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Posts tagged with “meditation”

Letting Go of the Guilt That Keeps You Chained to the Past

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“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything—anger, guilt, or possessions—we cannot be free.”  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

One night after my nine-year-old son had just gone to bed, he asked me if I would lay with him, as he was scared. I was getting ready for a busy week and was tired, so I replied, “No, you’re fine. Go to sleep.”

When he died the following afternoon after being hit by a car, I remembered what he’d asked me. The guilt that followed me from that …

Mindful in May: Global Meditation Campaign

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Today’s video is more than a cute cartoon (though I find it adorable!)–it’s an introduction to a global meditation campaign for social good.

Mindful in May is a one month online meditation campaign delivered to your inbox daily in May, to motivate you to bring a new healthy habit into your life, while raising money to help nearly one billion people on the planet who struggle daily without access to clean, safe drinking water.

Starting on May 1st, participants will commit to regular meditation through a mindfulness program delivered by daily e-newsletters. This will include weekly guided meditation downloads, cutting …

What to Do When You Feel Caged: The Key to Lasting Freedom

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“Wherever you go, there you are.” ~Confucius

Everything I do is about living and sharing freedom. But what is freedom anyway?

To understand freedom, it’s helpful to understand its opposite. The opposite of freedom is feeling caged, constricted, and ruled by guidelines you don’t believe in.

For many people, their job feels like jail. For some people, their community feels like jail. For others, school feels like jail.

I’ve been in all those jails. And for the most part, I was in those jails because I didn’t know there was an alternative. Now that I know the alternative, I have …

A Letter from Your Future Self

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“The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now.” ~Robert G. Ingersoll

Dear Past Me,

Remember that day when you thought all was lost? When you thought there was barely any point in carrying on?

The bank account was dangerously low.

You were arguing with everyone close to you.

The roof was leaking.

It felt like everything was a struggle and the so-called abundance of the Universe was nowhere to be seen.

You were going over the mistakes you’d made.

The money you had lost.

The opportunities you had missed.

You were going over angry …

Forming Healthy Habits: 3 Tiny Choices That Create Huge Change

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“It is better to make many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.” ~Proverb

Seven years ago I was a sedentary, over-caffeinated, unmindful, somewhat neurotic meat-eater with a bit of a drinking problem. My meals came out of boxes with chemical compounds for ingredients and had little in the way of anything that grew outside or came from a field.

I made excuses for not exercising, but in reality I was so insecure that I didn’t think I was strong enough to be athletic. I was afraid of making an …

Meditation Remixed: Movies, Pop Culture, and Inner Peace

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DJ/VJ and Audio Visual Artist Brett Belcastro created an awesome remix video using over 80 scenes from movies and TV shows to entertain and inspire viewers to find peace within their minds. And entertain and inspire it does!

As a huge movie buff, I appreciate how Brett used pop culture to share the power and importance of meditation.

From the Vimeo page:

“The idea for this video remix came to mind about a year ago while I was listening to a guided meditation by the Deepak Chopra. I was so inspired after attending his ‘Seduction of Spirit’ seminar this …

5 Surprising Things I Learned During a Year of Silence

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“Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept things as they are.” ~Karen Maezen Miller

Four years ago I spent the better part of a year being silent.

A friend had told me that in silence, the bits of you that need healing heal themselves. He was talking about the bits of me that had pushed me until I was sick and depressed, too anxious to answer the door.

I call it my year of silence, but it was more like a year of “doing nothing” because I wasn’t silently reading a book or silently reorganizing my cutlery drawer; I was …

7 Benefits of a Surprisingly Simple Meditation Technique

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“Our way to practice is one step at a time, one breath at a time.” ~Shunryu Suzuki

I blinked my eyes, wiggled my toes, and carefully heaved my right foot out from under me. It had gone completely numb after twenty minutes of meditation. I prodded it tentatively.

“The idea is to be able to meditate wherever you are,” our teacher said, pouring out some green tea as we stretched, “to be really present in whatever it is you are doing—cutting the lawn, doing the dishes, whatever it is. To simply breathe in…and out…and just be.”

“You don’t have …

3 Powerful Insights About Finding Yourself and Creating Change

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“Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.” ~Osho

When you’re on a spiritual quest in the chaotic outlying suburbs of Bangkok, and you’re having a complete and utter meltdown about your ability to face your inner demons and greatest life fears, where should you turn?

Well, I feel well qualified to answer this question, having been in that exact situation!

Where I turned was a peaceful little Buddhist temple, and more specifically a gentle and elderly monk named Yut.

Don’t be deceived by the “gentle and elderly” description, however, for Yut was also …

5 Meditation Tips for People Who Don’t (Yet) Like to Meditate

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“Don’t wait for your feelings to change to take the action. Take the action and your feelings will change.” ~Barbara Baron

I own a series of CDs called “Classical Music for People Who Hate Classical Music.” We know we should like and listen to classical music—they’re the classics after all! But when I actually find time to listen to music, I reach for Mumford & Sons, not Mozart.

