Meditation is applicable to everyone. In fact, I believe that it’s a way of life.
In my previous post, I shared about how you can Sink Into The Stillness and simply integrate mediation and mindfulness into your everyday life. Somewhere along the lines, we’ve been told that meditation has to be something that takes a significant amount of time, energy and effort, and it simply does not have to be.
Personally, having a practice for over twenty years allows me to fall into a second-nature flow with meditation. It is easy for me to find my breath and to meditate throughout every aspect of my life – from washing dishes in the kitchen to walking my dog to driving in my car. Meditation is a state of mind and it has saved my life.
What is meditation to you?
To me meditation is a friend that you come home to. One who doesn’t judge but can sit and be a witness to all of your everything.
A safe place to land when the waves are crashing hard. When life is joyful and the next it’s painful.
Meditation is what has pulled me through many of life’s circumstances again and again. I know if I have nothing, I have meditation and if I have everything I have meditation. It is a constant in my life.
There are many, many incredible benefits of meditation that you can begin to feel almost immediately once you begin the practice.
Meditation has a way of resetting the mind and body. Helping us become a clearer channel for the now. To trust the bodies instincts.
When I work with clients meditation is a way of life and when we don’t do it, the chaos of life gets the better of us. When we anchor into our Center and calm state of being the day flows with grace. This is the natural impulse of the Universe. This flow is what Nature operates from its not hurried it just is. I love when people tell me, “I’ve tried to meditate but just can’t or don’t know how.” Meditation is simple, it’s learning to concentrate. Do you know how to focus and concentrate? Most people on a mind level don’t know how or haven’t developed concentration. This prevents us from living fully in the present. Our minds are active, sometimes obsessive and other times out of control.
Beginning your meditation practice does not need to be complicated, time-consuming or stressful. A simple way to start is merely by focusing on your breath and in so doing, you begin to control your mind.
Learn to Master your thoughts by starting to focus on your breathing for 1-2 minutes. Each time you drift into the past or the future with a train of thoughts, bring it back to the breath.
When you learn a new skill in life, you don’t master it by trying to do it a couple of times or for 5 minutes. You master it by returning to it again and again. Eventually the mind follows your breathing and the concentration of the present moment. Then stillness comes. The more that you practice this, the easier it becomes and the more quickly you fall into this pattern when you begin to feel overwhelmed or your thoughts become too much for you.
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If you’re feeling like meditation will never be something you’ll experience regularly in your life or perhaps you’ve fallen away from a regular practice or you’re just looking for something to give your practice a little boost..
I have something for YOU.
I’ve created an incredible 3-Part Meditation Series that is for all stages of your journey with meditation. Whether you’re a complete beginner or have been practicing for years and years, I would love for you to experience this series.
What do you receive? Each of the 3 parts come weekly for 3 weeks and build upon one another. So you have nearly a month of meditation to take you through and help you access a deeper part of your Theta brainwaves and also help you access the heart – which to me is our compass, our guiding point of reference to help guide us into a place that is a little bit better.
Part 1 – a basic meditation to allow you to become grounded, connected and heart-centered. Part 2 – a chakra cleansing meditation to clear any stagnant energy you’re holding within. Part 3 – a meditation that takes parts 1-2 and brings you a little bit deeper.
Meditation is great for helping you access your imagination. As we become adults we often forget this aspect. A huge part of the creation process and the life that you want to live is through imagination – it is KEY. Through meditation you can bridge your inner world and outer world because what’s going on outside is a reflection of what’s going on inside
Are you ready to begin this part of your journey with meditation? I would love to help guide you through with my 3-Part Meditation Series. It is completely free – my gift to you! Click HERE to begin.
Meditation is applicable to everyone. In fact, I believe that it’s a way of life.
I had a client say I want to be realistic. I say realistic is how we keep our dreams and desires small. So we don’t get hurt or disappointed, but then we equally cut ourselves off from the expansiveness of Joy, wanting to unfold and grow in our lives.
For my clients I had them do an I want list or I desire for this year and then shift the list into a gratitude list. What this does is it helps the mind accept that this is a feeling in you but not something you are seeking. When we grow from within our external experiences can begin to match our inner world.
Give yourself permission to dream and expand what you would like to bring forward in your life. Do what sparks Joy in you and your life. When we begin to grow our Joy things take on different meanings because it’s the meaning we give the item or experience.
This is true about our experiences we are looking for experiences that will bring us a particular feeling so we seek it, rather if we sit and meditate about how we feel about the feeling or thought of that experience and grow that feeling that’s what we are seeking.
Then you begin to feel you are not separate from your experience but your experience is to draw more of who you are out. Expressing your soul and Divine Nature. This is what from the inside out living looks like.
