My word for 2011 is ease.

Not easy, as in I want life to be simple, trouble-free, all bubble gum and champagne.

Ease.

Where I stand firmly in the center of who I am and it feels right, it feels good, it feels yesss.

Since the year has begun, I have felt many things. Ease was not often one of them. Today, on the drive from Orange County to Ventura County, on one of the busiest roads in the country, I watched myself closely. In my twenties, I loved driving. Loved the freedom of the open road, the chance to go somewhere new and different, or to go to the same place a new way. I drove a lot. From Toronto to Vancouver to Dawson City, Yukon, to Nova Scotia, back to Dawson. Across Canada several times. Across the US, stopping for gas station cappuccinos and Marlboro cigarettes.

After more than a decade in Los Angeles, I no longer enjoy driving. Today it felt like me, a sleeping child, some raindrops and a whole bunch of crazies on the road. My hands clenched, my chest contracted, my body pulled into itself. I said my silent prayer of protection and still found fear floating through my brain. Then I began to notice. If I drive 70 mph here, my body relaxes, my chest opens, I think positive thoughts. There is ease. If I drive 75 on this narrow stretch, around this curve, feeling pushed from behind, I tense up and ease is nowhere to be found. But then here, where the road widens and there are fewer cars, 75 is fine.

So why do I push myself out of that place? That place of ease, of flow, of good feeling? Without fail, it is pressure from the outside. It’s that truck beside me that speeds up when I do while another car is bearing down on my tail. It’s the nervous thought that if I drive 70 mph, I will force someone else to hit the brakes. I watch ease come and go in my body, in my mind. I enter and exit the flow.

When I say no to one of my daughter’s requests, if it comes from the fear of a bad outcome based on another person’s opinion, my head and heart conflicted, there is no ease. If I say no because it feels right, I stand in my power and she responds completely differently. If I feel I should be earning more money than I am, and I get frustrated because I don’t know what I want to do with my life, there is no flow. When I remember to trust that standing in that good feeling as often as possible and acting from that place will bring all the answers I need, my body relaxes. Answers – and gifts – come. When I turn toward connection and love, for my husband, my friends, for myself, ease is there. When I close up, clench off, hold a grudge, it not only feels awful, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom.

I vowed today to act from a place of ease as much as I could. I want to practice standing in the center of myself instead of being buffeted by the gale force winds of my mind. I want to wake up every day more grounded in my connection to Source, to God, to the Divine. Choosing the word was a start. Now the hard – or the ease-y? – work is mine.