Is Coaching for You?

Do  you have thoughts like these?

Why do I get up in the morning?
I have everything I ever wanted and yet, this isn’t it.
Is this all there is?
Why do I feel trapped?
I feel like I am suffocating.  What is my work?   Where can I give who I am?
I am tired of being the lone ranger.  I want support.  I want relationships that feel like my tribe.

What does Morgana do as a coach?

I work with the big life questions. I guide people, perhaps like you, to drop decades of pain, shed mental prisons, and clean up the muck. I encourage you to move, to create momentum and to act on decisions and choices that support a life plan that is of your own making.  I support your direction toward freedom; what feels free to you.

What are my specialty areas?

• Chronic and Intermittent Depression resulting from beliefs and thoughts that de-press your natural guidance system.  Turning de-pression into ex-pression!
• Meltdowns. Every life has periods of upheaval, sometimes cataclysmic. Jobs disappear. Partners leave or are left. Career choices seem like mistakes.  Age cycles bring specific challenges like launching self into the world or reaching midlife with the “who am I?” questions.  Illness happens and changes life’s course.
• Unraveling the Serious Gene. Laughter and Play are essentials for making an adventure out of life choices rather than a blueprint of should’s and have to’s.   Every circumstance in our lives has the potential for humor.  I teach this. I live this. Besides, it is written in Cormythians (2:36)! :0)

Who are the people I coach?

People I coach tend to be seekers, questioners, and easily dissatisfied with a life marginally lived. They love freedom, BUT they feel stuck.  They often do not trust their own inner guidance AND they are undisciplined in living in the here and now.   Midlife women are particularly drawn to my practice because they feel restless, rebellious, and chafe against living the same life designed for their earlier years. They do ask “is this all there is?”  They yearn to live true to their nature. They yearn to create successful lifestyles for who they are now, economically, socially, and spiritually.

How do I get coached?

We talk weekly by phone for sixty minutes. Coaching by phone is focused on you. Your surroundings fade into the background. You will find the mobility and flexibility of telephone coaching an asset to a life on the move!  If we are not geographically challenged, in person sessions are an option.

So, ask the big question.  ”What is my high frequency life?” Not your mother’s or brother’s or your social network’s best guess, but a life shaped into one juicy, exciting and depth-filled experience made from the stuff of your deepest self!

People say:  “I need a wife.”
No.  You don’t.
You need a Coach.

Life is on the move, are YOU?

Email me and schedule your appointment today!

Check Out My Humor Web-Site too!

I do my best to see world events as a giant theatrical production somewhat like Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle, a 15 hour production modeled after ancient Greek dramas that follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and mythical creatures over the magic ring that “grants domination over the entire world”. (Wikipedia)

It helps me to see the folly of leading our lives based on the  belief that our cultural stories are true and unchangeable!

Such a theatrical “ring cycle”  is playing itself out in Washington DC right now, but rather than gods and heroes, we have the lowest common denominator in human thinking using numbers on fictitious ledgers representing “a balanced budget” as the golden ring that will return our country to its place of world power while the people be damned.

I have two conflicting points of view sailing around in my rational brain about our current circumstances.

One says that these world events are inevitable and must happen to dissolve a 5000 plus year human enterprise gone amuck.

Mad Cow

The other says: “what will it take for us to realize that “our core beliefs create the world in which we live”?  ( A radical thought to many, but a story that can empower enormous change for the better.) What will it take to understand that if we believe we are creatures of struggle, opposition, competition and survival of the fittest then that is exactly what we will be!

What will it take for us to realize that the dominant story of magic rings and fights over good guys and evil guys and prizes of power are stories that can be changed, indeed, must be changed and that we can do it.  We can do it by asking different questions.

If we were to accept as a working principle (forget belief, it is too confining) that we are cooperative, collaborative, “all in this together” beings, living in the same global neighborhood, how would we structure everything?  How would we handle our resources? Our relationships?  How would we restructure our economics so that all “had enough”, not excess, but enough to experience a life of well -being (for those that choose it)?

