Give yourself space to align your energy | #029

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Transcript episode #029 |Maria Furlano, DMQ (China), MTOM, L.Ac.

[Intro]  Welcome to The Art Of Tuning In Podcast with Maria Furlano, sharing insights, tools and conversations to inspire your energetic well being. 

00:11

Hello, everybody, welcome. This is Maria Furlano. Thank you for joining me today and taking a little time out to listen in, I so appreciate you being here. Today, I want to share a little bit about taking space for yourself. And I want to share a little bit of a story of what I do when I find myself not being able to actually align my energy as quickly as I want to, or to unwind in ways that I think you know that I want to be unwinding. And maybe there’s some hesitation in that. And I can’t figure out why I’m not letting go and relaxing. 

00:53

So I wanted to share with you just a little bit about what I do to help myself to do that. And see if hopefully, it helps you in any way, especially if you’re dealing with any anxiety if you’re dealing with any frustration, if you’re dealing with any overwhelm, if you’re dealing with fear, if you’re dealing with fatigue. I hope today's tool will help you out. 

Breathing Tune In

01:15

And before we jump into that, as always, if you’re a listener, you know that I just want to take a moment and breathe for a second. So if you’re new to my podcast, thank you so much for being here and joining me and it’s nice to meet you! I always take a moment in the beginning to tune into our breath. And I do it in a very specific way I ask people to inhale. And then to make their exhale longer than their inhale was. And the reason why we do that. And if you want to go ahead and do it, now go ahead and inhale nice and long through your nose or your mouth. And then when you’re ready, you’re going to exhale, even longer out your mouth, or your nose, whichever comfortable and just let yourself go. And then when you’re ready, breathe in again, and exhale again. And the reason why we do this is because it calms our nervous system, when we make our exhale a little longer than our inhale, we release more, we relax more, and our heart rate calms more. So if we put this into our daily practice, we naturally move into a state of not only more peace and more alignment, and more ease and flow on our nervous system, and our circulation system. But we also learn to tune ourselves to ourselves more quickly. And the more we do it throughout the day, the more it becomes just part of our lifestyle. So that’s why I always bring it up. I’m hoping to create a pattern of alignment in your life. So thank you for joining me in that I hope you feel a little bit better tuning into your breath. 

TOOLS for more support

> “Root the Mind” a guided practice video to help ground your energy (it's free!)

Giving yourself space

02:55

So when I talk about giving yourself space, I want to share a little bit of story of what I do when I feel like I cannot or I’m not getting myself in a space of relaxation, or a space of peace or calm or a space of alignment that I know to be true for myself. If you’re someone who has not worked with really getting your energy and your emotional state and your mind and your body into alignment as one, as one direction, one alignment one state of being, then this may be new for you. And of course, there are so many beautiful Soul/Mind/Body Practices that have been passed down through thousands of years from different traditions that help us to move into a state of alignment. 

03:51

And when we move into a state of aligning our energy, what happens is that we see the world we see issues in our life, we see people standing across from us in a completely different way. We see from our whole self, we see from a peaceful state, we see from a state that is not in competition, or in anger or in fear. So tuning in, and learning skill sets to align your energy is so valuable in living a life where you lead from who you really are in every moment of your life. And that’s the whole purpose of it. So besides all the health benefits that aligning your energy and calming your nervous system and understanding how to manage your emotions and moving your body in good ways, besides all the health benefits that come with that, the benefit of just moving through your life in an aligned state and living who you truly are and doing the things in your life that are true to who you truly are, is the most beneficial aspect of being able to move yourself into a state of being that supports you. 

05:10

Recently, I’ve been dealing with a lot of stress and a lot of emotional feelings for several weeks. I, of course, do my practices and I’m very consciously aware. And recently I went down to the ocean to stand and to walk and to stretch. Because the ocean is a place, the water, the smell, the sounds, the birds, the sand, the rocks, all of those pieces, really support shifting my state of being. And I knew that I really needed support. And so I went down to the ocean. And I was walking, and I was stretching, and I found a rock to sit on. And I was watching the birds and the waves. And I was really trying, I found myself “trying to feel good.” And what I noticed, after about 20 minutes was that I was trying so hard, I really wasn’t hearing anything, I had pulled out my phone, I was taking pictures, I was still trying to distract myself. And I found myself realizing how long it was actually taking me to shift my alignment. And it made me realize that I needed to stop and talk to myself. And this is something that I want to share. And it’s something that I share inside my membership. With members in the in the work that we do is when we talk to ourselves, we actually truly connect with ourselves. And we should never feel funny for talking with ourselves. 

Give yourself space to align and speak to your deepest energy

06:54

So one of the things that I did, and that I do naturally, in my own life is I said, “Hello, hello body, hello soul, hello self. We are not in alignment, and I’m my brain, I’m I’m distracting myself, I’m really not paying attention. And okay, I acknowledge that. So let’s connect.” 

