We lived in the Ashram for 10 days in silence, food and shelter provided to us. We would spend our days waking up at 4:30am and meditating till 9|:30 p.m. with some brakes for food and self care.

This was the most peaceful and yet the most challenging 10 days for me.

For the first 4 days I felt like a cattle on the hot stove, slowly but surely reaching the boiling point within myself. All my stashed down emotions, anger, fear, frustration, agitation, resentment and everything in between started to come up to the surface. I felt like I was ready to blow up or a steam will start to come up from every place imaginable in my body.

Waking up at 4:30 am, or sitting in meditation for 10 hours, or even not talking to anyone wasn’t the hardest parts for me. It was having food only 2 times a day at 6 am and 11:30 am. I always had a complicated relationship with food. Cycles of binge eating, emotional eating, eating for punishment, late night eating was a norm for me. And here only 2 times a day. The food was wonderful, we had a buffet style dining so we could eat as much or as little as we wanted, but in one 30 minute sitting time frame. At the beginning I was struggling to adjust. On day 5-6 it became easier and easier with each day. On day 8 I was standing in line to get my food. I was calm, refreshed after my morning meditation and everything seemed to fall in place at that moment. I was learning to focus myself on breathing and sit still in meditation in an hour increments. My monkey mind started to calm down, although I still drifted into re watching every episode of star wars or any other sequel that would come into my mind during meditation, but hey, I was learning;).

So I am standing there in the line to get my food, the table is filled with at least 5 different kinds of dishes to choose from plus the desert and drinks. And for 8 days there was no shortage of food and I was always able to get seconds and more. The food there was an abundant experience. And yet, I catch myself with some uncomfortable feeling. I was anxious. The line was moving veeery sloooowly.

People took their time choosing and collecting their food. The girl in front of me was dragging her feet, she took her time to slowly grab a portion of soup and pour it into her plate, and then she could not decide what salad dressing to take, and then she was standing, seems an eternity, over the piece of an apple pie. I felt the agitation and anxiety rising up my body, starting in my tummy and ending up blocking my throat as if I want to scream and I could not… What is happening to me? Why am I at dis-ease over this? All past lineups flashed in front of my mind. The line up in the store to the cashier, line up to see the doctor, line up to get to the bus, line up here, line up there. Why do I have to be in this torturous situation? I am a free person. How dare they take soo much of my time!

Oops, somebody pushed my button! Breath, Olga, breath!

You have a choice now. You can choose to keep going like this and escalate internally or you can choose to view this as a teaching opportunity. Can you possibly stand in long line and be at bliss with yourself and the world around you? It struck me that my life becomes one long autopilot lineup where I would experience something negative and will stash it deep into my psyche without processing it. Same I will do with something positive as well. I will not stop and cherish it. I would take it as given. I am used to moving forward without thinking too much, as long as I was moving. Every time I am in line up, I stand there, I am not moving or moving slowly and my brain start to become impatient. I have realized that this has been just a dysfunctional habit of my mind. I was so used to justify to myself that I do not have time, I will be happy when…or I just do something because I must, and I do this almost unconsciously. I do not take time to process what is happening to me when it happens, I do not take time to stop and enjoy what is in front of me, for example, food. I do not do things out of love or ease, I do things out of duty or something else.

I started to breath deeply, focused on my surrounding intently. I looked at this girl in front of me as she was the most important teacher in my life at that particular moment. She taught me a lesson in self awareness and compassion to myself. I have centered myself and when the time came for me to pick my food and later enjoy it, I did it slowly, with the sense of ease and tried to enjoy each moment of the action I was performing. I had a blast doing that. I have noticed the taste of the food I had never noticed before, I enjoyed the arrangement of colors on my plate and I managed to eat soo slowly and with great intention I have never done before. This simple act of self awareness and conscious attention to each and every moment gave me so much energy and peace I had never felt before. It was amazing! Looking back on the whole thing I have realized how much peace and joy this was costing in every area of my life. It was a dysfunctional habit of my mind. My mind’s dis-ease.

