Are you interested in being a meditation and or yoga teacher? I am excited to be part of a new teacher training offered by the highly experienced and gifted senior teachers at Inna Bliss. I’ll be leading the meditation teacher training.
Inna Bliss Yoga is delighted to present ‘Live Your Bliss’, a unique and transformative approach to Yoga Teacher Training for the devoted Modern Yogi.
We invite dedicated yogis to invest their heart and energy into this 3 month intensive training, including a 4 day luxe immersion retreat, as well as an ongoing small group mentoring program led by Riss Carlyon, Amy Wilkinson & Martin Collyer.
With an emphasis on contact hours, in depth study, practice and functional application of yoga in a modern studio setting, this course is designed to enrich your life, taking you deeper in your practice and empowering you with the skills, confidence and knowledge to rise up to your highest potential, both on and off the mat.
This one of kind training offers an inspiring fusion of postures, alignment, anatomical precepts, sequencing, philosophy, meditation, mantra, myth, mudra and the practice and magic of embodying and living your yoga blissFULLY. We acknowledge the traditional roots of yoga, and deliver the teachings in a practical and accessible way, encouraging you to embark upon your own journey of personal growth and conscious transformation.
If you are ready to take your practice to the next level, and are dedicated in immersing yourself in a time of growth & expansion, cultivating lasting change in your life, then this course is for you!
This is a course of 9 weekend sessions starting in August and ending in November.
Join us as we immerse in a deeply rejuvenating & soul inspiring week away in the paradise that is “The Shala Bali”, situated amongst rice fields and coconut palms in gorgeous Ubud, the cultural heart of Bali.
We will soak in the serene magic this beautiful island has to offer as we immerse in morning & afternoon yoga & meditation, within a stunning open air yoga shala, enjoy healthy & delicious local cuisine, indulge in pampering and self care rituals, laze, journal, explore, relax by the pool, and maybe sip a cocktail or two as the sun sets.
The focus will be around discovering and affirming what is it to truly embody Bliss in your body and in your life as we travel through each day with an intention to open to our truest, most authentic self. Off the Mat we will explore Bliss in nourishing and uplifting ways as we relax into the beauty, support & transformational healing that such a retreat and location ultimately brings to body, mind & spirit.
Each day will commence with sunrise mediation followed by a rejuvenating vinyasa class where we will expand and develop our practice throughout the duration of the retreat. Later in the afternoons, surrounded by the beauty &sounds of nature, you will experience the complete nurture of yin yoga & meditation to rejuvenate the body and mind.
Whilst there will be plenty of yoga & meditation on the retreat, we will also create lots of space for you to luxuriate, rest and rejuvenate with time for you to do as you please.
I N C L U S I O N S :
– 5 night twin or double shared accomodation at the luxurious Shala Bali in Ubud
– daily morning yoga & meditation classes
– afternoon release & restore yoga sessions
– 2 hour meditation workshop with Alison Potts, Innate Being
– daily fresh & organic vegetarian breakfast
– 3 dinners at some of Ubuds finest restaurants
– one 90min spa treatment at luxury spa in Ubud
– use of all yoga props – including blankets, straps and bolsters
– 10 class yoga pass to Inna Bliss to be used upon return from retreat to maintain your practice
– bali airport transfers
A T Y P I C A L D A Y :
6.30am Sunrise Meditation
7.00-7.30am Fruit & Juice
7.30-9.00am Morning Vinyasa class
9.30 Organic Buffet Breakfast
10.30-4.00pm Free time
(2.00pm Spa treatment at luxury spa in Ubud)
4.30pm Afternoon restorative / yin yoga practice or a Meditation
workshop
6.30pm Depart for dinner in Ubud restaurant
P R I C I N G :
$1599 – Standard Shared Room – Only 2 rooms left – either Single ($1950) or Twin share ($1599)
$1850 – Deluxe Shared Room – BOOKED OUT
For further retreat information & to register email us
Places are limited for this very special retreat, so we do advise you to book in early to avoid missing out.
These are the words of the maid Aibileen Clark, in Kathryn Stockett’s novel “The Help” to her little charge Mae Mobley. Every day Aibileen tells the toddler Mae these same words and gets her to repeat them back to her.
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Words are powerful. And the truth is more powerful still.
So it makes sense that words which reflect the deepest inviolable truth can deliver radical transformation.
Do you ever wake up in the morning fizzing with a low level charge of anxiety, wondering if you will be enough for the day ahead or whether you have been enough, ever.