We might decide that consciousness can be changed for the better by adopting a “function (behavior) follows form” management style creating family constellations, neighborhoods, organizations, corporations and governments structured “for the good of the whole of us”, collaborative, cooperative, and absent oppositional styles that only create  stalemates.

This would throw us into a new story, a “fake it til you make it” adventure of creating all our institutions and relationships anew,  based on the COMMON good,  the COMMON wealth and using COMMON sense.

We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For!

What would such an adventure entail?  Well, it might start by adopting the concept of “forgiving debt”, a concept used in pre-Christian, Christian, and Jewish traditions in bygone millennia when all incurred debt was forgiven in a Jubilee occurring every 50 years.

The attitude was:  “let’s start over!”,  let’s clean house,  lighten up the energy, just let it all go, cut our losses,  and start anew!

Why not?   Who says we have to pay it all back? The old story thrives on this ball and chain economic arrangement.  It is only radical if we believe we are slaves to the burdensome story we have been living on planet earth for millennia. Sometimes you just have to walk away and let a new phoenix arise from the ashes of what is outworn and unhelpful to LIFE!

We really can chuck it out the door, chuck it out of our consciousness!

Does this terrify you?  Of course it does, me too,  but staying mired in this muck is a dying way of life anyway—look around you!

I say pull the plug on the respirator and instead of doom and gloom, get busy doing the Alice in Wonderland thing of “believing in six impossible things before breakfast” and then watch our human energy, hope, ingenuity, and initiative soar!

The “too serious gene” has us by the you know whats and for what?”  So, that we can continue to believe  in wizards (more like boogey men) behind curtains and gods in the sky predetermining our fate!

How sad to plead with decrepit political entities to “save us”, shore up the ship and keep us on this treadmill of fear-based living!  Enough already!

You think this is nonsense?  You think this is wishful thinking? How will any of us know unless one by one and then joined together we walk away, leave the coliseum, stop supporting the gladiators in our national Washington coliseum? (see blog November 5, 2010)

Leave the Coliseum

We only lose when we “wait and see” and allow politics to remain the feeble and useless tool for managing our collective good.

I say,  let’s take to the streets to dance and laugh at the absurdities we have allowed to co-opt our lives!  Pull the plug on salaries in Washington and see what happens.

Are we so “spellbound”, so “in trance”,  that we really believe we cannot walk away from conflict, competition and greed in favor of choosing to base every individual action we now take on the COMMON GOOD inside ourselves, in our homes, offices, schools, organizations, governments, and planet?

It just takes one foot in front of the other, making decisions based on a NEW and life affirming story, and cutting off the life blood to any and all laborious “ring cycles” that keep us locked into stress and suffering.

Let’s declare a Jubilee, forgive debt, forgive ourselves for thinking we need to be trapped and instead take action based on a new story that demonstrates we have the guts, imagination, and collective will to create a culture of care right here and right now and then let that spread as a global epidemic!

New Year- New Beginnings- New You

The New Year is often the time when I hear that universal lament:  “if I only knew my purpose, my life would have direction and meaning.”

Well, that’s a heady topic and I suggest you don’t just take a day to sort this out.  Take a month.  Realize that all of January can be a prep time for your coming year.

So, here’s my take and it’s good news indeed! Your purpose is simply to lighten up. I mean it.  Your purpose is to continually find ways to raise your vibratory level of being; to really get that you are energy and that you decide in each moment whether you live at a high or low frequency.  It matters.

The quality of your life and your emotional and physical health depend upon it.  Waking up with a “let me at this day” feeling of exuberance depends on it.

In the 2010 film, Alice in Wonderland, Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter says to Alice: “You are not as muchly as you were before. You have lost your muchness!”

Muchness enlightens us, animates us, and it’s easy to lose when we deplete our vibrant energetic selves and default to autopilot, considering seriousness to be a genetic law of nature! The Mad Hatter and his twin, the Holy Hapless Fool, remind us that chronic seriousness is a sure- fire prescription for ”dead man walking”.

This year, I encourage you to reclaim your muchness by turning your world upside down and backwards, as is the way of the Fool.  That is, lead your life through the higher frequencies of laughter and play, and relegate your rational mind to second in command.

