Sex, Self-Esteem and the Goddess Cure

We’ve all had those moments where our minds go on a scary adventure to fear. It’s the “fear mind” that resembles a monkey with rabies and tends to be rather abusive and pessimistic. It says things like: “You can’t do that”; “Who do you think you are?”; “Ewww, gross, you have cellulite on your ass when you move like that in bed!” It’s really like a mind bully, except that bully is a part of our psyche. Not YOU necessarily, but part of the way our minds work as humans. Sooo … we best get to learn how to work with the rabies monkey “fear mind.”

One place that is often ignored when we talk about “fear mind” is sex. We talk about our fear to find love, our fear to take risks and start our own business or get a new job; but when it comes to sex, we might as well be Puritans living in the 1800s churning butter. All funky feelings arise and suddenly Harvard scientists, leading psychologists and researchers become like fifth-grade students — uncomfortable, anxious and avoidant. I say, let’s address it. Let’s walk through the fears, not around them.

Have you ever felt embarrassed before having sex or during sex? Sex is one of our most taboo vulnerable spots. In our Western society and in many societies cross culturally, we have seen an overemphasis on vulgar sexuality, and sexualizing products and even children to sell products. However, the sacred in sex is null and void. What is the sacred in sex? The sacred is accepting all of our sexual selves as beautiful and as something to be explored. Throughout our history, sex has become dirty and has been tainted with this virgin archetype of we must only enjoy pleasure if married. Yet these mixed messages really mess with us, and we don’t have a safe space to truly connect with our sexual selves — with how we feel with our own being as sexual and how we feel with a lover in bed. These anxieties are normal and, once processed, become a key to unlock the door to true intimacy with yourself and with your lover.

Shame arises from this guilt that we are doing something wrong, with our insecurities and our self-esteem with our body, with the lack of knowledge around sexuality and the permission culturally, from our parents, from our books, to say it’s OK, it’s beautiful and it’s sacred to explore your entire sexual self, to let go and be free. This shame causes sadness, lack of intimacy and a block, as we are sexual beings and it’s part of our health to have healthy and fun sex lives.

So how can we alchemize this shame into fiery intimacy? Here are three keys that I have found successful with my clients.

The Goddess Cures:

1. Take time to explore you (god/goddess time).
2. Read about sacred sexuality, tantra; inform yourself on the sacred nature of sex and begin to become conscious around your own sexual self — the insecurities, the fantasies, etc. (Google is genius; use it.)
3. Create a ritual before you have sex either with yourself (masturbation) or with your partner/lover. Light some candles and incense, play relaxing music, and remember to breathe and take it slow.

Christine Gutierrez is a mind-body psychotherapist and holistic health expert. She is the founder of Sacred Space NYC, a holistic healing+bodywork collective, and Cosmic Life, an online hub that features content from Christine and other experts, as well as resources, products, and services.

Photo credit: Jerry Wong

What You Can Expect On Your First Day of Chemotherapy

I remember my first chemotherapy treatment like it was yesterday. I was only 16 years old, and I’d been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I’d had surgery to remove a lump on my neck, and chemo was the next step. Walking into that oncology office for the first time, I remember feeling scared and confused. I didn’t really understand what was happening.

Looking back, I know now that’s what makes the first chemotherapy treatment so frightening—you have no idea what to expect! You’re thinking, “Am I going to lose my hair? Is it going to hurt? Am I going to throw up forever?” Once you’ve been through it, it’s not so bad. But that first time is tough.

Everyone responds differently to different oncology drugs, and no one can expect his or her experience to be exactly like anyone else’s. What I can do, however, is tell you a few things that will most likely happen on your first day. The more you know, the less you have to fear. Fear is a destructive emotion that can hinder your ability to heal, so the more you can reduce your fear and increase your confidence, the better.

Expect a blood test. On chemo day they have to make sure your white blood cell count is high enough to handle the treatment, so roll up your sleeve.

Get ready to wait. After your blood tests are approved, they have to prepare your particular chemo cocktail, and that could take awhile. Take along your iPod, a pillow, a blanket (you know how cold those offices can be), some good books or magazines, and best of all, a good friend to help you get through the waiting.

