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Compassion in these wild times // Mitgefühl in diesen wilden Zeiten

Years ago, during my Kundalini Yoga Teacher training, we were given five sutras (“words to live by”) to help guide us through these times. One of those sutras said, “Understand through compassion, or you will misunderstand the times.” It took me a while to understand its full meaning. 

Compassion is a parent saying to their child, “Darling, I know you think you want to stay up late, but you can barely keep your eyes open – can you feel that? It means your body needs some rest. Come on, let’s get you to bed.” 

Compassion is a mighty tree gifting some love to a weary human sitting in its shadow – even if said human doesn’t understand the gift. 

Compassion is an inner realisation knowing that you will have to listen what your heart has to say – even if it hurts – if you want to truly enjoy being yourself. 

My October calendar has some appointments available – if you’d like to explore the ways in which the energy of Compassion can help you get through these wild times, book yourself a spot, via this link. Talk soon!    

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Während meiner Ausbildung zur Kundalini Yogalehrerin bekamen wir fünf so genannte Sutras (Leitsprüche) an die Hand, die uns dabei helfen sollten, gut durch die jetzigen Zeiten zu kommen. Eines dieser Sutras war, “Verstehe durch Mitgefühl, oder Du wirst die Zeiten missdeuten.” Und es hat gebraucht, bis ich diesen Leitspruch komplett verstanden hatte. 

Mitgefühl ist ein Elternteil, der zu seinem Kind sagt, “Hase, ich weiß, Du denkst, Du würdest gern noch wachbleiben, aber merkst Du, dass Du Deine Augen kaum noch offen halten kannst? Das bedeutet, dass Dein Körper Ruhe braucht. Komm, jetzt geht’s ins Bett.” 

Mitgefühl ist ein Baum, der einem erschöpften Menschen, der in seinem Schatten sitzt, Liebe schenkt – auch wenn dieser Mensch kein Gespür dafür hat. 

Mitgefühl ist die innere Erkenntnis, dass Du dem Schmerz in Deinem Herzen zuhören musst – auch wenn’s erstmal weh tut – wenn Du Dich in Dir selbst wohlfühlen möchtest. 

In meinem Oktober-Kalender sind ein paar Termine frei – wenn Du gern herausfinden möchtest, wie das Thema Mitgefühl Dir durch diese wilden Zeiten hindurch helfen möchte, buch Dir gern über diesen Link eine Session. Bis bald!           

My take on boundaries

Over the past few months, there’s one particular theme that has been showing up in many of my Sessions: Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. So, I thought I’d write an info-post today and let you know where to look if you’re wondering whether your boundaries have any holes in them, so to speak.  

In every type of relationship field, keeping your boundaries healthy and strong is vital to keeping those relationships fun – both in your private life, and at work. And there are a few clear signs that can point you to the areas where those boundaries in your relationship fields may be less than good. 

Let me give you some examples to show you what I mean when I talk about boundaries that are less-than-fully-intact – and as you read along, “take the quiz”, if you like, and see if any of these issues ring a bell.

What boundary issues can look like: 

  • Other people’s problems tend to get washed into your energetic space, and you are busy cleaning up after those problems, even though they are not yours
  • You can feel other people’s emotions and states of mind as if they were your own, and this experience exhausts you
  • Some people seem to be throwing all kinds of energetic “darts” at you, and you tend to spend a lot of energy trying to protect yourself from those attacks (e.g. you feel the need to retreat more often than what would feel normal for you; or, when you are in a meeting with these kinds of people, much of your mental bandwidth is spent trying hard not to show any signs of weakness so you won’t get attacked) 
  • Your conversations with someone you’re close to seem to be not-quite-honest and you’re having a hard time talking about your actual needs & desires with the other person, even though you like them a lot
  • You keep noticing that you’re living out your parents’ values in certain areas of your life, even though those values don’t actually match yours
  • When you’re at a family function, you are having difficulties being yourself, and instead, you keep falling back into old behavioural patterns you’ve been meaning to release
  • When trying to explore certain relationship issues, your intuition seems to be blocked, and you are not receiving any clear guidance when it comes to those issues
  • There is a certain group of relationships in your life (e.g. friendships, siblings) that seem to be under the (negative) influence of a certain person, and their influence seems to trigger certain conflict dynamics within the group that create an unusual amount of stress between you
  • You keep sliding into conflict with someone (e.g. at work) even though the “official rules” that exist for that kind of relationship should foster more of a peaceful co-existence

None of these “symptoms” are unusual, and I made this list drawing from my clients’ experiences as well as from my personal life. Because those issues are very common. 

