A Girl On Fire: Stef Dawson

Sometimes people have a vision. For some, this vision stays at the forefront of their mind. The individual focuses in on the power of intention, motivated to see this vision come to life. Others have a dream or passion – a vision that does not always transpire to reality because somewhere along the way, their dream is tarnished and as a result, motivation killed.

Where there is a will there is a way and no journey of two people will ever be the same. The road can be rough and different people are exposed to a variety of circumstances and situations that makes the arrival of their success unique. What doesn’t break you only makes you stronger.

In 2007, Stef Dawson and I sat across from one another in Sydney’s inner west; having just completed a short season as two young lead actresses at the well known indie theatre “Newtown Theatre” in production, “Journey Into Sin”.

Today, we are both situated in LA pursuing different dreams, but within entertainment. Stef whose been in LA for 3 years has “broken in”, having secured a meaty role in the Hunger Games franchise (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2). For many others, it takes 10 + years for such a “break” to occur. I’m pursuing talent agency / management work and have been here for just under 3 months.

Six years post our time in theatre together, Stef and I can reflect upon the fact that we both believed in our dreams, and that one-day we’d be here in LA living the lives we imagined. That night, I saw a light surrounding Stef and I said to her, “Stef, you must go to LA. I just saw it. You’re going to make it. I’m not kidding, I’ve just seen that you’re going to make it in LA. You must go!” And six years on, having just secured her first big break, Stef is undoubtedly on the rise. What we both experienced that night was an insight into a future that has begun unfolding for us both, but as a result of also believing in, committing to and focusing in on that vision for the future.

We’ve remained inspirations to one another; kindred spirits empowered by ambition, determination and belief. I can’t express how much I believe in Stef and have followed her career journey with great anticipation. There’s never been a doubt in my heart or mind that she would reach her goals and the journey has hardly begun (or rather, never ends).

The power of intention is real. Believe in your dreams, stick to that vision in mind - it will bring about enormous rewards. There is no such thing as failure, only a magnificent journey to endure full of highs and lows, and everything in between. Stef is exemplary of a hard working, resilient artist; not afraid to put her best foot forward and fight for what she believes in.

Some dreams take time to unfold. Some dreams take on different forms and evolve. However, by embracing the journey fearlessly, never losing sight of the bigger picture, your dreams can and will only fall into your lap in a matter of time.

Allow Stef’s journey, positive attitude and relentless beliefs be an inspiration to you. Set your intention; see, believe and trust it all. Don’t give up because your dream is just as valuable as the next person and the next. You have the power to bring anything into reality with positive steps. That magic we all dream of, does truly exist.

Political Transformation.

We’ve just had a national election here in Australia and during the time of the campaign something occurred to me:

“They’re at war, our two main political parties, and war has never gone well, or ended well“.

There are many limitations to our political system: Like the fact that we only have a 3-year term; what can you really achieve in 3 years? Probably not many hard decisions and actions because you’re already planning for the next election.

How much taxpayer money is wasted because one government (party) rolls out one bright idea or reform or legislative action only for it to be abandoned by the next?

I’ve been to ‘Question Time’ at our national parliament and have to say that it was all I could do to stop myself from standing up and yelling down to the floor “Grow up you idiots, don’t you realise we’re watching and that you’re supposed to be running the country. Don’t you realise we pay you for this. If this was a business you all would have been sacked a long time ago!” Well, perhaps not all. It’s not fair to sweepingly generalise there but you get my point. Not only do we pay them to be there and govern and oppose but we also pay for their election. We pay financially and our environment: How many trees go down for all those letters and pamphlets?

As a dear friend of mine said recently “where’s the sense of grace and appreciation? When was the last time you heard a politician say: ‘We think they’ve had a good idea there and we think we can help it materialise with suggestions on structure…?’

Do any of them realise they’re meant to be on the same team serving the best interests of the Nation?

They are at war. We know the destruction and devastation war brings. Warring parties exist in a paradigm of separation when what we want is a paradigm of unity. They’re meant to be working together aren’t they really for us, the people and our nation? But in reality, they’ve got one eye on us and one eye on their own self-serving agendas.

I propose we scrap two party politics. Big call I know. Will it ever happen? Maybe not. Will anything really change until we do? Maybe not.