Food, drink, and clothes. Check with your doctor, but most recommend you eat normally before your treatment. You may or may not experience nausea, so don’t eat anything that could potentially upset your stomach. Take a water bottle with you, and sip regularly all the time you’re there. Dress comfortably, and take extra layers so you can adjust according to the temperature.

Calming techniques. If you’re getting really nervous days or hours before your appointment, take along your favorite calming music, some meditation CDs (I love the ones by Belleruth Naparstek — she has a great one for chemotherapy treatments), or even a notebook/journal so you can write down what you’re feeling. Take anything that will have a calming effect on you, even a stuffed animal!

Next! When it’s time for your treatment, the nurse will typically take you into another room. He or she may show you around, give you some materials to read, and then start your IV. Always feel free to ask questions. Answers will help assuage any fear you may be feeling.

Here comes the treatment. Once your IV is working successfully, they’ll start administering medications through it. Some are harmful to the skin, so if you see the nurse wearing gloves, don’t panic. She’s just protecting her fingers. The treatment can take from 30 minutes to a few hours — ask ahead of time so you can be prepared. Otherwise, just try to sit back and relax. The treatment itself is typically painless. If you feel any discomfort around your IV or port, however, ask the nurse, as, on rare occasions, medications can leak onto the skin.

Hair and fingers. New studies have shown that keeping your scalp and fingers cold during treatment helps protect them from damaging side effects. Use several bags of frozen veggies, or better yet, try the frozen glove or a scalp-cooling device.

That’s it! Once your treatment is over, you’re free to go home, though most physicians prefer you have someone to drive you. Pat yourself on the back. You made it through! Side effects vary from person to person, but do keep a sharp eye on yourself, and contact your doctor or nurse should you experience anything you’re not sure about.

I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. If I made it through, so can you. You can do it! I wish you strength, love, and survival.

Britta Aragon is a cancer survivor and the founder of Cinco Vidas, Inc. She wrote “When Cancer Hits: Your Complete Guide to Taking Care of YOU Through Treatment.”

Photo credit: Nanley (Kate)

It Takes Courage to Want More

I wrote this letter to the part of myself that dared to listen to her pain more than her need for stability. That part helped me write my first book, “This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love,” and discover my best life.

Years ago, I sat on a beach and considered ending my life. I didn’t see another choice. I was an honors graduate of Harvard Law School on partnership track at a major law firm. I couldn’t bear my day/evening/weekend job, even with its lush paycheck. I couldn’t figure out any other options with my frantic, analytical mind. I had no glistening faith or trust in myself, the universe or even the tooth fairy, back then.

You build that faith when you leap, not before.

So I screamed and cried in my journal. I let out one desperate wail near sunset. This letter is to her with my love and gratitude.
You wanted an impossible life. You wanted freedom. You wanted to rip off your lawyer clothes and identity and walk on beaches on a weekday. You didn’t even really know what you wanted. You just knew you wanted to live and that there had to be something more. You thought you were imbecilic or weak for wanting fairy-dusted utopia as you saw it, without a plan, money or a strand of reasonable possibility. But you wanted it so much that you didn’t want to live if living meant existing in the life you knew, the “responsible” life that did not involve sand in your toes and being yourself.

I remember your wail, your helpless, crazy cry. It was as though you fell to your knees and screamed “Uncle.” It was in that wail I believe the angels heard “Yes father, yes mother, yes universe, yes life energy, yes love, yes, yes, yes.” You didn’t know that saying no to the only life you knew was saying yes to the life that would come. I have this life now because of your courage and dignity, your commitment to dreams you couldn’t even name. I am beyond grateful.

You wanted to be a writer with all your heart, though you considered that forbidden territory to be childish and reckless. Well, I want you to know you weren’t crazy. You were meant to write, and that desire has saved your life, mine and probably many others’. I wrote a book and it got published by a major New York house and it hit some bestseller’s lists. Because of my writing, I have a devoted following of smart, creative people who attend my workshops, retreats and coaching programs.

Once I led a women’s retreat on the whitest sands anywhere on a beach in Mexico and I thought of you, sitting on another beach, in another time, as I led those women to their freedom. I’ve taught in the rain forest of Costa Rica, zip lined through a jungle. I visit San Francisco often and hang out with creative, brilliant friends, some of them famous. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself famous, but my fans would, so maybe I am a little.

