shamanism

The Discipline to Be Free to Love

~ florries ~ Leave a comment

My strongest discipline is to stay in the heart

Discipline is important on a spiritual path. When people hear the word discipline, they may imagine strict routines, extraordinary willpower and someone performing every spiritual practice perfectly before sunrise.

And partly, this is what is needed to stay on target. But not in an amount that overwhelms. It should nourish!

I am not perfect. I have never been perfect, and I do not believe perfection is the goal.

For me, discipline is most of all remembering what I have chosen. It means staying on target. And my deepest target has always been freedom. More precisely:

To be free to love.

First, you must know your target

Discipline without direction can become another form of control.

You can become extremely good at following rules without asking where those rules are leading you. You can meditate every morning, perform complicated ceremonies and follow every piece of spiritual advice you receive—and still become more rigid, frightened or disconnected from your heart.

Before deciding how disciplined you should be, ask yourself:

What is my discipline serving?

What are you actually moving towards?

Recognition? Power? Safety? Enlightenment? Control? Freedom?

There is no shame in discovering mixed motives. We are human beings, and our intentions are rarely completely pure or simple. Spiritual practice can be influenced by fear, ambition and the desire to feel special, just like anything else.

The important thing is to keep looking.

My target has always been freedom. Not the freedom to avoid responsibility or remain untouched by other people, but the freedom to be fully alive and fully capable of loving.

That direction gives meaning to my practices.

Begin the day by returning to yourself

If you want to work spiritually in the way that I do, I believe it is important to begin the day with a few practices.

They do not need to be complicated. The purpose is not to complete an impressive spiritual checklist before breakfast. The purpose is to return to yourself before the demands, emotions and expectations of the world begin pulling at your attention. For example:

Meditate. Even if it is for 3 minutes.
Breathe.
Become aware of your body and energy.
Connect with your heart.
Remember what you serve.

These practices create a point of inner orientation. They help you notice what belongs to you, what you have absorbed from others and what is still pulling you backwards into an old story.

Without this return, it is easy to spend the entire day reacting.

Discipline gives you a moment in which you can choose.

Recapitulate and reclaim your energy

Recapitulation has been an important part of my spiritual path.

We leave pieces of our attention and energy in the past. They remain attached to conflicts, relationships, regrets, old identities and moments we repeatedly revisit in our minds.

Part of us may still be trying to change what happened. Part of us may still be having an argument that ended years ago. Part of us may remain trapped in an old fear, waiting for a different outcome.Recapitulation does not mean denying the past or pretending that painful experiences did not matter.It means meeting those experiences consciously and reclaiming the life force that is still bound to them.

You remember.You breathe.You feel what is there.You release what no longer needs to control you.You call your energy home.

This is rarely something we do once and finish forever. The past has layers. As we grow, we become capable of meeting experiences from a different level of awareness.

The purpose is not to erase your history.

It is to become free enough to live now.

Become more fluid every day

One of the purposes of spiritual practice, in my opinion, is to become increasingly fluid.

Rigidity is tempting because it creates an impression of safety. If we can define everything as right or wrong, spiritual or unspiritual, success or failure, we do not have to remain open to uncertainty.

But life is fluid.

Reality moves. Relationships change. We change. Something that was true for us ten years ago may no longer be true today. Something that helped us survive one period of life may prevent us from living fully in the next.

Fluidity allows us to respond to what is actually here.

It does not mean having no values or allowing ourselves to be pushed in every direction. Water is fluid, but it is also powerful. It can change direction without losing its nature.

Spiritual fluidity means remaining deeply connected to your core while allowing your understanding, expression and path to evolve.

You can be committed without becoming rigid.

You can have a direction without trying to control every step.

You can change your mind without betraying your soul.

Discipline is the practice of returning

You will lose your centre sometimes.

You will become distracted. You will react from fear. You will fall into an old pattern, forget a practice or spend far too much time inside a thought that makes you miserable.

This does not make you a spiritual failure. The discipline is to return.

Return to your body.

Return to your heart.

Return to what you know beneath the noise.

