April 1, 2020
The usual April Fools jokes seem paltry compared to the cosmic joke we are all living today! Rather than fool each other this year, let’s do some serious counting of our blessings, clearing our paths, and visioning a vibrant future with all our loved ones near us!
How are you doing?!!
Where are you working?
Are you alone?
Do you need anything?
How can I help?
It’s important to keep active. Keep moving, even if it’s around the house! Here at Forgivenesswalks, we let our walking take us on a journey into our hearts.
As I’ve accummulated miles over the past 13 years, starting with walking from Maine to Georgia in 2007, I’ve discovered that walking can provide a medium for nourishing my whole being, body, soul, and spirit!
Awakening my physical senses while walking in Nature reminds me that the physical world is filled with delightful experiences that can soothe, enliven, distract, and invigorate me at any moment!
Imagining the rainbow of colors spinning in specific areas of my body leaves me tingling with energy and feeling more vibrant and fully alive from head to toe.
Allowing myself to feel all of my feelings and loving myself for having them in any moment opens a gateway to a journey to freedom. Whether they are challenging or joyful, and especially when I feel a low vibration like disappointment, criticism, fear, or blame, doing something to raise the vibration of that feeling, clears my path to acceptance and joy. It sets my life’s stage for new stories, surprising new outcomes, and even what seem like miracles to happen.
Wrapping these three activities in song moves my whole being and plays the strings of my heart, resonating their messages deeply to my emotional core, loosening old tensions stuffed away in hiding, easing them out to be acknowledged and loved.
I’ve walked this walk many times!
It was in 2009, as I walked through my neighborhood and up Stone Mountain in Dekalb County, Georgia, asking “how can I walk in service?” that these threads wove together, clearing my path, creating an emotional guide for making any walk a consciously transformative experience. Sensory Awakening called from my years as a Nature interpreter, Non-sensory charging beckoned from color therapy with LaVonne Sheets. The active and practical reframing of stuffed resentments and emotional blocks came from the toolbox of Colin Tipping’s Radical Forgiveness. And the songs? The songs wafted like magic into my walks from Barbara Hotz, my neighbor in Midway Woods.
I kept walking, four times through the 280-Benton MacKaye Trail, in the southern Appalachian Mountains, saying “I’m walking in service.” I offered my playlist and scheduled calls during my walks, encouraging others to “walk with me”, focusing on mindful transformation of our personal challenges, inspired by my lessons and reflections from the trail. Four creative women joined in.
The Universe responded as my vibration rose, with a job walking in service. For seven summers between 2010 and 2017, I served as Ridgerunner for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in Virginia. As I encouraged thousands of hikers to leave no trace on the Appalachian Trail, I listened to their stories, their frustrations, their joys, their breakdowns. I cleared deep limiting beliefs of my own, walking up Bald Mountain and The Priest, listening to the playlist of tracks I now called Walk for a Singing Heart. Once, in the two hours it took to ascend Bald Mountain, I experienced what it’s like to be holding fast to a limiting belief coined by my mom at the bottom of the mountain and unable to remember what it was at the top. I was stunned. This actually works! I truly could not find that belief in my mind – ever again!
As all teachers experience, I got to deeply learn what I want to teach by walking through my divorce, leaning on friends, family, coaches, and my financial advisor. My ability to create a Blessingway for My Divorce, actively hosting the ceremony of divorce that I wanted and my ex refused. With support from dear hearts from Virginia to California, I basked in their love, understanding, and sustenance, reframing that once shameful experience to one of spiritual growth and purpose.
I kept walking, using Walk for a Singing Heart on my long walks of 2014-2019. With my new partner, I walked the miles of the Appalachian Trail a second time, walked the twisted paths of the New England Trail through Massachusetts and Connecticut, and walked the coast of Oregon. Each of these walks provided plenty of opportunities to clear my emotional path, nourish my senses and non-senses and literally walk my talk!
These were supported by another position as Park Interpretive Specialist – what I always wanted to be – at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California. Now, the COVID19 challenge provides a sure opportunity to clear our paths! Although all of the staff at the Park is still working, including us seasonals, I know that many of you may not be!
Walking can help you clear your path too! I want to support you in doing that consciously, powerfully, surprisingly! So, just for today and tomorrow – no fooling – I want to give you Walk for a Singing Heart!
Of course, if you want, Barbara and I will graciously receive your investment of $47 at Walk for a Singing Heart
And… just for today, from the time this email goes out until April 2, 2020 at midnight Pacific Daylight Time, you may have this transformational playlist experience as a gift! No fooling! To receive it, don’t hit “buy now”, send me an email saying you’d like to receive Walk for a Singing Heart. I’ll send you the download link for your personal use. Walk on! No Fooling!
That email is regina@forgivenesswalks.com