Some of us have a similar relationship with meditation.

We know we should meditate—it has so many mental, emotional, and physical benefits, and who couldn’t use a bit of slowing down in …

5 Ways Meditation Can Improve Your Life and Make You Happier

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“If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.” ~Lao Tzu

For most of my life I had the overwhelming feeling that I was lacking something. I felt like I was not good enough, smart enough, or pretty enough.

I was nothing but an unattractive, chubby girl of little worth. In my late twenties I formed a huge crush that changed my life, for the worse, or so I thought. Against my will, I developed an unbelievable attraction to women. I was horrified!

Being gay was the cherry on top of my pile of …

5 Ways to Turn Simple Daily Tasks into Meaningful Rituals

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“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ~ Robert Brault

“Routine” can seem like a dirty word; we can get stuck repeating the same actions over and over again and feel like slaves to our habits.

Yet there are some things we simply cannot get around—sleeping, waking, eating, working, and engaging with others. There are also repetitions that we embrace as rituals—Friday afternoon with its promise of the weekend, weekly religious observances, a favorite TV show even.

What if we could turn regular, seemingly mundane daily activities into …

Interview & Book Giveaway: Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi

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The Winners:

Yoga, road trips, and personal stories that border on TMI—these are all things I enjoy, which might explain why I was drawn to Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi.

In this engaging self-help memoir, author and yoga teacher Brian Leaf shares his experiences healing Colitis and ADD through yoga.

Including anecdotes from a cross-country journey during which he tried many different studios, Brian provides a window into his …

3 Things Panic Attacks Don’t Want You To Know

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“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle 

Sunday started out with a panic attack.

It wasn’t little butterflies in the stomach like right before a first kiss. It wasn’t the feeling of anticipation as a rollercoaster slowly climbs the big hill before the drop.

This panic attack felt like I was about to jump off a cliff, while being chased by clowns. Not cute clowns—scary ones. The kind of clowns that were in the paintings at my pediatrician’s office when I was a kid. The clowns that smiled at me smugly when I was getting …

Death and Grieving: Breathing Through the Feeling of Loss

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“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” ~Dr. Seuss

The color brown has special significance to me; it’s the color of the robes that my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh and the monastics wear. It’s the color of my children’s eyes. It’s the color of the soil I like to dig in and plant things. It’s the color of my dog, Jake’s, paws and eyes and eyebrows

My husband came home today with a chocolaty brown gift bag. I could practically smell chocolate just looking at it. I find the color brown to be so comforting, so…grounding—and sometimes so …

Giveaway and Interview: Seeing, Knowing, Being by John Greer

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Regardless of our individual beliefs, we all want to feel a sense of wholeness to experience the present moment with peace and connection.

It’s the foundation of spiritual practice, however we define that individually: We want to stop feeling a need to fix ourselves, and instead awaken to the infinite beauty of who we already are.

In his powerful new book Seeing, Knowing, Being, meditation teacher John …

5 Meditation Myths and the Benefits of Starting Today

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“Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept things as they are.” ~Karen Maezen Miller

My personal rock-bottom wake-up call came a few years ago when, despite having achieved all of my personal and business goals, I found that I still wasn’t content or experiencing peace of mind.

Feeling frustrated, I realized that I could no longer rely on my future to fulfill me. I knew continuing to work so hard to accomplish bigger and better goals wasn’t going to relieve my eternal itch that there must be more to life than this.

To make matters worse, my increasing …

Giveaway and Interview: Learning to Breathe by Priscilla Warner

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The Winners:

In the past decade, I have read more than my fair share of self-help books.

Though I’ve enjoyed the ones with countless action steps and workbook sheets to change my life, I’ve felt the most moved and inspired by honest, personal stories of overcoming adversity.

That’s how I felt in reading Priscilla Warner’s brave book, Learning to Breathe—like I was seeing straight into the heart of someone else …

Giveaway and Author Interview: The Misleading Mind

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The Winners:

Have you ever felt like your mind was controlling you, dragging you along for a persistently bumpy ride?

Research shows the majority of us feel this way, but the good news is that we can do something about—and Karuna Cayton’s book The Misleading Mind teaches us how.

A psychotherapist and practicing Buddhist, Karuna has written an easily digestible book that offers solutions to the mental anguish we often perpetuate …

Conscious Healing: The Power of Mindfulness and Meditation

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“Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

One morning I woke up and noticed a few strange red bumps on my arms—bug bites, I thought.

Then, the next day, more bumps. Within one full week, my skin went from being clear and tan to being covered with red, scaly teardrop spots all over my body, including my face.

My self-esteem and confidence were thrown out the window; my comfort zone reduced to about the size of a prisoner’s cell.

I went to the dermatologist, avoiding any possible eye contact or bright office lights, and made my way into …