Maybe that thought, that internal tremor of self doubt, quietly charges your day, so subtly you don’t notice it. Maybe it builds on itself, and escalates, creating a pressure cooker in your inner environment. And causes you to question yourself, limit yourself, push yourself – or to silence yourself and retreat from spaces in which you are desperate to dance with all your free expression.
Maybe this happens so subtly you don’t even notice it. Maybe you’ve just got used to living under its rule or with the struggle of having to press on past it in order to live the life you want to live. Maybe you do notice it, but it feels too overpowering to subdue.
If this rings true to you, please know you are not alone in this experience. You are in good company. Everyone has it. Everyone has times when they forget who they really are and need to be reminded. And Aibileen was wise to that. She knew as confident and carefree as the little girl in her care was, that she would one day be challenged by a conflicting viewpoint that might threaten to take her out of her innate free spirit. She also knew how quickly an external viewpoint can feel like an internal knowing.
Which it is not.
It just feels like knowing.
Especially if you have heard certain words over and over again, or told them to yourself regularly. They can start to feel like unquestionable reality.They can become encoded in you but they are not you.
How can we break the code and rewire things back to where they truly are?
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Aibileen cast these words around Mae Mobley like a spell of protection. A sacred reminder. A reminder so incandescent with the truth that any time Mae might stumble or wobble on her path and lose herself, the cell-memory of these very words would bring her home to herself.
This is the thing about words. And Aibeleen Clark knew this. They are not just symbols. They are not mere sounds. Words sparkle with energy and create powerful vibrations in our cells.
How quickly they can become a part of our being. Change the course of our day.
And here’s the good news, the great news. The amazing, liberating, life changing thing about words you need to know.
If words are so powerful as to seduce us into believing things that are false and misleading, and the truth is more powerful still, think about how powerful words which are true can be.
As powerful as it is possible for anything to be.
That expression “Speak the truth and the truth will set you free” is spot on.
And underneath all those layers of inherited or imposed self doubt and self judgement you know without a shred of doubt all you need to know.
That you are special. That you matter. That your unique soul deserves to shine.
You are more than enough. You are perfect. And your goodness flows through you like liquid gold.
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Whenever you need a reminder, find the words you already know.
Listen to your soul, to what your instincts and individuality tell you and start to notice the voices that challenge that so you can create uncontaminated space around your truth.
Breathe, tune into yourself. Listen to your soul and interpret what it tells you.
Cast those words like a spell of protection around you every day.
Every time you give yourself a benevolent, gentle reminder of what deep down you already know for sure – you are creating the ultimate medicine. Actual inner medicine that is redemptive and healing.
You have your own words, but let me tell you this.
You are more than enough.
You spill over with goodness.
You are valuable.
You are important to the world.
You can relax. You’ve got this.
In your deepest personal space, you already know.
In this way, in every moment, you can welcome yourself home.
When I was a little girl living in Oxford, England, we used to go for a fortnight’s holiday to France every year, staying in a simple villa near a beach. Our lives in the city morphed into days of salty water, bright, bright sunshine, smells of bakeries, peaches and French cigars. The difference in the language, the food, the supermarkets and even the types of cars people drove made everything feel so exotic and all of this contributed to a feeling of special atmosphere, of having been lifted out of ordinary life, that I felt even at the ages of eight or nine years old.
But it is the coming back that I remember. As we switched from driving on the right hand side of the road, crossed the time/space boundary of the ocean between Le Havre and Southampton and found ourselves suddenly, increasingly, in more and more familiar territory I would press my face against the car window and feel something so profound it stands out to this day.
I had a sense that while nothing had changed, everything had.
That while we were only away for a mere two weeks, something inside me had shifted and the territory around me, though familiar, seemed to have shifted too.
It is fascinating that whenever we leave the routine and familiarity of our day to day lives and for however short a period time, we experience a sense of life touching us differently. As human beings, we take the energy of life deep inside us every time we breathe, and this creates a particular atmosphere inside us.
The scenery is enhanced somehow – the sights, sounds and smells more vivid. We can experience different parts of ourselves when we are away from home – feel new things blossoming and old things asking to be released. The common components of many of our holidays are the same and they include feeling relaxed, having more rest, doing more of what we love – reading, enjoying special company and meals, playing – and having an emerging expanded sense of time and space in which we feel comfortably at home.
We often have more immediate access to sources of intuition and inspiration, guiding us to having thoughts about things we want to do in our lives or change in our lives, when we get home. In short, our creative ability is ignited.
