musings
Recently, I had the fortune of speaking with my dear friend and all around beautiful human Claire on her inspiring podcast, Light on Being. We discussed the fundamental elements of Vedic astrology and how it has shown up in our lives.
I invite you to tune into our conversation and share your experience of the wisdom shared.
Yesterday was a Solstice - a moment in time where the pendulum reaches all the way to one side and stops before it starts to swing back in the opposite direction.
For the Northern hemisphere of this little blue dot, it meant that we experienced more Light yesterday than on any other day of the year. It supported us to really awaken and embody our inner radiance, to shine this LIght out like the Sun shines.
And yet, in this world, in this reality of duality, the opposite is also true. For our Southern Hemisphere friends, it was the longest night of the year. The extended darkness supported them to turn within, to cultivate a deep state of inner stillness, to foster the eternal flame of consciousness within.
It’s all about perspective - from where you are looking.
When we align our consciousness with the Truth of this existence, we See that all is well. That balance remains. That nothing is wrong. Nothing is missing. We have all we need. We walk the middle path, not clinging or pushing away, but understanding the nature of reality is change and balance.
I remember when I was little and we went on my first plane trip. It was terribly stormy that day, very dark clouds, big, fat rain drops. We took off and for awhile we were in the thick of it, clouds blocking our view of anything, rain sweeping the windows. And then, the most majestic thing happened - we broke through the clouds and found the most brilliant Sun! I was enamored with the blanket of clouds that lay below us. What had appeared very dark and ominous from below now looked light and soft. I wanted to run across them.
The Sun is always shining. The Light never leaves. It is always here, for those who are tuned to See. When we establish ourselves in Truth, we are given the perspective to realize, to understand this wisdom.
I felt called to offer a gift on this potent day, a day which all energy is multiplied in the intensity of the radiance of the Sun. Please join me here.
I was recently asked by BHAMnow, a local news source, what tips I could offer to help our community cultivate mindfulness. Here’s what I wrote:
Our post-pandemic world is picking up pace and many of us are finding ourselves physically, emotionally, and mentally stretched, and short on time. Good news is that it doesn’t take much time to begin to move through the world more consciously, in turn experiencing more ease in our life.
First thing when you wake up each morning, before you do anything - especially before you pick up your phone! - take 3 slow, deep belly breaths and do a full body scan, mindfully connecting with every part of you. Start at the top of your head and move down towards your feet. As you move to sitting up on the side of your bed, continue deep, conscious breaths, and allow your feet to rest on the ground. Notice if you are holding tension anywhere in your body - neck, shoulders, back, jaw - offer it release with a deep conscious breath. You can do this with your eyes closed or gently open.
Every time you get in your car, pause for 30 seconds and notice. Close your eyes and take a deep breath in, traveling through our senses:
Touch: Connect with the sensation of touch as your body rests inside the car. Feel the seat holding your form. What else can you sense - Is your air vent blowing against your skin? Can you feel the warmth of the sun?
Scent: What are you able to smell?
Sound: With the next breath, notice any sounds you can hear inside the car. Then move your awareness to include sounds outside of the car.
Taste: Take your tongue and swipe it across your front teeth - what can you taste?
Sight: And lastly, slowly open your eyes and take in the world around you. Start within the vehicle and then notice what’s outside of your vehicle.
Notice how this short and simple practice shifts your experience of the drive.
Take a moment before consuming your meals to take it in through your senses. Begin by deepening your breath, allowing the belly to softly expand on the inhale. This activates the part of our nervous system in charge of digesting our food preparing our body to receive the food.
Sight: Before starting, pause to take in what your food looks like. Fresh fruits and vegetables will always be more vibrant in color than processed foods. Notice the colors and textures of your food.
Smell: What does it smell like?
Taste: Take a bite. Chew slowly allowing your brain to process what your food tastes like.
Touch: Feel the different textures of the food you are eating. Is your food hot? Cold? Juicy? Dry?
Sound: Some foods offer crisp sounds as we bite into them. Notice what you hear as you eat.
Give these 3 practices a try! By spending just a few minutes each day mindfully, you can begin to experience more presence and peace in your life. Notice how these practices, this awareness, begin to bleed into the rest of your day. Please reach out to Pennie if you would like to learn more ways in which to cultivate balance in your life, finding real enjoyment.
The events of the last year have me contemplating transitions.
Last week, we transitioned from one calendar year to the next. As a culture, when we shift into a new year, we tend to review the events of the last year - where we have been - and look forward to where we would like to go in the year to come. <cue images of vision boards> We use this time to welcome in new opportunities, renewing our intentions to live a fulfilling life.