And they are all resolvable. 

One very elegant solution for these kinds of issues is to work on your energies. Setting up your boundaries in an energetic way, then testing them by observing the real-life results they create, and then improving them based on those results – if needed – can help you transform those issues, sustainably.

And this energetic solution is often much more effective in creating good boundaries than conversations (alone) would be.  

So if my list, above, feels familiar, and you would like to work on your boundaries, let’s schedule a Session or two (or, book yourself an Intro Consultation, here, if this is your first time working with me).

And then let’s set up some beautiful new boundary energies for you. 

Some small changes

I should be used to it by now: Every summer, I try to take a few days off – like any normal human being. And then, my muse comes for a visit, carrying a hole basket full of new ideas for my Coaching business. Demanding I sit down with her and take a look at those ideas with her, right away. 

This year, her ideas will mostly influence my internal processes, but there’s one that will be visible from the outside, too: My Intro Conversations will only be free for the remainder of August. After that, my sample Session will no longer be gratis. 

So, if you’ve been thinking about working with me, now is your time: If you book before August 31, your first Session with me will be free. My specialties: Relationship themes you would like to get clarity on – emotionally, energetically – which naturally includes the relationship you have with yourself. I look forward to diving into those depths with you!

To book your Intro Conversation, contact me here.

And now, I’ll give this relaxation thing another go. 

What do you call that feeling?

All of us are carrying around stuff in our lives that we know we’ll need to get sorted. And we’ve promised ourselves that we will – eventually: A repeated pattern that’s annoying, a habit that we don’t like about ourselves, an issue that we don’t like about our relationships, a certain thing we don’t like about our relationship with the world, etc. etc. Something that’s just not right, something that feels off.

We usually know what our personal “something” is.

And we usually also know what the emotional-energetic-physical feeling is that tells us that we’re going to have to look at our “something”, NOW.

It’s a feeling of urgency, and a feeling of intuitive knowing.

For many of us, that feeling is something that we’ve been trained not to feel, and that we’ve been trained not to listen to, but it’s going to get stronger and stronger.

And at some point you’ll notice – ok, NOW I want to find a healer, NOW I want to find a class to teach me how to deal with this thing, NOW I want to find an energy worker, a therapist, a coach… I want to find SOMEBODY who can help me.

So, my invitation to you is, look back at your life and see where in your life you’ve felt this feeling before – and you’ll know what it feels like. You’ve felt it before. It’s this strong inner knowing that says, “Now. Go. Do it.”

Can you identify that feeling?

Is now the time to dive into your “something”?

Is now the time to sort your “something” out?

Are you using your Inner Wisdom System?

Many spiritual teachers predicted that the years between 2012 and 2038 would be a transition into a whole new era.

Our consciousness would become more sophisticated, they said. And we would shift into a more ecologically healthy way of being. Life would become more peaceful, we would connect with our soul families, and we would all become the proud owners of some excellent intuitive gifts that would help us create a whole new world built on justice and freedom. 

For a while, I just assumed that this meant that we would get easy access to our intuitive wisdom all by ourselves, and that we would then automatically download our personal goals for this lifetime… and that we would basically all become happier and happier, in the process.

For some of us, this is exactly what has been happening.

For others – and I think this is the majority – it’s been different: We know something needs to change, and so we’ve been practicing Yoga and meditation. We’ve read all the wisdom teachings to get some answers. We might even have gone through some spiritual training or other. And we think we know how to work with our intuition.

But then again, the results we are getting from doing all of that inner work haven’t been what we thought they would be.

Our minds are still stressed, and we can’t really tell if we’re headed in the right direction. Our relationships haven’t improved much. Our intuitive guidance often doesn’t give us any clear answers. And we are not exactly sure how we can keep holding our inner strength when every week, there’s another major social, ecological or personal challenge to be dealt with (COVID-19, neo-fascists trying to undermine democracy, heat waves happening in Siberia, floods all across the globe… the list seems endless).

In other words, life has not magically turned into the love-fest those spiritual teachers saw coming.

Or, rather: Not, yet.

And I think that’s because many spiritual teachings are missing one important step: Customisation.

The times we are living in are an invitation to begin creating a personal relationship with all of these elements that make up your inner wisdom system.

