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I want to share a struggle that I’m sure you, or someone you know, has gone through in their life. I don’t know if this is more common with women than men but it’s rearing it’s ugly head in my world again.

Finding a harmonious balance between making things happen and letting things happen can be a struggle. In this go-go world we live in now, there’s a need to “make it happen, Capt’n” because there’s no time to waste. This generation, as I learned first hand from a conversation at Starbucks today, wants things to happen NOW! Instant everything. Replies, coffee, food, jobs, success and even relationships. The person I was talking to was explaining how waiting for things to happen is for the lazy. I was looking at some cups on the shelves and wondering what all these other gadgets were for. They were explaining an instant coffee press that had just come out. No time for the regular coffee press. This things speeds up the time to make the coffee without using instant coffee because “that’s stuff’s gross”. I was starting to feel like a geriatric at this point. I thought to myself, “you don’t have time to wait for coffee to brew?”

On my drive home, I kept thinking about this. I’m reading Gary Zukov’s The Seat of the Soul and understanding the difference between a five-sensory personality and the multi-sensory personality. This “now” personality that I was chatting with was definitely a five-sensory personality in that conversation. I would be curious to see if they had a multi-sensory personality as well. The five-sensory personality gets their information through the five senses… feel, smell, see, hear and taste. The multi-sensory personality has that intuitive sense as well and can receive information in multiple ways. Does a person who wants things now have that ability to let things happen? Let the flow of life just happen? Or is everything truly about getting and having it now. Are they missing out on the slower pace of the universe?

When we receive as a multi-sensory personality, yes, I am one, that sense of smell isn’t just what you smell right now and can put a name to it. It’s the smell of a fragrance from a loved one who has passed on. That unexplained waft of fragrance or cologne that makes no sense. Do they hear messages that come from out of nowhere? The messages that come from our intuition or our higher self. What about feeling a tingle or a phantom touch and letting the moment continue with a memory?

The balance between letting things happen and making things happen needs to be harmonious. It’s a beautiful feeling that follows something unexplained. It requires a stillness that allows for the flow of energy to continue and include all the relevant information that was meant for you. It’s understanding that what is happening and what is meant to be happening can be against your consciousness. It’s finding a balance between conscious and unconscious. It’s allowing yourself to witness and experience what you can’t explain.

I’m facing this imbalance right now with what should be happening, what I feel happening and the crown jewel, what the universe has planned. Intention sets my day and I try to stay true to it but, when I feel like a salmon swimming upstream, I can’t help but wonder, “am I forcing this to happen?” When we set intentions, we know what it is that we would love to see happen. Our energy shifts to help ensure it’s success. What if that intention is a conscious intention that conflicts with an unconscious knowing? Then what? Where’s the harmonic balance now?

As I get ready to face another week of finding the path for HERwithin through intention, intuition and guidance, I know that my intuitive answers come in the form of dreams, yes or no feelings, memories, thoughts and sometimes the most random stuff you can imagine. Those are the things that are key to letting things happen. Once I receive the message, it’s time to make things happen. It’s a harmonious balance of existence.

I am open. I am receptive was the first mantra I learned three years ago. I remember crying as I said it. I was safe. I was doing something I needed to do and I didn’t know why I was crying. I do now. That was my first real communication with HER on my quest to find that piece that was missing in my life.

I said this mantra (from the incredible Elizabeth Dialto from Wild Soul Movement) today for the first time in a few years. I was about to start a meditation and wanted to really be open to receive. The meditation I did was from Insight Timer and it was Awakening Your Inner Guide by Sabrina Heartsong. As I laid there saying over and over “I am open. I am receptive”, I cried again. My heart was remembering the beautiful feeling I had in that yurt on my purple yoga mat. This time, the tears were from a deeper place. It was me and HER talking together. Deep within myself I know I’m connected with the woman I am and my HERwithin is dressed and ready to go everyday.

During this beautiful meditation, you ask yourself “who am I” and wait for a message, a word, a feeling, anything that would be a response from within. My response was an image of a glowing yellow and orange ball coming from my solar plexus. It was beautiful, warm and spinning in different directions. Then you ask yourself, “why am I here”. Well, that glowing ball gained intensity like it was on fire. The brilliance of this glowing light was beyond words but then I was served up “SHINE”.