Stop for a moment, evaluate yourself. Are you at ease in your mind or at dis-ease? And if you’re at the dis-ease, make a conscious choice of slowing down and center, letting whatever needs to come out to be processed and let go and enjoy each and every moment of your life, even standing in the long, slow, dreadful line. It is not the line that is in dis-ease, it’s how you react to it.

Tell me what you think. I want to know.

With love,

Olga

One more thing this means to me is spring cleaning. To tell you the truth, I do not like this work. I wonder if anybody does, I guess that in all the diversity of our planet, some people do. But it does feel great afterwards to see the results and feel fresh and clean all around.

But, as you have guessed already, I am not just talking about the cleaning of living spaces or doing spring gardening, etc. What I like to do, several times a year and at springtime, is to clean my thoughts and emotions. You might do daily meditations, pray a lot, try to keep yourself happy most of the time or do absolutely nothing, but life is still happening and you cannot expect yourself to be all butterflies all the time. So, it is a good idea to take inventory of what is going on within you and clean and let go of all the old and outdated stuff.

We are complex beings. We, as Shrek once said, are like onions; we have layers. And although a lot of work might have been done in the past, these layers tend to come back, again and again. So, it is a good idea to systematically clean our minds in the same way that we clean our environments.

Today, I want to talk about emotions. Emotions are the connective messengers that transfer information from our subconscious to conscious and back. Emotions are also energies that sometimes like to get stuck in our bodies, and if left unattended, can cause lots of troubles for ourselves, ranging from low energy to lethal diseases.

So, how do we clean our stuck emotions? First and foremost, we need to identify what we are dealing with. Try to become your own “Sherlock Holmes”; dig deep within yourself and reflect on what was going on with you in the past three months. Let’s start with this time frame in case you have never done this type of cleaning before. Otherwise, reflect on all the time that has passed since your previous cleaning.

Write down the events and thoughts that bothered you during that time. Then, pick the strongest one – this will be your entry point.

Once you have picked an event, write down all the details that you can remember about it. Your thoughts, your actions, how it made you feel before, how it makes you feel now, what you were thinking about yourself and/or others who were involved in this event. Do not hold back. Write as much as you can. Once you are done writing, read it again. Take a separate piece of paper, divide it in half, and on the right of the paper, write down 10 thoughts, beliefs and/or emotions that you can identify from this situation. More or less thoughts do not matter. Then, on the left side of the paper, match the items that you put on the right with a positive contradiction.

You’ve got the idea.

After that, we are going to use the EFT (Emotion Freedom Technique) to diffuse this situation. If you are not familiar with EFT, here is the link to a simple “how to” explanation of this technique https://youtu.be/NFNQ8dc514k.

We are going to use what you have written as our personally tailored, unique, just-for-you script. After all, you did it yourself.

We begin by tapping and saying out loud:

Even though I feel …… and….. (state your emotions or a strong statement from your list), I love and accept myself completely – repeat this 3 times.

After that statement, use what you have written and just read it again while tapping. Try to feel the emotion that you are reading when you are reading it; pour your heart out while tapping. After you feel that you are done, take the divided piece of paper and read through the negative stuff on the left first while tapping. Once you finish with that side, then do same for the statements on the right.

Wow, you are done! Congratulations. Look deep inside and reflect on how you feel now. If you feel like there is something left, then write down exactly what is still bothering you and repeat this process until you are completely satisfied.

This technique works very well. Repeat it as needed, and don’t forget: we are like “onions”, we all have layers. There might be more to come.

If you need more help, feel free to contact me.

Love,

             Olga

In the middle of my walk back, during this beautiful sunny morning, I have caught myself criticizing myself. And that was a moment of truth…

The sneakiest, most disguised, vicious, and unforgiving bully in my life, the one that has done the most profound damage to me is MYSELF! I have spent all those years stewing on memories and outcomes of past traumas that I have completely overlooked what is happening within me, now and always. Wow, this is one big realization!

We all have this voice in our heads that very often shows us how unworthy we are, how bad and unqualified, how unlovable and useless we are. Sound familiar? And interestingly enough, the reasoning, the main purpose of this voice in our heads is to protect us from being hurt. What do I mean by that?