Now, that’s a frightening thought to some, suggesting states of mayhem and unbridled merriment. “What about production?  What about the bottom-line?  What about spiritual advancement?” you say.   Well, take a leap and take a risk!  You will find that muchness is necessary to living life full out.  Muchness is found betwixt and between what we call reality; the place where laughter and play reside.  You will feel far more energized, clearer, and productive living your life through the lens of laughter!

As Lily Tomlin’s bag lady/fool says:

“I made some studies and reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.  I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle I found it too confining.  Now since I put reality on the back burner, my days are jam-packed and fun-filled!”

So I offer you a gateway to more play (which always leads to more laughter) …..

• Create a Bubble Station on your deck/porch/yard. Become a whimsy-maker hurling giant bubbles into the air.  Add to each bubble something you want to release.  Meditative peaceful merriment will follow.
• Adopt a Red Nose of Courage. Keep one in your desk, car, and on your person.  Caught in traffic?  Slip it on and wave to the drivers around you or nix the “all- too-serious gene” at the next staff/”bored” meeting.  Collude with your colleagues to send a red nose signal when a meeting becomes tense, loses its thread or just needs a break.  Forget words, use the nose!
• Practice the Half-Smile (slightly upturned lips and relaxed face) EVERYWHERE you go.  It literally changes your brain to the “all is well” feeling.  Try it.  It works.

(Email me for wand, bubble, and nose suggestions)

So, all in all, it’s a grand idea to check your muchness on a regular basis and if you find yourself feeling: “I was much more muchly before” then it’s time for the healing power of laughter and play to dominate your year, mad as a Hatter and as muchly as a Fool.

Live Life Full Out In 2011!

Guest Blogger:   Robin Sierra /  Image selection:  Yours Truly, Morgana!

I

Every year, Florence Foster Jenkins gave a private opera recital at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York City . She designed ornate costumes, at least three for every performance, including the Angel of Inspiration, resplendent with full feathered wings.

She also sang wildly out of tune, but this never stopped her from pursuing her vision of becoming an opera diva, nor did it prevent people from flocking to her performances.

She was like a character in a Marx Brothers movie; her complete lack of talent combined with her full-blown enthusiasm and extravagance became her glory, and tickets for the turn-of-the-century recitals were harder to come by than “a box at the Met on Caruso night,” as David Weeks describes in his book, “Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness.”  Her operatic career culminated in selling out Carnegie Hall at the age of 76.  She died a month later.

Eccentric in Training

Jenkins wrote her own epitaph: “Some people say I cannot sing, but no one can say I did not sing.”

There are people like Florence who have managed to retain their individuality in a rigid world, people who have not stuffed themselves into the tightly restrictive harness prescribed for us by our culture and families.  Some of these people we call eccentrics. Eccentrics have a reputation for being unhinged, but actually, they are often more courageous than the rest of us, and have something valuable to teach.

Two predominant traits of eccentrics are that they don’t give a damn what others think and they have an unwavering belief in themselves. They are willing to let their strangeness show and even amplify it. In the field of astronomy, eccentric means deviating from a circular form. These undaunted oddballs can inspire us to break out of whatever circles have been drawn around us, or that we have drawn around ourselves.

Your Inner Eccentric

Dr. Weeks says, “I think that we are all stranger than we think we are, and we try to control that, because we’re scared of what we’ll find in there.”  What we find may jostle a lifetime of habits and relationships.  It may require us to re-examine decisions and take risks. It may cause us to be ridiculed or not liked by others. But the reward we get  from easing that control is the liberating experience of a life fully lived, and the relief we feel when we let ourselves out of the bag.

I knew a man who failing as a farmer

Burned down his farmhouse for the fire insurance

and spent the proceeds on a telescope

to satisfy a lifelong curiosity

about our place among the infinities

Robert Frost

We often wait for our farms to fail rather than burning them down ourselves, unwilling to take the risk to be who we really are. Some people find it easier to break out and be themselves than others. Some people spend an entire lifetime holding themselves back or living someone else’s dream. The farmer in Frost’s poem initially didn’t believe it was possible to spend his time pondering stars.  It’s too risky for most people to even consider following their passions. What would the neighbors say about the farmer turned astronomer?  Probably that he was a farmer turned lunatic.

