external reality to exist exactly as it is, we’re able to gradually interpret how shifts beyond our control may actually be supporting our own growth process and greatest potential. We are not victims of our lives. We have the power to choose.

Perhaps it’s from here that our own sovereign bliss is birthed.

Here’s to the moment,

Christie

PS ~ not feeling the May buzz right now? I’d love to support you with some transformational nourishment.

April 15, 2024

SPRING CLEANING

It’s amazing how attuned our beings are - at the most innate, untrained level - to exist in deep relationship with the planet. Spring cleaning is certainly not a man-made concept. As I speak, the acequias are gushing nonstop with snowmelt from the mountains, irrigating the verdant land around me. The wind whips through the valleys, moving with it decomposing winter debris. I am in the midst of a liver cleanse, doing my part to clean and refresh my inner terrain. As I continue to flush myself out, I am a bit taken aback by the manifestations of detox. Yesterday, it was a flurry of anger and frustration. I needed to shift to a space of objectivity to hold gratitude: my emotional release was in fact part of my own spring cleaning. Anger attaches to the liver - over time energy stuck here can lead to anxiety, depression, mood swings, and major sleep issues - with liver disease down the line. Happy to have some of that emotional debris leave my system.

Recently, as part of The Breathwork Collective, I facilitated a virtual breathwork journey in the theme of “Surrender & Release”. I led a meditation through different levels of our energy body as an exercise to clarify what we can consciously let go of. I find this practice deep & valuable, in meditation or contemplation, and wanted to share it with you. I invite you to scan each aspect of your being, and notice,

What am I carrying that is not of service to me? What can I release?

• Physical*: areas holding tension, density, muscular knots, congestion & mucous buildup, stiffness, stagnation

• Mental: unhealthy patterns repeatedly manifesting, toxic attractions + addictions to activities and substances, storylines used to justify natural emotions and negative self-talk, thoughts supporting an illusion of separateness

• Emotional: emotions that are not yours, which you have absorbed from others throughout your life; emotions that you can take ownership for, ones that you historically haven’t felt safe enough to express

SO MUCH energy gets stuck within us, limiting our flow, our health, our freedom. The mental and emotional “guck,” if not tended to via energetic and physical detox activities, manifest in physical symptoms. This is your being’s alarm system, telling you to wake up.

When I practice breathwork, I’m not always aware of what I’m moving. I consistently feel tears in my eyes after I remove my eye pillow, and perhaps for an hour or more afterwards will feel tingles still in my hands and mouth. I have no agenda nor attachment to results. As with my liver cleanse, I’m just grateful to move energy OUT. Clean & clear. And I always feel lighter afterwards. ✌️

*Note that the physical is the last level to manifest symptoms of blocked prana (life force), and there are subtle energy levels beyond the emotional, at the most foundational level of (dis)harmony.

April 2, 2024

KACHINA PRAYER

Blessings on my safety, and for safe space for my energy to sustain its natural flow of health.

Blessings on my ability to exist in full sovereignty, and to inspire and guide others to do the same.

Blessings on my ability to live in the heart, and show up in a space of compassion for all beings. 

Blessings on my awareness of who I truly am, at the soul level, and the clearing of all imprinting & trauma that clouds my perception of unity consciousness. 

Allow me to be a clear channel of service, in this body, in this lifetime, in this world. 

Blessings on all my relations. 

Mitakuye Oyasin. 

Thank you dear mountains for your potent support & healing portal, now and always, on this land I cherish and call home. 

This prayer was written for & inspired by my friend Alison Beckner, who has been curating a series of guest prayers throughout this year. Check her out here. Photo taken of me on Kachina Peak, Taos Ski Valley.

April 1, 2024

SURRENDER & RELEASE

Let

me be

like water.

This eclipse portal certainly is stirring things up. Recently, my emotions have been flowing off and on, like a hose spigot at the will of another’s hand. At times, it’s as if a rug has been pulled from under my feet, my inner stability and grounding temporarily shattered. Yearning for some sense of control, my mind grasps for places to attach, to weave stories, to understand. It can feel like the opposite of “progress” to non-judgmentally allow for deep release - the mistake of equating spiritual evolution with endless pleasure.

In my recent personal healing work, I’ve come to recognize the amount of energy I hold that is not mine - some of which I have been carrying for over three decades. Coming to a place of total energetic sovereignty has become a daily prayer. As a deeply sensitive empath, the pain and suffering of others has poured into my very open energetic field, particularly those closest to me, from a young age. At 36, I am no longer taking on anyone else’s wounds. I am not on this planet to be an energetic sponge. It is my responsibility to take full ownership of my own energetic field, and to not project onto others what is mine alone to heal. It is only in holding space for myself and my own process that I am able to hold space for others as they walk their respective healing path.

