Oh yeah!  I am leading a movement workshop this weekend called “Stillness Moves You…into the energy body”.  1:30 to 4pm on Saturday, June 19^th, at Empower Yoga, 1611 W. 5^th St., Ste. #140.

Would love it if y’all would join us!

Love,

Suzanne

Posted via email from Suzanne Armistead

Oh ma gosh!!!!!!!!!!!  At Hildes practice for our singing for Amma last night, we did some movement to get into our reception of Mother Love!  It was all so beautiful and healing.  Sus

asked me to lead people to the place of openness, and to help them connect to the places where they might be holding tension so they could be aware of them and smooth ‘em out.

We went together into the vibrations of love that are in all of us, that I call the energy body, opening with total surrender and joy.  We connected with one another by going into the energy body, individually.  It was yummy.  As we came out of the moving meditation, we joined one another with a light and delicate ease and grace, bringing this seemingly internal love outward to one another by moving around the room touching hands.  Each hand connection was expressive of the connection that we had with one another, quiet and soft with one, yet, joyful and giggly with another.  What a gift to see and share with one another this way.  What a gift to be alive.

Posted via email from Suzanne Armistead

Claiming My Life:  An act of self love

I have been in a lifelong healing process.  Sometimes it’s mental.  Sometimes it’s physical.  Sometimes it’s spiritual.  Sometimes it’s all of them or any combination of the three.  I have really come to see that it doesn’t matter which it is because it is all here to be worked out, and my commitment to myself is to do that.

I have been in a friend’s singing class called “Claiming Your Voice”.  You may know of her, Susan Lincoln, she is the originator of HildeGirls.  She is very talented, compassionate, present to the gifts of art in healing one’s heart and soul, and committed and generous in being available to share her gifts and talents through her work with those like myself.  Doing this class has given me an effective way to continue my healing.  It gives me a venue to look at myself with love and permission to be right where I am.

  I see through being in this class that I really do want to be free to be myself.  This is a major necessity in healing.  This means claiming my authenticity and letting go of thoughts that tell me I should be different or that I am not enough.  It is also about living and honoring who I am and who others are.  One of the ways that I am learning to do this is to call friends and/or family and sing to them.  In the past, singing to someone has been reserved to a very few, both because I feel shy, but also because I had to feel a certain way about them to sing to them.

Now, I realize it’s really about feeling a certain way about me.  The voices in my head can stop the offering of my singing to another in a flash by working to make me feel bad about myself!  But just now in writing this, I realized that singing to another and myself is mandatory to me.  Why?  Because it is about claiming my life.  Every time I allow the voices in my brain to trick me by telling me I am not enough and I should be different than I am, or that singing to myself or another doesn’t matter because I don’t matter, I am letting the fictitious veil of the voices tell me lies, and, worse, I am believing them.  NO MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I CLAIM MY LIFE  and every precious moment of it.  It is a gift for me, to me, and from me if I choose.  Claiming my life is a choice that I choose to make today.

Love,

Suzanne

Posted via email from Suzanne Armistead

I’ve been working with healing myself.  After the death of my beloved son, I saw the need to move beyond coping with the shock.  Walking and keeping my feet connected to Mother Earth was of great importance.  I connected with nature and was able to take the grieving process into the direction of healing.

Next, I saw was that I needed to do more movement and flexing and stretching.  The loss of energy with Davis’ leaving was of such a magnitude that I needed to open up reserves and let then flow.  The movement I needed to do was about addressing fatigue, joint pain, depression and fear.  I felt like I was sick with the flu, daily, until I began to move.

I moved with a guidance that was full of love and intention.  The intention was to live my life honoring my son and the undying love I have for him in my heart.  This meant living out loud the everyday awareness that he was with me, mostly to myself, but to my husband and others, too.  As I began to move, there was no pushing, forcing, or trying to be uplifted.  There was only love and acceptance planting itself through soft, gentle, incremental moving from stillness.

As I did it, I saw the breath rise and fall in me with such depth that I felt like I was being breathed for the first time in my life, instead of holding my breath.  The peace and calm that came to me was definitive, and the voices that drove me unconscious for years took a back seat and even disappeared most of the time. 

I did it daily.  No matter what was present, from mental anguish, anxiety, physical pain, anger, hopelessness, fear, you name it, it subsided.  I went to a place of peace, acceptance, and reverence.  I did it daily, sometimes twice a day.  Each time I laid down on the floor to do it, I heard the voices telling me it wasn’t going to work this time.  But the voices were so loud and painful that I couldn’t stand them so I did the movement, anyway, knowing that I had to move out of and away from their horrible clutches. 

