Oct04
Posted on Oct 4 by Ruth Davis
We take about 28,000 breaths a day, inhaling and exhaling, bringing oxygen into our bodies, and releasing toxins and waste we don’t need. Most of us are shallow breathers. We breathe high into our chests, not deep into the lower lobes of our lungs. And yet breathing into our lower lobes activates the calming receptors that reside there. Breathing into our lower lungs stimulates the lymphatic system so waste products can be efficiently carried from the body. Breathing into the lower lobes allows the rib cage to be elastic and open. This deep, whole lung breathing, is also called belly breathing because we can see our bellies rise when we fill our lower lobes with air. Belly breathing is not hard to do. It requires no special equipment. It just takes practice. The Practice: Find a comfortable position, either standing, sitting or lying down. Breathe in deeply through your nose. Breathing through your nose is the best way to activate the lower lung receptors. Inhale deeply and slowly, pulling your breath into your belly. You might want to place...
Aug16
Posted on Aug 16 by Ruth Davis
I have been crying a lot lately. But that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m writing this because, for years, I didn’t cry. Like most of us, I’ve had sorrow and trauma in my past. But instead of feeling it, sharing it and releasing it, I buried it. I tucked my sadness and grief deep and away, convinced that, if I didn’t feel it, it would disappear. My biggest fear was that, if I started to cry, to FEEL my sadness, that I would never stop. And so I denied it, avoided it, numbed myself with pot to prevent myself from feeling any kind of vulnerability. And if something happened in my life that did poke at my vulnerability, I quickly busied myself to avoid confronting any deep feelings. This “worked” for a long time. And then it didn’t work at all. I was always agitated. Crabby. Needy. I wasn’t allowing my body to ebb and flow through ALL of my emotions. Just like the body needs to laugh and sleep and breathe clean air, the body needs to...
Jul26
Posted on Jul 26 by Ruth Davis
We all love when magic happens. Magic is effortless. Surprising. Bigger than our expectations. Yet how often are we willing to make room for magic to happen? I am finding that, when I am willing to let go and create some space (through breathing, being in nature, just being still) magic really does happen and, out of nowhere, a brilliant new idea appears. This always happens when I am not trying to think of a great new idea but, instead, it is after I have released an open-ended question to the Universe. EXAMPLE: I recently created some very cool, fun, easy-to-follow video training tutorials for Mac users. My existing client base has loved them, purchased them, encouraged their friends to try them too. (you can try them for free at www.mac2school.com) And so I wondered, how can I reach a wider audience of primed and ready Mac users? The same afternoon that I posed this question, a friend in CA emailed me, asking if I was still planning to visit in September. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, came the...
Jul05
Posted on Jul 5 by Ruth Davis
Yesterday was the 4th of July here, a time, once again, to celebrate our freedom as Americans. I could go on about what freedom means, but we all have our own thoughts about it. So, instead, I’d like to invite you to play with some Free Writing. Writing is a wonderful way to access what is in your heart. Your hands are, in fact, an extension of your heart. Free writing means just writing…not editing, not even thinking, just following a stream of consciousness without judgment. It doesn’t have to be grammatically correct, you don’t even have to write complete sentences. And no one is checking your spelling! The idea is to just write and see where your words take you. If you find yourself correcting spelling as you write, or judging what you’ve written, consider this: the writer in you uses a very different part of your brain than the editor. I like to think of them as two beings doing two very different jobs. Both are important but they cannot work together in the same room at...
Jun28
Posted on Jun 28 by Ruth Davis
As I write this, it is 107° outside. In the shade. Typical summer numbers for Phoenix. And it’s not even the expected high for the day. Yes, it’s a dry heat. But so is your oven. Imagine standing in your oven with your blow dryer in your face and you can get a sense of what it’s like to step out in the heat of the day. Everywhere I go, people are bemoaning the heat, the dryness, the insufferable, unending summer. But does complaining make it any cooler? Hardly. In fact, some people say that focusing on how miserable you feel will make you even more miserable. So, this week I challenged myself to come up with at least FIVE reasons why I LOVE the summer heat, even the Phoenix summer heat. And it actually did make me feel a little less hot. Under the collar, anyway. SIX REASONS WHY I LOVE THE HEAT: The laundry on the line is dry in 10 minutes. Because there’s hardly any humidity, I’m not sweating so much that I feel like I...
Jun21
Posted on Jun 21 by Ruth Davis
I had lunch last week with a woman who I haven’t seen in almost six years. In all of our catching up, I told her about my emergency open heart surgery, the growth of Spark the Heart, the new Mac training videos, and she was in awe of how much I have bloomed. “It’s because I quit smoking pot,” I told her. She knew I had smoked and she was curious about WHY I chose to quit. “Because it was the one thing keeping me from what I really wanted.” I loved being stoned. I was highly creative, very functional (I didn’t smoke until after my working day), and it was a wonderful escape from the depression of a recent break up. When I was high I felt so connected to something bigger in myself. And that became the problem. What I wanted more than anything was to connect to OTHERS, to connect to something bigger THAN myself. But, being stoned all the time, I was usually too high to drive or too tired to go out, too fixated...