When I speak about this a lot of people will say things like Law of Attraction but that really only scratches the surface. It’s not about positive thinking and that can be detrimental to our overall well-being. If we aren’t allowing room for all our emotions to be present and have space to be. How can we learn to grow what brings us Joy?
If we are unwilling to move through the pain. Then Joy can’t grow in a stifled environment, can it? Your capacity to grow Joy and experience that which is Joyful will be the equal capacity you have by what you are blocking and hiding from yourself.
Meaning if we have a lot of unexpressed pain and even in that pain there are seeds of Joy but left unexpressed What will grow.? Weare emotional beings weather you “THINK” you are or not.
Back when I was in-between jobs I was a Massage Therapist, slash waitress, slash writer. After I came back from living in Europe for a year I didn’t want to go back to Massage full time. That always felt like a stepping stone one long stepping stone for me but I really didn’t know what was next. I gave myself time to be in the in between. Which our culture doesn’t value or really talk about much. Same as rest but that’s another post entirely.
I began working with Plant Medicine in particular Ayahuasca. I was called to facilitate and coaching with The business I have now. It took an Incredible leap to follow my heart to travel abroad with next to no money and it took another incredible leap to work with plant medicine.
But when Happiness and Joy are the calling cards you answer and you follow that because all else pales. Or maybe you don’t answer because you are sacred and life is comfortable and in our comfort we get complacent.
Why risk following your heart, when you have so much to loose? Instead, life has a funny way of taking it from us anyway. I get it, it’s not easy to follow your heart because it will challenge everything you hold dear. Are you sure? Because the mind is almost always sure of that beings a hell no and the heart is saying Hell yea, but when I listen to my mind I get scared.
Any notable person that follows their heart and pursues dreams has setbacks and challenges. Because it’s the Universe asking, again and again, are you sure?
Helping you move from the old story to a new one. Then it’s routing you, GPS to your experience, your highest version of yourself, by stripping you down to basics and rising you back up again. The famous death and rebirth cycle.
For a well lived life will ask you to die to your previous outdated selves multiply times. And what is life if we don’t die a few times in the process?
Our heart is a beacon of truth for ourselves and for others around us. It’s what lights your path even if you can only see a few feet in front of you at a time. To me, this is when I learned Faith in Action. I don’t believe in blind faith, for true faith is a demonstration of us listening and trusting and following what’s in our hearts again and again.
This is what I experience in my life and in my work and why I’ve been called to demonstrate this to those that are called to work with me. You deserve to be so filled with Joy that you can almost burst from it. This is you lighting up your life.
Life doesn’t have to be hard, we make it hard from our past stories. Healing comes and in that space so does JOY. Moving from the hard paradigm mentality story to the new one being ushered in is another collective leap we are learning to take. A GPS rerouting that’s taking place, one big fucking U-Turn putting us on the course of JOY.
Are you listening?
Can you feel it?
Choose it! We are all adults now and we get to decide not the story in our head. Lean in the heart knows the way.
Here is to an expansive 2019 for you and those around you. May you have the spirit of Joy return to you again and again as you relearn to grow that which expands your heart.
A mindful way to view self-love and how to bring the actions into your daily life with simple steps to help you cultivate a greater sense of self-love.
In today’s world and with the work I teach clients, self-love is taking center stage now. We are beginning to realize that loving ourselves is going to help us be more loving to others. That in truth how can you love someone else if you haven’t cultivated and developed some form of self-love?
When we begin to see ourselves as another would, or love ourselves as we love our friends, this opens up a capacity to grow our experience of self-love.
To take the journey of self-discovery is to open up to loving ourselves.
1. Set boundaries- When we care enough about our own well being we are able to say no to people and situations that aren’t healthy for us, that drain or deplete us rather than lift us up. Setting boundaries is a form of being empowered in your sense of self and thus you will love yourself more when you set limits and this fuels and grows that self-love. It can be challenging and often feels uncomfortable for people pleasers. We need to understand short-term gains don’t grow lasting results without some form of healthy boundaries in place.
2.Practice Good Self-Care- This looks like solid and balanced nutrition, eating whole healthy foods that nourish you. Some form of movement, learning to move your body in different ways teaches you to move your energy. Quality Sleep, Intimacy, human connections, and healthy relationships. Removing toxic people from your life.
3. Self-Acceptance- choosing to free ourselves from the burdens of the past. Regret and mistakes are teaching tools to help us grow if we can shift our perspective and allow acceptance to arise. We will be able to forgive ourselves and this is love.