If we continue to zoom in to how we measure change, we see we transition from night to day, day to night; hour to hour, minute to minute, second to second. Even more frequently, breath to breath, heartbeat to heartbeat. Change is our one constant companion.
2020 has brought this all to the forefront of our awareness, a collective experience of transition as time virtually stood still - moving us from a society constantly in motion, from a constant state of action, to one of virtual stillness.
What is my point? We are constantly in transition. While in this reality of Time, transition is the constant. Change is inevitable. Transitioning from what has been to what has yet to come.
Many of us experience transitions as unsettling and uncomfortable, something that needs to be fixed. During these times, we long for the stability and comfort of what we have known, pushing away the unknown, even if our known has been of suffering.
There has been so much loss in the past year, so many souls that have transitioned from their more dense physical forms to their less dense etheric forms. And herein lies the truth fear facing: From the moment we entered this body and took our first breath, we have been in motion, in transition, drawing our last breath ever closer to us.
Bottom line: We fear change because we fear death. We fear our own mortality. This fear is fundamental to our human experience. We all know it to be true - we know that some day we and everyone we love will die. We know this and yet we spend most of our lives avoiding this truth.
In years like the one we’ve just experienced, it becomes harder to avoid this reality. If you didn’t personally lose someone close to you this past year, then you likely have a friend who did.
If you are reading this and thinking, “wow, how depressing” please stick with me as this is not meant to drag us down but to lift us up.
Over the last month, I have been working deeply with acceptance. My general, conditioned, nature is to discover how things can be improved and to ‘fix’ them. For myself. For others. To ease suffering. Truthfully, to avoid suffering. At all cost.
What I have discovered is that the key to end suffering is actually within the discomfort. Acceptance of the transient nature of life is the pathway to end all suffering. Over the past month, I have been given ample opportunity to sit within the discomfort of the unknown. I have been given the opportunity to choose to not push away the pain but to sit within and note that it, too, is transient. That as soon as I have arrived within its womb I am already transitioning into another space.
Through the womb of this pain comes great realization. We are in a constant state of transition. Suffering arises when we cling to or push away realities that are not within the present moment.
How can we greet this transition more openly? How does the acceptance of this wisdom, this truth, shift how we sit in this moment? How does it impact the way we live our lives?
My experience is that acceptance is a practice, a deep one at that. One that goes against all of our conditioning and societal norms. It is an opportunity to discover the magic of the present moment.
The beauty of this life is that we are given opportunity after opportunity to practice acceptance. If we fail* to remain present and accept what is in one moment, never fear, we will soon have another chance to show up fully. To be the beautifully imperfect human beings that we are. As we embrace this reality, we see that all is beautiful. The pain, the shadow, the storms. All of it. *note: there’s no such thing as failure, only opportunity for increased awareness through self-realization
We are beautifully imperfect. And we are here, in this body, for such a short moment in time. We can choose to use this time to prepare for our impending transition or we can avoid this truth. Avoidance doesn’t make it any less real - we will all die. This is the nature of our reality in this realm.
We are given the beautiful gift of Life, NOW. How are we choosing to live this one precious life? Ultimately, how we live is how we die.
We are in transition.
Acceptance of the transient nature of life is the pathway to freedom. To Liberation.
One of the clearest ways I know to practice the presence needed for acceptance is through meditation. It is through the vehicle of meditation that we are able to arrive at the feet of our own Truth. Where we can once again merge with our True nature. Where we can move past the limitations of the thinking mind and sink into the knowing heart - that the true nature of You never dies. As we sit in this awareness, we more readily and openly face the constant opportunities to embrace change in our day to day life.
I personally invite you to join our next meditation course taking place on January 22nd. You can learn more here.
Thank you for taking the time to read this contemplation. If you are charmed, take a quiet moment to contemplate the questions I have posed here. Drop a comment to share any wisdom that arises, or reach out to me directly. Share this post with anyone you feel could use the reminder of this Truth. I see you, I love you, lets keep walking Home together.
There’s a lot of energy swirling out there.... many trying to find someone to blame for our current circumstances.
This lower mind tendency gets us caught up in a drama pattern that sucks us dry of our energetic resources and sends us in to a mental and emotional tailspin. The resources we do have get improperly allocated. In fact, by playing the victim in our life, we willingly give up our power. It’s so contagious. And, of course we are easier to herd if we are powerless. If you turn on the news, its all “us vs them”, finding a villain to blame - whether it’s China, 5G, Trump, etc.
Think about it: if you allow yourself to go down the rabbit hole of blame, of identifying the villain, how do you feel afterward? Does it uplift you, rejuvenate you, cause your heart to expand with compassion? My experience is that it does the exact opposite.