Trudy

Lily Tomlin’s character Trudy, an eccentric bag lady in the play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, says it well: “I never could have done stuff like that when I was in my right mind. I’d be worried people would think I was crazy.  When I think of the fun I missed, I try not to be bitter.” How much fun and passion do we miss because we are afraid of, and therefore confined by, what others may think of us?  How much does the fear of being the outcast bag lady or the lunatic farmer keep us from taking risks to be ourselves?

We try to please those around us, even when they’re not around us any longer. Other people’s voices become internalized, and keep us from acting spontaneously, originally, creatively. If we’re living our lives imagining what others want from us, where is our real life?  Life becomes a phantom of itself. This is what’s crazy. Trudy goes on: “I made some studies, and reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it. I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle I found it too confining.”

Dr. Weeks found that eccentrics were healthier and happier than the rest of us, and attributes this to the fact that because they don’t feel the need to conform, they experience lower levels of stress, which causes their immune systems to function more efficiently, and they are therefore healthier. And when people are doing what they want to do, without worrying  too much about social repercussions, they are more joyful.

Nuns at Play

The point is not to emulate eccentrics just for the sake of being different. If you don’t feel a genuine calling to sing opera, it becomes an empty gesture, a sham. Whatever you do must come from a true place within. It’s  about being brave enough to reveal your particular authentic self. Eccentricity is a continuum. On one end is Florence Jenkins, on the other is a person screwing up the courage to ask a waiter to return the cold fettucini. Both matter.

You may consider practicing your own “strangeness” in small steps, remembering that what is a small step for one person may be an enormous one for another.

“Dare to do silly things” suggests author Ray Bradbury.  Wear goofy underwear to your next business meeting.  Thinking about your underwear may inspire a subversive smile on your face that may lead to your next creative act.  Sprinkle chocolate on your mashed potatoes, walk around backwards for a day, decorate your car with streamers and balloons, surprise someone with a birthday party when it’s not their birthday, put up Christmas lights in your living room in July.

You can use these things to prime the pump and coax out your unconventional self, which may give you the courage to step out of your prescribed circle, making more substantial changes, like executing a course correction in your career, bringing more honesty into your relationships, letting go of old patterns that no longer serve you, launching a new venture or simply spinning out of the orbit of other people’s expectations.

Robin Sierra is an artist, Bereavement Counselor and Creativity Consultant who has been guiding people through personal transformation for over 30 years.  You can see her artwork and more writings at www.rsierra.net.  Contact: rsierra@rsierra.net

Sooooo, I am lying face down on the table relishing my weekly scenar treatment where my body talks to my body and sorts itself out.  Penny, the practitioner, says:  ”So what do you think about the election?”

I immediately do the “blowfish puff up thing”, ready to give my best pontification on the latest, and then, sanity prevails.  I hear myself say: “Well, I have decided to leave the coliseum.” My body immediately  relaxes and I laugh, as so often happens when a truth falls from my lips.  So, I rewind and muse about what I just said:

"I HAVE DECIDED TO LEAVE THE COLISEUM!"

I have this stunning picture of Congress as opposing teams of gladiators running around screaming at each other, whacking away with swords, blood flying and when enough of that has gone on to please the crowd, they march off. Steeped in self satisfaction, they revel in a job well done, backslapping team members, relishing the good pay a gladiator gets, and believing that opposition has once again saved the day.

Well, NO, opposition does not save the day! Opposition gets stuck in opposites, and opposites get stuck in polarities and polarities cause paralysis.  Nothing really changes because everyone continues in the same loop of illusion that truly believes that two parties in opposition can accomplish anything.  The truth is that two parties in opposition just stay stuck in opposition. Politics in a nutshell….

The absolute beauty of lying on a table in a half sleep is that my civilized mind was more or less off duty allowing the sanest solution to this very tiresome political masquerade to pop out, so simply and so brilliantly.  I can choose to leave the coliseum.  We can all choose to leave the coliseum!

