Meditation In Daily Life

Should I Have A Morning Practice (or Any Practice)?

Hello Beautiful Souls,

Having a morning practice has become a bit of a thing, and you might be wondering if you should have one, or you might be wanting some motivation to keep one going…

For those of us that have a hard time being consistent, this gets especially sticky… should I start yet another thing that I’m just going to quit later?
Argh.

But ‘everyone’ says they’re so good for me!
Ok, ok.

I started up a morning practice recently, and it has been AMAZING!
I even stumbled upon a podcast discussing ‘the science’ behind what makes them so great… (Having a BS, that usually makes my eyes roll. We can back up anything with science. We just need to find a study with the results we want and voila, it’s backed.)
All of this made me wonder, if my morning practice is actually this magic why don’t I want sing from the roof tops the all it’s many accolades?

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Balancing Shadow Work with Light Work

Hello Beautiful Souls,

I hope you’ve enjoyed the sweet song of summer and are welcoming the fragrant winds of fall.

As we cross the threshold from one season to the next, I’ve relearned the utility of balance, that while digging down into the depths it is also important to nourish the seeds of what I want to harvest. Balancing the dark with the light, the pain with the pleasure, the challenge with the gift. One without the other is either too dark and depressing or too shallow and ungrounded.

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Assertiveness Tips for Building Beautiful Boundaries

Hello Beautiful Souls,

Ok, it’s happening.
Someone is doing or saying something you don’t like or asking for something you don’t want to give and alarm bells are going off in your head and heart.
You feel really uncomfortable, maybe even angry, and you want to address it.
A boundary needs to be set…

Here we go with Assertiveness 101.
I’ve just created this new crib sheet for us to play with.
You’re welcome to test it out with me. Below is a video for those who prefer to watch, and a more comprehensive text for those who prefer to read. They’re a bit different, so if you really resonate with this topic, consider both.

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Building Beautiful Boundaries by Developing Assertiveness

Hello Beautiful Souls,

It’s safe to say that assertiveness is challenging for most of us, largely because we’re asking ourselves to be respectful (or at least civil) when a boundary has been crossed. I’m feeling bad, and now I need to tell you about it. Challenging.

Before we start with how to be assertive, let’s look at some things to do to before we get there… some foundational preparation that makes healthy boundary setting possible.

I’ve listed things that I find critical to my process, including two key points that I haven’t seen any where else. Look for KEY POINT belowor jump down to the video that covers just those two.

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Winter is a Time to Go In

There are many different wisdom traditions that talk about winter and the New Year. Some honor the changing of the sun and the bringing of light with the Winter Solstice, some are more focused on starting new things and resolutions for the (Gregorian Solar) New Year, while (Indian) Ayurveda says winter is a good time to look inside…

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Are You Self-Aware?

And what the heck does that even mean?!

I can definitely say that I wasn’t when I started meditating! I was all over the place, and as I started to be self-aware enough to see the patterns I was running in my life, I realized that 1.) it was going to take a while to sort out my anger issues! and 2.) it was possible!

Self-awareness starts with training our attention.

First, what we start with in many kinds of meditation is training our attention, which 99% of us have totally lost control over.

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You’re Not In Control of Your Attention

What do I mean by that?!

I mean that you’re not able to focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time before your attention wanders away, and you aren’t able to keep it from wandering even if you try.

I totally didn’t believe this at first.
You probably don’t either, so I’m going to give you an example and a simple exercise to test it out for yourself.

— Definitely don’t just believe this craziness! Find out for yourself! —

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