Regardless of how this current situation came to be, it is perfectly timed.
When we look to the stars, we see that this shift was always on its way. This opportunity to awaken, to rise up and shift the paradigms in which we support each other as a global community.
Speculating what happened, postulating what dark forces are out to get us can be dramatic and exciting, but overall is a waste of resources (time and energy). For ultimately, there is no one else but you.
This external world is just and outward reflection of our inner worlds. When we take time to pause and explore this inner world, we find divisiveness, hatred, self-sabotage, mistreatment, lack of self-awareness and self-love. Until we take time to heal these ostracized parts of ourselves, situations like the one we are currently experiencing will continue to present themselves.
The Universe will continue to present opportunities for us to awaken. And, awaken we shall. This is the nature of nature. It the cycle of Time. We are in the beginning stages of a new season of this cycle, the time of great awakening.
To build immUNITY from viruses, dis-ease, fear, scarcity, hatred, and other lower vibrations, we must unify all parts of ourselves. The good, the bad, and the ugly. They are all beautiful you see. They are all part of the Light.
The yogic teachings and practices do just that. They enable us to integrate all of ourselves. Seeing that all experience is a gift. All pain is a gift from Love. All sorrow, all heartache, all despair, they all point back to the unified field of Love.
Reach out if you’re tired of giving away your power and ready to awaken. Let’s walk the path together.
The excerpt below is taken from the book “The Prime” by Kulreet Chaudhary, M.D.:
“Dry brushing is the process of exfoliating the skin before bathing. It is different from using an exfoliating product with water, such as in the shower. Instead, sans water, you massage the skin with a special brush or glove with a rough surface. (You can easily find dry brushes at most health or natural products stores.) In Ayurveda, dry-brushing is called garshana and the preferred tool is a raw silk glove. I prefer this, and these gloves are inexpensive and available online. Which-ever you use, dry brushing accomplishes two primary goals:
It removes dead layers of skin so the body can more efficiently excrete toxic material. Remember, we are unclogging, and layers of dead skin cells can clog or reduce the efficiency of sweat glands. Dead skin cells are also a type of body waste, and sloughing them off removes this waste.
It targets the lymphatic system, which is directly beneath the skin. Dry brushing is incredibly important for the lymphatic system. You have already learned that your lymphatics don’t have a pump. When you move them, they move. Without movement, they have no momentum. Manually massaging the skin toward the heart and in the direction of the lymph nodes gets the lymph moving more vigorously, which increases the body’s detoxification rate. Essentially, you are helping to direct the biochemical sewage through the channels and into the lymph nodes, where it can be eliminated. One of the reasons why people develop inflammatory problems in the joints, including arthritis, has to do what lymph accumulation. Cellulite is also a condition exacerbated by backed-up lymphatics. And place where you have a lot of cellulite should be a particular focus of your lymphatic massage. Once you get the lymph moving, the fluid content of your fat cells decreases, which reduces the dimpled appearance of cellulite.
I would like you to practice dry brushing for 5 to 10 minutes every morning before you shower. If you miss a day here and there, don’t worry about it. However, you should aim to do a good thorough dry brushing session at least 5 to 6 days a week. Here’s how:
Start with dry, clean skin (since this is before your shower - you don’t have to be squeaky clean, but you shouldn’t have any lotion or oil on your skin).
Using silk gloves or a brush, vigorously massage your wrists and the tips of your elbows in circles, then massage with long strokes up from your fingers to the top of your upper arm, directing lymph to the nodes under the arms.
Massage your stomach and buttocks in circular motions.
Massage your knees in a circular motion, then massage your thighs in long strokes up the leg, directing the lymph to the nodes in your groin area.
End with your ankle and feet, massaging them in circles. Then massage up your calf in long strokes using medium to firm pressure.
Take your shower.”
This tea is a cornerstone of The Prime method by Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary. “It helps to heal the gut mucosa, improve the absorption of nutrients, and stimulate the lymphatic system. The tea helps move fluid through and out of the body, so you may urinate more, which is a good sign. Here’s how to prepare this pleasant-tasting savory tea:
Boil 4 to 5 cups of water in a pot. As the water is heating, add the following to the pot:
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
Additional options:
1/2 teaspoon manjistha powder, if you have lymphatic backup. (You can add this to the steeped, strained tea afterward, since its a powder and doesn’t require straining.)
