Elisabeth LaGrone
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6/26/2016 2 Comments

Dimming Your Light Dims Your Life

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Do you remember that scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they opened the ark and those looking at it melted? 

That scene is what I feared would happen if I started to shine my full light, to embody all that I was capable of, to be fully me.

I remember in grade school, our class was taking a test and that once you were finished, you could play outside. "Awesome", I thought and as usual, I was one of the first ones done. I turned in my stuff, got the “great job” from the teacher and out I went into the playground, only to find myself, alone, waiting for everyone else to finish. I felt bored as the playground isn't the same without your friends.

When they finally came out, I could tell they were upset that I had been out here "playing" while they were still stuck inside trying to finish their test.  And so it began, I planted the seed early on, that being myself, meant I would be alone and I would make people mad. So I starting pretending to be less; to be less talented, smart, prosperous, all of it. That way I could still be with everyone and no one would be upset with me.

As I grew up, that seed of limiting myself became a full grown and from those subconscious thoughts, I attracted a "tribe" that would reinforce my belief that being fully "on" would either make people mad OR leave me all alone.  

My light, on the other hand, didn't care about what I believed, it kept trying to get out and express itself, but my "tribe" at the time was not having it.

I would do something with minimal effort, and would be called a "know-it-all". I would find myself engaging & entertaining people in public and my friends would roll their eyes and demand I stop "showboating".

At work, I would get recognized for some achievement that I had strived for and would pride in myself. That is, until my coworkers would turn against me mumbling how I made them look bad.  

Even in my romantic life, the men I use to date would eventually confess how intimidating I am when they first met me, so I would try to be a little less, downplay my life, dim my light just a bit more.  

I would continue to try and play small so people would like me. Again, I didn't want to be isolated, uninvited, or alone so I played it down.  I didn't want to separate myself from the pack.

But I couldn't stop the longing & the need to be fully me, to be fully "on", to be me.

When you expand & shine brighter, those closest to you may feel burnt, blinded or incinerated by your new radiance. <--TWEET THIS!

Sometimes your tribe gets accustomed to your baseline behavior and when you start to express yourself more fully, when you try to level up, they can act like crabs. 

Acting like crabs refers to the phenomenon when you catch crabs and put them in a bucket they won't escape because inevitably when one starts to climb out of the bucket, the others will pull him down and not let him escape. If it keeps trying to escape they will eventually kill their own so the stay together.

Luckily, we are humans and not crabs, but it can feel like dying when you keep trying to level up and your old tribe turns against you.

This fear, that when we start to step into our full radiance, we will be all alone, is what keeps many of us living a mediocre life, but to deny yourself your full potential, is to deny your soul's purpose, your heart’s deepest longing, it is to deny your gift to the world. 

My longing to be fully expressive, to step into my true power and capabilities became too much for me to contain.  I knew I had to start owning who I was and knew that not everyone was going to like it, but that there were people out there waiting for me to step up. 

My new mantra, the new seed I am planting goes like this:
I expand in abundance, success, health & love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same.
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So what do you do if you've had the dimmer switch on low?
Start simple.
  1. You start stepping up.  Maybe you don't know your true power or purpose, so you try new things, something scary, something that inspires you.  Once a day do something that scares you or pushes you out of your old zone and your old way of being.

  2. You follow your bliss.  What makes you happy? What could you do all day every day and it not feel like work? I mean, it may be hard work but you love it so much, it fuels you rather than deletes you.

  3. When others doubt you, question you, or put you down, know it’s because it scares them. You stepping into your brilliance only shines a light on those areas in their life where they're not stepping into their own.

  4. As you start, know your happiness thermostat will go off.  This is a concept from The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. That says, we all have a current setting on how much happiness we believe we deserve. When we go above it, we tend to do things to sabotage ourselves in order to take us out of that new level of happiness and bring us back to our original setting.  With consistent practice and recognition, you can reset your thermostat to the level of abundance, success, health and love you truly desire, but again, it takes practice.

  5. If you fear that you're going to be isolated in your new radiance, all is well. You’re new vibe will attract your new tribe.  For more about this check out Kate Northrup's blog post, How to use your longing to fit in to your advantage.

​Now over to you, where have you been playing small? What is something you've wanted to do but were too afraid to try?  When did keeping your light dimmed actually bring more pain than good? Share in the comments below.  Let's create our new tribe, let's create a Radiant Life by Design!
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6/19/2016 5 Comments

Why Women Must Gather

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“Every woman who heals herself, helps heal all the women who came before her, and all those who come after her.”
​Dr. Christiane Northrup

When I was a teenager, I, like many, felt fear about growing up and becoming an adult woman. What did that even mean? Would I work or go to college? Would I marry early, late or never? Would I have kids or no kids? Would I show up fully in my life and own it or become overwhelmed by life and run away?  These stressful times caused me to isolate. While I was social and gregarious at school, I would hide away at home consumed by my racing thoughts.

In tribal cultures, woman would gather regularly to plan for the tribe and connect with one another.  The elders would teach the young about what it meant to become a woman in their society. They would teach them how to honor their power, their shakti, their divine feminine essence within them. How to use it to ask for teaching dreams, how to interpret their feelings & intuition and how to respond to stress.  But as society advance these practices of gathering in such a way became primitive and almost completely lost.   Now, most women have lost their ability to honor their bodies and their systems. We lost touch with how we, as females, should process our stress, our fear and our grief.    
 
Many women experience daily stressors — full work schedules, demanding families, disappointing bank balances — but women are designed to react different to the ensuing stress. Our reaction, rather than the typical concept of “fight or flight”is, to reach out and nurture — in short, to “tend and befriend” — during times of stress, but when we feel isolated or we haven’t a place to befriend other women we impede our natural ability to process stress.


Psychologist Shelley Taylor, PhD, a professor at UCLA, developed the “tend and befriend” theory of stress response, challenges the notion that the individualistic, aggressive “fight or flight” model applies to all of us, observing that “the human response to stress is characterized at least as much by tending to and befriending others, a pattern that is especially true of women.” While both sexes share the capacity for fight or flight, women seem to use it less often, unless they feel isolated from female companions.

Seeking out social support and nurturing others, as women often long to do, is one of the best forms of stress relief. ~CLICK TO TWEET

“The social world is undeniably protective,” observes Taylor. “Ties with family and close friends are protective of physical health … [while] social isolation increases the risk for all causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, stroke, accidents or suicide.”

If you are a woman of this world with blockages, shadows, layers, keeping your true soul essence, your light from shining then let us engage in practices to allow us to remember our true nature and our womanhood. As we reclaim our birthright, we not only pave the way for the next generation, leading by example, but we repair and heal all those who have come before us.

​We gather as women because it heals us to be together, we process our stress instead of storing those issues in our tissues.

The longing to surround yourself with other women is deeply seated in the hearts and souls of so many women. Today, the desire for woman-only sacred space has re-awakened. The energy is shifting, women are coming back into their power and learning how to heal ourselves.


This is a powerful time of change and transformation on the planet. Please join me Tuesdays in July 6-7:15pm for a very special series: Kundalini for Women at Yoga Yoga North. We will move, we will connect, we will align and elevate each other in this process, pulling from various healing modalities along with the technology of Kundalini Yoga, we will join together to expand our radiance and release the burden of stress we carry. Each week we will build upon themes and I will provide you tools to use at home to become more fully the being you were brought to this life to be.
Register Here: http://www.yogayoga.com/calendar/details?event_id=29921282

Sat Nam,
Beth
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