Now you’ll love this, because I know it will tickle your writer’s heart and the Brooklyn girl in you, eyes clumped with mascara and insecurity, who once dreamed of being in Manhattan with reason to be there. Well, I stay in Greenwich Village, write in artsy coffee shops and meet my publisher for lunch, not because he’s my publisher but because he’s my friend.

I live in Colorado under blue skies, with golden sun, trails, mountains and parking spaces for everyone. I get up when I want to and I am free. I have people who work for me. Yes, I can pay other people’s salaries, all because you chose your silly reckless dreams; you chose to write.

I finally feel like I belong in this world. I get to have life-changing conversations with people, almost daily. I meet visionaries and business leaders and actresses and authors and I meditate with them, lecture and, at the most beautiful retreat centers in the country, watch them melt and laugh and discover and grab their own inspired calling with both hands and one ravenous heart. It’s magic. It’s breathing. And I am paid for this. I can die with peace in my bones now because I know I have done something here on earth that matters. I’m so proud to be using my gifts in this way.

Here’s what I’m trying to say: I’m so grateful you believed in something more. I am so grateful you allowed everything you knew to unravel. I am so grateful you questioned what was available in life. I am so grateful that while you were terrified, you still chose to be different. I am in awe of you, because you knew there was something else and you believed even when it was excruciatingly painful to believe. I am grateful you chose the unknown, because I am living in its abundance.

I would have missed this life if you had gotten yourself under control, buckled down and accepted the status quo. I would have missed this life if you had allowed the pain to weigh in one more ounce than your thinnest hope, and you had ended it all instead of begun it all. I am terrified that others might not realize they have a choice or that their pain is not a lack in them, but their own flare of unexpressed wild beauty, creativity, heightened potential and the golden-eyed jaguar that resides within them. It motivates me to keep sharing. I don’t want someone to stop believing on my watch.

I am grateful to all parts of myself that chose this journey over and over, because it has required choosing over and over again. I am living this life because of every one of your decisions, through doubt, exhaustion and dim determination. I am grateful.

What letter do you need to write to part of yourself?

For more information on how to optimize your life, visit http://www.ThisTimeIDance.com/.

Photo credit: Cassandra Rae

Take a Fearless Inventory

I first learned the value of taking a Fearless Inventory three months before my college graduation. I had always been a big drinker from a big drinking family and since college is a time when even non-alcoholics drink alcoholically, my liver was pretty pickled by senior year. I had been seeing a therapist for about a year when she told me she thought my drinking was a problem, to which I defensively exclaimed, ”Well, then, everyone in my life has a drinking problem!” She calmly replied, “Well, I am not treating everyone in your life, and if you do not seek help with a 12-step program, I will have to terminate our relationship.”

Snap! Was my therapist breaking up with me? “Holy crap, is it that bad?” I asked myself. What I actually felt surprised me. Pure relief.

So, all gussied up in my ‘80s finest — stirrup pants, t-shirt with shoulder pads Velcro-ed to my bra straps, gobs of Stage Light makeup, enormous mane of red, permed hair in full effect with big plastic neon hoop earrings — and found my way to the basement of a church in Syosset, Long Island. ”Lookin’ good and definitely not like an alcoholic,” I reassured my review reflection before going in.

I sat near the door so I could smoke my Parliament 100’s considerately, and I was approached by a beautiful, similarly shellacked, big-haired woman about 10 years my senior. Noticing I was a newbie, she asked what brought me to the meeting. I said my therapist threatened to break up with me if I didn’t attend at least one. To be polite, I asked her the same question. She looked me straight in the eyes and with a calm that unnerved me, stated, “I killed a six-year-old boy in a drunk driving accident.”

“Wow, I am so sorry. That seriously sucks,” was my shocked and not-so-sensitive reply.

“Yes, it does, and I have had to figure out how to live every day of my life knowing I killed someone’s child and broke a mother’s heart.”

Her answer inspired my first Fearless Inventory and changed the course of my life.

I stayed until the end of the meeting, fighting back a tsunami of tears that threatened to overwhelm me. When I finally got to my car, I was bawling so hard I couldn’t drive, so I sat there listening to Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” (which of course inspired more bawling) and felt so grateful, it hurt.

