Bloom with Albane

This year more than ever, I have appreciated life moments to the fullest.

A simple walk alone in the park, witnessing the splendid eternal change of the lake.
Watching a movie with a friend and pinching her out of excitement.
A group massage, with love.
Playing ukulele alone in my bed.
Singing together, our heart wide open.
Hugging, with love.
Cycling in Berlin, the wind on my face.
Gazing at another human, with love.

During these moments, time seems to stop.
There is only now.
Everything else disappears: the turmoil of the past, the doubts of the future.
It feels magical, suspended.

I know this is accessible at each moment.
When we brush our teeth.
When we get up from bed in the morning.
When we eat, at each new spoon of food.
Even when we feel cold, hungry or tired.

I recognise that the magic is not in one specific event or another.
It is in the present moment.
We can choose to seize it, honour it or judge it, dismiss it as a means to an end, later in the future.
The choice is always ours, and we make it at every second again.
The present moment is benevolent, it doesn’t hold grudges against us.

Our power lies in our intention and will.
That is why I now consciously choose to honour the present moment, whatever it brings me.
And I invite you to join me there.
It is a beautiful place to be.

Thank you 2021 for all the teachings you have brought me.
A new chapter opens NOW.
I mean now.
No, Now! 😁😉✨

Have a wonderful holiday Friends.
I love you.
You are perfect exactly as you are right now.
Thank you for being.

Sliding fun!
The last picture cracks me open 🦖😂

Happy Monday 😘

I have an exercise for you.
It comes from the book of Byron Katie: I Need Your Love, Is That True?
I just did it and it relieved me so much.
Here it is.

Step 1: make a list of things that you don’t want people to know about you.
People can be your partner, friends, family, teachers, guides, flatmates, colleagues, or strangers in the street.
Make it as complete as possible.
Here are some prompt topics you can use: s*x, religion, money, s**t, relationships, beliefs, lies, contradictions, physical appearance…

Step 2: turn them around.
Write down: “What I do want you to know about me“
And below, write the same list as you wrote above, with the same words.
You can say it out loud, for yourself or to someone.
Is it as true or truer that you do want people to know about those things?

These are the things you are the most ashamed of.
These are the things you are constantly trying people not to find out about you.
This is exhausting.
It feels like hiding all the time.
It feels inadequate, not sincere, lying.
It takes so much energy and effort to defend against those things when you feel attacked on them.
When you stop fighting, you are finally free.

You don’t have to say them to anyone.
But tell them to you.
So you can see them.
So you know what you are afraid of.
Some things that come up might surprise you.

Here are some of mine:
My mom died of cancer when I was 16.
A part of me was relieved when she died.
When I stood up on stage to speak at her funeral, I was happy for the attention.
Before we knew she was sick, during my teenage rebellious years, I sometimes insulted her with “shut up“, “you are a cunt“.
I inherited two flats from her.
My first kiss was at 17, and my first s*x at 21.
I dated two guys who had girlfriends, who were my friends.
I asked my ex-boyfriend to marry me and a week later, told him I wanted to leave him.
I buy a lot of vegetables packed in plastic because they are cheaper.
I am not vaccinated.
I believe in God.
I am still judgmental.

This is what is.
I am perfect exactly as I am.
There is no mistake.
What is the upside of feeling ashamed?
There are two ways of being me: one is to hate it and one is to love it.
What do you choose for yourself?

Yesterday we had a really interesting impro exercise with my group.
We were working on status and how it influences the relationship between the characters in a scene – or you can say, between people in life.

According to Wikipedia:
Social status is the level of social value a person is considered to hold.
More specifically, it refers to the relative level of respect, honour, assumed competence, and deference accorded to people, groups, and organizations in a society.

The exercise was the following.
Two improvisers came on stage to play a scene.
It was decided that one improviser’s character will be high status, and the other one low status.
A parent was coming to apologise to the kinder garden teacher for the inappropriate behaviour of her child.
The parent was low status, very unsafe about herself, and the teacher high status, confident and feeling competent.
Then the two improvisers played the same scene again, with the exact same words, but this time, their statuses were reversed.
The parent, high status, still apologised, but was very assertive about what happened, her ability as a parent and the intelligence of her kid.
The teacher, on the opposite, was more apologetic than the parent to bring up the behaviour of the child.
Both scenes worked very well.