It’s not enough to know that there’s a third eye in you, which, theoretically, can pick up on intuitive guidance. You need to know how, exactly, your inner wisdom is speaking to you, personally, and how you can differentiate between a thought and your intuitive insights. You need to have reference points for what your inner guidance sounds like, and whether it’s coming from your Guides, your soul, your heart, or some other place like the Earth, or your future self.

So, the times we are living in are an invitation to getting some answers to some big questions, such as:

  • What is the concrete mission my soul has envisioned, for this lifetime?
  • Which part of my inner wisdom system can help me make important decisions from a place of integrity and self-knowing, when life is as unpredictable as it is right now?
  • How can I ground my closest relationships in love+trust+respect and transform them into mutually enriching partnerships and friendships that will survive any chaos?
  • And how can I stay connected to my inner guidance, use its wisdom to consciously evolve with a rapidly changing world, and contribute to creating a better life for us all, without burning out in the process?

These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself right now.

I would like to invite you to have a look at my new Session Cycle called Your Inner Wisdom System, and see if you feel that my work could support you in these times. We don’t have to start with a full-on, 12-Session Cycle. A single session or a 4-Session Package can be a powerful beginning.

If you like what you see on my Inner Wisdom System page, meet me for a non-binding Intro Consultation via Zoom, and let’s ask your inner wisdom system to give you some clarifying insights into a particular question that is bugging you, right now. This is how all of my coaching relationships start.

Send me a note via my Contact Page if you are interested, and I’ll send you a link to my online scheduling system, where you can choose an appointment for our Intro Consultation that suits you.

I look forward to working with you!

All different kinds of consciousness

You are so much more than an intelligent machine. There is more than one type of consciousness in you, and you can access them all – via your intuitive senses.

Your intuition is your entry point to all different kinds of consciousness in you which are similar to – but different from – your rational intelligence.

In some of the more brain-centered coaching styles, intuition is addressed only as this nebulous thing, as this “hunch” or “gut feeling”. But your understanding of your various layers of consciousness can be as clear as your analytical thinking, if you’ve learned how to properly access those layers. There is no guessing involved. When you know what you’re doing (and with the right support), you will experience this as a dialogue between your rational mind and your inner wisdom.

Which is why I don’t subscribe to a coaching-only approach if you want deep transformation. And which is why I’ve always included intuitive guidance and energy work into my Sessions.

Nature has equipped you with various levels of consciousness because our brain was never meant to be the sole solution finder in times of crisis.

All of your consciousness levels are part of your unique Inner Wisdom System, and all of them are here to help you: Your body’s wisdom, your past selves, your future self, your higher self, your Guides, your subtle energy bodies, your heart, your soul, etc. – you can talk to them all. And they all have answers to your deepest questions.

Healing your inner children

Healing yourself can start by healing your younger selves. Give your inner children – of all ages – the love and care and truth and beauty they were missing, growing up. Take their needs seriously, and let them share their strengths with you.

Ask your inner two-year-old about boundaries. She knows all about that No.

Let your inner four-year-old show you how her Guides, Angels and Healing Beings are helping her cope, in this strange world we are living in.

Let your inner seven-year-old decide who she wants to be friends with. She knows how to read her heart.

Ask your inner 12-year-old if she would like to share her deep thoughts with you.

And let your inner 17-year-old tell you about all the ways she would like to express her soul and herself.

Here’s another sweet practice you can try:

Use your imagination to build each of your younger selves a new home, and let them furnish and decorate their new places in any way they choose. Don’t judge them for what they want to put into their new rooms, and watch how they express themselves through interior design. See how they carefully place their most cherished items within reach, and sense-see-feel how much love goes into each decision. Let them make themselves comfortable, and give them room to explore and to change anything they like, as often as they like.

It’s your imagination, where everything is possible – and where your younger selves can fully be themselves.

Enjoy!

And if you need any help with this, let’s work together.
Helping your younger selves heal is part of what I do.

How to hold your inner strength

The more things are being driven into chaos all around us, the more important it is for each of us to be able to draw from our own inner strength. And because there is so much violence and fear that is getting swirled up, it can be difficult to access that kind of strength within ourselves.

Holding (and using) your spiritual strength is like the ability to control your breathing: It is like using all of those small muscles in your torso to draw in a full deep breath, expanding your ribcage and your belly, and to then let your lungs let out the air again, in a steady and controlled stream, until your solar plexus softens and gets ready to draw the next breath in.