When a burst of tears begins to pour out, or anxious energy stirs from within, we often want to assign meaning, to justify why we are a certain way in a certain moment in time. Labeling can feel tidy & linear, but our personal growth and healing processes are anything but. Our mental landscape, for all of its beautiful capacities, can actually obscure our own shedding of what does not serve us. Like snowmelt flowing downstream crashing into a beaver dam, or blood pumping through clotted veins, we work to remove impediments to natural movement - to ease the flow by unblocking it's passage. Sometimes it can feel like a thin line between allowing emotions to flow through us & letting our emotions rule us.

Can we allow the mind to join forces with the heart, and bear witness with compassion? Can we know when take space from our relations, so as not to unnecessarily enmesh our processes with theirs? And can we surrender to the flow of life (no small task!), recognizing the beauty and value of energetic movement as part of our spiritual growth?

It has taken me a whirlwind of a week to realize that my prayer is being answered - that my emotional release may be the letting go of pain and trauma that was never mine to hold. The healing path is messy, inexplicable, and unpredictable. Sometimes I may stray from my commitment to embody compassion and sovereignty. I forgive myself. And stay the course.

From the heart,
Christie

March 1, 2024

BIRTHING ANEW

Spring is almost here.

The time of birthing, of newness, of warmth. Of expansion, longer days, and more movement. The ice layer is melting as the earth below it warms. The morning magpies and other winged ones seem to be waking up from their own slumber with amplified chatter.

Winter is a season of inwardness - of deep restoration and slowing down. But just as a chrysalis is encapsulating major growth and transformation, we all have been planting our own seeds during this time of inner nourishment. Consciously crafting our dreams, spinning webs of both protection and growth as we gently nourish our deeply personal aspirations. With Spring comes the great opening, not only of blossoms and butterflies, but of these seeds we have been cradling within.

What has been waiting to be birthed within you? What are you ready to bring manifest into your life and the external world? There is both vulnerability and excitement in this space of expression - let’s feel it all. 

With goals can come direction, which at times seems to project ahead like a linear arrow. While living life intentionally is one of my core values, I am learning recently how easy it is to get “stuck” to certain ways of being, fixations of how I need to be doing things. The threshold between self-love and austerity can be blurred as personal discipline swiftly becomes less than nourishing. If we become attached to one focus in life, how do we allow for shifting perspectives? For intuitive redirection? If one commits to daily physical activity, but is unable to sleep all night, what is more self-nurturing: pushing against the body’s energetic capacity, or allowing for rest and reprieve? Be kind to yourself. Compassion, spaciousness, and inner flexibility help me to stay on track, while also embracing shifts in the wind, and my own personal evolution. 

Here’s to our individual and collective renewal as we approach Spring. Sending love and warmth to all, and - always - an invitation to connect in whatever way is nourishing to you. 

Much love and deep gratitude,

Christie

February 16, 2024

SELF CHECK-IN

Where are you right now?

Are you in your body? Your mind? Your heart?

Every morning, I start my day hiking my puppy on a gorgeous trail near my house. Winding through the woods and crossing the creek, I sometimes find myself “leaving” myself and the moment completely. I am still in a conversation with a friend from the night before, or figuring out how to balance my wants and needs for the rest of my day. My practice, again and again, is to pause and come back - to my senses and my body.

I never want to take for granted the beauty of these mountains. When I “come back” to myself, I feel my muscles awakening and the cold air against my cheeks; I hear Indy chewing on snow and the spring water flowing, I see the tiny buds forming on low trees and the rocky peaks illuminated by a new day’s sun. I smile with gratitude.

Our minds are not our enemy - they are tools of deep wisdom and power that we must keep in balance.

When we are fully in our bodies, we are able to listen to what we need.

When we listen to our bodies, we are our best healer.

We are sovereign.

When we are not in our bodies, we lose accountability for our energy. When we are mentally or emotionally “elsewhere” in time and space, other people (and animals!) feel the absence. Energy stored in emotions and thoughts from the past, or regarding the future, often end up projected onto those present with us. We allow the unchangeable past and the unknown future to fracture connections to ourselves and those we love.

So we come back. Back home, back to our body, our whole beings, heart + mind + spirit. We breathe, and feel where our breath is in our body. We find moments of silence and stillness, to go inwards. We close our eyes and scan our physical bodies, listening for what our deepest needs are. We tune into our physical senses to get present.

Showing up for any self-healing practice is a commitment to oneself. I love witnessing the power of sovereign action with each individual that gives his or herself the 90 minute space to come to my table, actively breathe, and fully rest and receive. In an overstimulating world that prioritizes productivity, receiving is no easy task.

Come join me, in person or remotely. Carve out the space for yourself (or a loved one!) to come home to every aspect of your own being. The potency of the practice is yours to give, and yours to receive.

Here’s to the power of the pause, whenever you need it.

Much love and gratitude,

Christie