The solar plexus is our “power centre”. A MindValley blog stated that …Your solar plexus chakra is activated:

• anytime you muster the courage to do something that scares you
• anytime you speak up for yourself
• anytime you exert your willpower and self-control

Well, in the past 24 hours I’ve done all three of these. I announced my podcast, told someone, respectfully, what I thought of a decision they were making (asked permission to share with them first) I’ve changed my morning eating routine and sticking to it (against every ego intervention I’ve had). There’s a reason why my power centre was glowing like a hot coal in a fireplace. It’s on FIRE!!!!

When we’re open and receptive, incredible messages, opportunities and creativity come through to us. When our power centre is strong, we have the ability, from within, to do what we are meant to do. The Sanskrit word for solar plexus is Manipura. Guess what that translates to … Shining Gem! The power of the solar plexus keeps you true to your path when you’re connected to it. You’re probably asking, “Janis, how in the world do I connect to my solar plexus?” I can tell you what I did and you can also google the beejeebers out of it and find a million other ways. The Mindvalley blog I linked here is an awesome source of information.

First of all, we all have a chakra that we are deeply connected to. Some people have a go to in their Heart Chakra while others are deeply seated in their Root Chakra. Anytime I did an exercise to connect with a chakra, its my Solar Plexus that was home for me. So, if it’s your go to chakra, you’ll feel a deeper connection. I believe that the chakra that you feel through is your home. Do you get a gut feeling or feel like you’ve been punched in the gut if something isn’t right? That’s your connection to your solar plexus. We connect through all our chakras so you’ll feel what you need to feel.

I do a lot of connecting with crystals. I always have my “Crystal du jour” on my desk as shown above. Today I have a mix of yellow and orange for both solar plexus and sacral chakras (I think I’m creating a new relationship with my sacral chakra which is very exciting for me). Citrine and calcite are my favorites.

I’ve also done a lot of personal work on myself by peeling away layers, accepting my role in relationships and understanding that everything that is happening to me is actually happening for me. The people on our stage are there to help us learn something. Everyone!!! When I’m triggered by someone, there’s a lesson to be learned. I can’t help but ask people that question when they have a need to gossip about someone. After I finish venting to a girlfriend, I have a recess for myself to revisit what’s triggering me. That’s a huge part of being open and receptive. We receive every minute of every day. It’s what we do with it that counts.

I highly suggest doing the meditation I linked to. Awakening your inner guide is another way for you to Find HER, Trust HER and Be HER. In the famous words of Mariah Carey, ” there’s a HERo, if you look inside your heart!” Take a moment to listen to this video with your eyes closed. Your HERo is HER.

When was the last time you were full of JOY? Not happiness but pure JOY? To me, happiness is caused by something else. Puppies, babies, waking up in a good mood, things that are outside of us. JOY on the other hand, is within. It’s a deeper state of being. When you’re JOYful, it’s beyond happy. When you’re happy, it feeds your JOYfulness within. Happiness is like the bees that bring pollen back to the hive and JOY is the hive. It’s home for happiness.

I noticed how my connection to JOY, since my labyrinth walk, has changed so many other things in my life. Because of a state of JOYfulness that has embodied me, I’m so easy to please. When I’m in a state of constant JOY, I’m less apt to be controlling and want things my way. I’m happy to watch anything on tv because sitting with my hubby feeds my JOY. Happiness and love are amazing fuel for JOY. Grumpiness and resistance are not. I’ve also noticed that my office emits JOY. I have lights twinkling in one corner, Sweet Orange essential oil coming form my diffuser, a card with a sparkly JOY on it and a happy funny piggy bank sitting by my computer (getting ready for the Year of the Pig).

My favorite character in the Disney movie Inside Out is, you guessed it, JOY! I use her emoji when I’m responding to happy posts on Facebook. She’s the core of me. I know over the past many years, I’ve lost my connection with JOY. Now, I know that now that I’ve connected to the woman I am, I’m JOY! It feels right. It feels like that perfect pair of jeans that fit everywhere.