After the exercise, one of us said:
“It is so clear.
Words don’t have any meaning.
Everything is in the space between the words.“
She beautifully expressed our experience.

If we look around, in advertising, politics, the media: people always look for ways to increase their status.
They want to appear important in the eyes of others.
Why?
They want to prove they are valuable.
They are seeking approval from the outside.
They haven’t realised that the only approval they will ever need, only them can give it to themselves.

When we played the impro scenes, we saw that the higher status characters were always the ones giving the approval to themselves.
What they said didn’t matter.
Their words were coming from the place of stillness inside of them.
We can all do that.
Then there are no statuses anymore, and no separation between us.
Bliss.

What a bliss to have beautiful friendships!
Sarah was in town this weekend to visit me in the cold Berlin winter.
When no one dares venturing out.

Sarah sold me a health insurance in Beijing in 2015.
She joined my impro group there shortly after.
I moved to Shanghai.
Then she did.
She encouraged me to create the impro group Improfoufou in Shanghai.
So I did.
Best decision ever.
She spent the Chinese New Year festivities at my ex-boyfriend’s family with me.
We went to the Yellow Mountains, and Hangzhou together, with friends and family.
We shared our flat for about 2 months.
We biked through Shanghai and ate smelly durian.
She came back to Europe, Brussels.
Then I came back to Europe, Paris.
We visited each other.
We went on a fun spa weekend, where we took baths and played mini golf.
And a camping weekend in French Brittany, where we ate lots of crepes.
I spent last New Year’s Eve at her mom’s place in Vendée.
This year, she moved to Bordeaux.
I visited her there and we went on a wonderful impro family weekend.

She is tall, I am short.
She has red hair, I have brown hair.
She is from Belgium, I am from France.
And yet we have so much more in common.

When we meet, everything is natural.
There is no holding back of any kind.
Together, we laugh at stupid things.
We watch cheesy movies.
We eat chocolate.
We listen to old school music.
We share the small details of our lives.
And the big vulnerable stuff.

We don’t always agree.
But there is always respect.
And love.
A lot of it.

I am so grateful Sarah is in my life.
Schön, dass es Dich gibt, meine Freundin 😘

I realise that I am still trying to seek other people’s approval and love.
In the past, I suffered a lot from feeling unloved or unworthy.
It is happening way less now.
That is why I help others, and especially women, in this situation.

I thought I was free from this eternal seek.
But it turns out I have become a master at understanding what people want me to be, say or do, and then do that, so they will love me and approve of me.
It has become second nature.
It comes together with my intention to drop my preferences.
If I don’t prefer anything, why not letting the other person have their preference?
But in many cases, I have buried my preferences, instead of really dropping them.
Unlearning in progress 😊

I am reading “I Need Your Love, Is That True?“ of Byron Katie 💛
Here is a passage that was useful to me and might be to you too:

“Think of someone you want to impress, whose love you want, who you are afraid of displeasing or who you think has power over you.
(I realise that for me it is everyone all the time, consciously or unconsciously)
Imagine having a cup of tea with this person.
During this time, imagine not trying the slightest attempt to influence her mental life.
(That is hard for me to imagine, I am doing it unconsciously)
Let her have her thoughts, her tea, her experience.
What does it feel like?
What does it feel like to be you?
What does it feel like to be with the other person?

How do you react when you think that you need people’s love?
Do you become a slave for their approval?
Do you live an inauthentic life because you can’t bear the thought that they might disapprove of you?
Do you try to figure out how they would like you to be and then try to become that like a chameleon?
In fact, you can never really get their love this way.
You try to turn into someone you aren’t.
And then when they say I love you, you can’t believe it because they are loving a façade.
They are loving someone who doesn’t even exist, the person you are pretending to be.
It is deadly to seek other people’s love.
In seeking it, you lose what is genuine.
It is the prison we create for ourselves as we try to get the love we already have.“

What helps me:
1. Noticing feeling uncomfortable with someone.
2. Identifying the thought: “I am unworthy“ in my mind causing the feeling.
3. Going back to stillness, remembering we are not separated, and we are always worthy.
4. Feeling relief and peace.
5. Connecting with the other person deeper, more authentically.

