Articles tagged with: well-being

How to Find Inner Peace and Freedom

Maxima Kahn November 16th, 2022

A Simple Somatic Practice to Uncover Your Innate Wisdom

One of the things I love about the work I do is I get to hold space for others and listen deeply to them. And in that space, I witness, again and again, the miracle of people finding their inner peace and freedom.

I get to see the innate wisdom we all carry in our hearts and bodies. People uncover beautiful answers to their questions and dilemmas.

I watch pain, difficult patterns, and stuck places, sometimes held for decades, dissolve. And I see the blossoming that follows in their lives, relationships, work, creativity.

It’s so simple, yet so astonishing every time. It takes my breath away.

The Surprising Path to Peace and Freedom

It might surprise you to hear that the key to your inner peace and freedom is in your suffering.

I love this. Because it means our suffering has gifts in it. Rich gifts of growth, healing, transformation, and yes, layers of deeper peace and freedom.

It means that the path through my suffering leads to a beautiful place if I know how to walk that path in a fertile way. And that the Universe is not out to get me, but rather is on my side, leading me to greater inner peace and freedom, if I am willing to accept the invitation.

Your suffering also tends to lead you to your calling, the unique brilliance and gifts you have to share, the way you find your most profound fulfillment and joy.

This doesn’t mean you should go out and court suffering. In any human life, we get plenty of it. And I don’t mean that you should wallow in suffering. That would be your key to inner hell.

Whatever suffering is arising in us is an invitation to let go of a place within where we are not yet free or not aligned with the truth of who we are and the truth of what is.

Saying this does not mean that others are given carte blanche to oppress, harm, or behave terribly toward us or anyone. It doesn’t make harmful behaviors acceptable in any way or excuse them. Nor does it mean you should beat yourself up for feeling suffering. It’s normal and a part of human life.

However, we can heal our suffering, rather than live with the pain and limitation of it.

Discovering the Miracle Cure

I want to share with you a simple, but powerfully effective tool I use with myself and my students to deal with inner pain. I call it The Miracle Cure because the results and the speed with which it works seem miraculous.

The Miracle Cure leads to our innate inner peace and freedom by welcoming and bringing loving awareness to our suffering, which is what our suffering wants. It wants to be seen, heard, felt all the way through, and then, released. Suffering is clamoring for attention, but loving, wise attention.

The greatest discovery of my life has been that everything dissolves in the presence of loving awareness, except the truth. And all we need is loving awareness for any suffering or lies we are carrying within to dissolve. Amazing, right? Test it out for yourself.

The Miracle Cure works by engaging the extraordinary wisdom of the body and letting go of your story about your suffering. The story about why you are suffering is what keeps you stuck. As long as you replay the story in your head, you will be stuck with the feelings and the unhelpful patterns. This is the first key to know about getting free inside.

I first learned a version of The Miracle Cure from a coach called Christian Mickelsen on a free webinar he led. I deepened my understanding of it through my study and practice of The Sedona Method. And I made it my own by practicing it over and over and blending my experience and study of somatic healing with it.

So, when I lead the process with a student, it may take different forms, as I let myself be led by my intuition, by what is arising and needed in the moment, and by the many modalities I have learned.

You can learn the simplest form right now and it will serve you beautifully. It’s a potent tool for helping yourself and others.

How to Practice the Miracle Cure

Think of an issue that has been troubling you in some way. Connect with that issue until you feel it. This usually doesn’t take long.

Now, look inside your body. Where do you feel those feelings most strongly in your body?

Focus on that part of the body and bring your attention to the very epicenter where the sensation is strongest.

Let go of all your thoughts about the issue and focus solely on the sensations. What do they feel like? Describe them.

Keep your awareness on the epicenter of the sensation. Breathe into it. Give it space. Let it know that you feel it, see it, hear it. Send it love and compassion.

Be patient. This pain is wanting to be acknowledged. Images and thoughts may arise. You can note these, but return to the sensations and keep breathing into them and bringing loving awareness to them.