I haven’t always been like this. I used to have little episodes of goofiness pop up periodically but then I’d slide back into my old ways. I laugh now that it was like I would get “JOY drunk”. Now that I’ve done the work to get myself aligned with my HERwithin, the harmony I feel now is being translated into JOY! It’s always been there but we get so bogged down by life that the layers build up and we don’t sense it any longer. That’s when you get “JOY drunk” periodically. Think of it as a way of HER sending you a signal that you can have that all the time. She lets you feel it for a bit but in order to have it all the time, there’s some work to do, baggage to unpack, self-limiting beliefs to destroy and some boundaries to establish.

We can’t experience JOY when the true essence of it, HER, is lost in our orbit somewhere. She’s always there waiting for us to come home. JOY is in our soul. It’s that spark within us that is always lit and now it just needs a big ol’ shot of oxygen to really ignite it. That oxygen comes from us. When we start breathing in life and releasing the stale air within, our light becomes brighter and our JOY emanates from within. We are JOY! If I can find it, anyone can. I’ve been through divorce after a 24 year marriage, loss of both parents, being alone for the first time in my life, loss of jobs, loss of direction, loss of myself and then a moment when I knew everything had to change and I had to start moving towards something I couldn’t put my finger on. That something, was the JOY buried within me.

Have you ever had that feeling that you had all the right puzzle pieces but nothing seemed to fit together properly? That’s been my 2018. I knew things were coming together with HERwithin and things were changing and shifting for me personally but something wasn’t right. Being relatively new to the world of reiki, energy and alignments, it was hard to find a connection with the right person. That changed today on my 55th birthday.

I was at a women’s conference in September and I came into that conference with a new found internal alignment of myself. Let me explain… I had been working on releasing some deep self-limiting beliefs that I wasn’t aware I was carrying around. I knew I was rather judgy about myself and why things didn’t work out but I didn’t realize I was limiting myself. I was literally standing in my own way. Releasing these things over the past year has been amazing. One of the things I released, and seriously needed to, was that I wasn’t important. In my earlier years when my boys were in grade school, I was volunteer mom extraordinaire. Holy moly did I do it all and took it to the next level. I pulled together some amazing hockey and lacrosse tournaments, managed hockey and soccer teams like a boss, created events in school that blew the lid off previous events and on and on. I loved being that mover and shaker but when it came time to thank me for all my hard work, what did I do? I took a deep breath, received what was being given, applause, flowers, gifts or hugs and then removed myself from the room. I can honestly say that I don’t remember those beautiful times of gratitude. Isn’t that sad? In my mind, I wasn’t important enough to be receiving this. It was all just part of the process. Back to the women’s conference… well, I went there alone and had a purpose. I was going to walk up to people I wanted to meet, introduce myself and join in their conversations. I was important and I made a difference. One of those people that I purposefully greeted was the amazing Dixie Bennett. Her company Stillpoint Bodyworks was something I needed to find out about. So I introduced myself and we talked. I kept getting drawn to her and realized why. She has a service called a Birthday Alignment and I needed to do this. I think this was that thing I needed to get all my puzzle pieces aligned. So, today on my 55th birthday, I did it.

I would love to explain everything that happened but when something happens so deeply within it’s a feeling that defies words. I feel refreshed and tuned up. My chakras, nervous system and soul feel different. HER and I went through it together. I’m feeling aligned, honestly aligned, for the first time in so many years. I’m aligned with my path for HERwithin. I’m aligned with my path for becoming a professional speaker and I’m aligned with myself. It’s a beautiful feeling that I wish I could share with my hubby. I know I have his support in everything I do but, I know I lose him when I go too far down that spiritual rabbit hole. His head is nodding but I think it’s more reactionary than voluntary. I’m sure lots of women have those men in their lives. As much as I would wish this experience on him, it’s probably as realistic as me reassembling his ’72 GMC pick up that’s in pieces in the garage. He has his thing and I have mine and we both appreciate what the other likes.

To start my next year of life with this amazing feeling of alignment is like lining up the tulip bulbs in the garden and watching them pop up in a perfect row as they create a beautiful array of color. 2019 is my garden and my tulips are ready and waiting. I feel it and I know great things are going to happen with HERwithin, me, my family and even you!!