And with all of that, in this easeful sense of pleasure, a strong belief, an understanding – a knowing – that we can embody these feelings and experiences consistently, not just while we are away. Because they are closer to our natural state. We can take them home with us and they can take us home to ourselves.
But how? And when we step out of alignment with our natural state, how do we find our way back?
The Tantric meditation tradition has shown me that there are numerous techniques and practices to relocate me in this natural body of love. From accessing imaginable ability (meditating with photos and music and tastes and memories of your holiday) to using cellular memory (which is like muscle memory) to keep the vital energies that have been awakened coursing through our beings daily. These practices are simple, life enhancing and joy bringing. They involve meditating with our real selves and understanding how the overall sense of authenticity and belonging we often feel when we are away are, counterintuitively, showing us where our home truly is.
Practice
Next time you are away from home and feeling a sense of wider perspective and deeper self connection, explore through a journal or your own thoughts and meditations what those feelings are and where you are getting them from. When our beings are relaxed, our real needs and desires – the callings of our soul- come forward. On holiday, we can understand better what we have been missing in our lives and begin to explore how we might recreate that at home.
Write a list of some of those life enhancing qualities you have discovered.
Your list, for instance, might look a little like this
While we can’t recreate the exact conditions of time away, once we identify the specific soul nourishing components, we can be more mindful of bringing them into our lives, even in bite sized pieces. It’s amazing how small gestures towards ourselves can turn on inner lights. For instance, just going to the library or bookshop and getting a good book and placing it on your bedside table so you know it’s there; taking an extra five minutes for yourself here and there; going to bed earlier, taking up a new activity you enjoyed on holiday, gazing at a beautiful view.
It’s an interesting thing and the truth that when we start giving ourselves the things that nourish and nurture us, the response in our being is so positive we are encouraged to give ourselves more and more. And the harvest we reap from planting all these little seeds is higher vitality, deeper meaning and a peaceful and joyful experience in precious lives.
Recently I’ve been spending time in schools as well as one to one with children, exploring their meditation space.
When it comes to meditation, kids know best.
Children are often so much closer to their natural, healthy, instinctive state than we are as adults, that they make wonderfully creative meditators and their meditation experience is rich.
It would be an easy trap to fall into, when offering children meditation, to offer it from the framework of what we as adults think they “need”. Usually this framework is more about what we feel we need. A lot of children therefore learn to meditate with quiet and stillness and focussing and this can work against their natural state. I don’t know about you, but most school aged kids I know are “in the office” 24/7. There can be a relentless vibration of being marched -or commanded – from task to task. “Get up, brush your teeth, put your clothes on, have breakfast, get your stuff together, get in the car…GET. In. THE. CAR”. And from this schedule into the school schedule – with a little time-capped “Play time”, and then into after school activities based around structured learning and performance – Martial Arts, Dance, Sport, and so on. And then homework, dinner, get-ready-for-bed and bedtime. And in the morning, it starts all over again.
How are we going to allow our children opportunities to get back into their own natural instinctive rhythms of being, doing and resting?
That’s where making sure their meditation space is a proper sanctuary for them – in other words, it is all about them and their needs, cravings, individuality, dreams and desires – is key.
Silence and sitting still and concentrating on breathing or following the teacher’s demonstrations of stretching, it seems to me, are the last things our children will be craving and won’t provide the opportunity to recover and restore that is needed. And if any of us aren’t getting what we crave in meditation, then meditating at all is a waste of our time and energy. More importantly, it could even be injurious – in the same way as forcing your body into a yoga pose that isn’t right for it would be.
We come to meditation to nourish our souls, restore our beings and come back into our bodies. If your soul had been subjugated to this amount of imposed-structure, wouldn’t it be craving a chance to be in a free space again of deep play and freedom to roam?
A child who has been sitting the majority of the day and supressing the natural urge to move that all children are intimate with probably isn’t going to want to sit. A child who has been asked to pay attention to a variety of externally imposed experiences might well be craving a spontaneous, individuality-affirming inner experience. Kids are close to their imaginative instincts. Daydreaming is refreshing, it takes us home, and about as soul nourishing as it gets.
Our children are great teachers for us on how to meditate. It’s a fun and rewarding space to explore with children and see what their ideas are. Here are five of the most popular among the children I work with.
What Do You Need?