A long time ago, people had to adapt and create certain mechanisms to survive. Presumable danger was behind every bush and tree. People always had to be on guard and expect the worst. The ones that were able to perform in this way survived and in time, these traits were deeply embedded into our DNA and consciousness.

Human babies, when born, are helpless and completely dependent on others for survival. They stay that way for many years to come. As an adaptive mechanism, certain patterns and behaviours have to be learned to survive. Our parents are moulding us into something. Most of the time, they have no clue how to be a parent or they parent based on what they have adopted from their own parents, and all of that is shifted through the prism of their protective shields. It is most likely that nobody taught them how to be a whole and self-sufficient person within themselves, full of self-love and acceptance that reflects into love and acceptance of their surrounding world.

So, to adapt when we are brought into an imperfect world, children have to develop a coping mechanism, which is: it is not the world that is imperfect, it is me who is not, it is I to blame for everything, etc. The child cannot face the truth of an imperfect world and imperfect adults around them to rely on. It is scary to live in a world where you cannot trust the people that your survival depends on. As a result, here we are.

We tend to teach our children that bullying is wrong and that you have to be nice to people. But it all comes back to that initial survival mechanism that we needed early on. We need to learn that there is another way when we become adults, and to not act from the long-outdated 5-year old point of view. We need to grow up, take responsibility and become whole adults who know their worth, who love and accept themselves, and in return, they can teach their children to be that way, because children are like little sponges who pick up everything from the adults around them. By doing so, we will be able to finally bring actual change and positive transformations. And it all starts with us, right here, right now!

Love,

Olga.

Today is garbage removal day. Although I had a few restless nights, I woke up early for some reason. I put myself together and readied myself to get up and do something. I really did not want to do anything, but who will do it for me? So, I got up and prepared myself for another ordinary day. It took me a while to get myself going. I really did not want to do anything. Finally, I was at the garage door with 2 recycling bins in my hands….

…And… something happened. The garage door opened… and I breathed in the cool, fresh, mesmerizing, early morning winter air. It was probably -15 degrees C outside, but everything seemed soo still and beautiful! Everything that was buzzing around in my mind went away and the only thing that was left was the moment of absolute peace and tranquility.

OMG! That is IT! That was my breaking point, from being down and miserable to this gulp of freshness energizing my life right now. I took a walk. I just relaxed and breathed all of this freshness into my lungs. I was enjoying being alone, the quiet of our sleeping town and my brisk walk. In the middle of this, I asked myself: what happened to me? What other things can I look at to get myself out of the constant feeling of hopelessness? And the answer was strong and revealing: “Olga, you have too much crap in your head! Look at what you think about every day and see what kind of thoughts they are.”

So, I have started to do just that. I spent the whole week catching myself thinking about something and then writing it all down. At the end of the week, I looked at everything and saw several horrible patterns in my thoughts.

1. I was beating myself up many times for something that had happened a long time ago.

2. I was nervous about future things that might or might not happen.

3. I was impatient and judgy towards my hubby and my kids, and on top of that, I was beating myself up for my inability to control them.

4. I was not happy about how I looked and felt and was wondering why I do not have compassion from my family towards me.

5. I was definitely unhappy and constantly pointing out all the reasons why to myself.

What a well-loved and well-nourished garbage bin full of negative thoughts I have in my head! I have concluded that I am, once again, heavily sabotaging myself. I am the one who is cranking up the dial of the negativity that I feel. I was definitely contributing to my stress levels. This revelation was not pleasant, to say the least. What should I do? I started to dig deeper and uncovered negative patterns that were at the root of my self-sabotage. I learned to deal with it in a very simple and practical way. I cannot even start to describe how amazing it feels to take control after a long battle with yourself!

To tell you the truth, I am not done yet. It is a process that takes time and effort. Life still happens and throws different challenges in your way, but I know now that I can deal with them in a proactive way. Now, it takes less time to bounce back from the chaos within myself to being calm and centered. What a relief!

I invite you to take a look at what is happening inside your head, find those unwanted garbage thoughts, emotions, and energies within yourself and take out this trash for good!

Love,

            Olga