What if we had a government comprised of independents voted by the people, in electorates as they are now? There was still a figurehead, but who wielded no real power? There was still a cabinet, so that there was a specialist in the various areas of government – someone still heading the environment portfolio, someone else the treasury and so on? The cabinet could be elected by all of the members of parliament.

All of the various areas requiring governing, like Health, Education, Finance, Environment, Foreign Affairs, etc, would still be lobbying government for what they feel they need or want, and decisions still have to be made on how much money comes in (tax) and where the money goes. The government still has to work out what the priorities are.

There’s always going to be disagreement about what’s more important so how do you sort that out? Some people want to spend lots on defence, some want to spend lots on the environment. Plus, there’s legislative conflict too. One piece of legislation to save the environment might mean the cutting of lots of forestry jobs.

The beauty with this new form of government is that there are no party lines to tow so all members can “cross the floor” and vote on legislation that they feel serves the best interests of the nation.

There would still need to be accountability and so a senate could still exist, a council of sorts. Members of this senate would serve only one term and so there would be no danger of decision making to serve re-election. Election to the senate would be through a process of application, where each seat would be designated to a specialist in a particular area. For selection each member would have to fit certain IQ and EQ requirements, pass psych tests to illustrate their capacity and would have to fit the criteria for that seat. For example, the member of the senate council responsible for health would have been educated in a health profession and have accrued a wealth of experience working in the field of health.  

With this proposal you get rid of party agendas, self-serving agendas and back room lobbying based on selfish interests.

Such a change might be a long way off, either way, at the end of the day it’s got to start with us. We have to be changing our own internal perspectives on separateness, on opposition, on conflict and war. We need to both realise and voice that we’re all connected, all in this together regardless of background, culture, colour, age, or gender. 

Written by Adam Cootes of Arising Self

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Attachments.

We all have attachments to things. They vary from time to time, depending on what we believe our needs to be. Try and identify what they are. Write them down and be honest with yourself. It could be that you’re attached to a certain thought, belief system, your mobile phone or particular food types, i.e. cravings for sugar. Work back from the primary thought to understand where it comes from and what its trigger may be. Don’t judge yourself for it. Don’t try and go “cold turkey” on the attachment. Just work towards, each and every day, relinquishing your attachments, perhaps starting with one, and take baby steps in letting go of certain thoughts and feelings surrounding them. It will take time and so don’t be impatient with self. Honor your journey here, take your time and process each thought with love, forgiveness for self and patience. Keep a journal - put pen to paper to get certain thoughts and feelings out of your mind. Healing takes time. Embrace the “time” - for however long that may be and go forth into each and every day with the mission of feeling that little bit more free. 

Understanding Pain - Pt. 2

Now back to this pressure applied to my hand. If I increase the pressure, eventually I invoke a sensation that I would describe as pain, here a threshold of input from tissues to brain has been reached where the brain now interprets a problem. The pain experience has begun, a message to my conscious self to say, please pay attention here, something is not right. 

This is an example of mechanically driven pain. Now in the case of an infection, the pain is chemically driven, where nerve endings in infected tissues are responding to chemical changes and pointing out the problem area.

We feel chemically driven pain during and after a big training session, where so much lactic acid has been produced in tissues that nerve endings become chemically irritated and send these messages to the brain.

Some pains are relatively easy to understand, they are ones we expect, like when I have rolled my ankle, torn a ligament, the ankle swells, it hurts, I rest it, get some treatment on the local tissues to help healing, I get moving again and the pain goes away.

If however the injury causes me to have a large fear response, say I injure my back at work, and the injury has an impact on my ability to provide for my family and say my dad has suffered form low back pain for the last 20 years and I have watched it cripple his life I am going to be very afraid of what is going on, and when I am very afraid I am going to get over protective, create adaptive movements to avoid further hurting anything and I’m likely to become more sedentary. Further more, my nervous system is going to heed these fear messages and sensitise itself, so that I will in time feel more and more pain as part of my brain’s attempt to protect me.

Fear increases tension as it seeks to protect and in doing so can facilitate and perpetuate pain. It must always be considered when working with pain.

Education, creating understanding and empowerment has a huge impact on reducing fear and pain.

There are many things that can contribute to the creation of pain. You can get tummy pain from infected food; you can also get it from stress, and chronic anxiety. You can get a headache because you’re dehydrated, or because you’ve got a viral infection but also because you’re  holding onto a build up of frustration or anger.

