Today I taught my first restorative yoga class. I've taught meditation, yin, yoga nidra, slow flow, and gentle flow/challenge, but never restorative. I'm sharing my class teaching with an another amazing teacher, as we are able to organize our every-other-weekends (hers with a daughter in travel sports, me with my 500-hour meditation teaching coursework), and …
Continue reading What Does Space Mean To You? 25 Questions To Consider
I've been up since 4:35 am after a horrifying dream. Unable to go back to sleep, I opted to write my morning pages and move into meditation, as is the usual flow of my pre-dawn days. You all know I've struggled this week with my purpose, with moving forward, with what to do and how …
Not being in a classroom on the first day of school since 1975 has been a textbook meditative exploration of riding the flow of emotions. In meditation, we learn to ride our emotions as they arise in our practice and our life as a series of waves.
I really appreciate your patience with the pauses in this 30 day experiment. Part of me wants to say that it's an exercise in pure mindfulness, to have lags and flows in the videos, which mirrors life and meditation, and part of me gets agitated that it isn't perfect. Thanks for watching, whenever it crosses …
Continue reading Mindful Meditation Project, Day 20: Using Can’t As A Map
If we can't be kind to ourselves, how are we going to extend kindness to others? https://youtu.be/42bnczQbmQ4
That seems so ridiculous to say. Don't you think meditation would be the perfect place to find calm and peace when mental and emotional chaos becomes intense? I do, and it's what I believe and teach. But there's also a piece of meditation that invites compassion along with the discipline. A place to be soft and vulnerable and open and a part of the flow of chaos rather than trying to stop it.
You're already meditating every day in every moment of your life. You just don't know that yet.
Sometimes even the most beautiful meditation spaces aren't enough to stop a vicious cycle of mental thoughts from running rampant. Dealing with an unexpected situation in my life made my brain grasp for answers in all directions, and before I knew it, my meditation was off and running in a thousand different directions. Grounding myself …
Continue reading Mindful Meditation Project, Day 17: Alternate Nostril Breathing
How do you come back to yourself when your mind wanders from what you think is 'right' or 'wrong' in meditation?
Let's use the power of the Aquarius full moon tonight to release whatever we're carrying that no longer serves us in this moment. https://youtu.be/rV2_GdmJYvc
As it turned out (unbeknownst to me), this morning's regularly scheduled 30 minute practice was a continuation of yesterday's theme of giving ourselves grace. I woke up later than usual, again due to not sleeping well, but made up my mind that I'd get back on the cushion despite a gnawing headache. I am a …
Continue reading Mindful Meditation Project, Day 9: Sitting With Discomfort
Today's practice almost didn't happen. Thanks to a sleepless night from feeling ill, I was in no shape to meditate this morning. I put it off and put it off, and finally, as the sun set, settled down for my 30 minutes. I didn't have much of a direction or even intention, but it was …
Continue reading Mindful Meditation Project, Day 8: A Sense of Grace
How do you create physical space for yourself? What about mental space? These are places where we can begin our meditation practice.
Developing the habit of naming our gratitude, of connecting with those things that bring us joy, peace, and meaning, is the first step in aligning with their energy to bring us more of that energy in our every day.
What an interesting meditation practice this morning. Despite having the background and training of being a meditation teacher, I'm always curious about new experiences in my process, and today what I realized was how the energy of one singular day--less than 24 hours, actually--can be so intensely and drastically different. Yesterday's practice was fairly light, …
Continue reading Mindful Meditation Project, Day 3: Feeling Into the Heart Space
Words by Beth 