I cry when I peel and cut onions. I’ve tried everything from running water to wearing my glasses to actually wearing swimming goggles. I guess I have either super power organic onions or I’m just sensitive to “onion power”. Either way, I still do it. I look at it as a nice cleanse for my eyes (once the burning stops LOL). Frying up onions for meals is so good. That added flavour is amazing and the smell of fried onions… YUM!! Am I the only one? I know they stink up the house but isn’t that what hood fans are for? Hey, my new microwave has a built in fan to clear out that smell. Then, there’s the wonderful smell of the candle burning afterwards to clear our the untouched odor. Right?? I love a lemon candle or the beeswax candle a girlfriend gave me last year. Have I gone on long enough about the lovable onion?

The reason for this post is because I found this piece of onion skin in my office. It’s upstairs away from the kitchen and yes, it could have been caught on something and dropped off when I sat down. Well, if that’s what happened, you wouldn’t be reading about it would you? I remember looking down and thinking, “that’s a piece of onion skin. What is it doing in here?” Then in a flash, I had a moment of receiving an award in junior high school. That rush of WOW that comes over me when I’m handed an award is as fresh as it was 40 years ago. That piece of onion skin, in my eyes, was an award for all the work I’ve been doing on and for myself. I’m peeling away soooooooo much stuff and becoming stronger by the day to face the ugly shadows that lurk behind me. Peel, cry, peel, cry, peel, cry.

I created HERwithin because I realized that there was a part of me that I was completely disconnected from. My HER. That part of me that feels like a 5 year old some days. The part of me that looks in the mirror and smiles at the woman smiling back. The part of me that doesn’t judge me. The part of me that knows I’m important. The part of me that remembers and smiles. Your HERwithin is your soul. It’s who you are. My tagline is now “Reconnect with the woman you are” because within us is that woman. Parts of that woman are a 5 year old child but we don’t remember HER. She’s your intuition. She’s that piece of you that knows that you need to turn here instead of going straight. She’s the one that reminds you to call your sister. She’s the one that reminds you that you’re beautiful, spiritful and YOU!

But do you know what happens? As we go through life, we develop layers and those layers create distance between you and HER. She’s always been where she needs to be within you. We wander far from home and we can’t hear HER any longer. That’s when our world becomes lonely, unfulfilled and we feel lost. We look for anything that will guide us “home”. Books, online courses, advice from family and friends. Well, nothing and nobody holds that answers you’re looking for, but YOU! Where are those answers? You guessed it… under all those layers.

So, when I found this lil piece of onion (that’s the actual piece in the picture), I felt like the universe was saying “YOU DID IT. You’ve peeled away so much over the past three years and you deserve an award!” My reward is actually the love I have for myself. That honestly takes a lot for me to say. I can say that I am overflowing with JOY for myself. It’s such a deep feeling that nothing can take it away. If I have a bad day and I’m crying, I know it’s not going to last forever. It’s energy that needs out of my body. Those tears just flow right over top of my JOY like a waterfall. JOY is always there and I am so happy I know that and feel it now. There were so many days in the past ten years that I didn’t feel anything but anger, resentment, confusion, sadness, alone, used, unimportant… I’ll stop there. I can feel an energy shift happening with all those words. NOW, there are days that JOY takes over and I just let HER do that. I’m playful and mature at the same time. I’m whimsical and graceful at the same time. It’s a harmony of ‘this and that’. It’s not a balance. Balance means that it needs to be equal or it’s off balance. Harmony is the essence of nature. Everything lives in harmony in a forest. The water, the bugs, the trees, the plants, the birds, the animals, the mud, the sunshine. It flows together harmoniously. That’s what happens when you peel away the layers between you and HER.

You’re probably wondering when you’ll know it’s time to peel. It’s like labour. You just know. You know there’s no harmony within you. You know you haven’t felt JOY in years. You just know. I did and when I started peeling away my onion, some ugly stuff was facing me and it took time to peel and cry, peel and cry. That’s what you need to do or you grow more and more layers and you’ll never peel enough away to find HER.

I’m holding onto my lil piece of onion skin. I may even frame it. It’s my reminder that I DID IT! I found HER and my harmonious self is living a life of JOY!