Now as a coach I am compelled to milk this metaphor for all it’s worth.

Where  in your life are you convinced that opposition is necessary or the norm and so you suit up as a gladiator? Is it in your job? Your primary relationship?  At bored meetings?  Is it when involved in legal stuff or health care stuff or religious stuff?   Might you think that a contentious atmosphere, a good skirmish frought with antagonism and opposition is really proof that you are doing something.  Proof that you are a professional?  Proof that you are doing your job?  Proof that you have power?  Proof that you are right?

So, what if opposition, debate, and party politics are dinosaurs–so tired, so weary, so dead that there is nothing to be done but pull the plug. What if that same opposition and debate and politics goes on inside of each of us and depletes us and makes us weary, literally gives us chronic fatigue.

Well,  your coach says “enough is enough”!  If you’re tired or disillusioned or checking out, then leave the coliseum. The game is over when the gladiators walk.  Suit up for a latte,  sit down and try silence.  Who says conflict, opposition, and two of anything with opposing views is the way to any sort of truth for yourself or for the country.

Morgana Leaves the Coliseum!

Leave the coliseum wherever you’ve got one going in your life and give your armor to Good-will!

Now, there’s a concept.

OH, and bless Rumi who said:

“Beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field.  I will meet you there.”

(“no armor allowed”)  Well, I said that actually!

Since I believe that what is going on outside ourselves is a direct reflection of what is going on inside ourselves,  I have asked myself where am I inviting pollution into my mind and spewing it out into the world?

These habits of harm are just that, habits, mindless ways of thinking and behaving in our every day.   They embody thoughts, comments, and actions continuously spewed out into the “common air” like the oil spewing out into the “common home” of the ocean.

As we are finding in the Gulf, the clean-up is not so easy. It takes a conscious effort and a consistent practice to transform harm.  It often feels like trying to change the direction of a huge ocean liner.

Where to begin?

Put  your attention on habits of health.  Rather than obsessing on the pollution, shift attention to cultivating a new life affirming garden in your mind; a committed focus  to the “greening” of your mind, your behavior, and our planet.

In choosing  ”the greening”,  we choose a shift, a shift away from habits of harm.  I recommend a shift tohabits of humor.

One master at transforming the utterly horrendous is Mel Brooks who wrote “Springtime for Hitler” in the musical, The Producers.  One can only laugh and deeply emulate someone who can take something so grotesque and shift us into a brain swelling happy place that is so opposite the expected response.

Another is thebreast scarves image posted on this blog,  a “habit of humor” response to breast cancer.

The thing about these humor shifts is that they change our brain by stimulating a particularly luscious part of the brain that triggers a feel good place,  a sense of “we can handle this”,  a sense of positivity that is empowering!

Habits of humor trigger laughter and laughter is power, an engine for fueling change!  Laughter shifts people, it shifts moods, it shifts a feeling of hopelessness.   Use humor and laughter to fuel you, to embolden you.  It is far more disarming and unpredictably effective than anger and blame.

The fact is we get nowhere by staying in the muck, seeking the muck, speaking the muck, or seeing the muck!

So, where to begin?

• Irreverence is a good start followed  by finding the absurdity in the “serious”.
• Think in terms of a humor plan of action that you consciously cultivate so that when situations arise that are all too serious, you can use the opportunity to practice habits of humor.
• I put on a clown red nose when stuck in absurdly long traffic jams on interstates (which seem to be caused mostly by people gawking at something that is no longer happening! ).  I wave to the neighboring cars on my right and left, smiling through the big red schnoz!  It changes my brain chemistry and that of  the drivers, some of them, anyway.
• Sometimes I launch into silly poetry like “ladies and gents and dogs without fleas” (scroll down the linked page) when conversations become tedious or negative to the point of sending my energy down the toilet.   Silly poems are a great way to scramble the brain into thinking differently and delighting your listener as you go.
• You might really up the ante and practice “the red nose of courage” which is doing something utterly courageous to shift the prevailing mood or mindset.   Take a lesson from the laughing guy on the metro and then find a buddy and shake up the next line you find yourself standing  in for what seems like hours.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jedd2FiZTqM

We may not be able to personally clean up the oil spill, but we can for dam sure clean up the inner oil spill and cultivate our own inner greening. The magic is that this inner clean-up shifts the thinking that creates the soiling of our outer home.  Magic is afoot!   Never underestimate the power of habits of humor!