4. Self-Forgiveness- We can begin to forgive ourselves only when we accept who and what we are now. All of our faults, missteps and should of would of could of. We are exactly where we are being exactly who we are meant to be in each and every moment. Let go of the self-hatred and self-criticizing. This is when we begin free ourselves and begin to forgive. Self-love in action.
5. Live Authentically and Intentionally- When we begin to live with purpose and desing which is living a heart centered life and letting your heart guide you. This grows self-love. Listening and acting from your heart. You don’t need to know your purpose if your intention is to live with greater joy follow what grows that inside you. If your intention is to live a healthy life follow what grows that for you. You will develop greater self-esteem and love for yourself when you see you are doing what you set out to do.
When my decisions started to grow greater Joy in my life I could see and feel that which was not in alignment with my heart come up to be healed and cleared in me. I continue to come back to each of these steps as a deeper understanding of myself grows over time. As I hold space for clients to move through these steps I am reminded how far I’ve come on my journey to growing self-love actualized in my life. That i can look in the mirror and say I love you and feel it in my core of my being.
This is my wish for you to see yourself and grow that love and appreciation and this will grow a greater Joy for you and you will be able to be that in the world.
The mirrored effect and the bullshit meter measuring stick.
Why the truth can feel like complete and utter bullshit when we are facing our conditioned responses to life? Our conditioned self is the programming we are taught and told and feel from a young age that’s been handed to us externally.
The truth is internal.
The truth can feel counter-intuitive when facing our false conditioning because our conditioning runs the show and runs so deep. It’s what drives us and as we begin to let go of our conditional self only then can we live free.
To be the most authentic version that we are designed to be. We need to take stock of what’s running our lives currently.
Our stories are wrapped so deep through our thinking and being that we’ve identified ourselves as them; so we can’t see the forest for the trees until we are smack dab in the mix of it.
Facing our conditioning requires a few things from us.
1. Awareness is the first step, but just the beginning.
Developing the Inner witness and Observer helps us see from a different perspective.
As our perspective shifts only then can we begin to let go of the attachments around the conditioned self. The reason there are attachments because it has served us and in serving us it becomes a part of our identity with the egoic-self.
2. Loving ourselves in our awareness of our conditioned self.
Why this is so essential but can be the most challenging part?
When we begin to love ourselves at this moment, just as we are we will begin to untangle from the attachments of why we bought into the conditioning in the first place; which is most likely rooted in a not enoughness or a too-muchness feeling space. Often loaded with: shame, anger, guilt, just to name a few emotions entwined with our experiences.
This is what acceptance looks and feels like but so difficult for so many to accept feeling shamed or rage or guilt. This is why forgiveness is challenging because this is another layer of acceptance. This is a huge part of the self-love work I teach so clients can begin to actualize this and set themselves free.
3. The power of choice to shift and change because love can and will dissolve it.
Now can be replaced with a new energy that comes from your heart space. An emptiness that is already full. This is when our spirit or soul essence fills us up.
4. Acting by affirming this new energy from your heart which is your truth.
How do you act from your heart? You listen and follow it which is a different feeling than an automatic response based in Fear. Practice from this space it doesn’t happen overnight it takes conscious effort to live from here. This is part of living the Unconditioned self.
Taking these steps helps you to actualize your authentic self as the dominant energy you express. Instead of the conditioned self that’s based in fear.
Sounds easy but it can be challenging. Our growth is often challenging and rewarding because reaping the benefits of a heart-centered life is the greatest gift of all and anything less feels dissatisfying. It’s like eating a meal when you wanted a piece of chocolate cake.
We are full already but we need to get unconditioned to experience the truth of who we are. Layer by layer, we unfold by letting go and shaking off the past.
This is the great awakening that is taking place right now.
Can you feel it?
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions with this process or would like me to walk you through a session. I love holding space if you feel called to remember your greatness.
I hear clients say “I don’t want to look at the past. The past is in the past, it can’t be changed.” I disagree: It can be changed. We can change everything.
All-time exists NOW. If all time is now, then absolutely you can change the past. Our past lives in our perceptions, and we can change what we see by learning to make peace with it — by giving ourselves the ability to feel all that we couldn’t feel then.
If we allow ourselves to feel the feelings that we’ve stored through our trauma and pain — by being present with it now and letting it go — we no longer need to hang on to all those feeling we couldn’t experience from ages 0 to 8.
It’s not about reliving the past. Your past is informing your NOW all the time. As we continue to carry around those feelings and experiences we will throw them into our future. We will continue to relive it with different people and situations, but it’s the same energy that’s presenting itself in our lives.
When we are triggered with anger and hurt in our NOW it is almost never about what triggered us. But that it’s a familiar feeling touching a wound. It’s an opportunity for us to become aware of what’s wanting to be noticed.
