Lynn Serafinn's Cosmic Journey

Feeling, Healing and Transformation – What Can We Learn from Pins and Needles?

Did you ever sit on the floor for too long and your leg went numb? Remember that horrible feeling you got when you stood up? At first, you don’t even feel your leg and your leg might wobble (or even collapse) underneath you. That happened to me on more than one occasion in India after having sat on a marble floor for several hours listening to a lecture. I had to get used to the locals laughing at me whenever they saw this western woman in a badly-wrapped sari fall over her own two feet for no apparent reason!

But once you’ve made it through the wobble, something else starts to happen—the dreaded “pins and needles” sensation as the blood starts to flow again in your legs. It feels absolutely horrible at first, and there is an overwhelming urge to sit back down on your leg and make it go “dead” again. But we know this is the worst thing we can do. We know the blood has to start flowing again. We know that the “pins and needles” is the signal that our leg is returning to its healthy state, where the leg recovers from its numbness, and we are again able to feel it and use it fully and effortlessly. We know it is necessary to feel the wobble and the pain (and maybe even the falling and the humiliation!) before we can move forward.

The interesting thing is, our emotional world works in exactly the same way, but for some reason, many of us do not respond to our emotions the same way we respond to our leg. Let me explain.

Emotions get “blocked” within us in exactly the same way the blood in our leg gets block—we “sit” on them and do not allow them to flow. And just like our legs, when we sit on our emotions, we go “numb”. We become detached and desensitized to our own feelings, as well as to the feelings of others. In extreme cases, we become incapable of connecting at an intimate level with anyone, what to speak of ourselves. Many of us can go on for years—decades—with blocked emotions.

When something shakes us up from our “numb” state, it is very similar to what happens when we first stand up on our “dead” leg. We wobble. We might even stumble. We have been hiding our emotions from others for so long, that when we start to allow them to be seen, our world starts to rock. People might not recognise or relate to us anymore, and because we fear losing them, we might try to convince ourselves to return to our familiar, stuck, numb place. We might also quite possibly become afraid of what we intuitively know is coming next—the “pins and needles”. This is the stage where sensation is returning to us. And just like pins and needles in our legs, it probably doesn’t feel particularly nice. We might experience an avalanche of confusing emotions like humiliation, shame, grief, anger, blame and fear. And being inexperienced with these emotions, having been cut off from them for so long, we might not know what to do with them or how to process them in a constructive way.

Now, if we were to sit our leg for decades, you can be pretty sure we would render it permanently useless, and it would be unlikely to heal. But the wonderful thing about emotions is that, even those that have been stuck for most of our lives can come back to life—if we can stay with the “pins and needles” long enough to allow the “flow” to come back into our feelings, without succumbing to the urge to jump back in the box of our numbness.

And just as how the end of the “pins and needles” stage restores full sensation and mobility to you leg, making it to the other side of your emotional pins and needles brings you into full sensation, which leads to flow at a heart and soul level. In both the leg and our emotions, feeling is the doorway to healing, and healing is the doorway to transformation.

And while the above analogy is my own, the essence of this story is the fundamental principle of the book Memory in the Cells: how to change behavioral patterns and release the pain body by my client and good friend Luis Angel Diaz. The book teaches both the theory and the practical methodology of what Luis calls “Cellular Memory Release” (CMR), where you learn how to FEEL your emotions at a deep level, not only for the purpose of healing old wounds, but also of transforming them so your life is full of awareness, sensation, aliveness and flow.

As Luis puts it, “It is about transforming the ‘Pain Body’ into the ‘Joy Body.’

Memory in the Cells is coming to Amazon at exactly 12:01 AM Pacific THIS TUESDAY October 5th (yes, that’s TOMORROW, as I write this). In celebration of the release of his book, dozens of Luis’ friends and colleagues have kindly donated a complete library of personal development gifts that you can download for free, when you buy the book Memory in the Cells on the day of its launch this week. I’m also giving away a free download (audio and text) of my mini-eCourse “Making Friends with the Monsters Under Your Bed.”

To find out more about the book and the free gifts, and to see a video in which Luis talks about how he came to develop this method to help people learn how to deal with pain, go to: http://memoryinthecells.com

AND… when you buy the book on Tuesday, Oct 5th, not only will you receive those free gifts, but you will also receive a special FR*EE 2-part LIVE online class with Luis himself, where he will take you through the CMR process, step-by-step.

This is not going to be another one of those self-help books that just sits on the shelf, unused. Luis is truly dedicated to sharing the information and practical tools in the book, and this free class is his way of showing that he “walks his talk.”

I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the release of this highly-practical, and truly healing, book by Luis Diaz. To buy the book on Tuesday October 5th, just go to http://memoryinthecells.com.

And then, I hope to see you on the fr*ee class a few weeks later.

Warm wishes
Lynn Serafinn
Author, Transformation Coach, Book Promotions

http://spiritauthors.com/contact

About Lynn Serafinn

Lynn Serafinn is a an award-winning transformation coach, book promotion coach, radio host and bestselling author of the book The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self. She also works as a campaign manager for mind-body-spirit authors and has many bestselling book campaigns, including four #1 sellers in 2010 alone. She is also the creator of Spirit Authors, which offers training, coaching, business-building and inspiration for mind-body-spirit authors, whether established or aspiring. To contact Lynn for coaching, campaign management or media appearances, please fill in the form at http://spiritauthors.com/contact.