Stressed on Starbuck's?

So, we humans have two complementary aspects to our nervous system: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.

Our sympathetic, known as the “fight or flight” component, ideally keeps us safe from mammoths marauding through our real estate and unfriendly tribes seeking to co-opt our uteri (is that a word?) to fatten the tribe’s population.

In our culture, however, we have turned this sympathetic function into an over-adrenalized lifestyle that equates excitement and stimulation with a life well lived.

I call this the “Starbuck State of Mind” or the caffeine driven rush to “DO”, at all costs.

In small doses, the sympathetics are a valuable asset to staying alive and well, but as a dominant way of moving in the world, we are left with sleepless nights, mind- numbing fatigue, sexless sex, and lives designed in a cuisinart.  Sort of a chronic PMS state of mind!

Parasympathetic Mind

The balance resides in cultivating the other aspect of our wiring, the parasympathetic mind.  It is in cultivating the 4 R’s of PSM that we flourish.

We feel creative.  We feel that “let me at this day “ feeling. Inspirations well up.  Visionary thinking appears.  Deep wells of loving connection flood the numb spots.

Just think about the last really good massage you had or moments after deeply focused love- making and you will remember that you felt still, open, and connected, euphoric even, with an “all is right with the world” mind state.  That is a parasympathetic state of mind!

The “gift of the 4 R’s” is the reward for cultivating PSM:  REST, RELAX, RELEASE, & REPAIR. When we cultivate experiences that evoke the parasympathetics, we receive bliss  free of charge and the more we conduct our lives from there, the deeper the rest, the relax, the release and the repair for whatever in our psyche (soul) or body needs repair.

Cultivating PSM in our lives begins with 4 questions asked lightly and gently of ourselves:

• What wants to rest?
• What wants to relax?
• What wants to release?
• What wants to repair?

Sit easily with these questions.  Let the answers for TODAY bubble up,  no efforting here.  You are listening to a deeper truth rather than your mental myths.  Be patient.  Answers will come.

You have begun cultivating parasympathetic mind. Think of it as a seed bed that you cultivate.  It is a garden requiring space and aeration and tending so that creativity, deep feeling, and deep rest can bloom.

Here are a few experiences that have helped me in my own cultivation.

• Go to Nature, it is your natural habitat and your true homeplace! Sit with a tree,  your plants or near your bird feeder—any aspect of Nature.  Go early in the AM before our planet revs up for its day or go at dusk when activity is waning.  Breathe deeply as you say to yourself:  “I live from my soul’s pleasure.”  “Circumstances in my life come and go like the weather.”  “My feelings come and go like the weather.”  “Doors open.  Doors close.  I am safe.  It is only change.”
• Make up your own phrases that create feelings of ease, release and comfort.  Cultivate “habits of healing” replacing learned “habits of harm”.
• Discover music, movies, and animal relationships that move you, not stimulate you, but move you, evoking tears that well up and spillover, a deepening of your breath, and inspiring felt moments of release; delicious liberating release like a 3 day orgasm!
• Buy a giant bubble wand and bubbles. Go to your deck, yard or to the water and wave bubbles madly into the air.  Watch them float skyward, catching each breeze, or bouncing on the water’s surface.
• Add words of love for yourself to each bubble. “I am well.”  “I am kind and gentle in my thoughts.”  “I am tender with myself.”  “Every day above ground is a good day!”
• Cultivate the art of laughing deeply and crying the same. Be the actress, play the part until you feel it.  Empty yourself regularly.  Risk it.  You will repair psychically and physically. You will live more for your soul’s pleasure.
• Download “Turning Depression Into Expression” www.MorganaMorgine.com FREE FROM ME to THEE!

Be Well.  Espresso in moderation, but espress you exuberantly!  OMG, that is so cheesy…..