Transform Your Fear, Sadness and Anger into Emotional Equilibrium Using Unordinary States

Dear Friends,

As a child, I was highly mystical and fascinated by consciousness and reality. I saw, knew, and sensed a living, magical, dreamy world as alive as my physical reality. I recall lying on the grass outside, gazing up at the sky, and wondering how I could know I was really real or if there was a way I could prove that the unordinary world I lived in was real. My world glimmered with spirit guides and animals, ancestors and elementals.

It was a bridge between the harshness of the real world and beyond.

Over time, my unordinary world became ordinary, and I moved into adulthood, pursuing a pathway as a psychotherapist, pastor, and spiritual guide with a thriving career. I prided myself on still straddling the unordinary edge between psychology and spirituality –incorporating some woo without being too weird. I came alive when I brought magical transformation and metamorphosis into my work while toeing the line of psychology.

My reality was fractured when, on an ordinary Thursday in January, when walking back to our car after ice hockey practice, my 11-year-old son was hit by a car and died a few feet from me. A primal agony rendered open in me as I watched him die.

The magic vanished. The raw reality of the real world crashed on my shoulders. I was in a waking dream state, and it was a nightmare.

Not only was I traumatized and grieving. My children and family were equally reeling from their own trauma and grief. 

Rapid changes rifled through our lives like a rolodex in the aftermath. We left a Colorado ski town and landed in rural Central Virginia like a fish out of water. I closed down my spirituality business that I loved, unable to provide any semblance of wisdom or support in the wake of my grief. I clung to my living children with all my might, desperately hoping that if I held on, nothing bad would ever happen again.

As I buried my son, I also scattered the remaining fragments of my life. I was devastated.

In the months and years following his death, I desperately wanted to recant the magical dream of my spirituality. Ordinary, waking life was painful, and there was no escape hatch. I was drowning in the primal nature of my experience. 

I wailed with grief. I railed in anger. I paled with fear. 

One thing kept me going. I needed to connect with him. Nothing could stop me from wanting to be with my son in body, soul, mind, and spirit. There was a maternal yearning that would stop at no end to find him and feel him with me.

I knew how to connect with him through that magical world, so I turned to unordinary awareness to find a connection again. I wanted to connect with him daily as though he were still alive. I didn’t want to go to a retreat, go back to therapy, or join a support group. Just getting through the day was hard enough. I wanted to sit in a chair in my own home and feel him with me. I needed him to be real….and it had to be really real in a way my mind or emotions couldn’t discount.

Over time, I noticed that I was naturally using some methods for altered awareness that I had used long ago to get that really real connection.

First, I taught breathwork for stress reduction class at a community college in my early 20s. Suddenly, I was returning to the box breathing and breath holds to support myself when I would cry. Second, I learned how to meditate when I was 15, and the first method I learned was mantra meditation. I began to repeat simple words, like ‘allow’ or ‘stay’ when the grief was overwhelming. Third, I found comfort in sitting in front of our wood stove and gazing ahead at the fire. Over time, I would notice sharpening and softening of my gaze when I felt most alone, which I had learned how to do through dristi for balance during my yoga practice of over 20 years.

I began using these induction techniques, and my relationship with him came to life. Fear, anger and sadness lessened.

I noticed my grief tempering, the trauma symptoms lessening, and my presence increasing. I experienced a dimensional connection with him that didn’t ignore the physical reality. It opened up a new realm of possibilities, including expanding my sense of space, time, and self. Tangibly, I started sleeping through the night again, regulated my nervous system, including eliminating heart palpitations, allowed myself to be fully present in my process, started my Ph.D, let go of expectations for my work, and immersed myself in my family life, including stepping back into the ice rink to watch my kids play youth hockey. I started to feel whole again.

I tested the method with my family, especially my living children, and the results astounded me.

They reflected experiences of deep meaning, profound insights, and new perspectives that paralleled a dramatic shift in their symptoms. They were growing beyond ordinary reality into an unordinary awareness that changed how they perceived what happened and its meta-purpose. We were doing better as a family. We started to laugh, play games, work on the farm, and start to see a life together again. 

As I slowly emerged into my work again, I made a sharp pivot and began using the unordinary state methods with adults and teens, with the same results that had helped me the most.

Individuals were accessing an ordinary-unordinary state of awareness that was diversifying their perception, transforming their perspective, and changing their state of Being. This translated into positive changes, such as making clearer decisions, defining purpose, quieting the mind, and improving well-being, including how they felt about themselves, their relationships with others, and how they showed up at work, home, and with family. 

Today, I teach and train this method, GAZE™️, for adults and youth.

By using GAZE™️, a 13-year old prevented panic attacks before a big project, a young developer launched his own business fearlessly with a clear vision, a grandmother reduced her anxiety as she supported her daughter in chemotherapy, a 16-year old discovered a soulful voice that countered self-criticism, and a spiritual healer gave herself 8-weeks off for self-care in the midst of financial strain.  

GAZE™️ guides you to experience an unordinary state of Being that will give you the equilibrium you need to navigate life challenges with ease, clarity and calm.

This is a state that is sustained and integrated into everyday life. You lean into this state of Being to receive guidance, clarity, and direction in what you do and how you show up in what matters to you the most. You learn how to create a new reality in your life –one that is unordinarily ordinary.

It is an adage and it’s true. Life is short. Time is precious.

You only have today, and today is the day to access an unordinary state of Being that gives you everything you need –an enduring, everlasting peace.

Join me for a course. Schedule your retreat. Meet with me individually. Find community in a group. Book me for an event. 

Let’s live into an unordinary life together.

With gratitude,

Annie

What is the GAZE Method and Why Does it Work?

GAZE™️ is different because it uses your vision to induce altered states of spiritual experience. The method vacillates between open monitoring (fuzzy gaze) and focused attention (gimlet gaze) coupled with other natural methods to induce a hypnogogic state, which feels like you are in between waking and sleeping. GAZE™️ may disorient the pre-frontal cortex, slow input to the parietal lobe and activate the parasympathetic nervous system which alters your state of consciousness. GAZE can be effective because:

• You move from mind wandering to attention stabilization, which can support you to entrain to an expanded state.
• You gently induce a temporary hypoxic state that supports expansion, which can give you a new broader perception.
• You up-regulate control over brain function, which can help sustain integration and regulation.

GAZE may dramatically shift your perspective very quickly and the change tends to last over time. There can be a link between the unitive qualities in an expanded spiritual experience and positive psychological outcomes, like increased psychological flexibility and ego dissolution. GAZE™️ experiences may facilitate quantum leaps of change in your personal life, including your work, relationships, home and daily routines.