Creative Stress Management--The Class

This coming Sunday I'll be facilitating a class on creative stress management, a topic that has been near and dear to my heart for many years. Through trial and error and working in social services, giving my heart and energy to others, I realized that I needed to focus more on managing stress and developing wellness practices. Through many years of research and a passion for shining light on others' creativity, I've developed a class that I'm happy to present to the world this Sunday.

Nearly two years ago in 2014, I facilitated my first official workshop on creative stress management through collage for a professional development day at Edmonds Community College, where I then worked. I provided blank notebooks and each participant used the cover page as the backing for their collage. They were instructed to rip or cut out any images or words that spoke to them. They could then use the notebooks later to record their dreams and goals or for anything they liked. There were no other rules. They were the bosses, and they loved it! And I fell in love! I realized quickly that this is something I want to share with more people and at the same time, something that puts me in my own creative flow.

Several months later, I had the opportunity to combine mindful breathing with collage at another professional development day but this time at Bellevue College. I absolutely loved seeing the relaxation on participants' faces and in their shoulders as they followed a simple breathing exercise. Our collages that day also focused on specifically on work-life balance.

Then last summer in 2015, I had the opportunity to lead another mindful breathing exercise and collage session for a wellness challenge at Lake Washington Institute of Technology. Again, the experience reaffirmed my passion for helping others feel stress relief and move towards a greater level of well-being. And people began to request more opportunities to rip and tear inspirational images and words from magazines and flyers to create their own unique visual oasis! I offered 3 more sessions--one focusing on goal setting, another on our personal missions, and the latest session with a group of early childhood education employees on a professional development day.

In addition to workplace creative stress management, I've hosted several collage parties for friends over the past several years as well, at first to try out my ideas and make sure they flowed well and then to continue spreading the creative stress management love. And it's more fun to create and inspire when you're in the company of friends!

With that said, I also enjoy creating when watching TV, when I want to refocus on my wellness and goals, when I'm just hanging out, when I feel inspired, so since I created my collage notebook two years ago, I have filled the pages of the notebook with mini-wellness collages. It's now one of my prized possessions. Think vision boards, but in miniature and mobile form. I can take the notebook anywhere or turn to a particular page and focus on it to feel a renewal of inspiration.

As you can tell, I'm wild about creative stress management and I can't wait to share it with more people. If you're interested in attending my upcoming class on May 1st, please send me an email at: maret.carrillo@gmail.com. More information is below or you can visit: www.facebook.com/owningyourgoodness. (You can pay the supplies fee when you arrive on Sunday.)  Looking forward to creating greater wellness with you!

Leaping Forward on Leap Day

“Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.” ~Mary Ann Radmacher

Today is February 29^th. It feels kind of funny—and fun to write that because it’s not a common day, is it? I was just thinking about it actually and we won’t have this day again until 2020. Wow. Think about that for a bit. What do you think you’ll be doing on February 29^th, 2020? How will your life be different? How will it be similar? Who will you be spending your day with then? Maybe that’s why it’s called Leap Year. Because we can take a leap into the future (and past if we choose) and imagine all we’ll accomplish in the next four years. All the adventures we’ll go on. All the love we’ll give. 

Sometimes it’s helpful to look back as well, but only in reflection upon the lessons we’ve learned, I think, and on how far we’ve come. What were you doing on February 29^th, 2012? I love numbers and dates so I’m pretty sure I celebrated in some way, but I don’t remember many specifics from that day. I do know I had just had my first surgery ever four years ago this month. And it pretty much confirmed that I had a rare condition called the Nutcracker Syndrome, in which my left renal vein was trapped or smooshed by my aorta and superior mesenteric artery, causing the blood to flow from my kidney in a different direction towards my left ovary, creating internal varicose veins which when swollen caused achy pain and during certain times of the month, excruciating pain. I’m very grateful to say that four years later, my renal vein is flowing properly now, the varicose veins are not causing hardly any discomfort, and I’m 13 weeks pregnant! An amazing little miracle is growing inside me and that wonderful little being will be 3 and a half years old next time we have a February 29^th and celebrate Leap Day!

Do you do anything special on Leap Day or during Leap Year? If not, would you like to start a new tradition? It seems like a good time to reflect on our journey in this beautiful life and to envision what the future may hold for us. It’s also a great time to start taking consistent baby steps towards reaching those goals and dreams of yours. You don’t have to wait until New Year’s to do so. Or if you had a plan that you began on January 1^st and it’s been hard to keep, now is as good of a time as any to reevaluate why that plan may have been difficult to maintain and adjust and start again. 

What’s one way you can create a new positive habit today that will get you one step closer to your dreams? Because once it becomes a habit, each day you will take one more step and before you know it, you’ll be creating new dreams or adding to your current dream. And when you look back to reflect on those steps, you’ll be in awe of all you’ve accomplished because you took that one step today on February 29^th. Let me know how it goes. :-)

Meditations in Falling Off the Goal Wagon

A great deal of my thoughts, frustrations and energy have been dedicated throughout my life to feeling bad for falling off the “wagon.” I think I sometimes envision this wagon being a caravan filled with my hopes and dreams carrying me swiftly to my goal. So when I fall off of it and lose my way, stop doing the things I’ve committed to doing or not do them in the time frame I originally set up, I tend to feel really down. At least at first.  

Other times I start an “I don’t care” campaign in response to my falling off and apathy clouds my normally optimistic and hopeful disposition. In a way, this defiance can be an act of self-love, giving myself permission to give up the time-frame constraints I had originally imposed upon myself and allowing myself to be free and embrace a more impromptu way of living.  