Some energetic part of you knows how to pull your inner strength into yourself, how to hold it, and how to then release it and use it, in a very deliberate way.

For some of us, using our spiritual power means to hold our ground in a heated argument and to channel peace – even though we’re scared – and to direct all parties involved towards focusing on a specific solution to a specific problem. 

For some of us, using our spiritual power means to move with our creative instincts and to keep working on a project until it feels right, before we release it – even though fear would rather have us put out a half-finished version, instead, just to be done with it.

For some of us, using our spiritual power means to trust our intuitive senses and to gently hold space when our relationship grids are evolving into a new direction, even when our PTSD triggers would have us fall into fight, flight, freeze or fawn at the slightest sign of distress.

For many of us, it is very difficult to reconnect to that kind of inner strength.

We try to take a deep breath inwards, but our diaphragm keeps trembling, and it feels like our lungs are not filling up the way we would need them to.

And we try to push our fear-based stress responses against an ever-changing world, because we haven’t learned how to trust ourselves.

We can’t remember what it is like to let our spiritual muscles hold us, move us, keep us safe.

Try this

Developing your ability to draw from your inner spiritual strength takes practice. And you won’t be able to get there by yourself. We need each other to become ourselves. So, here are my two cents: A list of transformational practices that can help you hold your inner strength – and if you need support with any of those practices, contact me. It’s what I do. 

  • Develop a daily spiritual practice that makes sense to you, and keep it up.
  • Do the necessary healing work and release as much personal and collective trauma from your system as possible, until you feel like yourself again. This is the most difficult part. And unfortunately, it will cost you: Time, energy, money, sometimes relationships, and many illusions. 
  • Rebuild your personal boundaries – on an energetic level first, and then through action and words. Be mindful of what you will and won’t allow to happen in your relationships with other people, and be as good a friend to yourself as you are a friend to those you love.
  • Learn how to hold your personal space, and use your breath and your intent to regularly center and ground yourself into that line of light that flows up and down your spine, down through the heart of earth, and up through the center of your soul – in an endless loop, going up and down. It is your lifeline to the love and nourishment coming to you from Earth, and it is a direct hotline to your soul’s intuitive wisdom and power.
  • Get clear on who you are, at soul level, and then translate that expertise into your human life. This can be tricky, because we tend to be a bit blind to ourselves. So, find someone who can help you understand yourself. The clearer you get on who you are, the more you will be able to fully engage with your gifts and talents and bring them to life. 
  • Stay focused on your own experience, and stay close to the people you trust.
  • Keep building a world you would like to live in. And find a bigger cause you can support, outside of what you can do, as an individual.
  • Don’t get discouraged if you can “only” work on one single issue to help create a better world. That one single issue will touch many lives. Keep it up. Ask your soul to let you know how you can use your creativity to unfold that one single issue, in the best way possible, and then fill it with life.

Do you need help with any of these practices? Contact me. It’s all part of my work.

Image: One of my Symmetric Light Series pieces: Fresh greenery in front of a concrete wall
©️ Lilly Mackuth 2019

A state of overwhelm

Over the past couple of months, I have taken some time to learn more about nervous system regulation, which can help to address states of shut-down and burn-out, triggered by chronic stress or PTSD.

And the more I learned, the more I could sense the deep feeling of overwhelm that seems to paralyse and frighten so many of us, sending us into low energy states and shut-down, or hightened energy states and burn-out, when it comes to the current developments on this planet. Some call it a “trauma-spell”, and it affects individuals as well as the collective.

We feel overwhelmed when it comes to the current crash of our natural environment, we feel overwhelmed when we observe the current political shifts towards far-right extremism, and on top of it all, there’s the overwhelm that shows up when we face difficulties in our personal lives – in our relationships with others, and in our relationship with ourselves.

And the more I learned about the energetic expressions of that overwhelm, the more I could also sense that working towards establishing a sense of self-trust, equilibrium and solution-orientedness can seem utterly impossible, when you’re in the thick of it.

Which is why, in every one of my client Sessions, I consciously apply Yogic meditative tools at the beginning of each Session (and sometimes throughout) to help my client get into a state of balance and ease, in order to help them tune into their intuitive guidance system.

Because in that state of balance, where we have access to our #innerwisdomsystem – that’s where we can sense-see solutions to what is keeping us shut down, or burned out. That’s where clarity lives.

