Being Is Our Birth Right

Spring Musings & Reflections

Apr 01, 2025

Kristina Renée x Medicine for the Soul is an independent publication funded by real people, not advertisers or affiliate sales. Upgrade to a paid subscription for $8/month. Your subscription is immensely appreciated, allowing me to be of greater service to the world.

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closeup photography of white petaled flowers — Photo by Bruno Kelzer on Unsplash

Blessings Friends,

As we welcome another seasonal transition, that of Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and Spring where I reside in the Northern Hemisphere, I wonder how are you tending to your heart? Your body? Your mind? How have you been connecting to the divine relationship of your being?

Spring and Autumn invite us to shed and remove the overgrowth so things can freshly thrive. It is a beautiful time to clear out any stagnant energy in our homes (closets, drawers, old food, gardening, etc) as well as our inner home (the mind, what we consume, outdated beliefs, etc). Living near the ocean breeze in a warmer climate, this Spring I have been tending to the Earth, the garden and plants, finding much rest in the warmth of the sun, the song of the Hawks and the intoxicating smells of jasmine and orange blossoms.

I have also welcomed another digital detox, having deleted apps on my phone that I notice suck my time and put my mind and nervous system in a sense of disarray. Our habits, especially when we place a pause to them, reveal a great deal about what is underneath our actions, thoughts and feelings. Every time I take this digital detox, I redirect my focus to write more, read handheld books, be with my loved ones in a more spacious way, and find a greater union with Mother Earth. As I step away from the pull and distractions of the world that has managed to hook itself into our pockets with these little computers we call phones, I get to reconnect to the vast goodness of my own inner world. I am reminded of the spaciousness that is innate within me already. I am greeted with the being-ness to ponder and create. I get to simply enjoy the medicine of being.

Being is not simple though in a society that pulses and ticks to the beat of consumption, instant gratification, and powering over one another. The modern world thrives on grabbing our attention, attaching us to division, comparison, and ingraining the false story that worth and value are depicted by how we look and the materials we have. Our devices, while they do serve a purpose for modern communication and connection, are also a slippery slope. Each day we use our devices, which were actually designed with blue light instead of red light due to its addictive quality. Think about that. And perhaps, how evermore important it is to remove ourselves from the allure, whether we are conscious of its tug or not.

The Medicine Of Being

The medicine of being is our birth right. One that I sense is getting lost in our fast paced culture of doing, achieving and production. One slowly being replaced with the subconscious whisperings, “more, more, more” that have been knitted into the fabric of our society. It weaves so subtly, but also sometimes so loudly, the negative karmic thought pattern of “if only I x, y, z, then I would be or have x, y, z” as in “if only I or when I x, y, z, then I can rest. Then, I can be happy. Then I can be.”

One of my elders spoke briefly on this subject in regards to her 35 plus years of working in therapy. She shared how the influx of the worldly distractions to our psyche and mental health is like none other we have witnessed or experienced before in the history of humanity. At a rapid rate, we are more swayed than ever, more apt to exist in the suffering of disconnection to ourselves and to one another — to the fragmentation of the Soul.

When we are disconnected, we are caught. In Buddhism, the word for getting caught is Shenpa. It can also be described as getting hooked. When we are hooked on something, attachment, aversion and misconception are there. Being, true presence, is no longer available when there is Shenpa. Oh goodness, how easy it is to get hooked! If I say the word “republican” what arises within you? If I say the word “democrat” what arises within you? Notice the narrative that sparks in your mind. Notice how your body feels. Notice the reaction whether big or small.

When there is a reaction, there is a hook. Reactions, when held with compassionate curiosity, offer insights to the experience of Shenpa. To bring awareness to our reactions gives us information. Information offers insights so we may investigate and reflect. Realizing Shenpa brings us closer to our inner world, to our habits and patterns that block the pathway to our heart, to our being.

Daniel Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and executive director of the Mindsight Institute said,

“Mindfulness is a form of mental activity that trains the mind to become aware of awareness itself and to pay attention to one’s own intention. Our state of mind can turn even neutral comments into fighting words, distorting what we hear to fit what we fear. Inviting our thoughts and feelings into awareness allows us to learn from them rather than be driven by them."

It is easy to be driven by our thoughts and feelings, especially in the modern world. While sometimes driving thoughts and feelings may serve our endeavors, careers and life choices, often, mainly when we are unaware of our deeper intentions, it causes great suffering “turning even neutral comments into fighting words, distorting what we hear to fit what we fear.”