I still do this magnificent practice after  a year and 9 months of discovering it as a healing for me.  I share it with others, now, too.  I teach monthly workshops on it, and weekly classes.  Tomorrow is a workshop called:  Stillness Moves You:  The Experience.  The experience is one of going within and meeting the energy body.  Our energy body is the healer.  When I move into the energy body, I move into healing.  I ALLOW healing to take place within me.  The truth about it all is that meeting my energy body reminds me who I am, restores me to the truth that I am pure Spirit, and that I am love.

In gratitude for miracles,

Suzanne

Posted via email from Suzanne Armistead

Mother’s Day exceeded my expectations in terms of the love that was sent to me from friends and family. There was a lot of love expressed to me that helped to deal with the gap of child loss. One thing that is clear to me, and many who remembered me on that day, is that I am  a  mom and always will be. And, I treasure that with all of me.

Posted via email from Suzanne Armistead

I am shooting from the hip and speaking into infinity.  There are moments when I fool myself and pretend to be doing something else.  In this moment, though, I am in touch with how it really is for me.

TEDxAustin is up and coming and having been invited to perform at it, David, my beloved husband, and I are in preparation for it.  All of the last three weeks has been about gathering.  My mind wants to “add” to what it thinks it knows in order to “feel prepared”.

However, I am beginning to learn by observing deeply within myself, and in that observation what shows up is the truth and acceptance of how I really work.  Preparation is not different than my moment to moment everyday life.  And, in fact, it is just another word for “livin”.  Preparation for me is about living very spontaneously in a dance that keeps me moving toward my target.

Along with moving toward my target, I realize that my target is also moving.  So, any pretense on my part to not move in order to gather by trying to bring toward me that which I want to accomplish, is a mistake.

Speaking into infinity is a moving experience, as is acting spontaneously.  Some time ago in my life I recognized that I knew so little, that no matter how much I learned, there was no holding to that learning like it was a knowing, and I realized that dancing was the way to move forward, and I could reach for what I wanted and be in the perfect place to receive the gift.

Speaking into infinity, acting spontaneously, and dancing in life are my gifts from Spirit, and anytime I deviate, having been tricked into thinking that I need to do it differently, I find out hard and fast that it was just a good idea.  This whole piece I have just written has been my experience of speaking into infinity, acting spontaneously, and dancing in my life.

When I do the above, I let go.  I stop trying to add to, and live with what I have been given that is all a gift.  I actually celebrate myself and my life when I dance and live in this spontaneous action that emerges from listening to my environment and responding to it by being present to it.  Preparation for the TED event, is the opportunity to be who I am, dance, and celebrate my life and gifts.  The more I do this, the more I step into the actualization of claiming my artistry.

The great mountain that I climbed learning this artistry, the significant distance I traveled in order to do the work in front of me, and each step I took in order to learn from and experience what was put in front of me, has brought me to the  summit.  This is the moment to claim my artistry, and I step into it with reverence and gratitude for all given me.  I couldn’t have realized this moment without speaking into infinity, acting spontaneously, and dancing the guidance always given me.

I claim my artistry and I thank you, God.

She invited me to be interviewed because she sees me as having healed myself of many years of depression, and wanted to speak openly to me about my process and the gifts I have been given along the way and in my healing.  It was inspiring to be with her and share with her from my soul.  Her questions evoked moments of the darkness that I hadn’t visited, yet, from the healed side of my life.  In this moment of sharing, new consciousness spoke from my lips and told my story.  I was passionate, alive, and full of gratitude and reverence for the peace that I have learned to have in my life.

My speaking brought to me the realization that I have grown into new consciousness, one of knowing I am not alone, I have never been alone, and I am connected in my life to others with love and peace.   My friend gave me a gift of the profoundest nature.  She wanted to talk to me, really talk to me about my life and listen to me, for herself, and, as an opportunity to share it with others who might have a healing for themselves by listening

As we talked, I realized I was sitting across the room in her chair listening to me.  We were one, and the love we shared was never ending, rich, and full of the moment’s wisdom that poured out of my open heart.  The open heart is the key, here.  It allows life to come into my being, and leave conjoined with my will to take action no matter what is at stake.  I am so done with living in ways that consist of hiding or apologizing for myself, or trying to look good or be different than I am.  My life is a gift.  My work is the action  I take in order to realize that gift.  It gives me the skills to evolve and heal and connect with others, knowing the truth of our oneness.  I am not alone, and this realization has healed me and my life  in baby steps with gratitude, reverence, and humility.