1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds, if you are having a lot of excess gas production
1/2 to 1 inch of peeled fresh ginger, for people who want to increase their Agni even further (some people have a particularly hard time igniting that digestive fire). Just add it while the water is boiling. For a stronger ginger flavor, you can keep the fresh ginger in the thermos; for weaker ginger flavor, strain it out with the other ingredients.
Let the water boil for 5 to 10 minutes with the whole seeds, depending on how strong you want your tea to be. Afterward, strain the seeds out of the tea, then pour the tea into an insulated vessel (like a thermos) to keep it hot all day. If you have a tea ball, use it for less cleanup. Then sip the tea throughout the day until it’s all gone. Try to finish it before 6 p.m., so you don’t have to use the bathroom multiple times during the night.”
This recipe provided from the book “The Prime; prepare and repair your body for spontaneous weight loss” by K. Chaudhary, MD.
We are facing a great challenge. This challenge presents a great opportunity to awaken - Awaken as individuals and as a collective. We are reminded what is truly important and have been given the opportunity to evaluate what is important to us, observing what we have come to prioritize and value with our time and money.
This is a time of rebirth. In order for the new to be born, the old must die.
What needs to be destroyed so that we begin to live through an awakened consciousness? What old paradigms and programming are we ready to release so that we might to begin living through our awakened heart? The heart of a warrior.
The warrior befriends death, for he knows that which is real can never die. We must throw into the fire what hinders our expansion, destroying all illusions of separateness, of ego and ignorance.
May we surrender our desire to control and return to the truth of who we are. What part of us must die so that we can resurrect our warrior-ship?
This is a time of initiation. Self-initiation. What rises from the ashes is Truth. Only Truth remains. This Truth is the very fabric of reality.
May we rise from the ashes awakened to our Truth, living beyond all fear and ignorance.
I’m feeling all of you right now….. all the mamas and papas.
Feeling everyone who is struggling to keep juggling all their ‘balls’ up in the air.
Even though the world has stopped, Life continues.
Before ‘Rona, these “balls” were known as CEO of your own business, Mother, night shift manager at a fast-food chain, security officer at the local hospital/bank/post office, Father, caretaker to your elderly parents, chef, full-time shuttle driver to your kids’ after school activities, assisting with homework, Spouse, housekeeper, gardener, handyman.... <endless list>
Maybe you were already struggling with the balls were juggling before all of this began.
And then the Universe the added more into the mix: balls known as full time educator, 24/7 care of your children, all-our-meals-are-at-home what’s-for-dinner chef, everyone at the house together all the time, both parents trying to work from home....
Maybe you lost your income due to the closures. Maybe you’re not sure how you’ll continue to pay the bills, keep the roof over your head, food in your bellies, lights on, health insurance paid for, necessary medications refilled....
Maybe your work has actually picked up and you are now busier than ever at the same time your responsibilities at home have changed.
Maybe you are a single parent and provider.
Maybe you have a partner that cannot help you bear this new load.
Maybe you have a supportive partnership and its still too much for you to bear.
Maybe you employ 50 people and you don’t know how you’re going to continue to pay them or the rent of your establishment.
Maybe you are a police officer/EMT/firefighter/banker/nurse/RT/OT/PT/physician/EVS or one of the other many roles that are called to continue to go into work during all of this. Your kids are now at home 24/7 but your employment depends on your ability to continue to show up to work.
Maybe you are the parent/spouse/sibling/daughter of someone with a compromised immune system and you live in fear of losing them to this virus.
Maybe your loved one was already really sick, fighting for their life before all this began.
Maybe you’ve lost someone you hold dear to you in the last two weeks and you haven’t been given the opportunity to grieve and be supported by community in a way you would have before all this began.
It is overwhelming. I know. I see you.
Take a breath.
Take another, really slow and deep.
This next part is important:
Know is okay to crumble under the weight of it all.
It’s okay to feel what you’re feeling.
Take another breath.
Know that you are capable of weathering all storms. ALL STORMS.
This will pass. I repeat, THIS WILL PASS. Everything here is impermanent.
You will rise through the ashes of this fire a stronger, more authentic version of yourself.
The fire only destroys that which needs to change.
Whenever you are doubting your capacity, I want you to reach out to me.
I see the brilliant, indestructible Being that you are.
I am here to remind you of your greatness.
While we are all isolated in our separate households, remember we are all in this together.
My point in writing all of this out is while our experiences are unique to us, there is a common thread arising: all of our lives are being impacted by this event. Every single soul here on the planet has been impacted by this experience.
Remind yourself of all the things in this moment that you have to be grateful for. Reach out to your dearest friend and remind them of their greatness. We rise together. No one is alone in this. We are here to support and encourage each other. You’ve got me. And, I’ve got you.
