- anatomy
- answers
- ashtanga yoga
- assumptions
- author
- balanced life
- beauty
- biohacking
- books
- brain
- calm
- change
- communication
- confidence
- content strategy
- copywriting standards
- creative expression
- creativity
- curation
- darkness
- desktop publishing
- distraction
- dreams
- embrace mystery
- emotion
- emotional healing
- encouragement
- energy
- exercise
- fears
- focus
- freedom
- gestures
- happiness
- head injury
- healing the body
- healthy mind
- heart
- hiking
- holistic healing
- hormones
- humor
- ideas
- impression
- inner dialog
- inner wisdom
- intellect
- journey
- legal
- letting go
- life change
- life-saving
- listening
- love
- marketing
- meant to be
- medical
- meditation
- memory
- mindful
- mountain
- my secret innuendo®
- nervous system
- nutrition
- opposites
- organization
- patience
- peace
- perseverance
- physical healing
- poetry
- productivity
- professional
- psychology
- relationships
- relaxation
- secret
- sense of self
- silence
- skincare
- sleep
- spirituality
- surrender
- synchronicity
- technology
- thoughts
- time
- transformation
- transitions
- trusting
- unconscious
- undefined
- unknown
- vibrant
- wholeness
- wine
- words
- writer's block
- writing challenge
- yoga
Healing with Ashtanga: Modulating stress on autopilot
This time of year brings up stress. It’s not always in real time, but rather in remembering…
Not just in the mind, but in the nervous system and in the tissues. As the mornings are darker, the unconscious becomes brighter, and all that is held inside me comes alive in a new way. This shows up as inklings of thought that generate more depth, or sometimes a standstill—a pause too long—that highlights a blockage.
How to identify and get past the stagnant feeling where words or feelings are numbed? Move my body! My Ashtanga yoga practice has been my savior through the years.
Left Brain wrote this | Right Brain approved it
In 2012 I wrote about my yoga brain. Fourteen years later I’ve realized I don’t have just one brain state. I have a whole house of them. There’s a yoga brain and a hiking brain. There’s a writing brain, a romance brain and a networking brain that counts the seconds until it can go home. There’s even a kitty brain. Each room has its own mix of analysis and flow, and I’ve found that the best moments happen in the doorways between them. Wander through with me.
(Fair warning: my left brain drew the floor plan, so everything is labeled)
Are you nervous? Ashtanga yoga cleanses the nervous system (2nd edition 10 years later)
It’s good to be proactive and cleanse your nervous system. Ashtanga yoga is one way to do this. I have proof.
I’ve practiced all kinds of yoga through three decades—various methods such as Iyengar, Ashtanga, Vinyasa Flow, Yin—to increase strength and flexibility, to lower stress, and to gain mental and spiritual clarity. I’ve also done it at times just to get out of the house; to soothe an unknown entity rising up inside me, I transported myself to yoga class at the soonest possible opportunity because I had to.
Distraction of emotional trauma: Through undischarged residual energy
I am distracted often. Yes, that gets in my way when I know I’ll disappoint someone if I don’t accomplish a certain goal. Sometimes that someone is myself.
Yet, with my life of freedom—more so, the art of distraction itself—I wouldn’t have it any other way. There is a beauty and inherent intelligence in distraction.
Why does a distracted mind cause anxiety? (My original version of this article was 12 years ago during my graduate studies after the Yoga and Psyche Conference).
Practicing confidence: A metaphorical house
I’ve come alive in some areas that surprised me but that emerged as I was writing—with a real pen in my hand into a mole skin journal; I find special powers in heavy ink pens.
I invited my insecurities and desires to rise up through the prompts.
My favorite is about a room in a metaphorical house representing my life. Mine is the tiniest house of time, which is the subtitle to my book I just published.
Psychology of allowing people in
I’m in a networking group, and with that comes lots of education on marketing yourself. What I thought was natural for me has risen to the surface in a new form, now reaching out for my attention.
There is a lot of discernment required in deciding who you are in the face of the public. Your identity—the one you feel comfortable articulating to others—matters.
It’s important for me to connect with people who know how to listen, know how to pause…
On recovery and intuition
David Whyte, the writer, pops into my Inbox from time to time. Normally, his messages set the stage for great introspection. Here’s the latest:
Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. Rest is the essence of giving and receiving; an act of remembering, imaginatively and intellectually, but also psychologically and physically. To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavour, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals.
I love my Full-spectrum Infrared Sauna
The benefits include increased metabolism, aid in recovery from muscle aches and pains, immune support as the heat accelerates the immune response, detoxification as blood circulation increases and works together with the stimulated sweat glands, reduction in cellulite, ease in joint pain and stiffness, stress reduction and skin improvements. ⠀
Why Do I Write? Day 1 of 30 of Write Yourself Alive writing challenge
I write because I want to get in touch with my heart. There is a longing that rises to the surface through my fingertips, when I'm feeling safe to let it out. That expression allows me to be those expressed words, when before I was shielding myself from being me.
Quantum physics - Day 26 of 30 day writing challenge
I'm not a scholar but I love quantum physics. I dreamed about it last night somehow and then saw someone post about the subject today (which I hardly ever see). One of my favorite books is The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra.
Absorbing vulnerability through humor - Day 14 of 30 day writing challenge
I had a dream last night of a cave where I've got giant tongs to reach into the cave and pull out stuff that needs to go. I pulled out one big black thing with tentacles that I wanted to throw away quickly without any of it touching me. I said, "My Vulnerability".
Behind the eyes of a writer™: A series, part sixteen
In between the letters is a place. To imagine what occurs—as a word is formed, as a choice is made—is to be a step closer to being in that space.
Sentences are made of more than words. Ideas, described. Pauses, illuminated.
Let your mind wander to your creative insights
I have always asserted that it cannot be confined to a box, to a timeframe or to a large conference room filled with eager brainstormers. Creative insight does not just come to most people spontaneously—except for maybe standup comedians. It requires what I call a certain zone
Behind the eyes of a writer™: A series, part ten
Your tapestry speaks of histories, of memories, and of dreams once lived yet maybe not. You are a heart that I have won. Even my nervous and tender sentences do not put a dent in your undying craze over me.
Embracing illness: Holistic healing process
I am happy for the miracles that occur in healing sometimes. Surreal, yet not. For instance, it is known in some cancer patients with x months left to live—as deemed by their doctors—that to embrace their illness by leading a life full of bliss for the last months of life is to allow cancers go into remission.
Pensive thoughts show on our face, saying way more than we think
"It happens whenever you look at me," he says of my morning look.
Feel yourself at peace: Coming into wholeness
What does that mean to come into wholeness? Imagine yourself at peace, in love and at one with your path in life, and then you will know the answer.
Learning to talk to yourself: Your internal dialogs
It's not easy, but possible to speak internally to another person as if you have direct access to each other's thoughts. You can be fueled by the language that speaks to you inside your mind. This dialog can be a way for you to make things right simply within your mind with certain people.
Am I moving toward or moving away?
In my search for wholeness, I get a cue as to what I avoid in life when I watch what it is I try to withhold from others in my conversations. These are the truths which I hide even from myself, since I clearly lack confidence to orate them. The fear is controlled by my unconscious. These are the inner truths that point to my fear of being who I truly am.
Letting go: It's an art to speak to your unconscious
The unconscious is where we are driven. In the same way that most of an iceberg is actually underwater, the largest part of our psyche is the unconscious—most is the "shadow."