DailyOM: In this 14-day course, how do you define "personal power"?
Rosie Kuhn: I define personal power as the ability to choose from one's own highest truth and highest good. Too often people are making choices based on others' beliefs without discerning the degree to which they are true for them. We've been domesticated to perceive and interpret life through lenses like our culture, our religion, our race, our gender, our education, and so many other vehicles for culturalization. Personal power requires one to completely reject the perceptions and interpretations that have been handed to them in service to thriving in the fullness of their human spirit.
DailyOM: What are some of the ways we undermine our personal power?
RK: We undermine our personal power every time we ignore our own truths, wants, and desires. We undermine our personal power every time we do what we should do instead of what is ours to do. We undermine our personal power when we act from fear. We undermine our personal power when we act as if we lack anything. We undermine our personal power when we interpret ourselves as unworthy and undeserving. We undermine our personal power when we believe we need to justify and rationalize what we want, what we think, what we feel, and what we do. We undermine our personal power anytime we don't trust ourselves or respect ourselves. And we undermine ourselves when we ignore all the evidence of our awesomeness.
DailyOM: Tell us about some of the types of empowering practices you teach students.
RK: The most important empowering practice is cultivating awareness through noticing and witnessing what thoughts, feelings, actions, and body sensations arise from within ourselves. We cannot utilize our personal power to align ourselves with our highest truth and our highest good if we aren't conscious of our thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and behaviors. The next most empowering practice is to notice how we decide to choose what it is that we choose. We either choose from fear or from inspiration, intuition — our higher knowing. It takes practice to notice and attend to the way we make choices.
However, once we've become aware of how we make choices, then we are free to decide on either fear-based choice or essence-based choices. These practices are foundational to utilizing our personal power in service to our highest truth and our highest good! One other practice is to be true to what is in the moment. Too often, we ignore our authentic response within a given moment, especially if we are experiencing uncomfortable feelings, emotions, and body sensations. The greatest gift we can give ourselves is to be true to who we are always and everywhere.
DailyOM: You focus on the body and how it can be a source of power. Why is this "body-centered" connection so important?
RK: My experience is that our bodies are communication devices meant to let us know when we are truly aligned with our highest good and highest truth. When our bodies are in any way dis-eased, with restless, irritable discontent or with aches, pains, tumors and the like, it's our bodies' way of telling us that we are out of alignment with our highest truth and our highest good. Most of us, including me, ignore and distract ourselves from the symptoms of dis-ease until our body gets to the point where it is yelling loudly, which more than likely takes us to our doctor or hospital. I believe when we listen to the wisdom of our bodies, we will always hear what we need to hear, which inevitably aligns with what we need on all levels of our being. This brings us to the fulfillment of our human spirit. And for me, that's what it's all about.
DailyOM: In Lesson 10, you teach about "zero significance." What does that mean? How does it impact our lives?
RK: When faced with something new, before we can have an authentic experience with it, interpretations we carry from the past jump in front of us. What this creates is a response to our interpretations, not a response to what is authentic within us. These interpretations — the data that shows up — can be cultivated through multigenerational traumas and challenges of our ancestors. They can be what we heard on YouTube or saw on Instagram. So our interpretations and responses may not be — and most likely isn't — our authentic response but someone else's.
To bring mindfulness to our interpretations requires us to get really curious — about the truth of what we are thinking, seeing, or being with. Zero Significance is a practice by which a person wipes away the perceived data they initially see and asks the question, "Is this really true?" Then they look for a way to see reality as it truly is. This requires patience, presence, and the practice of discernment. Slowing oneself down allows one to see what is collected through past experience.
DailyOM: What can students expect to achieve after taking your course?
RK: Students can expect to achieve greater self-awareness around how they currently decide to choose what they choose. They will achieve a greater degree of self-perception, witnessing and noticing thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors that were previously unconscious to them before taking this course. They will be more able to decide what they're going to base their decisions on and how they use their personal power to ignore, distract, avoid, or deny what is true for them, especially when they are uncomfortable in that truth. They can expect to experience humble moments and humorous moments as well. They will also achieve a sense that they are no different than most people on the planet who are struggling to utilize their personal power for the truth and the good of all humankind, which includes themselves. | | |
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