I’ve struggled with these dueling ideas—plan, plan, plan for success and reaching my goals versus let it go, relax, don’t worry, I don’t care. But just now as I type this, another idea popped into my head. What if I stop struggling against my innate nature of planning and relaxing, and fully embrace these seemingly opposite traits to take a more positive stance? Could this taming of the duel inside be the key to peace? Isn’t the idea of envisioning our dreams and then releasing them the very basis for the famous Law of Attraction?  

Could there be a hidden nugget in my angst that I haven’t yet been accessing? I think so. And I’m intrigued. As an action-oriented planner and dreamer, this delights me that in my “laziness” I may have actually been cultivating something of value after all. Maybe all the time when I could have been “productive” and instead gave myself time to rest and “veg” on the couch or on Facebook was actually exactly what I needed to move forward.

Rest is required when on a journey. And setting out to reach our goals and dreams is quite a journey. So of course we need rest! In seeing my resting time as essential and valuable, I then give myself permission to take my sweet time, enjoy the view, reflect…or not, be human, and to gather my strength for the next lag of this incredible journey we call life. 

"You are on the path... exactly where you are meant to be right now... And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing, of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love." —Caroline Adams

Learning to love even the darkness

Recently the weather in the Seattle area has begun to shift slightly-the days are a little bit shorter, the nights a little bit crisper and the gray skies have returned more often than during the rest of this summer.  I'm struck with my automatic thought to despise the end of summer and dread the coming of the colder, darker, rainier days.  This year I would like to challenge this automatic thought of mine and since the changing of the seasons is inevitable, actually look forward to the autumn and winter seasons through a more positive, yet still sincere lens.

So yesterday I asked myself this question, "What do I love about each season?"  And "what do I look forward to every year during each season?"  Spring and Summer are my favorite seasons so it's extremely easy for me to come up with lists upon lists of my favorite things about these two sunnier, brighter seasons.  But what about the two seasons that are more challenging for me?

My first thought, because of the chillier nights these past few weeks, is how much I love wearing a different scarf each day.  When the colder months arrive, I no longer accessorize with necklaces as much as with scarves and boy is it fun!  I also love wearing tall boots again with leg warmers in the fall and winter!  But apart from clothing changes, I also look forward each year to the crunching of fallen autumn leaves on the ground during my sometimes rainy nature walks, which I try to take part in all year round if possible.  This is one of the Tranquil Times I relish in and also a way for me to be creative with my nature photography and keep up my exercise during busy times.  Speaking of photography, I love standing below trees during the fall and admiring all the bright reds and oranges and yellows of the leaves before they fall.  I never tire of taking photographs of the exquisite Autumn colors in the Pacific Northwest where I live.

Now for the hardest season for me--winter!  This took some real thought and creativity to come up with  the things I like about winter and what I look forward to during the winter months.  I always imagine the soft white snow falling so quietly and closing schools and workplaces, because this is such a peaceful event, if you don't have to drive on the icy, snowy roads around here and can just stay home and play.  But let's be honest--this only happens at best one or two times maximum each year and sometimes not at all so I really needed to come up with more than just hopes for a winter wonderland this coming winter.  So what else?  Going to the gym no longer seems like a waste of sunshine because it's dark out by the time I'm off work most of the winter.  So that's a positive way to view the darkness.  I also enjoy settling in at home more during the winter months to work on crafts like making earrings--my best friend, Andrea and I made about 30 pairs of earrings last November in preparation for a holiday craft fair at my work!  I'm motivated to try cooking yummy soup recipes during the cold winter and so is my wonderful mom who likes to share her soup creations every fall and winter.  My adorable husband and I love preparing warm tea--especially chai tea--on cold nights and it's something I definitely look forward to very much.

Something wonderful about both fall and winter is cuddling!  This coming fall will be our first fall as a married couple and I am definitely looking forward to staying in on cold, rainy nights, watching a movie all warm and cozy in our cute apartment.  Not quite as fun as cuddling is bundling up for a walk outside in the cold, maybe on one of those amazingly clear, chilly days we sometimes get here in Seattle in the winter.  Spotting the first pussy willows of the season every February is definitely a highlight for me as well because I love seeing the promise of the spring ahead right before my eyes in the form of a soft little plant I can pet!  Seeing the tiny buds beginning on all the trees is also a delight after a long winter.  The act of witnessing the beginning of this new growth shoots hopeful rays of light throughout my being every winter and I know that I've almost made it through another long winter and spring will come again.

So my real challenge is finding joy and love for the in-between--the waiting for spring to come, the aftermath of the fun, family-filled holiday season, the maintenance work of keeping our new year's intentions, all while the days feel extremely dark and dreary.  I think I'll create a new tradition for the last week in January to help motivate me and give me something real to look forward to and work towards.  What could it be?  Going trapeze flying again?  Doing an indoor (or outdoor) 5K walk at the end of January?  Travel to the little German town of Leavenworth in Cascade Mountains east of Seattle to the Icicle Fest?  Hosting an Anne of Green Gables movie marathon with the girls?

I think, for me, it helps immensely to always be working towards something, a secret little goal or a big, public dream--whatever it may be, the focus on forward motion helps inspire me.  And breaking big dreams into fun, little projects throughout the year, like this weekly blog I started this month, makes the forward motion even more obtainable.  So what will my project or tradition be during the dark, challenging months?  That is the question.  I'm grateful for this insight now, in August, before the cold darkness hits so I know what I need to creatively brainstorm about in order to be proactive for the coming fall and winter and make them joyful, love-filled seasons, just like my beloved spring and summer!