Gladness Factor

Maleficent from Disney Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Trickster Moon - Where do life's lessons sneak up on us/surprise us, and how can we greet these lessons with receptivity instead of resistance?  CAYA Moon Question

"Into the house where joy lives, happiness will gladly come."  ~ Japanese Proverb

"The most waisted day is one without laughter." - ee cummings.

“If we can just let go and trust that things will work out they way they're supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself.” ~ Goldie Hawn

The Gladness Factor (GF) was “discovered” as an essential for being a Fairy Godmother in the late 1990s by Dr. Leticia Foon.  Most traditionalists have scoffed at her discovery, because GF was always perceived important through oral tradition.  Foon just wrote it down and gave it a name which instantly professionalized it in peer reviewed journals.  Current students majoring in Western Fairy Godmothering now are required a minimum of three levels to help increase and maintain their GF skill set.     

 

Maypole Dance

Foon states GF predates 900 AD coming from both the English and Norse Fairy Godmother traditions (Note: Foon hasn't studied other traditions).  Paintings from this period hint that singing and dancing are important components for increasing the intensity of GF.   It wasn’t until the Elizabethan period did twirling and skipping became an aspect of GF.  This can be best illustrated in Shakespeare’s play Midsummer’ Night Dream.  Foon developed several GF exercises lifted from Eleanor Porter’s 1913 book Pollyanna.

 

Researchers have shown that deficiencies in GF can lead to misery, cynicism and exhaustion.  It can be best illustrated in the case study of Maleficent, now associated with the Sleeping Beauty tragedy.  If we look at the beginning of Maleficent career, her personnel file shows that she had high levels of enthusiasm, team player, and had the knack to solve problems where other’s didn’t seem to find them.  She was written up twice for singing staccato happy songs, because they caused a disruption in the office.  Also noted was she’d work overtime without meal breaks or going to the bathroom in order to get the job done.  We find that around twenty years into the Fairy Godmother business, there was a change in Maleficent’s personality.  She became more isolated.  Her annual review states: “She lost her nimbleness and flexibility when waving her wand.”  She seemed exhausted and cranky at staff meetings.  She had taken to leaving notes on the bathroom like: wash your hands and close the door.  We have learned her change was due to the work climate: reduction in resources, endless requests that agency couldn’t compensate for and a management attitude: if you want to keep your job you need to be tough and committed enough to suck it up.  The cumulative toll at the worksite and the oversight by the King and Queen were the straw that broke the camels’ back so to speak.  It drove Maleficent to curse rather than provide a blessing. 

 ~#~

Understanding trauma and how it affects us is important.  Trauma has a way of sucking the GF out of our lives.  One way is to take back lunch. 

My co-worker retired almost a year ago.  One thing I’ve noticed is I’m eating more and more at my desk.  I’m catching up with e-mails while eating my salad, soup, and yogurt.  J always made me step away from my desk and eat somewhere else. 

I’ve decided to be part of the take back lunchmovement as a way of break in what I do.  To put my work back into perspective.

~#~

 

How is this spiritual?  If you can’t laugh or sing songs, even out of tune with staccatos – how are you going to make magic?  How are you going to see possibilities?

 

Resource to learn more about trauma - required read for all Fairy Godmothers:

Laura van Dernoot Lipsky Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others

Downward Facing Dog – Youtube Yoga Practice

The Dog by Picasso

Silent Moon - How can we find silent time to restore and regenerate our enthusiasm for our lives/work/relationships? ~ CAYA's Full Moon Questions.

When the breathe wanders the mind is unsteady.  But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life.  Therefore, one should learn to control the breath. ~ Hatha Yoga Pradipika

I would like for people to realize that yoga is not about touching your toes. ~ Gary Kraftsow

Yoga has a sly, clever way of short-circuiting the mental patterns that cause anxiety. ~ Baxter Bell, quoted in "Worry Thwarts," Yoga Journal, March 2006

The first time I heard “Rest in Downward Facing Dog,” I turned towards my friend (the one who talked me into coming to this free yoga class) and smirked.  It was a “Now I heard everything” smirk while holding back a big belly laugh that would ultimately cause me to land on my head in this position.  Looking around, I could tell everyone in this class was very serious resting in their inverted “V” poses.  This only made me want to giggle more.  How could you be serious in this pose – bum pushed up into the air while you are looking at your feet?  And, rest?  Hello - my arms were killing me.

Yet, Yoga and energy work has somehow managed to weave in and out of my life since that 1988 class. 