Have a gorgeous weekend dear Friends 😘

This year I shifted – or dropped – my perspective like never before.

I understood that there is no goal to attain, as all we ever need, we already have.
Before, I was helping my clients and myself to get what we want.
I realised that the only way to be happy is to want what we have.
And let life unfold.
It is not only about accepting reality as it is, but moreover to love it unconditionally.
Why argue with what is?
We will always loose.

We already love reality, but we simply don’t realise it sometimes, because of how we think.
The more we question our thoughts, the more we realise they are all illusions.
How can we ever know a thought is true?
We can’t.
There is great relief in that knowing.
Nothing to defend, or argue against anymore.
Just peace.

The moment we name something, we make it separate from us.
There is this thing, and there is me.
This is where all the trouble comes from.
We have never been separated.
Again, realising this is a huge relief.

You don’t have to believe me.
All beliefs can be dropped.
But you can experience it for yourself.
I realised that no words can describe the truth.
Only silence can.

The greatest contribution we can ever make is to be ourselves at peace.
Even saying that is untrue, as the world and I are the same thing.
I have nothing to teach, I am unlearning too.
My only intention is to be free from suffering at each moment, and help others free themselves too, the best I can.
Becoming conscious of our thoughts and questioning them is the method I found to be the most useful.
If I can help anyone with that, it is a gift to me.

Happy December 2021, dear Friends ✨💛

I don’t know for you, but I LOVE this song, by Jason Mraz.
When it came out, I was listening to it again and again.
I learned to sing it, alone in my room.
For the greatest joy of my flatmates 😄
I sang it in karaokes in China.
It is one of those songs that made me get up and dance in parties.
One of those songs that cheered me up when I was feeling down.
An important song.
I am grateful it exists.

Yesterday, I listened to a beautiful interview of Jason Mraz, where he explains how he composed it.
He was sitting in his room, trying to find inspiration for a new song, with his guitar.
The first riff came to him.
The one at the very beginning of the song.
And the lyrics followed.
They reflect his conversation with the Universe, asking It to use him to create music.

Here are the lyrics:
“Well you've done done me and you bet I felt it
I tried to be chill but you're so hot that I melted
I fell right through the cracks
and now I'm trying to get back
Before the cool done run out
I'll be giving it my bestest
Nothing's going to stop me but divine intervention
I reckon its again my turn to win some or learn some

I won't hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait, I'm yours“

He is not talking to a romantic partner.
But to the divine, as he puts it.
He is falling and getting back on the creative flow.
He reckons there is no losing, only winning and learning.
He is being done, not doing.

What an inspiration ✨
If this was possible, I love this song even more.
And dear Universe, I’m You(rs) too ❤️

Love to you dear Friends

Only our stressful thoughts are blocking the way to joy.

To release them, we need to become conscious of them as they arise.
This allows us to realise they are not real and to let them go.
It frees us from suffering, every time.
The world itself, or others, cannot make us suffer.
Only the stressful thoughts can.

When I feel anxious, or sad, or angry or any stressful emotion, I recognise this as an indication that I am thinking a stressful thought.
Today for example, I was waiting for the physio therapist in the treating room a bit longer than I expected. I felt frustrated.
The second step is to identify the thought causing the stressful emotion.
For me it was: “The physio therapist is wasting my time.“
As soon as I became conscious of it, I paused.

Then I asked myself the 4 questions of The Work of Byron Katie:
1. Is it true? My answer: no.
2. Can I absolutely know that it’s true? My answer: no.
3. How do I react, what happens when I believe that thought? My answer: I ruminate angry thoughts in my mind, I am stressed, my body is tensing, I am not enjoying my time. When she comes, I might not be nice to her.
4. Who would I be without the thought? I would just be happy to be lying there, enjoying a quiet moment in my day, relaxing, being grateful.

The next step of The Work is to turn the thought around.
As I visualise the situation, I contemplate how each turnaround is as true or truer as the original thought.
My turnarounds:
I am wasting the physio therapist’s time if I complain.
I am wasting my own time and peace of mind.
The physio therapist is gaining me time, by helping me to do The Work and drop my story.
Then I felt peace.

Who would you be without your stories?

I just finished the Michael Singer podcast series and I am listening to the audio book A Mind at Home With Itself by Byron Katie. Both beautifully liberating.