Be Soft
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Tanya Vallianos, MA, LPC, ATR, NCC, EMDR III, EAP II is a psychotherapist in private practice in Fort Collins, CO. She can be reached at www.innersunhealingarts.com or 970-420-9504
Nature – A Soft Place to Land
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Connecting to Nature is the journey back home to self, finding inner peace, and soul-deepening connection. When you slow down at Nature’s pace, your heart rate and breathing slow down. You relax and walk more leisurely and quietly. You become more hyper-aware of all that is around you.
Nature, in itself becomes a mindfulness practice, where you can notice more of the details - the cracks and crevices in the bark of trees, the way the leaves fall in a particular way and direction with the breeze, or the sounds of your feet softly engaging with the earth.
It is here that you are more available to tap into the spirit of the land, the plants, the animal and insect world. You notice what you are drawn to, what speaks to you. You take a moment to be near the tree or flower or insect that has your interest.
Now you turn your awareness toward your heart, focusing on the gentle pattern of breath flowing in and out. From this loving place of connection, spend time basking in Nature’s radiant beauty. Give appreciation for the time spent with it as well as allowing for the receiving of any guidance, support or healing within its presence.
It is from these Nature experiences that you are able to access your beautiful memories at anytime for they are always within you. They are able to support you through daily stresses. They are a reminder of your connection to something bigger. And they show you a deeper part of whom you are. Indeed it is an inner place to rejoice in.
-Tanya Vallianos
Tanya Vallianos, MA, LPC, ATR, NCC, EMDR III, EAP II is a psychotherapist in private practice in Fort Collins, CO. She can be reached at www.innersunhealingarts.com or 970-420-9504.
True Blessings
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Yes, it’s true. Our beautiful, sentient equine friends know how to connect with the Universe at Soul level much more readily than us humans. Why? They know how to be in the moment and appreciate and surrender to whatever is occurring right then and there, The world “just IS” to them. For us – it’s not so easy.
We have these large frontal lobes that think a lot. And we tend not to be very connected to our bodies, which tell us what is going on at the sensory/emotional/intuitive/nervous system level. This is where horses mostly hang out. And they’re really good at it. They can show us how to be more deeply connected by being more mindful, by being more in the present moment and surrendering to what “Is.”
If you want to experience more connection at a Soul level, incorporating gratitude into your everyday life will help you open your heart and have relationship with your true essence – that of Love. In each moment when you are present with the idea of being blessed that you have food to eat, a home to live in, that your family loves you, express thanks to the Universe for all that you have, however big or small.
After all, you are the Universe experiencing itself, so any experience can help you reach higher levels of consciousness. Even if you experience something negative, still you can try to remain thankful. Valuable lessons are often disguised as tough teachers. These too are gifts to be treasured despite the challenges.
-Tanya Vallianos
Tanya Vallianos, MA, LPC, ATR, NCC, EMDR III, EAP II is a psychotherapist in private practice in Fort Collins, CO. She can be reached at www.innersunhealingarts.com or 970-420-9504.
Redefining Valentine’s Day for A Global Perspective
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Here we are again, another February has arrived, a month that has come to be associated with Valentine’s Day, romance and its commercial legacy. And while retailers revel in the potential for boosted revenue, for the average human, it is a day that can bring up strong and varying emotions. Whether excitement, annoyance, disappointment, insecurity, confusion, anxiety, disconnect, sadness or disdain in our responses, V-Day has certainly weaved it’s way into the fabric of this culture as a yearly ritual. How can one small remembrance day, bring up so much internal turmoil or disconnect, especially when it’s supposed to be about honoring all-wondrous “Love?”
What’s interesting is that these are similar feelings that are brought up for people around Christmas and Hanukah, they too being holidays that engage loved ones and ritual, involve certain expectations by the wider culture and are holidays that are highly commercialized. According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year, Christmas being the first at 2.6 billion cards.
Most of us have considered the ins and outs of the affairs of the heart and our place within it, asking ourselves, “Am I where I want to be in love?” Most of us have considered our roles in our families and in friendships, asking ourselves, “How much am I loved?” Yet, maybe this is what hangs us up? Perhaps we really sense what is missing in these holidays and at the core of our Western world lives.
What I’m proposing here is that perhaps we can move towards a more profound perspective - less self-focused and external based. Maybe it’s time to let go of the idea of “buying love” or needing an excuse in a holiday to show love. Instead, opening up to the higher awareness of personal sacrifice, personal time, deepening conversations and a much more global perspective. How do we learn to love and give beyond our own families or tribe, beyond our own self-centered needs, beyond a cultural ideology of love?