Chemically driven pain can be created by poor nutrition. If we don’t eat well, we’ll hurt more. Other lifestyle factors too contribute. We are more sedentary now than ever before in history, and when we do exercise, our exercise is often uni-dimensional, jammed into a short time frame, and often ineffective in relaxing the tensions and moving the stagnancies in the body that drive pain. 

As kids we explore and express so much more physical freedom, we run and jump and hop and wrestle and roll around and dive and climb trees and as we get older, things become more serious, less fun, less play, more work, more responsibility, more burdens and so our bodies follow our minds into the contraction.

One of the biggest generators of pain both chemically and mechanically is stress. Under stressful situations stress responses involve suppression of the immune system, increase in heart rate, suppression of digestion, increases in biochemical’s like adrenalin and cortisol, which are involved in inflammatory pathways and the creation of tension.

Stressful emotions like frustration and anxiety are contracting of the body.

Anxiety for example is a fear, based emotion. It is generated within the body following a perception within the mind of threat or danger. The emotion drives an action. All emotions want to become actions. Anxiety wants to move, it wants to run away or race around and fix stuff or control stuff. If we wake ever day with challenges that strike worry and fear in us then we are constantly generating anxious tension.

Likewise the emotions of frustration and anger generate tension in the body for fighting. These are emotions of fighting. We have them not just in conflict with people but also in conflict with situations; at times when we feel powerless or out of control, which for many is often. Sometimes we might feel really angry and feel that we cannot express it. The body has been told to fight and then told to block the action of fighting and so a tension is created in the body. This is another pathway to pain.

We also commonly suppress the expression of the emotion of sadness. The emotional body lives within the physical body. When we suppress emotion we create conflict, tension and stagnancy in the body – all lead to pain.

So, when you have pain, pause before you hate it or become afraid of it, and instead, seek to understand it. Can you see its message and respond accordingly? In your search to understand the messages you may be confronted by things you’d rather avoid. Things like the origins of your stress. This is not pains fault, but rather, your challenge.

Get more connected to your body so that you can pay more attention to the messages it conveys, maybe you’ll pick them up before they have to speak so loud as to become pain. Be mindful of the way you move, how you live, what you eat, and what stresses you, and importantly learn about how to meet stress, release stress and reduce stress. This will be the greatest thing you can do to reduce your pain and help your health.

Written by Adam Cootes of Arising Self

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Understanding Pain - Pt. 1

Pain is not something we learn a lot about when we’re growing up, except that we don’t like it, we see others curse it, wish it away, see it as a problem, often an enemy, as an affliction, something being forced upon them from some external place. We learn to be afraid of it, rather than taught to understand it.

I remember as a child, the pain of sore throats and ear infections, cuts, scrapes, the loss of skin on knees and knuckles in hockey matches; the pain of a broken nose in cricket – all of these physical injuries or illnesses, infections and the like.

I was riding in a taxi recently whilst interstate teaching and said to the driver who had asked the reason for my visit that I was running a workshop on “pain”. After a pause, she said, now there’s something I hate. This said a lot for me. It’s our relationship with pain that is so important in being able to change it.

If you hate it, you reject it and then it’s hard to understand it and heed the message it is offering.

I appreciate now that there are many contributions to pain and that pain has a purpose. It is not the enemy, and although it is unpleasant, it is very unpleasant for a reason, because it is a message about a problem. It is essentially a message from myself to myself, and if I listen to the message and understand it I may be able to grow, heal, prevent recurrence of the pain and often times prevent further illness and even death.

Pain is part of our survival armory; it is like an alarm system, a response to perceived, actual or potential danger.

Pain is unpleasant – and is so for a good reason. We’re meant to pay attention to it. If it weren’t so uncomfortable, we wouldn’t pay attention to it.

I have come to learn also that pain does not exist in the tissues of the body. Although I feel that pain is in my thumb when I hit it with a hammer, it is not. It is in my brain. It is created there by centres of the brain that have interpreted messages coming via the nervous system, from the squashed tissues in my thumb.

Pain exists in the brain and is part of a much broader response to the perception of danger to the tissues of my body. These include:

·       Tension, which might be splint to protect an area of the body that has been damaged

·       The sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which drives the fight and flight responses through the body including chemical responses that kick start inflammation and healing pathways.

It is these neural and chemical interconnecting message systems between mind and body that mean that I can no longer allow myself to perceive that the mind and body are separate

Pain is an experience; it involves sensation, memory, and emotion and is unique and subjective to each individual.