At the start of any meditation time with children, cue them immediately that this is their space, their time and they are in their power here. Effectively, hand the baton back to them so that they know they can and should have their own experience in meditation – this is not another thing that’s going to be imposed on them from the outside – this is about them coming home to themselves. Let them know that they are already meditation experts and that when you were a child, you were too, but as an adult need some tips. Ask them” “if you could be anywhere right now, where would you be and what would you be doing?” This is a great pathway back into their beings. Ask them, when they are thinking and talking about their “perfect right now” what feelings of “things waking up” or “lights going on inside them” they have and in what parts of their bodies. This is a way of teaching children how to self tend.
2. Move & Groove
Get a few ideas from the kids on what music they like. Create a playlist and then get them to vote on which piece to play. Invite them to move in any way they feel…moved to! Moving or dancing to music can be a great way of getting bodily into one’s inner rhythms.
3. Shake It Out
Little do we know how much children’s emotions are responding, below the radar, deep inside them, to things which are happening in their daily experiences of life. Emotions like resentment, fear, frustration, disappointment and exasperation are all emotions expressed time and again by the children I work with. First, we bring the emotions into awareness – the healing state of attention alone. Then we affirm is good to know how you feel! Then we get them to shake it out in any way they like – with as much craziness as feels right to them. I have seen children just use their hands and arms and others use their whole body in a crazy dance. They love this one!
4. Voice It!
Taking it one step further. So often, children want to voice how they feel but are afraid that isn’t allowed. Energy then gets trapped in parts of their being to an uncomfortable degree – often their throats, chests or in their bellies. This is a practice to empower children’s voices, to release unhealthy blockages of emotion and to give the kids a chance to let it all out vocally. It is great to focus on feelings of vibrations when we use our voices in harmony with our feelings. Get them to notice words and feelings as they vibrate through their bodies. Singing, chanting, sighing, humming are all expressions of feeling the music of life. This is Mantra practice for kids.
5. Mythical Worlds
Probably the best gift we can give our children is simply to allow them their right to dream. And dream and dream and dream and dream. Dreaming is a deep instinct and like all our instincts, deeply connected to surviving and thriving. You can honour daydreaming by exploring together some of the great contributions made to our lives by “Dreamers” – artists, architects, songwriters, musicians, inventors, people who have transformed world situations from a dream of peace and harmony. We need to dream and we can’t be scrimpy with ourselves when it comes to dreamtime. After the movement and voice meditations, children will feel relaxed and in their beings – the perfect context for settling back into their inner world of adventure. You could even get them to tell stories of their day dream, or draw pictures afterwards, if they are inspired to share.
Above all: make it friendly, make it fun, make it about them, not you. Let them guide you, teach you, inspire you. I love this comment from a teacher whose class I went into recently: “They came so alive when you unlocked some things in them! It was wonderful to see them getting so much out of the session. Personally this session had a big impact on me, I went home and started painting again after a 5 year gap!”
Right now is a great time to enquire into your own heart and ask it what it needs and what no longer serves it, to live the way you want to live going forward. For example, would you like more peace in your life? What do you need in order to live a life of more peace and what do you need to cut away? This kind of pruning is natural and healthy and brings more growth…as any gardener knows.
Such a great example of how life animates us from within. How emotion moves us. Literally. Sometimes life seems so full it just wants to burst out of us. When we gesture, when we are animated in our speech, we are watching meaning come alive. Deep love, or deep sadness, move us to reaching for each other and embracing. Stirred by a song we love, we dance. In poignant moments, we may touch our own hearts.
Prana pulses in our physical beings.
Prana pulses in life.
Feeling and moving with prana connects us in a rhythm from inner to outer to inner.
Movement is a natural response to the rhythms of our inner life. It is also the body’s instinctive healing response. Movement invokes the prana body – energy flows, emotion moves in a rhythm with life.
Let life stir you all you want. Move it!
The beauty of meditation is once you have decided you are going to meditate, you don’t have to decide anything else. You can start to relax, let yourself be, and enjoy the journey.
Here are seven things to consider as you take your journey, to make your meditation as delicious and rewarding to you as it can be.
Be Yourself. In the words of the old song “There’s no one else to be.” You don’t have to strike a lotus – or any other – pose to be a great meditator. Meditation is rich when we cherish, rather than resisting, our instincts. This can be the best “me time” you ever have so make it work for you.