I made a pact with the universal powers that be at that moment that I would not drink again. I was so ecstatic that the tragic story was not mine and so keenly aware of how easily it could have been, something shifted permanently. I still think of that generous angel who shared the story that led to the wake-up that inspired my transformation.

Once I stopped drinking, things changed. I dropped 25 pounds in 30 days, discovered my cheekbones and moved to NYC after graduation. I took an honest inventory of all areas of my life. Writing down what I wanted more of and what I wanted less of in each area. I stayed in therapy and got dialed into the self-empowerment movement. I realized that to create the life of my dreams I had to be brutally honest about what was not working and what limiting beliefs were blocking my potential. The rest is history. Taking a Fearless Inventory was a game changer for me so I want to share it with you.

Take Your Own Fearless Inventory

Start by writing a list of the main areas of your life: career, love, spirituality, health and wellness, finances, family and other. Make two lists for each category: Want More and Want Less. Keep the Want More list and burn the Want Less list with an empathic witness by your side. Declare what you want and feel the feelings of already having it. Visualize it, feel it, believe it and you will bring it into being. Open your eyes for sychro-tastic situations and meaningful coincidences that start to show up, then take action.

By taking your own Fearless Inventory and daring to declare what you truly want, you will harness the mind-blowing power of your intention and tap into the infinite possibilities of your life.

I know you can do it. I did.

As always I will be cheering you on like a wild maniac!

For more on living fearless and free, visit http://terricole.com/

Photo credit: Steve Rhodes

You Have the Power to Choose

When I was 12 years old, I had a bone marrow disease in my left arm. The night before a possible amputation, my father sat by my side and took me through a guided visualization of an army of little soldiers marching into the infection. With picks and shovels, they cleaned it out, and one by one, we watched as they marched the infection out of my body. Except for my left arm being a few inches shorter, it is now in perfect health.

I didn’t remember this story until many years later. I was in a yoga class with my teacher John Friend. One of his assistants kept coming over to me while I was in downward dog and kept trying to adjust my shoulder. In frustration, I plopped on my mat, asking myself “What is it? Why can’t I pull my shoulder back?” I didn’t really expect an answer, but it came to my mind loud and clear: “Your left arm is shorter.” The whole story came back to me and I jumped up with excitement, rushing to John to tell him my left arm was shorter and that was why I couldn’t do the position the way he had been trying to get me to do it. He looked at me and said, “It isn’t likely unless you had some trauma to your arm.” Excitedly, I said, “I did, I did! When I was 12 I had a bone infection.” He said, “OK, use a block under your hand.”

In that moment, it was like so many pieces of my past made sense. I remembered being 12 years old and so much of what my father had taught me about the power of our thinking. I realized that one of the most challenging times had been not only my greatest teacher, but the foundation of the creation of intenSati, the workout I developed that combines positive affirmations and movement so we can exercise our power to choose what we think, say and do. It also reminded me to remember that the guidance from within me is always there, and asking my higher Self for the answer is a practice I could develop.

We have the power to choose what we think, say, and do and the perspective we choose is what will determine our actions and our experience. Training ourselves to choose to look for what is right about our past and our present, and to intend a future that is getting better in every way is our right. Few people develop this ability and, therefore, many walk around in a state of fear, worry and doubt instead of gratitude and appreciation for what was, what is and what will be. The choice is ours every single day and in this way we are always co-creating our reality. As above so is below, this is what I now know.

Affirmative prayer is praying believing it is already done. IntenSati is practice of affirmative prayer. When we add motion to the affirmations, we add emotion, and emotion creates change. We become it, we breathe life into it and we call it forth. Every thought is a prayer and worrying is praying for what we don’t want. It’s our faith that determines the outcome – worrying is preparing for failure; positively affirming is preparing for success. We are blessed with the power to choose. What will you choose today?

Every day in every way
I co-create my reality

As above so is below
This is what I know

Today I choose to see
What is right about me

When I ask it is given
What I believe I receive

I am preparing for success
I am available for guidance
I have the power to choose
What I think, eat and do

Where fear has blocked me
Love now surrounds me
Everything is right about me.
And so it is!

Join me in choosing to believe that we are always right where we need to be. No mistakes have been made, none can be made and none will be made. It’s all happening for our benefit.

Life is good! Go in peace to love and serve the world, and eat your veggies! Owning your power is sexy!