“There’s respecting first your own boundless heart, its wish to connect and a respect for your own limits and the limits of others. It’s tender work that with time brings ease. I know this from my own experience.”

There’s a premium placed on healthy boundaries. Boundaries are necessary because there are people who wreak havoc in our lives. And boundary setting is only one part of the skillful means required in our relationships. Clear boundaries help us to respect our limits. There are people we must keep a safe distance from and often times they are some of our closest people.

“If you are open to fine distinctions, you can observe that something in you knows the way home, slow as it may be, it returns you to the center of itself.”

An audio version of this blog post can be found here.

This quote above from Ruthy Alon, a late and great Feldenkrais somatic movement teacher, is a favorite of mine.

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.”

Rumi’s quote offers a beautiful insight about the dynamic nature of balance. Balance includes both opening and closing, exertion and rest.

As we move through each of the days that make up our lives, it’s essential to make time to pause. It’s good to check in with yourself and see how you are faring. Is it easy for you to relocate your center…has empathic distress gotten the better of you?

There’s plenty to be concerned about in our world and it’s essential that we pull back, take a breath.

“Self help books (or videos) are like car repair manuals: you can read them all day but doing so doesn’t repair anything. Working on a car means rolling up your sleeves and getting under the hood, and you have to be willing to get dirt on your hands and grease beneath your fingernails. Overhauling emotional knowledge is no spectator sport; it demands a messy experience of yanking and tinkering that comes from a limbic bond. If someone’s relationships today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark on a child’s mind. When a limbic connection has established a neural pattern, it takes a limbic connection to revise it.” “A General Theory Of Love” Lewis, Amini & Lannon, MDs