Be physically comfortable. Meditation is a time when the parasympathetic nervous system does its awesome job of rest, repair and re-set. It works best when we cooperate with this process – that means listening to your instinct to relax. Some people feel more relaxed when walking in nature or swimming in the ocean. Others feel most at one with themselves when they are dancing. You might like sitting but there are many who get sore sitting for long periods and prefer to lie down. Make yourself super comfortable and at ease so you are not “holding on” physically or resisting yourself in any way. We are not meant to be “enduring” in this space – meditation is where we come to heal suffering, not increase it.
Delight in your senses. Our senses are pathways to all our rich connections with life. Rather than trying to shut out background noise, actively bring the outer soundscape inside yourself. Keep your eyes open if you prefer and watch the clouds making shapes in the ever changing sky. The same with taste, touch, smell. Allow yourself to be absorbed in each sense as it arises. This way you can absorb and be nourished by the elixir of the universe through all the pathways you have been gifted with.
Greet everything that comes up with a loving heart, moment by moment. Think about when you invite an old friend into your home for a chat. Do you open the door partially, then ask them not to talk about things, do you make them feel uncomfortable? No of course you don’t. You want them to feel welcome, make them comfortable, and give them all your spacious attention so they can talk about all that is going on with them. Give your thoughts, feelings and sensations the same active, loving attention. They are coming into a healing space – open the doors of your inner temple wide and give them a positive greeting.
Make it delicious and compelling for yourself so you will want to come back again and again. “You know what you love.Go there” (Sutra 98. The Radiance Sutras. Dr Lorin Roche.) We all have experiences where life seems to resonate with us in very personal ways and thinking about what you love to do, where you love to be, whom and what you love are all ways to get straight into your own soul. This can be the life force infusing your meditation – spending a few breaths filling your being with this state of love – savouring your aliveness.
Practice not flinching as you feel any tension in your body and your mind. As we start to relax and release tension, we feel everything we have been tense about. This is a natural part of the healing rhythm of meditation. Let yourself feel fingers of fatigue, the buzz of stress, the tugging from any unwinding – this is all Prana (life force energy) moving freely through your body. As you feel it, you heal it – things shift and you other notes and nuances are free to come through in your spontaneous meditation.
Try tiny bite sized moments of meditation throughout your day. 21st century meditators find great efficacy in this. We are really busy people and while we crave the relief and release that comes from meditation, we often get put off by the idea of “having to find the time.” Five minutes, absorbed in a loving moment with yourself and life can be all it takes. Cloud watching. Letting your mind drift, unfettered. Cherishing a few feel-good breaths – big inhalations, relaxing sighs. Eating a few squares of dark chocolate slowly, luxuriating in texture, flavour and the awakening of your pleasure centres. Having your favourite daydream. Pausing to really listen to a song that stirs you deeply. A series of spontaneous meditative moments arising during the day can be as deeply nourishing – if not more so – than one long session.
There is a fabulous scene in the 1999 film “American Beauty” in which Annette Bening’s character Carolyn Burnham – an estate agent who feeds herself all day with positivity mantras from the self- help industry to mask her total lack of self esteem – has a brief, private meltdown after failing to make a sale.
Alone in an empty house, she starts to cry and as she cries, she berates herself for her “weakness”, physically slapping herself and screaming at herself over and over again, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut Up!”
Within seconds, she stops crying, dries her tears, smooths her clothes and walks back into her world where appearance and image are everything and fearful walls have been built around that image to protect it from anything as chaotic as real feeling and emotion.
Bening’s character is modelling the “inner shut up” – the dominatrix that demands you suck it up, push it down, pull yourself out of it…do whatever it takes to make sure your inner experiences go unregarded and your real self, completely disrespected. Using the double poison of self repression and happy-clappy, manufactured positivity, she ironically casts a spell of bitter unhappiness on herself and all the others in her life.
How would you react if I suggested to you that every day it is likely you are investing a lot of energy in repressing and silencing yourself?
That the exhaustion and fragmentation you feel at the end of the day comes not from what you have experienced that day, but from what you haven’t allowed yourself to feel?
It is so easy to push ourselves and our feelings and reactions aside unconsciously, to overlook ourselves or, even worse, deliberately slap ourselves when we begin to feel our own self-expression rising up within us. There are all kinds of reasons why we do this: we often encode values at a very long age – values we have been given by schools, churches or critical parenting. We may have a deep fear of being seen to be “weak” by those around us; fear of being our real selves and thinking it better to project an image of someone stronger, better, more successful.
The trouble is, it backfires. No one likes to be hit. No one likes to be told to shut up. Imagine someone in your life were doing that to you all day, every day. How would you feel?
