Breathe

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Breathe

Right now, where you are – breathe.

Take a deep breath and imagine a rubber band around your lower ribs and inhale through the entire circumference of your ribcage.

Exhale fully.

Repeat three times.

Take your time.

Resume whatever you were doing and may your day be filled with lots of space.

(photo by Tim Goedhart)

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Your Self Perfect

Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors…all I plead with you is this:  make love of your self perfect.

-Sri Nisargadatta

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The Personal Mind, Is It Really So Serious?

Oh, my personal mind!!  It churns and searches for something to latch onto and grasp.  If given its preference it would do leaps and bounds into the future every minute of every day.  Dear mind you show me the yearning to fix, solve, create, implement, buy, change, and modify.

Experiences stored, memories created and strategies planned off of the information of the personal mind.  When the mind is calm, there is space for new experiences, new insight and ways of being with my body, mind and the world.
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The Answers Lie Within The Question

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What happens when you wake up one day and you realize you have no connection with your Self?  You realize you have never seen your Self, acknowledged your Self or honored your Self.  Where on god’s green earth do you begin? Read more

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Becoming Tender To Human Vulnerability

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Don’t turn away. 
Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. 
That’s where the light enters you.

-Rumi

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Taking A Closer Look At Monkey Mind

Energy extended outward, when intentionally watching, it surges inward and dances in front of me.

The amount of energy produced inside of me exceeds the amount needed to function.  It overwhelms me as it comes inside and slowly reduces.  I feel the production of energy is too great, and it is apparent that it takes more energy production to be external than is necessary to function internally.  It is as if the extraordinary amount of energy I feel desires to extend outwards to release itself.  Yet, it seems the desire to reach outwards, in actuality, generates more energy and therefore creates an antithetical loop; exchanging the desire to expel with the reaching out to expel which by its nature, produces more and adds to what was already too much.

The mind reacts to a need for shaking off, letting out, dispelling the excessive production.  This need is apparent when trying to bring the energy back in.  The body feels restless and responds with a nauseous sensation, a sense of being too plugged in, and receiving too much energy.  It is not the unwieldiness or the lack of self-control.  It is the production of too much energy driven by habitual ways of being external rather than internal.
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Taking The Past Into The Present, Mindfully

Along the way, with each day and sometimes even each second I learn something new.  As I welcome the new year and reflect over the past years, there are a few “solids” that have unraveled in my life so far, and I want to share with you the culmination of that reflection.  I feel blessed to have been bestowed these gifts upon my ever questioning and wondering “why?” nature.
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Pay Attention, A Practice

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I analyze.  I am continually finding myself analyzing situations and then strategizing how to best respond.  At least this is what I have called it for most of my life.  This obsessive analyzing has served me in many positive ways:

  • It has made me a super problem solver.
  • I am a tinkerer driven by a mad curiosity which results in discovered efficiencies both in my career and in my personal life.
  • The constant questioning and problem-solving have led me to learn – and I mean a lot about a lot of different things.

However, if I do not pay attention that same analyzing quality also can destroy my happiness by creating confusion and clouding clarity.
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A New Year Word

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Welcome to 2018!

I have been off in hibernation over the holidays – it is what I do every year.  I visit my family at the beginning of December, my hubby heads off to his family’s house, and I stay at the casa with Travis (the cat) and hibernate.

It is one of my favorite things to do each year.  There is a space that opens inside of me when I am left to my own devices, when I can make my own schedule, and when there is no one, but Travis of course, to listen to me regurgitate my thoughts audibly.

For the past 20 or so years, I have practiced my end of the year ritual.  It is not even about the new year itself but rather the energy that permeates everything and everyone towards the end of the year that resonates with me.  Everyone seems to be in the same mindset; there is more optimism everywhere I look, and I ride the tide and wrap myself in the energy that feels like wrapping up and beginning anew.
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