Perhaps you will need to return a hundred times in one day. Then returning a hundred times is your practice. Perfection says that you should never lose your centre. Discipline says that when you notice you have lost it, you come back.

There is far more compassion in this understanding of discipline. It makes room for our humanity without turning our humanity into an excuse to abandon what matters.

Staying in the heart is not always soft

My strongest discipline is to stay in the heart.

This does not mean maintaining a pleasant emotional state at all times. It does not mean smiling while someone mistreats you, avoiding anger or saying yes when every part of you is saying no.

The heart is not weak.

Sometimes staying in the heart means setting a boundary. Sometimes it means speaking a difficult truth. Sometimes it means leaving. Sometimes it means refusing to participate in something that violates your values.

Love can be gentle, fierce, joyful, grieving, protective or wild.

Staying in the heart means continuing to seek the place within you where love, truth and freedom can exist together. It means asking love to guide your power. It means refusing to let fear, pride or the desire for control become the unquestioned ruler of your life. And when you discover that you have left the heart, you return.

Again and again.

Remember what you serve

Spiritual discipline is not about becoming superhuman.

It is not about becoming the strongest, most enlightened or most fantastic person in the room. It is not proof that you are better than anyone else. It is the choice to continue moving towards what matters. Meditate because it helps you listen. Recapitulate because your energy belongs in the life you are living now. Release what confines you. Practise becoming fluid.

Return to the heart whenever you notice that you have left it. And remember your target.

My target is freedom.

Freedom inside myself. Freedom in relationship with life. Freedom to experience the mystery without forcing it into a fixed belief.

But most of all:

The freedom to love—and to remain free while loving.

Here I am naked in front of you (almost)

~ florries ~ Leave a comment

Hi there beautiful people!

It’s been a while. And here I am right before you with everything that I am. My full power, my full body as you can see. 

I hope I don’t chock you. Maybe I want to chock a bit 😉 but most of all I want to inspire. I call this project A Dance for Gaia 2. Number 2 since I did the same, got painted and photographed back in 2017, when my body looked completely different. I was slim and young back then. Now my body is carrying the signs of a lot of experience.

I feel a bit vulnerable showing myself like this, but I’m inspired by all the amazing women sharing their bodies in the body positivity movement. I do however feel that this project is not really body positivity. Not that I have anything against it! On the contrary, I think it has done something incredibly important by challenging the idea that only certain bodies are beautiful, worthy or desirable.

But for me, this goes somewhere else. I call it Shamanic Body Liberation.
It is not about learning to love your body because it looks good.
It is about remembering that your body was never the problem.
It is about experiencing the body as sacred.
As nature.
As the place where Spirit lives.

I painted my entire body with symbols, colours and patterns. I wanted to transform the body from something that is looked at into something that is felt. From an object to a landscape. From something to judge into something to honour.

For me, the painted body becomes a kind of ritual.

The marks are not there to hide anything. They are there to reveal something.

A body can be soft.
A body can be large.
A body can age.
A body can carry scars, stories, grief, pleasure, strength and wisdom.

And none of this makes it less sacred.

I was born in Sweden in the 1970s, and there is also something deeply personal in this project for me. I grew up in a culture where nakedness could be quite natural – connected to swimming, saunas, summer, nature and a certain sense of bodily freedom. I want to reclaim some of that freedom, but through my own spiritual language.

Not as sexuality. Not as exhibitionism. Not as an attempt to prove that my body is beautiful.

But as a declaration:

I belong in this body.

I belong in nature. I belong IN the world.

I don’t have to become smaller to become more powerful.

I don’t have to transcend my body to become spiritual.

My body is where I experience this life.
My body is where I breathe, dance, feel, grieve, laugh, love and connect.
My body is where Spirit meets the Earth.

That is what Shamanic Body Liberation means to me.

I would love your feedback! Please feel welcome to comment and tell me what you think and feel about this. 

This week I will show this project to the world. Follow me on Instagram for more! And have a beautiful day!

