30 Day Meditation Challenge [Begins Nov 1!]

A 30 day Meditation Challenge?! Who's with me?!!

When: Nov 1 - 30, 2013
Where: Wherever (or at home in a designated spot)
Time: Whenever. Same time everyday (or first thing in the morning/last thing at night)
How Long:  15min (or longer)

Part of the challenge is to meditate and then write a short reflection on the experience. 15 minutes of meditation followed by 5 minutes of writing.

Sign up: Send me an email, like/friend me, and join the 30 Day Meditation Challenge group for inspiration, motivation, and encouragement.

Yeah.

I Dare You

Ann Voskamp has a flair for the dramatic. So much so that the first time I attempted to read One Thousand Gifts, I couldn't get past the first few pages were she recounted the events of her baby sister's death. I had to put the book down and away. So this time, I skipped the first few pages. The premise of the book is the author's spiritual journey to find Joy. Joy through the recognition and gratitude for Gods gifts. A dare to write down 1000 things that she is grateful for. Ann Voskamp is a Mennonite farmer's wife and mother of six living in Ontario, Canada. Her days are filled with all the details (tedious, frustrating, unfulfilling, deep, emotional, rich) of that kind of life. She id deeply spiritual and wrestles with her faith in a way that is inspiringly authentic. Here is an excerpt.

Being a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully enetering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. Nut a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing .. Through all that haste i thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.

I speak to God: I don't really want more time, I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done - yesterday. In the beep and blink of the 21st century, with it "live in the moment" buzz phrase that none of the whirl-weary seem to know how to do.

Who actually knows how to take time and live with soul and body and God all in sync? Who actually knows how to take time and live with soul and body and God all in sync?

To have the time to grab the jacket off the hook and time to go out to all air and sky and green and time to wonder at all of them in all this light, this time refracting in prism.

I just want time to do my one life well.  I just want time to do my one life well.

The most important I think I got from this time reading was a challenge to be grateful, to practice gratitude. Because in gratitude lies the spark of Joy - and I want Joy! Do you? I think I'm going to dare myself to write down 1000 gifts ... I will keep you posted.

1. Brendan's giggle 2. Sunshine 3. Fall changes 4. Sitting on "Mommy's wap" 5. The way he says lap

Get One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp or find out more via her website.

Why Yoga?

For me, yoga is the key that brings my life into harmony. It's the necessary discipline and sacrifice I need to make to keep my life flowing. With out this discipline, I find myself less able to cope, more afraid, more self-critical, and not as happy. Yoga has the same effect a glass of wine has on my dinner and cooking experience, the same effect great sex has on a date with my husband, the same effect laughter has on my child. Yet, yoga is something  that comes from within. The other wonderful experiences are all external, but for yoga all I need is my willingness to be, breath, move and feel. This year, much about my journey (as so applicable for this time of year) is a drawing inward - a movement away from the external roads to happiness and towards a truer, deeper, long-lasting satisfaction. I want to know, once and for all, what true happiness is, and I have everything I need for that journey right now. The following is an excerpt from Erich Schiffman's book Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness.

The first time I saw someone practicing yoga I had mixed feelings. On the one hand I was attracted, there being something profoundly right about what I was seeing. On the other hand there was a mysterious, exotic, and ancient air about it that made me nervous. I had never seen anything like it before. It seemed powerful, almost bizarre. The man I was watching obviously knew what he was doing, and he seemed to have access to a hidden reservoir of energy. Questions like "Why in the world?" and "What for" raced through my mind. Reactions like "so what", "crazy", and "fanatic" filtered through and yet I was deeply impressed. I wanted to know what twisting and bending your body coud have anything remotely to do with God, life, meaning, or happiness. What was yoga all about? What relationship could it possibly have with anything? With my life, my perceived problems, global issues, despair, hopelessness, the alleviation of suffering, making a difference, enlightenment... ? And like many things in life, we can never know in advance the full impact something is going to have on us. Reasons for our initial involvement may pale and lose importance as we move deeper. We change and learn, often in unexpected ways. The simple perspective I have come up with, through all the years and thousands of hours of practicing yoga and meditation since that first exposure, is that yoga makes you feel good. It's relaxing. It's energizing. It's strengthening. You feel better at the end of a session than before you began, and life runs more smoothly when you maintain a consistent discipline than when you don't. Yoga enhances your experience of life. It changes your perspective. You thereby find yourself spontaneously embracing a larger, more accurate conception of who you are, how life works, and what God is. You start seeing things differently, with less distortion - which results in more peace of mind, better health, more enthusiasm of life, and an ever-growing authentic sense of inner well-being. As you practice yoga and mediation regularly, this subtle sense of feeling good gradually becomes so pervasive, so natural and genuine, so much a part of you that it carries over into the whole of your life. And in doing so it helps clarify your deepest longings, motivation, and aspirations, thereby restoring optimism, hope, meaning, and purpose to life. -Erich Schiffman, Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness

Slow down

Slow down! I see that sign when I'm driving through neighborhoods and near schools all the time. Each time it makes me pause and remember to yes, slow down. Carl Honore gives a compelling argument for slowing down and it's benefits: eat better, make love better, exercise better, work better, live better.  He compares the fast life with the good life. Valuable talk on the power of slow.

[ted id=73]

People who inspire me [my muses]

There a so many people who inspire me. You inspire me! These women and men have inspired a change in my life in one-way-or-another, do inspiring things, have inspiring style or they just seem like lovely inspired people. You can't always pick your muses, they usually just find you. This list is ever expanding ...

Amanda Stuermer Amy Ipolliti Audrey Hepburn Brene Brown Bill Plotkin Cassondra Schindler Christy Turlington-Burns Elena Brower Elizabeth Gilbert Gwyneth Paltrow Kas & Moni Mueller Kristin Cooper-Gulak Oprah Rolf Gates Sabine Keagy Sean Hayes Shanan Kelley Shiva Rea Stephen Cope