Allow the sensations to be as they are and to shift and change as they do. They may get stronger, move to another part of the body, soften or dissolve, or change in some other way. Attend to them patiently without judgment and with compassion. Keep your focus on wherever the sensation is strongest and keep breathing into that point and sending it love.

Almost always, if you do this patiently without trying to make anything happen, the sensations will soften or dissolve. Usually, they will dissolve partially at first. Keep going, stay with what remains until it has completely dissolved, if possible.

Then, notice what remains. The space, peace, openness that remains. Welcome this with your awareness. Allow yourself to rest as that inner freedom, peace, or spaciousness which is your true nature. It may feel empty, quiet, calm, or neutral.

That’s it. You have done the Miracle Cure. You have released suffering.

After Finding Peace and Freedom

Notice there can sometimes be a tendency to go looking for the suffering and recreate it now that it’s gone, to feel uneasy without your familiar pain. Let yourself instead rest in the peace and freedom that you are.

If the Miracle Cure isn’t working for you in the moment, just let it go. Don’t stress. Don’t force it. Often, when we are dealing with a very painful issue, we need someone else to hold space for us and guide the process because it is hard to generate enough courage to bring awareness to our suffering without our defenses and distractions arising. And it can be hard for us to generate enough love and compassion for ourselves. Sometimes we need to talk about our suffering first, for it to be heard and for us to sort out things about it. Sometimes we need to take some action around it before it is ready to be released. Remember, suffering is a messenger and an invitation.

Or we may just need to return to the practice at another time. Or try another tool or practice.

Even if you just let go of a little bit of the suffering in one session, celebrate that. Often, if you begin the unraveling process within, it will continue on its own as you go about your day. And if there’s more to attend to, you can do so again another day.

To your inner peace and freedom,

Maxima

Seeking Your Heart’s Guidance

Maxima Kahn March 13th, 2018

A simple but powerful exercise to help you hear your heart’s guidance.

Your heart is here to guide you to your best life. Not the easiest, but the best. The fullest expression of you. The richest, most beautiful, rewarding life.

Your heart has answers your mind could never devise. Astonishing in their wisdom, rightness and simplicity.

But how do you hear the voice of your heart? How do you access that guidance?

Here is a process to cultivate connection to the wisdom of heart.

1) Set the scene

Find a place and time where you will not be disturbed. Turn off your phone (really) and close your computer. Have a notebook and pen or pencil. Light a candle or sit somewhere beautiful in nature.

2) Open the flow

This step is preparation, to get your controlling mind out of the way, to open inside. You aren’t yet seeking any guidance. You are clearing the channels to receive guidance.

Grant yourself full permission to write anything at all without judging, doubting, or expecting anything of it. Write for two full pages without pausing to think or edit, starting from the words “In this moment…”.

Write whatever comes, whatever you think, feel, notice around you or in you. Just keep the pen moving the whole time, without pausing, even if you think it is nonsense.

3) Make a request

Now, write a short paragraph to your heart, asking for its guidance and promising to listen.

You may ask about a specific challenge or situation, or you might just ask, “Oh my heart, what do I need to know, be, or do now?” or something general like “How can I live a more joyful life?”

Make a promise to set aside doubt, second-guessing, or your mind trying to figure things out and control the process.

4) Write your heart’s guidance

Drawing on the feeling of freewriting that you did in step 2, simply relax and let the pen flow, writing whatever answers seem to come from your heart.

Keep your promise to yourself not to judge, doubt, second-guess, analyze or edit the answers while you write. That will stop the flow. You can use your wisdom later to discern what feels right or to interpret it.

If your heart tells you anything you feel you cannot do or do not understand, ask follow-up questions. Express your feelings and concerns. Dialogue with your heart about them.

5) Take action

If it feels true and right—even if it also feels scary, hard or silly—follow your heart’s guidance, taking action on what you were told. Keep the faith with your heart by not ignoring its precious wisdom.

What steps will you take? What changes will you make? How will you act in accordance with the guidance you received?

Keeping the Channel Open

by JR Korpa on Unsplash

If you ask for guidance, receive it and then ignore it, you close down your connection to this most valuable inner resource. And your life will feel out of balance.