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Moving into the Storm – from enslavement to freedom

The following blog post was originally written for Transition Bedford site at http://www.transitionbedford.org. I decided to include it here on my own blog because, although it makes references to working within the Transition Network, the key points are relevant to everyone who wants to understand more about what it means to be free at an inner level, and to understand more about why they may not always be creating the impact in the world they desire to create. I welcome your comments and feedback, as I spent  significant amount of time writing it, lol! Hope you enjoy it. –Lynn

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Whether we are aware of it or not, the members of the Initiating Group (IG) at Transition Bedford are now evolving from the “forming” stage into the “storming” stage. Can you feel it? Entering the storm means we are making real progress, even if it seems unclear right now. So, at this important juncture, in hopes of taking us even further into the eye of the storm, I’d like to share some ideas which have been swirling about in my mind ever since my Transition Training in London. It has to do with media, our responsiveness to it, both conscious and unconscious, and our role as leaders in the community. After much reflection, I believe in our work within the Transition network, it is essential that we bear in mind

1. That we as an initiative will need to understand and address public emotions that may be stirred up by the media in all its forms (TV, film, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, pop culture, music, advertising, Internet, social media, etc)

2. That we will also need to become acutely aware of how WE ourselves are impacted by media, whether consciously or unconsciously

3. That we will need to know how to protect ourselves against succumbing to any unconscious unwanted impact, so we do not become “reactionary machines” instead of creative, resilient human beings, both individually and collectively.

4. That we will also need to become acutely aware of our own impact upon our community as we reach out to them.

5. That we will also (and most importantly) understand how to avoid unintended impact upon the community.

It is important to understand that these statements do NOT mean that we, as part of the Transition Network, are not entitled to our emotions. It would be an unreasonable expectation to think that we as humans should never feel angry, overwhelmed, grief-stricken, bitter, hopeless or cynical, especially when we are facing issues of such importance as climate change. Nor is it true that, by being part of a Transition Town initiative, we are expected to become super-humans or non-humans.

In fact, the truth is exactly the opposite. Continue Reading…

Continuity – The Dance of Change within the Changeless

Meditation 77: Continuity

Continuity is a sense of begininglessness and endlessness that comes from feeling connected to Existence itself. In the Divine sense, Continuity does not refer to the act of “sticking with things” for a long period of time. In fact, Continuity has nothing at all to do with “doing”; it is an attribute of Being. Nor does Continuity refer to a need for things to be changeless. Quite the opposite, Continuity is that state we reach where we are able to witness all of Creation as a great system of continual flow and change without beginning or end. Existence is both always the same, and always changing, simultaneously. When we witness this, and feel this at our core, we come to realise that Reality is comprised of a single experience of Divine Continuity, which has infinite possibilities of expression. These possibilities flow like the colours of a kaleidoscope as we turn the wheel around and around. As these patterns are ever-changing, we cannot say there is ever truly a specific pattern, as there is no way to “freeze” them in time. When we release the need to hold on to a particular pattern, we begin to step into the awestruck feeling of Divine Continuity, and come to enjoy every moment as it unfolds before us.

It is often said that unhappiness comes in life when Continue Reading…

How Getting the Flu Was the Highlight of My Week

How Getting the Flu Was the Highlight of My Week
By Lynn Serafinn, MAED, CPCC

Author’s note: I originally wrote this article on 13 October 2008, but in light of the recent outbreak of “swine flu”, I thought it might be especially relevant. I also feel it can help us reflect upon what true “strength,” “wealth” and “wellness” are, as well as what we consider to be “lucky” and “unlucky” in life.

I am a workaholic. I don’t seem to stop. Ever. It isn’t funny. I even have made up a name for my workaholic “gremlin”. His name is Bonzo. Bonzo has a very loud voice. My intuition speaks more softly. When Bonzo shouts so loudly that I cannot hear the voice of my intuition (or I hear it but choose not to listen), the inevitable outcome is that I make myself ill.

A week ago Friday I was co-leading a very large event in London… a community day for about 70 life coaches from various parts of Europe. I had been working on it for 6 months with a team of 3 other great coaches. That day, the weather turned really cold and I knew that I was catching a chill but I kept going. The day was a great success, but it was an enormous amount of work, both over the past months and on the day itself. In the back of my mind, I could hear my body saying, Slow down. Create some space for yourself.

On Saturday, the day AFTER the event, I presented at a wellness fair here in Bedford. It was a freezing cold day and they had the doors open all day during the event. I shivered all afternoon. I kept hearing my body screaming, “Slow down, woman!”

On Sunday, the day AFTER that, I walked half an hour in the pouring rain to meet up with a new business contact, and then later I had my daughter over my house for the night because she needed to talk and get some loving care. We were chatting until well after midnight.

In my head, all I could hear was, Lynn, you keep saying you want to slow down. So, why are not stopping?

SO… Continue Reading…