Learn more about how you can Find HER

A goal is just a dream with action steps. We all dream. We have those thoughts of wonder and ‘what if’ that fill our hearts but then also have us second guessing our abilities and self-worth. Isn’t that a harsh reality? How can something that brings so much joy to our hearts, a dream, can create an avalanche of self-doubt and criticism. Well, let me explain how that works when it comes to our mental capacity to deal with change. 

As MLK said, “I have a dream”. Then what happened? He took action. If he would have sat back and dreamed about his speech of making a change to civil rights, nothing would have happened. It takes  action steps to make a dream a reality. My question is, did Martin Luther King have a moment of “what am I doing” after he gave his speech in 1963? Chances are he did because there’s a response in our brain that happens when we step into something new. Let me explain in more detail. 

Welcome to the limbic system of our being. This is the place where feelings and emotions that motivate or paralyze us hang out. It’s the centre of our emotional life and the formation of memories. I wonder if this was a conversation at Disney when someone thought of the premise for the movie Inside Out. Let me explain more about what happened to my apple cart. When we capture the thought behind the panic that sets in, our job is to understand and liberate ourselves. Everyone can do it. 

Here’s what happened to me. I speak almost monthly in a group called Women Talk. It’s my safe place to hone my craft and grow my audience. My dream is to be on a large stage with hundreds maybe even thousands of women listening to me show them how to reconnect within and love the woman they are. I’ve had a visual dream so many times over the past few years since I was first introduced to Women Talk. I see the outfit I’m wearing, I have a beige Madonna mic on, there’s a chair, carpet, little table, cup of tea and I’m in my element. In order to make the dream a goal, I need to apply some action steps and take them. The first one I did was find other local events that I could talk at. I didn’t have a problem doing that. I love talking to women. The next step I took was to join the Women Speaker Association as recommended by a fellow Women Talker. What happened next took some time for me to figure out.

The day after I joined the association, I woke up feeling great. Had a couple of conversations then my apple cart flipped. That seems to be my internal symbol for “incoming moment of panic”. I had one of these last month and it was a picnic basket upside down. I’m starting to see a pattern now. As I sat on my couch, in tears, I knew I needed to get this energy flowing through me. So, I kept crying and let the emotion of panic/fear move. Emotions are ENERGY in MOTION … E-MOTION. If it wants to move, let it. Mine usually come through tears. I’m not an angry person so punching things doesn’t do it for me. After the tears came and went, I sat and journaled, focused on what was really bothering me. It wasn’t those earlier conversations I had, even though its easier to point fingers outwardly than to focus within. It wasn’t my lack of confidence that I can do this. It was the fear and panic that was created because it’s new and its outside my comfort zone. I’ve never done this specific act before. However, my brain picked up on the NEW part and when back into its warehouse of memories to remind me what it was like the last time I took on something totally new to me. Well, guess what? There was fear and panic back then. I’ve done it so many times that you’d think my brain would have a better response. It’s only tapping into the way its always been. From divorce to entrepreneur to becoming a stepmom, you can image the fear associated with all of those. I needed to retrain my brain to have new responses to NEW things because there’s going to be a lot more coming down the pike.

The deeper I’m connected with HER, the more I can face the shadow side of my life. It’s like my brain says “ok, she’s passed level 10, let’s see how she handles a level 10 shadow”. No way could I have handled this, the way I did, 10 years ago when I got divorced. My response back then was to stuff it down and not face it. I was a human piñata of ignored emotion. Over the past 3 years, I’ve been facing those shadows and tossing them overboard one by one. Yes, it’s a lot of work but, now I joke that when I have an emotional upheaval, my response time is faster than the local fire department. Amongst all of this, I’ve redeveloped my Self-Knowledge. That’s the understanding of WHY I’m feeling and thinking things. There’s always an attachment to those and like a spammy email, sometimes I don’t want to open those attachments. Now that I have the ability and strength to open them, release them and walk away with clarity and grace, I’m open to as many flipped apple carts that the universe has in store for me.

Check this out if you’re interested in learning more about your limbic system.

I experienced something that was unexpected, enlightening, empowering and any other word you can think of that would elevate you to a new level of awareness. I participated in the Walking Goddess Labyrinth walk. It was an indoor labyrinth with 10 women and our guide. The evening was incredible.