07:21

And I sat down. And I became consciously aware. So the step first is to really become consciously aware that you’re not connecting, that your energy is still scattered all over the place, that you’re distracting yourself. Now I put my phone away, I sat down on a rock, I felt the rock, you know, felt it with my hands, I felt the rock, I really started to listen deeply to the sound of the ocean, I started to actually really see the birds that were soaring and surfing on top of the waves, which was so beautiful. I started to see the sunlight that was sparkling on the water. I started to notice the wonderful people who were walking and running by me and the conversations that people were having and the the animals that were there. And I started to tune in. 

08:21

And the reason why I bring this up is of course we can do this anywhere. I mean, you can literally be sitting in your car and you can choose to tune in, makes it so much easier when you’re in a beautiful place like nature. And it reminded me of how important it is. That wherever we go, whether it’s a park, whether it’s a tree in our yard, whether it’s a flower that we have in a flower pot in our home, that we connect with nature, and that we go into a state that is really a different state of where we were. 

08:56

And so what I was realizing was how long this particular day was taking me to get in that aligned state. And it reminded me of how I really used to beat myself up for not being able to switch from a certain state that I was feeling into a more positive state because I was taught that, you know, you should always be positive, that you always look for the bright side, there’s always a solution. And I actually believe those things. I believe that being positive and looking at the positive and the bright side of life is a really good way to live. And I also believe that there is always a solution. However, sometimes it takes a few moments to get into that state to get into that state where you actually believe it. And if you’re forcing yourself to move from one state to another state, you’re actually just bypassing how you feel and you’re creating another false state of being. And I hope that that makes sense to you. Because I hear from a lot of people that they’re also very hard on themselves the same way that I used to be very hard on myself from not being able to feel better, or to be in a different place. A lot of times when we’re in a state of pain, physical or emotional pain, we’re dealing with emotional loss, or we’re dealing with real fear and frustration, anger, when we’re dealing with those emotions, it takes time to process them. And it takes time for our physical system, the cells, our nervous system, how we’re breathing, how we’re standing, how we’re holding the tension in our body, it takes time for that to relax and unwind. Those are physical things. Those are, that’s matter, right, these are, these are physical vibrations and holdings that need time to unwind and relax.

Creating space with conscious awareness

11:01

So when I say, we need to really learn how to take and make space for ourselves, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about making the space for yourself with a conscious awareness to understand that your body needs time to physically unwind and relax, that you might do your normal stretching. And you may need to do it a little longer. Or you may need to do it more often. Or you may need to take a hot bath instead. And just be patient with yourself. Be patient and understand that your mind and body are connected. And what you think about definitely creates the energy flow in your body. And what we think about and where we choose to take ourselves, for example, to the ocean, or standing in front of your flower pot, and looking at your beautiful flowers and breathing them in standing on the grass, looking at a beautiful painting, listening to beautiful music, all of these things that we can do, we don’t have to be outside.

12:04

I realize right now some people are quarantined, some people are inside, and they can’t go outside, but you have things in your home. The other day, I sat in front of my incense burner, and I just watched the smoke. I just sat and breathed and just allowed myself, allowed my energy to just follow the beautiful patterns of the smoke of the incense. A lot of times when I’m giving a new meditation to a client, I’ll tell them to sit back, but have a candle burning in front of them. And if their mind starts to distract, or to go to, you know all these places that it goes to just look at the candle, look at the flame. And allow yourself to look at the beauty of the flame and keep breathing. And then when your mind has focused on the flame and you’re feeling more just in alignment with that beauty, close your eyes again, and breathe and move back into your meditation. 

13:11

There’s a lot of times people think they’re supposed to instantaneously be able to meditate or change how they feel. And what I want to share today, especially in a time, right now in our environment, in our society, in our culture, in our nation and our world, where there is so much going on. There is so much information coming at us all the time that we need to give ourselves some space, some space to relax. And we need to give ourselves some space of forgiveness, some space of forgiveness that maybe we were not going to shift our energy in two seconds, and allow these beautiful practices of yoga, of Qigong of you know, just stretching of breathing of mind body alignment allow these beautiful practices that have been passed down for thousands of years to really take shape in our life and support us. 

You can be supported…

14:17

You don’t need to do any of this alone. We don’t need to be alone we can have support and that support sometimes comes from other people. And that’s support sometimes comes from nature and from beautiful art and from beautiful music. 

14:38

So I want you to understand that because if we can find support in our surroundings if we can find support in nature if we can find support and art. If we can find support in our music, if we can find support in the watching of the beautiful incense burn, we will always be able to find our own alignment and not be dependent upon another distraction to take us away from what we’re feeling that might feel painful, but we’re actually able to relax, dissolve, support our energy and heal our pain. 

15:20

So I hope that that gave a little bit of a different perspective today. And I hope that you have an absolutely blessed week. As always, if you are interested in learning more tools to support your energy, and to expand your energy, please visit The Art Of Tuning In Podcast calm, and come on over and join our beautiful studio. I can’t wait to meet you there. And thanks again for tuning in. And I’ll see you in the next episode. 

15:50

[Outro] Thank you for tuning in. If you’d like to learn more and elevate your energetic well being I invite you to visit The Art Of Tuning In Podcast comm where you can learn all about our online studio. I look forward to meeting you there.