~#~

Adho Mukha Svanasana (AH-doh MOO-kah shvah-NAHS-anna)adho = downward, mukha = face, svana = dog

Benefits

•Calms the brain and helps relieve stress and mild depression

•Energizes the body

•Stretches the shoulders, hamstrings, calves, arches, and hands

•Strengthens the arms and legs

•Helps relieve the symptoms of menopause

•Relieves menstrual discomfort when done with head supported

•Helps prevent osteoporosis

•Improves digestion

•Relieves headache, insomnia, back pain, and fatigue

•Therapeutic for high blood pressure, asthma, flat feet, sciatica, sinusitis

~#~

As I’ve spoken before, our bodies are made up of energy that vibrates (science speak – partical energy theory). Many people are familiar with chakras, but there are also many more energy layers that make up our bodies.  Even our physical form that you can touch is an energetic body (science speak - its molecules move around at low energy.)  These individual energy layers don’t work in solo by themselves.  They’re interconnected and working in concert together.

If you injure your physical body, the others will be affected.  When I broke my ankle, I found it so easy to get caught up in healing the physical.  For example, I went to the emergency room and got a cast, had to navigate stairs and doorways for 8 weeks, taking a bath with a garbage bag was.... – I didn't even consider the other layers in my treatment plan.   

The same can be said about negative thoughts, emotions or habits.  We may stop or change them, but energetically speaking they’ve been imprinted on the body.  They are in our muscle memories.  Again, each energy body needs to also be healed in order for the habit to be permanent. 

Bodywork like Yoga is a great way to integrate healing throughout the energy levels.  I think of Yoga or Qigong working like oatmeal does for the digestive system.  The poses or movements unclogs and scrubs out the places where energy is stuck.

Why is this important?

Magical living is about working with energy.  If I have stuck places like stress pain in my neck and shoulder it makes it hard to concentrate on what I’m trying to manifest.  I become so focus on the pain that my energy is diverted between two places – what I'm trying to create and that “pain.”  My craftiness becomes not so perfect: the lemon happiness cookies burn or taste odd, the healing candle for a friend becomes more about me and I have to rip out many rows of stitches. 

~#~

There is no excuse for not doing bodywork.  Thanks to modern techology you can do Yoga or Qigong at your home via Youtube.  Start off with something gentle like Hatha Yoga.  There  is no Olympic medals in this practice.  Turn off the competition - yoga is about being present in the moment without judgement.  It is accepting where your temple body is at each day.

 

Storytellers, Singers, Poets and Bards

The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Milais 1870, Tate London

“How impressionable and vulnerable we are in the faith of a single story.” ~ Chimamanda Adichie

“If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. “ ~ Barry Lopez, in Crow and Weasel

“It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.” ~ Native American saying

“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.” ~ Walter Cronkite

~#~

I like a good storyteller, singer, poet or bard (I’ll refer to now as storyteller).  A day off from work in the winter equates to snuggling up in an afghan with my nose in a book.  And that dreaded housework, blast some good songs out and it seems to get my mind off scrubbing the tub.  Every culture has someone who has these gifts that go beyond entertainment.  This person is able to manipulate their medium to instill moral lessons and provide inspiration to move us beyond what we are.  A good storyteller makes you say: what if or I can do that or how can I change the world?

One thing I have enjoyed this past year is reading all the blogs on the Pagan Blog Project.  Each person has been my guide in shaping my journey towards the Light.  Each has continued to challenge me to review my personal truth and stories and most often changing my perspective in how I live magically.  The Pagan Blog Project has allowed me to hear multiple stories from different and the same faith tradition.  Each is a piece of the puzzle or a beautiful square in a quilt to wrap around myself.

I think it is human nature to want one way of knowing – a single story to hang our witch’s (name your faith) hat on. I believe it’s very easy to resist hearing others’ ways of seeing holy and spiritual even when you are practicing the same faith tradition.  When we do this, I believe we’re ending up with an incomplete story.  Our story becomes one dimensional and dulled as we look through our single lens.  And, ultimately what winds up happening is discord and lack of respect for those who have a different story because we are in The Only Truth zone – us versus them.  I believe our experience is flattened by this dependency of having one story or one recipe for the truth. 

I recently read the minutes of a spirituality group I’m part of.  I’m not able to attend many meetings due to being a soccer mother and going to college.  I was very saddened to hear a person who offered to teach for the evening was disrespected.  The teacher was presenting an element of his practice.   Apparently, there was a lot of heckling and jeering to make him lose his train of thought.  The more I read the minutes; I felt the audience was caught up in their single lens story and not opened to hearing something new.

I’m guilty of immersing myself in a single story.  I tend to fall back to my favorite books and authors that started my journey.  The same can be said on the Pagan Blog Project.  I’ve found myself leaning to the familiar – specifically looking at what my age group is saying and those with similar practices.  When I have caught myself doing this – with purpose I get on the home page and read subject matter that I’m not familiar with.  I have discovered ideas that I are strengthening my magical living - such as learning about Norse faith, seeing Goddess symbols out in nature, learning more about herbs, or learning new ways to celebrate the holidays. 

Activity:

Pick a spiritual subject and read three different blogs about the subject.

Go to a meet-up on a spiritual topic and be open to learn something new.