I have found that movement is what it takes for me to live.  And, living is synonomous for me with being present to my life.  There are still days that I look at my life and say how could this be my life?  I am 59 years old, my precious son of 25 years has passed away and I am still sad and shocked beyond what I can speak.  I have a wonderful and loving husband who shares in my grieving process, although he has his own.  We are very close, and support one another with love and a growing  commitment to love one another and our lives, together.  This helps.

People tell me often that they think I am courageous.  I tell them that what it takes for me to find joy, again, is to stretch myself as much as I can.  What does that mean?  It means to love my life with the same intensity and passion that I love my son.  I have seen just recently that to do this I must reach into places within myself that are new and unknown, and express myself from my depths.   Doing this helps me be present to myself and my life.  Movement is the stretch, the love, that connects me to myself and my life.  It is exposing of every way in which I would ordinarily hide.  It is the most artful way I know of to tell the truth for myself that I live with daily, be it sad or joyful.  It is my language, my liberation, my truth.

I connect to who I am when I move, and this is not the lower self Suzanne, but the higher self Suzanne who knows why I am here, what I am here to do, and when it is done.  In doing the work of stretching myself, being present to my life, connecting with who I am and why I am here, I am learning to love my life and trust it, or should I say, trust myself in living it.  Because of this,  a new joy is emerging.   It is the joy of learning how to love myself.  It all comes back to this, doesn’t it?  I think this is courage.

The Moving Love performance is about returning to union by shifting from fear to love. It is about connecting with our loved ones in life and death by choosing love and shedding all judgment. It is about healing every separation to remain connected forever, by standing open in love to the mystery that is Life.

There is no opposite to life and death is not the end.

******

Seating for Moving Love is currently booked out.

We invite you to place yourself on the waiting list by registering at www.movinglove.eventbrite.com.

We are grateful for your comments below.

Suzanne and David Armistead

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Note: the Moving Love Performance was held 09/05/2008 in Austin’s fabulous One World Theater to a capacity audience. The evening of transformation was profound. For information about the performance and the Moving Love Project visit: www.movingloveproductions.com.

This page is an information only page about Suzanne Armistead’s upcoming healing celebration

Moving Love

A Mother’s Transformation of Grief from Darkness to Light

To reserve tickets refer to your email invitation. Act promptly. Seating is limited.

(Seating is now booked out. To get on the waiting list please go to:www.movinglove.eventbrite.com)

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You have been invited to join with Suzanne and David Armistead this September 5th, in a powerful experience of healing celebration
to be held in Austin’s renowned One World Theater:

Created and Presented by Suzanne Armistead

Produced by David Armistead, Russell Forsyth, Beckie Forsyth, Craig Toungate and Susan Lincoln

Script by David Armistead

On September 5th last year, Suzanne and David’s son, Davis, died, opening a Spirit journey for mother, son and family – to be carried on the wings of love through death, across loss and separation, into transformation and union, and to now walk together, changed and forever changing, to live in miracles daily.

In Moving Love Suzanne will guide us through an opening and authentic soul journey of grief and transformation based on her true story, using the media of creative movement, narration and music to honor Davis and offer all attending an opportunity to bring lightness and illumination to places of darkness within regarding death.

For portions of the performance Suzanne will be joined by her husband David for narration and comment, by the Hilde Girls, with Susan Lincoln, for songs of spiritual opening, by Russell Forsyth, Craig Toungate and Susan Lincoln for original and improv compositions, and by Beckie Forsyth for stage management.

Playbill

• Act 1 - Birth and Wonder: the mystery of mother and child
• Act 2 - Humor, Passion and Pain: being present in joy and suffering
• Act 3 - The Struggle of Life and Death
• Act 4 – A Father’s Counsel, A Mother’s Prayer: cutting through illusion
• Act 5 – Waking to Love: love is real
• Act 6 – Spiritual Union: experiencing we are one
• Act 7 – Sharing Transfiguration: learning to walk in miracles

Important Things to Know –

• Ticket reservations and theatre seating will be on a first come first served basis.
• To attend you must receive an email invitation. Please RSVP to your invitation quickly.
• Admission and parking will be free, gifts to all from the Armistead/Weiner Family.
• Attendance at the performance is not recommended for children.
• There will be a reception/greeting time with the Armisteads preceeding the show beginning at 7pm.