Susan Laurance, LMFT

Happy New Year and enjoy this beautiful song...

Very helpful article for dealing with addiction.

Awakening Now (Danna Faulds) Why wait for your awakening? Do you value your reasons for staying small More than the light shining through the open door? ... Forgive yourself, Forgive yourself. Now is the only time you have to be whole. Now. Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true nature. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. Please, oh please, don't continue to believe in your stories of deficiency and failure. This is the day of your awakening.

So many benefits to meditation...

Happy Thanksgiving Mary Oliver's poem makes me very grateful to live on such an amazing planet with such awe-some creatures! The Summer Day by Mary Oliver Who made the world?... Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? See more

Stopping and Starting By Gunilla Norris One of the hardest lessons of any inner journey Is to understand that our ideal sense of how things should be And the actual experience are miles apart... To be with our being is the most simple, direct, truly human capacity, And it is the most difficult to sustain In two minutes of sitting quietly we will soon discover That our minds have gone off by themselves With plans, fantasies, judgments, hopes, fears and what have you In nothing flat we have flown away from our presence in the present To accept that we do this all the time Is to accept the process of stopping and starting again and again See more

Excessive noise without periods of silence elevates stress hormones. Silence helps replenish the brain and the body. Taking Time to Switch Off According to the Attention Restoration Theory, when you are in an environment with lower levels of sensory input, the brain can ‘recover’ some of its cognitive abilities. With our digital world, our brains get less time to switch off. We are constantly processing enormous amounts of information. Research has shown the constant attenti...on demands of modern life is placing a lot of stress on our prefrontal cortexthe part of the brain responsible for making decisions, solving problems and more. When we spend time alone in silence, our brains are able to relax and release this constant focus. Researchers found that silence helps new cells to differentiate into neurons and integrate into the system and that when we experience silence, our brains are able to work at better understanding our internal and external environments. We can make sense of our lives and gain perspective, something that is vital for our overall wellbeing. See more

If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality. -Dan Milliman

Self-Observation Without Judgement by Danna Faulds Release the harsh and pointed inner voice. It's just a throwback to the past, and holds no truth about this moment.... Let go of self-judgment, the old, learned ways of beating yourself up for each imagined inadequacy. Allow the dialogue within the mind to grow friendlier, and quiet. Shift out of inner criticism and life suddenly looks very different. I can say this is only because I make the choice a hundred times a day to release the voice that refuses to acknowledge the real me. What's needed here isn't more prodding toward perfection, but intimacy - seeing clearly, and embracing what I see. Love, not judgment, sows the seeds of tranquility and change.

Images-R-Us "He said, "Be afraid of the world, for it is big and strong; and fear the demons within, for they are many and brutal; but do not fear yourself, for that is your Self." ~E.Harding, Conversations with Jung, Page 8

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters By Portia Nelson I... I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I fall in. I am lost ... I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out. II I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place but, it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. III I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in ... it's a habit. my eyes are open I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. IV I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. V I walk down another street. Copyright (c) 1993, by Portia Nelson from the book There's A Hole in My Sidewalk. Reproduced with kind permission from Beyond Words Publishing, Hillsboro, Oregon.