Pretty downtrodden, sad, lost and wounded, I would think.
Also, that which goes down, must come up. And sometimes it comes up at times and in ways we wish it wouldn’t – when we lash out at loved ones, snap at our kids, when our bodies get sick from all the slap-wounds and all the blocked energy of repressed feelings.
Every time we say to ourselves “I am wrong to think this”, “I shouldn’t indulge in this feeling”, “I can’t think about this now”, “I need to get over this and get on with it”, we are giving ourselves the slap down. And it is true, there are times in life when it is necessary and appropriate to park things. If you are a doctor about to perform brain surgery, you want to keep your mind focussed on the task. If you are driving a car, you don’t want to be drifting off into warm, fuzzy daydreams, you want to have your eye on the road.
But at some point, there has to be time to catch up with yourself fully, to play the full inner drama, to relish in every emotional connection you have made to life.
This is how we human beings have been designed for healing. We are meant to digest, process, experience, feel and heal.
This is where meditation is our biggest support, our therapeutic space, our perfect “me time”, our birthright healing space.
The danger is, that we may have got so used to avoiding and shifting away from our thoughts and feelings, that we bring this unconscious attitude into meditation. We may feel automatic shame or guilt when we have thoughts we think we are “not supposed to have” while meditating. When intense feelings and emotions rise up, we may try to escape them by deliberately turning our attention away from them onto something else – be it the sound of Om or a vision of emptiness. Meditation can be used as medication – as an anaesthetic – just like any other drug or disinfectant.
All those myths about “mind chatter”, “monkey minds” and “inner stillness” can dangerously impede the natural rhythm and flow of meditation. The inner shut up can actually stop us from meditating and subvert meditation itself into a place for control and discipline – the inner slap.
Your meditation thrives in the sacred space of your most tender, most open and curious and compassionate attention.
It can take a little patience and self- tolerance to cultivate an inner embrace and welcome all of yourself in meditation, but let me tell you, it is worth everything. Imagine being liberated from that constant inner put down. Imagine being able to live your life in a relaxed, easeful flow, experiencing the most intense things in life and the most ordinary, with an expansive and life-affirming field of awareness. Imagine being IN your body and soul, not parted from them. Imagine being IN your life, not separate from it.
I take my “catch up time” in a series of brief pauses throughout the day. As a busy working mother, this is has great efficacy and potency for keeping in touch with myself, and feeling healthy and inspired. As soon as I wake up, I spend five minutes allowing whatever is calling my attention to come forward. I have a “bring it on” attitude. Fragments of dreams mix with the motor of the to-do-list and hum in and out of concerns, tensions, anticipation and desires. It is like tuning up an engine before you start the car. I also bring in my own spiritual practices – prayers and protections for me and my loved ones. During the day, I can take breaks to pause and feel the touch of life on me. Anything from a moment’s trance or daydream to simply enjoying the touch of sunlight on my skin, the sound of bird calls or a song I like, the taste of my favourite tea.
If you feel you only have time to “come together with yourself” – to meditate – once in your day, my top tip is to make it at that time you transition from your action phase into your resting-and-unwinding phase. For many people, this means when you enter your home (or your commuter train or your walk to your house) after your day at work. Sit or lie somewhere alone, or take a walk, and begin to feel your whole being relax. As tension unwinds from you, you will feel it, so let it be felt fully. Remnants of unfinished conversations, moments of success and triumph, concerns, insights, plans – let them all come out to play and dance, process, communicate, meet and dissolve. Your nervous system loves this. It is in this way, your exquisitely wired inner healing system does its work. And let me tell you, it is worth the sacrifice your loved ones may need to make to wait five or ten minutes to tell you about THEIR days, for you to spend time catching up with yours. That way, everyone is happy and no one gets asked to shut up.
For more on meditations to suit the rhythm of your day, I recommend Dr Lorin Roche’s wonderful little book “Meditation 24-7”
You can download glorious, short guided meditations from this book, here: https://radiance-sutras.bandcamp.com/album/meditation-24-7
If you are interested in learning more about a delicious practice in which you can reunite with yourself at the deepest soul-level and which is massively practical for modern lives as well as deeply spiritual, my next Instinctive Meditation Workshop is in Brisbane on 29th August. More info here https://www.facebook.com/events/1023100621043196/
Thank you to my mentor Dr Lorin Roche for alerting me to this scene from American Beauty and the great discussion which followed.