Our Human Design

I came across a scientist speaking about how as humans we were never designed to know everything that is happening on Earth. The speaker elaborated on how the slew of constant information in our daily lives has a very strong negative impact on our bodies and minds. This resonated with me, and it makes sense. We have learned that our nervous systems respond to a situation that we see in a movie or video the same way as if it were happening in real time. This means that our bodies feel and hold the experience we have either on our devices, television, news, movies, etc as if it were happening. If we are not aware of how to discern what we take in and understand the impact on the subtle layers, or how to clear the experience, an energetic hygiene if you will, it gets caught in our systems on some level. And while, yes, fear can teach us how to take action when necessary, modern day fear often etches its way into our lives without us even realizing, presenting as chronic stress, anxiousness, the inner critic, numbing out, scattered, and depressed.

How are we to make clear, judicious decisions in the bombardment and derailing, with the loud pulse of the world screaming for our attention? It would only seem natural that our nervous systems struggle to be in the medicine of being, for being comes when we can hold ourselves and our experiences without losing ourselves to them, when we are not hooked, grasping or pushing things away. And yet, we will get hooked. Getting hooked is a part of the human experience.

Learning how to touch being is an antidote in today’s world.

It seems to me that if we are not aware and take heed to slow down, with the advancements of technology and AI, our own birth right of being may soon slip away. Our being offers spaciousness and grounding to the impermeance of life, to the changes that are always a foot. When we learn how to access our being and also feel the expression of our experiences, we recognize that one does not have to exist alone. Two truths can exist at once. This wisdom is one passed down from the ancient lineages of consciousness through the Veda’s (the roots of Yoga), the Buddhist philosophies and many other indigenous lines of knowledge. They have been woven together into profoundly accessible methods with nervous system and emotional intelligence education and psycho-spiritual awakening techniques into our current timeline.

As a teacher, practitioner and guide of subtle body healing, I support others to enter the layers of turning inward, what is called Pratyahara in yoga or the hypnotic altered state of consciousness attuned to the theta brain waves for their own self healing. Savasana is the pose in yoga that can offer a brief moment of understanding and revealing of being-ness, of our own innate birth right to be connected to our energetic body. Other methods allow us to access this deeply grounding spaciousness, such as acupuncture, nature, hypnotherapy, breathwork and meditation, just to name a few.

Being Is Sacred

A student once told me after a yoga class I taught that she felt weird. When I leaned in to understand what this meant for her, she replied this expression of being:

“I was totally relaxed with no tension in my body or mind.”

I asked her if that was familiar or unfamiliar. She shared that she had felt it before but it was unfamiliar. These moments of being, of deep inner connection, are sacred. They are healing in ways that only we know when we feel it. I can share with you how it impacts me, but it will not be like yours is for you. And how beautiful is that? Within each of us is a goldmine of wisdom that we can harness, especially in times of challenge, change and uncertainty.

I wonder when you do touch the presence of being what happens? Do you allow yourself to be with being? Might you find the pattern of doing to overcome, of guilt, shame, or fear to arise taking you away from being? Might the monkey mind whisk you to planning (future) or reminiscing/ruminating (past)? When was the last time you had a day, or two, or even a week without your devices? Without checking the news, social media, posting, playing a game, etc? Now, take a moment to imagine what may happen if we each began to widen the being innate to us into our daily lives. How might the world shift?

One Final Thought

From the language of the nervous system, another way to think of being is that we are learning how to stay connected to ourselves in the midst of life. We will experience the physiological effects of the nervous system, yet instead of getting caught in flight, fight, freeze or fawn, we can build a wider relationship with our experience from our center, learning how to return to a regulated state, again and again. This does not imply that we don’t or will not feel tension or stress. As humans we will, and in some ways we need a dose of healthy stress.

Yet, when we really sit with it, do we need as much stress as we have? As much input from the outside world? As many meme’s, tiktoks, reiterated news feeds, regurgitated headlines, and advertisements selling us on how to stay young, on how to be “successful", on how horrible the world is, on how we must, nay should, be in a constant state of doing? Do we need to stress about making drop off for our kids? Do we need to stress about missing a phone call, returning a text or email? Do we need to stress about how many likes our post got, or how to work around the algorithms? Do we need to stress about spilling a drink? Or the dishes in the sink? You get my point. And, I think if we are really truthful, deep down in the wisdom of our heart, we know the answer.

One writer on Substack,

Dad Explains

, recently wrote about his perceptive on a video of a child witnessing a train up close. He shared,

“Children marvel. A blade of grass is a miracle. Rain is a blessing. They receive the world. They don’t try to own it or analyze it. We adults are too clever for wonder. To proud for mystery”

And then he went on to quote Carl Jung who said,

“Modern man can’t see God because he doesn’t look low enough”

How about we start looking low again? How about we drop our chins to our chest, awaken to feeling the center of our hearts, and reconnect to our innate birth right of being.

Shall we?

Kristina Renée x Medicine for the Soul