Our bodies are great indicators of how we continue to carry our past with us: excessive weight, fatigue, addictions, disease, pain. These are red flags that your subconscious is trying to speak to you and you aren’t listening.
We haven’t been taught tools to navigate our inner psyches and we are here now remembering our true selves.
I have clients ask two simple questions when you are triggered:
When did I first feel this feeling? This will tie back to the original emotional experience, or wounding. Just asking this question doesn’t mean you need to relive the trauma. Rather, it pulls up the stored emotions that you were unable to feel at the time. This is where healing happens.
Where is it in my body? We store trauma and pain in our body and this helps to heal it on a cellular level.
Most of the clients I work with need a little guidance in the beginning with a session to pull it up. But most people have been triggered in their present: They can bring an incident up and begin there.
Start in the Now, because most likely you’ve been carrying years of pain with you unacknowledged. We are really good at hiding from ourselves. Remember: It’s not about the “Why.” The “why” activates victim consciousness and the small self. It’s about acknowledging what’s been hidden to experience the feelings and let it go.
This is why the past matters and why being present in the Now helps to let it go. This creates space in your life for New Beginnings.
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It’s ultimately what surrendering feels like. I think sometimes people have an idea of surrender as giving up. Rather, it’s an allowing of all that is present and to be with it wholly now. This is the art of surrender.
It feels new and different with each layer and each experience…as if we are experiencing surrender for the first time.
Michael Singer has a book out called The Surrender Experience. It’s a phenomenal story of his life: With each experience, he goes deeper inside and let’s go of his wants or needs to make changes to the external. Anything that triggers him he becomes present with it and let’s go of the need to control it. Just allowing where he is at and what he feels to be present.
This is at the core of the work I am currently doing with clients. Shifting energy, patterns, and perspectives. Remembering the lost art of letting go and being present with what is. So your New Now can be informed no longer from your wounds of your past.
If you feel that any of this speaks to you or you would like a free Breakthrough session please reach out. I would love to walk you through releasing your past to make room for the New that wants to emerge in your life.
The role Fear plays in our lives and being able to access the deep meaning from it.
I had someone come to me and ask me some questions about Fear recently.
Him “How do we know we have faced our fears?”
Me “When we are living a life closest to our heart and most Authentic self.”
Him “Why is it important to face our fears?”
Me “To bring us to our truth inside ourselves.”
Him “Do we even think we have fears?”
Me “We think we have Fears but most of them are imagined.”
Him ”And how come it is important to think in these terms or value our progress in these terms?”
Me “Once you’ve come to a place that you have conquered your deepest fears you live in a place of Freedom and truth. This is the dance we call life.”
It is said in a course of miracles that Fear is a call to Love.
But what if Fear is THE CALL??
What if Fear is a gateway from Heaven and Hell and what I mean by this the heaven and hell that we currently living within the perimeters of our experiences in the right here and now. Not the one that religion has distorted.
These gateways help you transverse the souls calling. Your purpose and what you are here to do.
What if what you are deeply afraid of is what you are here to do?
What if it’s your biggest gift and you receiving it is being able to give back to the world as a part of your path?
Fear is apart of the Duality of our world.
For me, Fear has always been a part of my journey. I didn’t grow up in a warm fuzzy environment. That doesn’t mean I blame my parents. I love both of my parents, but I didn’t grow up feeling safe so in my experience I’ve registered my world through the lens of Fear.
I wouldn’t know my life without it. I’m sure there are plenty of others who will read this and feel the same. You can’t be human without Fear we are wired for it. This is why we fight like hell to keep and hold onto comfort and resist change. For it scares the hell out of our little human minds.
I’ve never met anyone that willing walks into the fire so they can experience an ego death. And most soul growth will challenge you to do this again and again. Some will say you die once and others like me say you learn to surrender again and again.
There is the fight or flight fear where our adrenals are pumping massive amounts of cortisol through our body to help us with the stress we are enduring and then there is the idea of FEAR. We are afraid of what something might be like. So it’s an imagined state.
This imagined state is where a lot of power is. If we can learn to change our thinking around an imagined situation or a preconceived idea then we can learn to dismantle the fear that lives in our minds this way.
I use Fear as a marker, it helps me realize I’m heading in the right direction to dismantle false belief systems, past conditioning and overall what’s holding me back.
Either you learn to harness fear for your benefit or it has a hold on you and controls your choices and keeps you repeating patterns of conditioning from an unconscious perspective.
That’s why there are sayings like do what you are most afraid of and magic happens outside your comfort zone. Because either Fear is a motivator or it’s a deterrent and if you put Fear in its place you begin to conquer it.
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