Welcome to my blog, SoulQuake, my year long experiment in living with Zeal, creating a life of passion and joy. SoulQuakes are the measurement for knowing something is right for you, a wake-up call from your soul to pay attention. It is the butterflies, the quickening, or the peace and contentment you feel in your physical core around anything. It is the point where your soul is telling your physical body to go in this direction. I want to believe and trust this idea, so I am doing my own experiment. A year of practicing what I preach as a life coach by “Living it to Give It”. Please join me on this journey to create a life that rocks me, in hopes that you will be working along with me to do the same for yourself.
WIND, WATER, AND KNOWING
Blog 1, Sept 13, 2012
I am getting up at 6:30 again on a weekend, leaving my family and driving a few hours to do another thing I love, at least I hope I love it. I am going windsurfing… two days of lessons. I will be 44 this October and these two days of learning something new in the outdoors especially with wind and water has the exact ingredients that lights me up like nothing else. So it is a birthday present from my awesome husband, who gets me.
Some would say, “Really at 44 you are learning to windsurf!” I general look at them and “Yes.” Now, if know me, you know I have been in the outdoor adventure industry since I was 19, mostly as a high ropes course and zipline guide and facilitator. This information alone, in my lovely conservative hardworking Midwestern farming everything-must-be-practical-town, just baffles. Actually some get it, and I LOVE them for it. (And actually I have an inkling that is why God has placed me here, to release our areas self-imposed limitations, but more on this in a different blog.) Anyway, so I’m adventurous, but not in an XGame-just-for-the-adrenaline way, there has to be meaning, a deeper purpose. This is what motivates me, drives me. The goal is to use the experiences to gain deeper understanding of myself and serve others in doing the same. These concepts; experiential learning, self awareness, compassion and creating your best life course through my blood. It is who I am, why I am here. It is why I am a life coach.
Back to windsurfing though, there are few hours of classroom information about general sailing concepts: knots, wind direction, lift and thrust (which I know) and lots about the windsurfing itself of course (new to me). Then we learn to rig our sails and get into the water. It is a less than perfect day overcast with gusty winds (10-15mph) and a bit chilly. The water is warm and Instructor Doug, is kind, which reconfirms there is a God because I am in the water more than I am on the board. I do get up and have a few good runs that first day out of total desperation. The second day we refine our technique, well I got a technique, day one there was NO technique.
I did well, maybe for 44, but I feel really good about it… and exhausted… and sore from my toes to my finger tips, literally. Proud is an understatement!! I love the need to be fully engaged. Your mind and your body have to be fully committed because there is a technique and a strategy to “catching the wind” and letting the power move through your body. You are a part of the movement, moving with the wind. It is incredible, kind of soul changing really. Because nature to me is the closest connection to God, (Spirit, Universe, whatever you call it) and I just moved with GOD! Maybe we do this every day in every way we move, but this was raw and real and had all the complexity and ease with knowing God.
This life is about knowing. “I am a spiritual being having a human experience.” There is a difference between knowing and knowing something, even God. But real knowing comes with doing, experiencing, being in it and reflection. I thought I knew how it would feel to windsurf and now I know.
A huge thank you to Wind Over Water Sailing School in Galena, Ohio!
Let me know if you enjoyed this blog and how and when you get SoulQuakes in the comments below.