If, on the other hand, you learn to discern what your own heart voice sounds like, what it feels like when it is speaking to you, you will strengthen your access to this guide within.

Learn how your own heart speaks to you—which may be in images, sensations, impressions or emotions, more than words. Learn to trust and follow the guidance. See what happens as you do.

As you refine your ability to hear your true heart guidance, as you cultivate your deep trust in it, your willingness to follow it into the challenging, scary and wondrous places it is leading you, you will begin to create a life of extraordinary richness and beauty for yourself and for our world.

We want our souls to be fed in the heart’s great pool. Sit with your pen and wait. Sit. Listen. There, it is whispering. There, formless but real. Like wind.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy: Cultivating Intuition and A Return to Heart and also What I Know.

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A Return to Heart

Maxima Kahn October 11th, 2017

Fires, floods, earthquakes, violence, intolerance, divisiveness, greed. It’s easy to see our world is in upheaval. These are intense, challenging times.

We are being called to return to heart.

As a human race, we have been living in severe imbalance for so long that the re-balancing is requiring some radical and painful shifts in our world.

We cannot continue living as we have been—ignoring and dishonoring the livingness of our world, disrespecting and doing violence to the creatures, the waters, the earth, the air, to women and children and people of color, people of all kinds.

We cannot continue to promote the values, the way of life, the beliefs that have brought us to this crisis. We cannot cling to our possessions, our security, our fear, our cynicism, our isolation.

All of Life is Alive

by Aaron Burden

All of life is calling to us. The wind is alive. The trees are alive. The rocks are alive. The clouds are alive. All of life wishes to be in deep, sacred relationship with us. In holy communion. In partnership. As it was always meant to be.

The original peoples of all cultures were given instructions in how to live in right relationship on the lands and waters where they dwelled. Rituals, ceremonies, prayers, practices, offerings, recognition of the cycles of life. These kept the peoples living in harmony and balance with the world around them. These kept the people in balance within themselves.

When they forgot these life-giving ways, either temporarily or later completely, trouble occurred. Not as a punishment, but as a reminder of the natural order of life, as a call to return.

Life has an order that is inherently good and whole and workable. When we move with it, our lives tend to flow well. We find acceptance and peace, even in challenges. We find true joy.

We Must Live From Our Hearts

Nothing is more important than that we live from our hearts now.

We need to quiet our incessant minds, our clamoring egos, our false sense of separateness from others. We need to tune into the still, small voice within.

Photo by Dingzeyu Li

We need to learn to calm the voice of fear, the addictive habit of fear, that has been built up in us by our contemporary culture and listen instead to the voice of heart, of love, of peace. We all carry this voice. All of life carries this voice. The ocean carries this voice. The flowers do. The animals do.

Sacrifice and Surrender Will Lead to Joy

This is going to ask a lot of us. We will have to sacrifice cherished comforts, ways of tuning out and disconnecting, our sense of superiority, and much that is familiar or once felt secure.

We may have to leave the 9-to-5 job and follow our passion for art. Or take a steady job in order to support our art. We may have to downsize and band together. We may have to reach out and ask for help, instead of trying to go it alone.

We will not be able to rely on how things worked for us before. We will not be able to hide out and play small. It simply won’t work. We will meet with more chaos, disruption and suffering. Until we relent.

Now, we are asked to step beyond our wounded selves, our limited desires and preferences. To step into our extraordinary gifts, cultivate our capacities, and shine in our full Beingness.

Nothing less will do.

If you have a calling in your heart that you’ve been ignoring or neglecting, a calling that comes from love, it is time to follow it. If you have a longing to reach beyond the pain that has held you captive, it is time to heal it. If you have been ignoring the livingness of the world around you, it is time to get into right relationship with it.

Life is calling. Let us join together and answer the call.

To your Beingness,

Maxima

On Devotion to Creativity: A Life, A Path

Maxima Kahn September 27th, 2017

I Am Devoted to Beauty and Creation

Some days all i can truly do is write. It’s all i can do truly, with a whole heart, with devotion. This is what’s given to me, and it’s a lot.