And as US citizens, we are faced with many issues from a new administration that challenge the acceptance of others that are different, who are discriminated against or marginalized. More than ever, this needs to be a time to widen our circles of love. From refugees and immigrants trying to find a safe and welcoming home-base; to the poor, sick, homeless, and hungry around the world; to our own neighbors having a difficult time making a living wage and supporting themselves and their families - there are endless opportunities to show love this Valentine's Day and all days throughout the year. And if we are so open and gracious to changing our perspective, most likely, these opportunities will allow us to ultimately love differently, much more boldly, and universally. When we come from this limitless love we naturally and easily embrace our fellow humanity and ourselves. Opening our heart, we allow unconditional love (rather than a grasping, egoic kind of love) to be our guide and compassion to be our gift to life.
-Tanya Vallianos
Tanya Vallianos, MA, LPC, ATR, NCC, EMDR III, EAP II is a psychotherapist in private practice in Fort Collins, CO. She can be reached at www.innersunhealingarts.com or 970-420-9504.
Mindfulness: The Secret to Happiness
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Mindfulness helps bring balance, stability and ultimately more happiness to our lives
In the past 18 years working in the psychotherapy field, the prominent and most obvious complaint that is presented to me is that people are not happy in their lives. Whether it’s career, or relationship or a myriad of many different aspects of their lives, people are wanting to make changes, so that they can feel more alive, joyous and a greater sense of peace and ultimately, happiness.
Why are we so unhappy?
We are often trapped and rapped-up in our own negative thoughts and beliefs. These ruminating thoughts circulate round and round maybe for hours, days, and even years, keeping us disconnected from ourselves and causing a great deal of suffering.
As a way too rationalize the egoic mind, humans tend to think that things, life, emotions are happening to them. We tend to look for reasons outside of ourselves as to why we feel so miserable. This becomes the default coping mechanism as a means of survival that starts in childhood. Unfortunately, in time this strategy doesn’t hold up very well. We become more and more dissatisfied; we become chronically ill, our relationships dismantle and we find ourselves in meaningless jobs.
Mindfulness practice has a very direct way of stopping the ongoing commentary by directing our focus to the present moment. It is a way to ‘nip it in the bud,’ so to say; by not identifying with the story that follows any negative event, or underlying belief.
We are able to ‘still’ our minds. Once we’re able to do this, we cease creating stories and the suffering ends.
Staying present in the moment, we are able to really notice all the beauty around us. We have a more profound level of gratitude for it and all of life. This ability to be the observer takes us out of a “this is happening to me” mentality. We are brought closer into connection with out higher selves and all of creation. This is our true nature.
How can I start feeling better?
Take some time to be in nature finding a quiet place where you are not disturbed or distracted by others. Find an object to focus on, such as a flower, tree, bird, or water. For however long, bring your attention to that which you’re focused on and the cycle of your breath. Allow all of your senses to be a part of the experience. Let go of any urges to think about it or understand it. Instead, allow your mind to become quieted and just notice what you notice. If you observe that you have come back to ‘thinking’, gently bring your attention back to your breath and the nature experience.
When you are finished, you can have an honest curiosity about your quiet time. Were you stressed, sad, or irritated? More than likely – you were not. And you became more aware of the possibility of happiness. With each time of choosing to stay present in the moment and finding quietude within yourself, the more likely that you are on your way to a life that feels balanced, healthy and happy.
-Tanya Vallianos
Tanya Vallianos, MA, LPC, ATR, NCC, EMDR III, EAP II is a psychotherapist in private practice in Fort Collins, CO. She can be reached at www.innersunhealingarts.com or 970-420-9504.
In Our Digital Era, Can Horses Help Us Create Deeper Social Connections?
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As humans we are hardwired to be social beings. We cannot survive without contact and connection to other members of our species. Without real human contact we simply cannot develop, and evolve in the way nature intended.
Research conducted by Matthew Lieberman at UCLA in his first book, "Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect”, shows that being social and connecting with others is as fundamental a human need as food, shelter, and water. For example, Lieberman discovered that we feel social pain, such as the loss of a relationship, in the same part of the brain that we feel physical pain. The importance of social connection is so strong, he writes, that when we are rejected or experience other social "pain," our brains "hurt" in the same way they do when we feel physical pain. That is why we are profoundly shaped by our social environment and that we suffer greatly when our social bonds are threatened or severed.
One landmark study, “Social Relationships and Health”, by House, Landis, & Umberson, published in Science, showed that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. Research by Steve Cole, Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the UCLA School of Medicine, shows that genes impacted by loneliness also code for immune function and inflammation.