Some simple self-regulating tools

When you find yourself in such a state of overwhelm, there are two quite simple things you can try: Singing, and dancing. Both singing and dancing can help to regulate low energy states and shut-down (i.e. hypoarousal), as well as hightened energy states and burn-out (i.e. hyperarousal).*

When you’re in a low energy state (i.e. when your autonomic nervous system feels frozen and shut down), your mind may be thinking thoughts like “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where to start, it’s all too much”. Your body may feel paralysed and your head is probably quite foggy, eyelids heavy, focus: gone.

Try dancing.

It’s the simplest way to bring some warmth into your frozenness. If dancing seems to be too much of a stretch, start by wiggling your toes to a piece of music. HipHop or R&B are perfect for this. Get one part of your body to move to the music, then another. If you can, stand up and rhythmically shift your weight from one leg to the other, and back again. Left and right, left and right. Keep your knees slightly bent, and let your body become one with the rhythm. Keep moving, even if it’s difficult at first. Left, and right. Move for 10 minutes at a time, and see how you feel.

When you’re in a hightened energy state (i.e. when your autonomous nervous system is in fight-or-flight mode, racing towards burnout), you may be thinking thoughts like “There’s so much I need to do, I haven’t done enough, I can’t stop working, I have to do more”, and your body probably feels antsy and restless. Your eyes are wide open (too wide, actually), and your whole system feels stressed. Which is not the kind of mood that would usually have you burst into song. But that’s exactly what can help you get back into a state of equilibrium:

When you start to sing, you start to regulate your autonomic nervous system – if the style you’re singing in elongates your outward breath.

So, find a slow, gentle song that has you singing long phrases on long outward breaths. The mantra Ra Ma Da Sa by Snatam Kaur is perfect for this. Sing along for 10 minutes and see how you feel.

*P.S.: Obviously, these tips do not replace medical care nor therapy or healing modalities. Please contact your medical doctor, your mental healthcare specialist or your spiritual healer if your symptoms persist.

Your Inner Wisdom System

Some time ago, I created the hashtag #InnerWisdomSystem because I needed a container, online, to showcase some intuitive findings from my client Sessions, across social media. And over time, that small hashtag I have been using to channel and collect my findings has slowly formed into a nice clear capsule containing all those elements that make my work so interesting to me:

Elements like that part of your #InnerWisdomSystem which acts like a radar within your third eye, sending you clear energetic images when something’s off in a relationship, letting you know how to navigate around the places that would have you shipwrecked. And how to find the places where your soul-mates gather, instead.

Or, that part of your #InnerWisdomSystem that whispers dreams and songs and thought-loops and mantras to your inner ear to help you find the next pieces in your personal relationship puzzle.

Or, that part of your #InnerWisdomSystem that lets you feel for your heart’s energetic self-healing mechanisms in the dark, after a break-up, and which also comes with clear instructions (and a flashlight) on how to use these mechanisms, if you know where to look.

Your #InnerWisdomSystem is that part of you that sets off all the nervous alarms in your solar plexus when someone pushes against your sense of self, using systemic misogyny, or racism, or sexism, or or any kind of violence to try to strike fear in you. And your #InnerWisdomSystem is also that other part of you which will then always guide you towards your inner center, the source of your courage, and integrity, and self-protection, and new beginnings, if you know how to let yourself be guided.

Your #InnerWisdomSystem lets you sense-see-feel your soul’s past incarnations on this earth – the ones whose trauma and pain you are still carrying around in your subtle energy bodies – because it wants you to heal all those wounds that couldn’t heal, back then. And that same #InnerWisdomSystem will also gladly send you all those memories of your successful past lives – the ones who will want to teach you a thing or two about love, and connection, and freedom, and joy, if you are open to hear what they have to say.

Your #InnerWisdomSystem wraps your energy body in the softest sheets of soft fuzzy love as soon as you reach out your hands to ask your team of Guides, Angels and Healing Beings for help.

And your #InnerWisdomSystem then picks up on your team’s giggles and perspectives and tips and truths and sends their messages through your intuitive channels to reach you. Because what good would a whole band of cosmic helpers be if you couldn’t hear their wisdom.

Your beautiful, interconnected, super-conscious #InnerWisdomSystem knows how to solve your life’s mysteries, in any circumstance.

It’s an incredible thing.