Perhaps you want to learn to meditate, or you're just curious. But when you "try" to meditate, or even attempt to be more mindful, you're convinced it doesn't feel right or look right. What if it doesn't seem correct because you're not really allowing yourself permission to explore? Let's look into that idea with today's …

Continue reading Mindful Meditation Project, Day 15: Granting Yourself Permission

It might take some doing, some breath, a pause to use my imagination to carry those sensations and allow them to linger, but the idea of fully investing the self into a moment of bliss to make it last and release the need to go hunt out another bit of happiness in my day to keep me going is where I'm hanging out today.

It breaks my heart when students tell me they don't meditate because they can't empty their minds. Well, of course you can't...we live in a chaotic world full of life, energy, and action. We are no longer required to take time away to become monks in a monastery by denouncing everything and everyone in our lives in order to explore ourselves and our spiritual path.

I had fun with this one. We frequently spend so much attention on releasing and letting go of thoughts and emotions that block our path that it's easy to overlook the option to spend time basking in the bliss of the things we love. The promise of coffee, a pen, and a blank notebook did …

Continue reading Mindful Meditation Project, Day 12: Breathing Into Your Bliss

Are we imperfectly perfect or perfectly imperfect? Is this all in our semantics? I see these as the same--we work to be perfect outside of ourselves (where we perceive imperfection) while at the same time, we are simply perfect. This duality is incredibly hard to comprehend when we have come from the traditionally trained and conditioned mindset that we are in no way, shape, or form perfect in anything, which is the cause of so much of our own self-inflicted suffering.

Some days the 30 minutes seems like hours, but when I opened my eyes to rejoin the world, the sunrise spotted my floor, filtered through the crabapple tree leaves outside my window, and I felt refreshed. The headache lingered, but it didn't stop me.