Video: All As You Go

Dr. Rob shares words of letting go of the worries, going with the flow and enjoying the journey. Happy Friday

Practicing Non-attachment, Allowing Our Children To Be

Parenting asks us to rise to some of the most difficult challenges this world has to offer, and one of its greatest paradoxes arises around the issue of attachment. On the one hand, successful parenting requires that we love our children, and most of us love in a very attached way. On the other hand, it also requires that we let go of our children at the appropriate times, which means we must practice some level of nonattachment. Many parents find this difficult because we love our children fiercely, more than we will ever love anyone, and this can cause us to overstep our bounds with them as their independence grows. Yet truly loving them requires that we set them free.

Attachment to outcome is perhaps the greatest obstacle on the parenting path, and the one that teaches us the most about the importance of practicing nonattachment. We commonly perceive our children to be extensions of ourselves, imagining that we know what’s best for them, but our children are people in their own right with their own paths to follow in this world. They may be called to move in directions we fear, don’t respect, or don’t understand, yet we must let them go. This letting go happens gradually throughout our lives with our children until we finally honor them as fully grown adults who no longer require our guidance. At this point, it is important that we treat them as peers who may or may not seek our input into their lives. This allows them, and us, to fully realize the greatest gift parents can offer their offspring: independence.

Letting go in any area of life requires a deep trust in the universe, in the overall meaning and purpose of existence. Remembering that there is more to us and our children than meets the eye can help us practice nonattachment, even when we feel overwhelmed by concern and the desire to interfere. We are all souls making our way in the world and making our way, ultimately, back to the same source. This can be our mantra as we let our children go in peace and confidence.

~Reprinted with permission from DailyOM.com

Riding Lessons for Life #19

The Half Halt:
In a riding lesson that I, myself, was taking the other day, I was discussing half halts with my trainer and he said, “The most important part of the half halt is the letting go.”    The half halt is when the rider pulls back on the reins in order to slow the horse down without stopping entirely or to shorten the horses stride without losing momentum.   In either case, the rider checks the reins back for a stride, and then immediately releases the pressure on the reins.  The reason the letting go is so important in the half halt for several reasons. First of all, if the rider maintains a constant hold on the reins the horse will get annoyed, often to the point of the horse pulling against the rider’s hands in order to try to get away from the constant pressure, and the horse will learn to ignore the pressure so that it eventually becomes meaningless. Another reason letting go is so important is because we want the horse to learn to maintain its own rhythm and to go along without constant dictation from the rider. Read more

Fear is a choice

We all deal with rational and irrational fears. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of death.
Whatever it is that you are afraid of, be it mysterious or mundane, it is holding you back from
your true potential.

“Breaking free is a matter of choice, a matter of allowing yourself to go to the highest peak and
feel The Breathe, of All That Is, moving through you,” explains Meagan O’Nan, author of
‘Creating Your Heaven on Earth’, “My message is simple. Listen to your heart.”

“Is your heart leading you, or is it your ego, your fears?” asks O’Nan. “A perfectly aware and
conscious individual once told me that thoughts are like an icy wind. The truth is that our fears
keep us from our heart. Our thoughts glide through our bodies maneuvering us to a place
where we struggle, we question, and we neglect what is already perfect.” Read more

Riding lessons for life #10

Sitting the Trot:
The sitting trot- dreaded by all riding students around the globe! Why? The trot is the most animated and jarring of all the horse’s gaits, and riders usually “post” or purposely rise and fall in and out of the saddle with the horse’s rhythm so as not to get bounced around.  But the sitting trot is an important, advanced skill and important to develop as a rider.  It is challenging because most riders tend to want to stiffen up in order to try to hold themselves still and upright in the saddle.  This is actually counter-productive and will make you bounce more because you are stiffening up against the horse.  What a rider must learn to do is relax into the saddle, go with the horse’s motion, and allow the horse to carry you along, bumps and all.

It’s always amazing to teach rider’s to do the sitting trot. At first, many are tense, as I mentioned above, and are self conscious about getting bounced, so they don’t breathe, they tense their entire bodies and therefore they do get bounced!  I tell them that they must trust me on this one, they must breathe, relax their muscles from head to toe, sink deep into the saddle, and then I see a smile spread across their face! It really works! Read more

Tied in knots

The journey of release:
When we become overwhelmed and things are not going as planned, it is natural to hold tighter to our goals and try to force things to go our way. In the process, we tie ourselves in knots, tensing our shoulders, jaws, and muscles throughout our bodies. Our mind tells us that this is how to get a firmer grip on a situation that feels out of control, but as we create knots in our bodies we are blocking the flow of our energy, exhausting ourselves by exerting more effort yet accomplishing less. At these times, though it may seem counter intuitive, our higher selves know it’s better to let go.

This may not be quite as easy as it sounds. After the relief of our first decision to release, if we allow questions about how to get everything done to start again, the knots will be back before we know it. So we need to be aware that this is a process to breathe through. First, we need to let go of our idea of what the perfect outcome should be, and allow that the intelligence that drives the universe knows better than we do how everything fits together for the highest good. Then we might have to release our imagined consequences and realize that, in most cases, the worst that could happen really isn’t that bad. Read more

Perspective

By Teresa D. Huggins
April 14, 2009

A beautiful day in Utah skiing at Park City
Crystal Blue Skies, Sun Sparkles on the Snow
No Lift Lines, Open Terrain
Pure Joy with my Family
Son hits the Terrain Park
A few Runs with My Husband
Choose a Path that is Very Steep
Uncertainty Sets in
Memories of a Challenging Slope Flashes before me-
“You can do it” Encouragement from hubby~
Still doesn’t shift the Frozen Fear within me Read more

Come out and play

I thought it was rather odd when my friend from the nursing home asked me to motor her wheelchair through the puddles that formed from the melting snow. I didn’t really get it, but I went along with it. We were out on one of our walks or what I like to call one of our”weekly strolls” because I stand and she rolls. Adhering to my friend’s peculiar request, we were off on our watery wheelchair adventure! We splashed through each puddle together and came out of each experience, slightly damp and smiling. In fact, after a few puddle excursions, even I started looking out for larger and more daunting puddles to sail through until one day we were out on our stroll, and to our dismay, no puddles were to be found. They had all dried up.

Keen on keeping our strolling adventure alive, we discovered something new that awaited us. As we headed down the residential street, there was a small pile of leaves. My friend asked me to roll her through them and we did like two small children rushing into a cluster of autumn leaves which flew up into the air, softly floated around us and then made their way gently back to the earth. Read more

Cultivating the seed within, peace

In our noisy world, we often find ourselves longing for peace and searching to find it somewhere else. While it’s true that there are places we can visit where we can experience peace, such as sacred sites or buildings, we do not need to wait until we get to one of these places to feel at peace. Instead, we can learn to locate the seed of peace inside ourselves and cultivate it so that it grows into a reliable source of serenity that we can always access, no matter where we are.

We experience peace when we are in a state of mental calm and serenity. It might surprise you to notice how infrequently you allow yourself to be free from anxiety. Realizing this is the first step to inner peace. If you wait until all the details of your life are taken care of to allow yourself to experience peace, you will never feel peaceful because there is always something that your mind can grab onto to create anxiety. Read more

Dr. Rob’s Intention of the day, February 10th, 2009, Stop trying in your life

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