Say I apply a light pressure to my thumb, a message is sent by a mechanically compressed nerve ending (well many lightly compressed nerve endings to be honest), to my spinal cord and then on up into my brain where it travels to many centres including the somato-sensory cortex, at the top of the brain. This is where the map of the body exists in the brain. This is how I know that it is a pressure applied to my thumb and not my big toe.

If I were a soldier, and had gone to war, and were involved in a skirmish and got shrapnel in my hand which got infected and had to be amputated I could years later still feel pain in my hand that no longer existed because the messages were still moving between these centres of the brain. This phenomenon is known as phantom limb syndrome, and proves again that pain is not in the tissues.

To be continued in “Understanding Pain – Pt. 2”

Written by Adam Cootes of Arising Self

Follow Arising Self here

Personal Authenticity.

It’s one thing creating a world around you that appears to the outside world to be a certain thing. Does that make you a slave to society by creating an external reality that’s fit for them, but is not necessarily in true alignment to your own authenticity?

Being a “perception engineer” for the outside world doesn’t necessarily serve your own life or internal happiness, joy and truth. To truly be “free”, live authentically and happily, you have to address and live your own truth first.  That begins with working from the inside out; not the outside in. 

If you’re driven by certain things, such as creating the perception of being wealthy, sophisticated or successful, you must ask yourself first, where do your own personal values stand amidst that perception, and are you living as a wealthy, sophisticated or successful person within your own life, heart, mind and soul first? Are you clean, tidy, fit, healthy; do you take pride in your living environment; in your relationship with yourself? 

There’s nothing wrong with “branding” or “personal branding”. But if you’re goal is to succeed, achieve and be happy; ensure that the truth you’re living behind closed doors is the very truth that guides your genuine health and happiness - not the perception of it that others might or might not accept. 

Becoming Your Own Guide

Lets not kid our selves, creating positive change isn’t easy; personal transformation isn’t easy. It’s not hard to feel stuck and powerless in changing things about your own behaviour. There is often a great weight or gravity to your own patterns and your own desires for things to be the same.

In essence, to change you must firstly want to change; there must be sufficient reason, creating sufficient desire. You must know the why, the reasons and want to change badly. You must build this ‘fire of desire’, this want for change by reflecting on the reasons regularly. Without doing so there will not be the energy required to overcome the barriers to change.

Then, you must identify the barriers and break them down. To do this, you must learn to watch yourself – you require self-awareness first.

You have to be able to watch yourself, watch your old patterns of eating poorly or ‘being lazy’ or not exercising, or stressing out about things unnecessarily.

You can cultivate the ability to watch yourself through meditation and self-reflection. If you don’t meditate already, learn to – an untrained mind is as useful at creating personal transformation as an untrained violinist is at playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Find a teacher or source instruction on the net. You can find my introduction to meditation at www.arisingself.com

The self-reflection part can take many forms. Personally, I think it’s nice to keep a journal, this really helps you to be accountable and to call into question what your perceptions, feelings and actions are. You might for instance keep a food diary and call into question why you have consumed in a day what you have. Did you eat because you were hungry? Was it a genuine hunger, or was it stress driven, boredom driven or because of an emotional feeling of emptiness? Are there poor eating patterns because of a fundamental lack of regard for self?

In asking these questions of yourself you find your barriers to change; stress, boredom or loneliness as examples. These are the things that need further work if you are to change your patterns.

Another very useful tool of self-reflection is watching back the movie of your day in your mind. Slowly. Observing yourself: the way you move and feel, your mood, your reactions, your patterns and so on. On the first run through, just watch and observe.

On the second run through ask yourself questions like, “Why did I act like that, feel that, respond like that? Could I slow down, be in the moment more, not rush so much? How often to I actually deeply experience something in the moment? What perceptions, stories or beliefs do I need to change in order to feel less stress and enjoy my day more? Can I accept the nature of my reality and the things I cannot change and pour my energy into changing those things that I can?

On the third run through, press the pause button as you go, and this time seek to guide yourself. Consider putting on a different set of glasses, metaphorically speaking as you step into your day. What if this set of glasses allowed you to enjoy everything in your day, allowed you to see meaning and purpose in everything, see the opportunities for learning and growing and the connections and the enjoyment? Can you watch the movie with this set of glasses?

By Adam Cootes of Arising Self

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