When the intuition goes quiet – reclaiming your inner voice

~ florries ~ Leave a comment

The other day I ignored my intuition. I was invited to a jam session, which is something I really love. But all day before I didn’t feel like going. Thoughts went around in the head, was wondering what was up. Finally the decision was made to go anyway. The weather was marvelous so I took a long walk to get there. Upon arriving, the place, a beautiful pavilion in a vast park, was empty. No one was there.

The jam session had been postponed and I had missed the information about that. At first, feelings of disappointment arose. Then I relaxed and thanked the intuition that had warned me all day, once again promising to listen inwards and trust what comes up. I sat down and enjoyed the sun, listened to the calming sound of people talking in the park, the birds, the wind. So no harm done, a good time came out of the whole thing.

Still, this was an action going against what a large part of my work revolves around, paying attention and trusting that inner voice, which is so often vastly more intelligent than the conscious mind. Can’t count the times when it has taken me places where I would never have gone without it. So much gained from following the flow, the Tao, of life!

For example, the week before I felt like going in to a second hand shop. My first thought was to find a dress. Once in there I wasn’t excited about the dresses, just glanced through them, but instead I was attracted to the section of scarfs. I rarely buy scarfs, but since my feeling to look at them was so strong, I followed it. There in the back, hidden from view, was a beautiful one which matched my outfit perfectly. And it was on sale.

I know, a small thing, but there was such joy and excitement in it. And my outfit looked so much better with that scarf!

Could tell you so many stories about following the intuition, but I would love you to listen to my latest podcast episode instead. It’s called “When a woman’s intuition goes quiet – reclaiming your inner voice”. In it, I share all from a personal story to methods and a guided meditation to strengthen ones intuition. You can listen to it here, or on Spotify and Apple Music.

You can also download my free guide on the same topic here. It dives further into methods to really listen in to that inner voice, which can take us on such amazing adventures and bring all from success to happiness! Hope that you listen to it today and that it brings you right to where you should be.

Personally I’m going to go on an unplanned adventure in my own city this week, to practice. This is one of the best ways I find, to get into that flow of synchronicity. It’s simple, just take half a day or some hours and walk out your door. Like Bilbo says in The Lord of the Rings, you never know where the road takes you…

Follow your feet and talk to people if you feel like it, asking for directions is a good way to start a conversation. Follow your attention, let it be free and take you forward. Bring a small budget or a little picnic in a backpack so that your body feels safe. Then just go!

On how to step into flow

~ florries ~ Leave a comment

Flow… We long for it when it’s not there and love it when life flows magically. Stepping into a fluid state is one of the corner pillars of shamanism. It’s about liberating our energy from blockages, allowing us to connect with our entire power.

I truly believe that the pathway to flow mostly lies in self-love. But feeling into what one is passionate about is key if the heart is the door. Compassion with all that comes up when reaching for that inner fluidity is the road that leads to the door. And following ones joy is the mailbox so to speak.

I support women in the process of stepping into flow, I call this process Shift into Power. Each person is unique, but there are some things that we seem to have in common when it comes to blocking our flow. One of them is fear of wild forces that we have within us. The heart is totally wild, it doesn’t like control, and that can be scary. To overcome that fear one can do many things, but a simple practice is to close your eyes and let your mind smile to the heart, until the heart smiles back. That brings the inner flow into a joyful stream which can take you anywhere! 

Another fear to overcome is the fear of actually becoming successful, because when stepping in to flow, success often follows. It’s more about the fear of change than anything else. We can be so comfortable with staying in the current state of things, simply because we are used to living life in a certain way. So much can change with success or when you take your current success a step higher. And many are afraid of this, it can be all from “will I have time to just chill out?” to “what if people actually see me?”. Overcoming these fears is tricky, but the first step is to acknowledge that it’s there and to check out what the fear is about for you. A second step can be to make a structured plan on how you will meet the challenges that you are afraid of.

But first and foremost we need to let our wild heart set the rhythm that we dance through life to. Letting the heartbeat be the drum that decides which foot we take the next step with. It’s important to make plans, be structured and letting the mind work out a path, so that it can be at ease. However, when it comes to flow, the heart knows best!