To start with, we had to select words from a bowl that resonated with us. I just walked up to the bowl, looked in and saw the word HARMONY and gravitated towards it. I love that word and I had no idea why that was the word I chose. I sat down and kept getting a pull back to the bowl. So, I went again. This time I stood over the bowl blankly looking into it. It felt kind of funny because I was the one who walked over that and now I wasn’t moving. I flipped a few other cards over to see what was on them and nothing was jumping out at me. Then a lady picked up a card and under it was TRUST. It’s like it was shining. Really! That was the one. Trust? I had the option of so many other one and funny thing, I can’t remember any of them. I must have read 10 different cards but I can’t remember them. LOL. So I had my Trust & Harmony and we had to set an intention with our word. Coming into this, I had some pretty serious intentions that I was going to set on this new moon but much to my surprise, none of them were used. My intention is to Trust myself, HER, that I will be looked after, the Universe and my path. My other intention is to create Harmony with me and HER. Like the harmony in nature, that’s what I strive for.

Before entering the labyrinth, I took 3 deep cleansing breaths and trusted that whatever happened in that labyrinth, was exactly what was to happen. I walked slowly and on purpose saying to myself “Trust & Harmony” all along the pathway. I could feel a flow happening with my walk and an ease happening with my step. As I came across someone coming my direction, I flowed off the pathway and back on to let them pass by. I had no idea what I was doing, what I was supposed to do. I just did it. As I wandered, I pretended I was walking through a field of daisies and there was a green path of grass meandering through the flowers. I started to feel like I was 5 years old and living within one of my childhood dreams. Or was it a premonition of what I’d be doing 50 years later?? I flowed, meandered, repeated Trust and Harmony and started to weave my way towards the centre. Then something fun happened to me.

In the centre section of the labyrinth, I felt like a bunch of self-limiting belief walls just crumbled. Shit that I’d been carrying around for years and year were just gone. A childlike giggle started to come over me. I could see the other women were intense, concentrating and having some serious emotional moments as they stood or walked. Why was I giggling inside. THEN, in the centre, after some time within, we are asked to rip up the cards with the words and our intentions on them. We then place them in the bowl in the centre and start our walk back out of the labyrinth.  I ripped up my cards and as I did, my entire being was taken over with JOY! My two original words were gone and all I had coming through me was JOY! As I love the movie Inside Out, you can imagine my joy in hearing this word echo through my head and body. Whatever I released with the intention of applying Harmony and Trust, opened a big ol box of joy and it was engulfing my being. THEN, my word HARMONY came back to me as HER&ME. It’s like I had achieved my intention within a few steps. The two “words” are close in sound and that was my queue that HER & me ARE Harmony and that Trust & Harmony = JOY!

I had a spring in my step and an energy flowing through my body that I’ve never had in the evening. As we all moved back to the area with the chairs, I was vibrating. My feet wouldn’t stay still, I was fidgeting with everything I had in my lap, I was that kid in school that just did whatever came to them. I wasn’t sitting still with my feet on the floor, like the other ladies my age, listening to the “teacher”. I had a giggle I could feel starting to erupt and I kept pushing it down. NOOOOO!!!! I was suppressing something like the way I used to suppress other emotions. I had to blurt it out. It was coming and I couldn’t not do something about it. So, the teacher looked and me and asked if I felt anything within the labyrinth. I literally vibrated in my chair. I had an energy force running through my body that needed to move. I considered getting up and running around to help it move but I talked about it and physically helped it move through my body with those body shutters we get when we’re chilly. With each shutter, I’d smile and say “I’m just vibrating”. I did feel completely different than the 9 other women. Yes, 5 year old Janis was in the house!!

What an amazing experience!! Who knew that walking around on a fabric labyrinth would create this sensation. Apparently, the Sagittarius New Moon is like a super power moon. My intentions will be amplified by 10x! I went in with the intention of taking HERwithin to new levels and to focus on what needs to be done to share it further. I now know that when I surrender to what will be, Trust and Harmony will take over and round out the evening with an energetic surge of JOY throughout my being. I released, set intentions, felt the shift and can’t wait to see what happens over the next month. It’s also my birthday month so magical things are going to open up right before me. My job, to Trust and stay in Harmony with HER.