What jewels have been laid in my hands—I am awestruck, fascinated, dutiful, grateful. How could i possibly organize my life any differently than around these jewels?

Writing is my listening, how i tune my ear to the worlds, all of them—or whichever chooses to haunt me now.

Beauty is incredibly important to me. To actually capture beauty in the hand for a moment, more than once, more than just a lucky break, that takes deep work, to devote your life to something.

I’m interested in devotion, that profound movement of the heart—offering, sacrifice, surrender. How much it takes and how much it gives us in return. You can’t force it or fake it. It has to arise organically in the heart. But you can commit yourself to it consciously, once you feel it start.

Devotion is like a small, worthy boat that holds and carries us across waters now stormy, now calm, so that we can see astonishing lands, become salt-worn, washed whole, a part of sea and sky.

Creativity Is Not a Chore

by Averie Woodard

Creativity is not something i make myself do. It’s something i open myself to do.

I tend the garden, create the right conditions, the proper soil, show up lovingly, and work with my hands in the dirt, grateful for rain when it comes, grateful for sun, for blossoms and ripe fruit. I’m happy to tend to the slow care of picking caterpillars off the stems, cutting away the dead heads and stalks, mulching with the unused portions, watering daily. I know the seeds will flower in time.

Why would i complain about the work of creating? I’m honored to be given these seeds, this plot of ground, this longing. And entranced by the miracle of growth, new life—every time. Entranced by the process of growth and the care it takes to create art. Entranced to be in my garden of creativity, feet muddy, knees in the soil, dirt under my nails.

This is the place i feel most home, most right, at peace, one with all, belonging—even in the struggles. Outside my garden of creation there are precious few places i feel as well. Ritual is one of them, any kind of communion with the All, being in nature, around a fire, and often when i am teaching.

But, that garden of creation and communion is my first home, my path of devotion, my sacred work, my divine play.

Explore Devotion, That Magic Power

What are you truly devoted to in your life? What do you give your whole heart to, sacrifice time, money or other opportunities to follow?

What are the rewards of that devotion?

What do you care about or want more of in your life that you could be more devoted to? How would you express that devotion?

You may wish to journal about these questions, to dive deeply into them and see what arises for you. Remember, devotion is a movement of the heart. It’s not another “should.”

Please share your responses in the comments below, so we can continue the conversation.

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To your devoted life,

6 Essential Ingredients Webinar

Maxima Kahn August 17th, 2017

The 6 Essential Ingredients You Need
to Thrive in Your Creative Life

A completely FREE, interactive 90-minute webinar with Maxima Kahn

Tuesday, August 22 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. PST
(To find out when that is in your time zone, click here.)

You’re invited. To register, send me an email here.

Note: You’ll need to register at least 30 minutes ahead in order to receive the connection information.

Why Do I Need These Ingredients?

Lacking these 6 Ingredients, creative people tend to spin their wheels and blame themselves for their failures to realize their dreams. They feel frustrated, blocked, uninspired and confused.

These 6 Essential Ingredients make a huge difference in your creativity, fulfillment and enjoyment. And you can easily begin adding them to your life now.

What You’ll Receive:

♥ We will dive into the 6 Essentials Ingredients you need to thrive in a brilliant creative life. What they are, why you need them, and how you can bring them into your life now.

♥ You’ll identify the most essential ingredient for your creative life now. Focusing on bringing this in can radically boost your creativity.

♥ You’ll leave with ideas and action steps to bring these ingredients into your life.

♥ I’ll answer your questions and offer free coaching around the 6 Essential Ingredients.

♥ And you’ll receive a copy of my e-book The 6 Essential Ingredients of a Brilliant Life.

This is my gift to you.

Join me for this free webinar and see how your creative life can be transformed.

Feel free to share this with friends.

To register, email me here.

Why Should I Listen to You?

I have guided hundreds of artists, creative people and dreamers to free themselves from the blocks that limit their creativity and the full expression of who they are and what they dream of being, doing and having. I have helped them to create remarkable lives of passion, purpose and deep play.

Together, we play, dive deep, listen to our hearts and souls, get inspired and get real!