Adelle Brownlee Brewer

The last year of my life has been chalked full of goodbyes. I said goodbye to my mother, and others who transitioned. There were also goodbyes to dear friends who moved, changed direction, and many times I listened and grieved with others who said ‘goodbye’ to their careers, their stability, their livelihood. While it was a year of so much letting go, and so much grieving, every experience gave me an opportunity to reflect, express appreciation, and grow stronger in the essence of gratitude, and my belief in grace. 

This year? I’m dedicating it to the year of hellos.  As one of my practices, I sit on the throne (ha…yes, I did say that), and read the daily affirmation from Miracle Consciousness. It is a life practice that connects me to the miracle of each life I encounter, seeing them as pure light, pure love. Today’s affirmation: I choose peace. I choose love. I choose joy. It is a choice.                 
Perfect for my year of hellos. 

This was present in my in-box today, another perfect affirmation for my year of hellos: 

I release the belief that anything or anyone outside of me can prevent my good. I participate in the circulation of blessings by giving generously and knowing I will receive in abundance. I keep my thoughts on gratitude and trust the constant flow of good in my life. I forgive myself and others for past hurts and receive the wealth of a peaceful heart.

From my amazing friend and colleague Adam Barley, a master 5Rhythms teacher in England. His words resonate deeply with me… passing them on. And yes, Gabrielle’s books are genius. So much wisdom in her glorious life on earth. Adelle 

“To listen to the no-sound of the breath, expanding into the stillness and spaciousness that brings. 

To tune into the same consciousness we find when we dance – aware of the body, it’s instincts and hunches about timing, space, and pace.

To allow the free flow and creative expression of our feelings in and out of relationship with others, including more body-awareness and embodied communication with our friends, lovers, and enemies, remembering how to speak straight from the heart, and listen with everything we have. 

To totally engage in the moment to moment teachings and alchemy that the events of our lives are constantly giving us – whether in a brush with a stranger, an intimacy with our family, a conflict with a friend, or encounters with birth, death, sex, money, and creative endeavor. All the stuff of life has the potential for deep and profound personal evolution, both as healing and growth. Whether you dance daily at home, weekly at your local class, or in periodic high-octane blasts at workshops, a strong practice will create and strengthen pathways in your body-heart-mind that make this kind of engagement more readily available. Gabrielle Roth, the founder of this practice, communicated this kind of engagement with life so beautifully in all three of her books. (If you haven’t read them, just do it. They’re brilliant.) There’s something about movement practices that do this particularly well I think. Because they’re rooted in the body, they create pathways within us, new neural networks, that engage us with ourselves and each other in a very ‘whole’ way. Then off the dance floor those same pathways quite naturally get used to engage us in some mysterious way with life, allowing it to affect us more deeply and teach us more vibrantly, shaking us loose from our moorings of social convention, constantly nudging us awake. 

Nudge me awake. More please. Next step. I’m waking up again. A little more. Listen. Yes. Now. Take a breath. This is it. Let love in. Let myself show. Let life hurt me. Let life bless me. Let go, let go, let go. Let go of letting go and stick with something long enough for creation to happen. Let this be. Here we come.

All these things happen all the time. There is no need for a dance floor. No need to move in a way that would look weird whilst shopping for vegetables at the market. 

Now is the moment of power.” Adam Barley

Adam’s website: http://www.adambarley.com/

 As the word ‘Awareness’ entered my teaching this week, I was once again reminded of the power of being aware of what my body is saying. The power of ‘Awareness’, the principle we teach that has the catch phrase, ‘Paying attention to body sensations.’

When I woke up and looked at my computer, Deepak Chopra spoke to me this morning about Awareness. Powerful sage of our times, his words resonated:

“If you want to change your body, a change in awareness must come first. Awareness is where meaning happens. What you are unaware of won’t change.

If distorted energy is the root of all problems, it can be brought back to its normal, healthy state by accessing our inner intelligence–pure consciousness.

As your awareness changes, your energy changes, and then your body changes. The chain of events moves from the invisible realm to the visible on this path: AWARENESS – ENERGY – BODY

Awareness that is limited by fear, doubt, anger, lack, addiction, insecurity, and judgment is conditioned. Conditioned awareness does not heal the body, it merely repeats the patterns from the past. In everyone there’s a level of awareness that isn’t conditioned or lacking. This is your real self, full awareness which automatically masters.

When You Are Fully Aware:

Old conditioning keeps us from being free, because time and again we fall into old patterns that run too deep, while our new behavior, the one we wish we could have, has no groove to follow at all. This state of being trapped in old conditioning creates its own kind of awareness.

When Your Awareness Is Conditioned:

You can’t find your center, so impulses pull you this way and that

You aren’t familiar with a place of peace and silence, so there’s constant restlessness

Conflicting impulses fight against each other

Local disturbances disturb and distract you

You see the world from a contracted perspective

Your inner world is totally disorganized

There are three ways to break down old conditioning: reflection, contemplation, and meditation. Their power increases in that order. We all tend to use these words interchangeably, but they have separate implications.

Reflection — taking a second look at old habits, beliefs, and assumptions.

Contemplation — focusing on a thought until it expands as far as it can.

Meditation — finding the level of the mind that isn’t conditioned.

Consider the best use of these methods for yourself to maximize your access to full and unconditioned awareness.
The chain of events that ends in the body begins in consciousness. By moving stuck energy, the free flow of consciousness is restored, and that is enough to bring the body back into a healthy state.” ~ Deepak Chopra

Well…hmmm… today will be a contemplative, meditative day of reflection.

Sending love your way~~~ Adelle

Aligning Actions and Words… Madisyn Taylor

Words carry a lot of weight in this world, from how we say them to what we say with them, but it is through our actions that we bring things into being. This is what we mean when we say to one another that actions speak louder than words. In many cases, what we say doesn’t necessarily line up with what we are doing, and it is here that it becomes clear that it’s easier to talk about doing something than it is to actually do something. At the same time, it’s easy to keep doing something that we don’t necessarily acknowledge ourselves doing verbally. It’s good for all of us to take a look every once and a while to make sure there is alignment between what we say and what we do. 

For example, it’s easy to talk about our dreams, but it takes a lot more energy to take the many small steps that lead to bringing our dreams into reality. If all we ever do is talk about it, we begin to lose faith in ourselves because nothing changes on the external level. In this way, being all talk and no action is actually a form of self-sabotage. It’s also useful to examine our actions to see if, through them, we are following through on our words. For example, in expressing concern about the environment, we can look to make sure that we are taking the simple steps we can take to put that concern into action. 

It’s always helpful to observe what we talk about and who we say we are, and then to observe what we actually do in the world. Sometimes we realize our actions haven’t caught up with what we are saying, and at other times we see that we might change our words in a way that it will more adequately reflect what we do in the world. Either way, the more we align our words and our deeds, the clearer we are in expressing our truth in the world, and the more powerful we are in bringing it into reality.