We live in a world in which more people are connected than ever before through social media. Yet despite that connection, there is still a fundamental disconnect between people - the most basic type of communication, human face-to- face interaction, is becoming less and less frequent. In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of those surveyed said they text their friends at least once a day, while only 33% said they talk face-to-face with their friends on a consistent basis.
We are sacrificing the experiences and understanding of real world interactions that are necessary in our development for a mere connection that at best is superficial. Social media forces upon us a feeling of intimacy and closeness that doesn’t actually exist. Online relationships provide opportunities for less risky interactions that also require less giving of oneself. An online interaction does not require that we compromise our needs or delay gratification because friends are always available on Facebook, and when we’re finished with them, we simply click off. Choosing this one-dimensional interpersonal relationship potentially reduces online friends into self-objects that only feed the user. Concern for the other is not required.
In Alone Together-Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Psychologist Sherry Turkle shows us how social media has brought forth a drastic change in how we treat relationships, and for the worst. And in a study of roughly 300 people by the Salford Business School they found that these social networks are exacerbating negative emotions. The surveyors found that if you are predisposed to anxiety it seems that the pressures from technology, create even more insecurity and more feelings of being overwhelmed.
This corroborates the idea that social media cannot be used to replace the interactions that take place in the real world. It may seem that these digital interactions are satisfactory on the surface, but deep within us, within our neurology, we cannot escape the truth that these digital connections are not enough.
Emma Seppala is Science Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University and Co-Director of the Yale College Emotional Intelligence Project at Yale University. And states that, “A sense of connection is internal.” Researchers agree that the benefits of connection are actually linked to our subjective sense of connection. In other words, if you feel connected to others on the inside, you reap the benefits thereof. One way that we can re-learn this ability to formulate deeper connections is with the help of horses.
Horses Know How to Establish Deep Bonding and Reciprocal Relationships
Horses have a rich history in their relationship with humans. Across different cultures and eras they have been utilized for work, show, cultural rituals, companionship, and continue to serve in many of these roles today. With the popularity of Equine-Assisted Therapy/Coaching programs within the past few years, there’s been a genuine interest in equine behavior in relationship to humans.
Like humans, horses are highly social animals, with defined roles within their herds. They have distinct personalities, attitudes, and moods. They form friendships and are protective of each other. They are tuned into the environment and other horse emotions, due to the fact that they are prey animals and are always watchful.
Social interactions between horses are how horses develop their bonds. They are able to create respectful social behavior, relationships, and harmonious communications with one another. This is accomplished through food sharing, bathing together, playing activities, mutual grooming and learning how to fit in with the social structure of the herd at large. It is similar to the way people learn how to connect and communicate with one another.
Horses communicate almost entirely through body language. Humans are primarily verbal. If a human has an interest in a true bond with the horse, then silence becomes one’s best approach. Low nickering, cooing and quietude are the staples of a horse's life. Thus, we can connect at their level by creating similar sounds and movements and being present with them as they are. These are empathic responses for deeper bonding.
In bonded horse and human relationships there is appreciation, the capacity to forgive, camaraderie and the desire to behave cooperatively, and an open corridor of honest communication that transcends the limits of speech and sign language. To be part of this kind of relationship with a horse requires effort and a good deal of learned and developed skills on the part of the human. The horse and human are partners, each recognizing the other's skills and abilities. They are also painfully honest and hold people responsible for their behaviors.
Hence, horses provide vast opportunities for metaphorical learning for humans, since they are able to acutely pick up on thought-forms and emotions and then mirror them back through their body language, behavior, and mood. This ability of horses to be blatantly perceptive and honest, makes them especially powerful guides.
For humans who struggle with social interactions, working with a horse gives them much-needed practice. For many, it can be easier to create a healthy, successful relationship with a horse, than it can be with most people. Through interaction with horses, we can learn to know ourselves better. Calm, peaceful and confident or agitated, distracted and fearful will be their response depending on which we bring to them. This is all done in the moment, on the spot, when it’s happening. We begin to learn their language, and how to have authentic relationship. We can discover that some of the basic needs and concerns of horses are the same as ours. This gives us a different perspective for dealing with these issues in our own lives. And begin to develop or improve, self-confidence, trust and self-respect.
With their giving, kind and unconditional nature, we can reawaken and remember our connection with all life. We are able to re-establish our giving, compassionate nature, and receive the greater benefits that this wisdom brings.
-Tanya Vallianos
Tanya Vallianos, MA, LPC, ATR, NCC, EMDR III, EAP II is a psychotherapist in private practice. She offers bonding experiences with horses in Fort Collins, CO. 970-420-9504
