My Why, Part I – The Journey

Why do I want to re-up AZT?

Arizona is my sacred landscape

Arizona has been a place of spiritual growth and awakening for me. My adult life began when I stepped off the plane, alone in Phoenix, at age 18, to start college on my own in 2002. This desert is where I first learned about myself and how huge the world is. It’s where I learned my place in this world and what paths were really meant for me. It is where my soul truly awakened its love for the outdoors, mountains and plants.

Arizona has been a place I return to in times of transition and uncertainty. When I am unsure of myself or the direction of my life, the desert calls me back. It’s where I can hear my inner voice again. And it is often where I find heightened emotions of wonder, joy, and gratitude. My spirit truly resonates in this sacred landscape.

Now I find myself again in need of that spiritual growth and expansion. I’ve spent too much time telling myself the same stories, drowning in the same anxious feelings, and following the same pattern of behavior. And while I’ve made real progress in my emotional intelligence and learning to regulate my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, I know I’m capable of more. I want to reconfigure my psychophysiological response to imagined threats. I want to do things that make me a little nervous without panicking. I want to go camping alone in the countryside and feel present, happy and calm.

Reconnect my neural networks

Rewiring the mind and body to behave differently is complicated. It requires more effort than saying something once.

Lasting change requires sustained attention and deliberate intention. It takes exposure, practice, failure, and repetitive successes to slowly break new ground over time. I can release old emotional stories and create new patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that resonate in my greatest harmony. An 800-mile hike through Arizona’s sacred landscape is exactly the time and place to begin developing these new habits of mind and body.

I can enjoy backcountry camping alone because I am a capable, experienced backpacker who is grounded in the present and comfortable with myself. I am aware of myself and my surroundings. I only need to worry when there is a real threat. If a problem arises, I can fix it. I trust myself.

When I can enjoy backcountry camping alone, I will unlock a whole new level of independence and happiness in long-distance backpacking. I will be free to explore new places with childlike curiosity and mature competence. These experiences will feel joyful and calm. And I will be deeply grateful that I chose to do this inner work because it will open doors to infinite possibilities of adventure.

Clear intentions + High emotions = New energy¹

intentions

• Based on the present
• Conscious but not on high alert
• Worry when necessary
• Solution-oriented problem solving.
• trust myself

Elevated emotions

• Free
• Curious
• Cheerful
• Calm
• Grateful

Quantum Healing

It’s about to get really crazy here. Skip if that’s not your thing or read on with an open mind. 🙂

Emotional thought patterns and physiological processes on autopilot

How can one change their thinking patterns, their emotional habits, or their body’s physical and chemical processes? Like a path trodden by many feet, the further one travels, the easier it is to find the way. The more I repeat a thought, feeling or behavior, the stronger the connections within my neural pathways become and the more habitual these actions become.

Emotions are responses to environmental stimuli, both real and remembered or imagined. My body and mind often cannot distinguish between a real threat and an imagined threat and therefore fall into the same stress response to any threat: worry, anxiety and panic. I think, feel and act and my body responds in a learned habitual way. Chemically and neurologically, this response is imprinted in my body’s physiology. It is an automatic response that can be navigated unconsciously. So how can I stop the autopilot response from going down this emotional path?

Quantum theory

Quantum theory teaches that the universe is built from small energy fields where particles exist as possibilities and not as fixed objects. Explain how small things behave like waves and particles according to observation. What if the little things inside humans behaved similarly? Could we manipulate these little things and change the matter inside our bodies? Are humans made of energy and also radiate energy? Could that energy behave as waves of different frequencies? What if we had a magnetic charge (an intention) combined with a higher energy (a higher emotion) and could create a higher frequency electromagnetic energy field that corresponded to our state of being?

Flow states and infinite possibilities

Mind and body, thoughts and feelings, intentions and emotions: what complex configurations we humans possess! All possibilities exist within us, but accessing them requires intentional awareness. We must invest our energy in the unknown to create something new. A clear intention and high emotion may be all that is needed to move from living in the past to living in the future. I want my brain to stop being a record book of the past and become a blueprint for the future.

Attention turns possibility into reality and meditation is an excellent means for this. Walking long trails is my meditation. My awareness in my body is amplified, my senses are heightened, and my energy is focused on the present moment. I walk, I flow and I exist. My mind is free to choose what it pays attention to. I can direct his attention more easily as the walks eliminate the usual distractions.

Consistency creates stability. Psychophysiological coherence between mind and body creates stability. A calm nervous system. Balanced heart rhythms. Emotional well-being aligns with physiological harmony. Hiking is a state of flow in which the cadence of my steps matches the frequency of my existence in high harmony. Hiking alters my brain wave patterns and heart rate. Everything is synchronized, on the same wavelength, in resonance.

My energy field responds to elevated emotions. Along the way, higher emotions such as gratitude, wonder, freedom, joy, and love naturally arise. The deep gratitude for my body that takes me uphill. The amazement in the view from the summit. The freedom to do what feels good. The pleasure of drinking ice water fresh from a spring. And the love I have for every living being. These emotions give me energy and take me to a place where I feel at home.

I can change, step by step

I don’t feel broken when I feel anxious on the road. My nervous system simply needs coherence and heightened emotions to reorganize itself. A long-distance trail is one of the most powerful environments for that process. When I walk in the flow, I become the observer and not the chaos. My body regulates itself naturally. I am connected to something bigger than myself. Along the way, I become a coherent, present, and powerful version of myself. The version that can create new patterns, release old emotional stories, and move toward real healing.

¹Dispense, Joe. Becoming Supernatural: How Ordinary People Do the Uncommon. Hay House, 2017.

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