CONSISTENCY is KEY

This week I pray for CONSISTENCY.  

Over the years - I have added so many new hahahabits in my life.  The only way I know how to do this is to show up and take a baby step in a new direction and then repeat and repeat and repeat.

I did the same thing when I wanted to lose weight.  I started walking.  Walking out the door of my house and walking to the end of the block and then back home again.  At first, I would go towards the right when I walked out my door.  I would walk past 4 houses to the stop sign and then turn back and walk home.  I did this consistently every day (thahahahank you Susan Powter and Stop the Insanity) for a week.   The following day, I turned left and walked past 6 houses to get to another stop sign.  I did this consistently for a week.   Those were my first two weeks of walking.   Daily - short and sweet - action steps.  By the end of week 2, I was feeling really good.   And my pants were looser.

I learned that it didn't matter how long I walked each day RATHER that I walked daily.  Once I became consistent with my walking everything else fell into place.  Like increasing my capacity to breathe and stamina.  On week 3, I went past the stop sign and continued up the block.  Crossing the street and walking by 7 more houses.  Now, all these years later, I've upped my game.  I no longer count houses.   I measure miles.  I've also lost 80 pounds and went from big boned to petite.

This is how I learn to do things.   I decide to try something.  I show up.  I do it once.  I do it again.  I do it a third time and I start to build muscle memory.  It gets easier to do.   Over the years, this CONSISTENCY formula has served me well.    It's how I became hooked on Pilates.  It's how I began to meditate.    It's how I became a yogini.

 

This is how our Laughter Yoga started.  I showed up once and then again and then again and here we are seven years later - going strong and with a powerful haha muscle.   

What I've noticed over the years are these 3 STEPS to making CONSISTENCY work:

1.    THINK IT - set my mind to something 

2.    DO IT - just do it - whatever I committed to in my mind, I apply into my life - for 5-15 minutes

3.    REPEAT - woohoo - done it once, now do it again

These 3 steps move me into ACTION where my thoughts become my new reality.

This week, I pray for CONSISTENCY in other areas of my life - relationships with people, art and creativity.  I pray for the COMMITMENT to make these priorities and to follow through until the muscle memory builds and makes it easy.  

Attitude of Gratitude

Gratitude is a powerful transformative practice.  It creates all sorts of abundance and hahahappiness in my life.  It also shifts my energy in subtle, and OMazing ways.  

Psychologists Robert Emmons of U.C. Davis and Michael McCullough of the University of Miami found that practicing gratitude can actually improve our emotional and physical well-being.

Their ongoing Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness found that people who keep weekly gratitude journals had fewer physical symptoms, exercised more, had a better outlook on life and were more likely to reach their goals.

Truth:    WHAT WE FOCUS ON, WE GET MORE OF
It’s true.  I have been practicing gratitude since I first heard Oprah share her practice of writing down 5 things every day.  This daily practice has helped me shift my focus to what is really good in my life. 

In the beginning, I started small.  Grateful for my breath.  Grateful for my legs that walk me to the bathroom.  Grateful for my bowels that release and empty.  Grateful for this new day and whatever gifts it brings.

It helped me shift my perspective. I used to notice the clouds first before seeing the vast blue sky.

I notice that when I take a few moments to remember and record my gratitude, it gives me the opportunity to digest and appreciate my life.

Gratitude creates changes at the emotional and mental levels, and also changes my body at a cellular level.  

Truth:  GRATITUDE IS A MULTI SENSORY EXPERIENCE
Gratitude is more than just something I write down or say.  It’s something I feel.  It’s a sensation of joy and awe that I get deep within whey I see the sunrise and paint her colors across the sky.  It’s a feeling of happiness that washes through me when the wind blows and a fresh breeze cools the sweat on my brow.  It’s the fabulous smell of a fresh peeled orange in the morning that makes my nose wrinkle with delight.  It’s the pleasure I get from wrapping soft cotton modal fabric onto my.  It’s how my heart softens as I touch my cat’s fur and hear her purr.

Using my senses to experience gratitude heightens the experience.  It fills my reservoir of delightful and delicious experiences I can draw upon in my memory bank.

Gratitude opens the gates of tenderness - and lets my heart feel even deeper.  Each day that I practice gratitude, I feel connected to the Earth, to people I meet, and to the flow of life.

Truth:  GRATITUDE IS A MUSCLE
Gratitude - saying thank you on the INside and out - to each and every thing that comes my way, no matter what it looks like when I receive it.  

When I get lost in my thoughts or lose my focus, I stop and breathe and go into gratitude - counting my blessings and thanking the Universe for all the chaHAhallenges and opportunities in my life to love.  

The Universe works in mysterious ways and what I see is not always what is.   Being in gratitude allows me to chaHAhange my perspective - see things differently or just be in appreciation for my life right now.

I flex and strengthen this muscle daily.  I stretch the muscle by writing in my journal.  I work it out by putting my gratitude on paper and writing thank you notes or doing a Act of Random Kindness (ARK).   I expand my muscle by knocking on a neighbor's door to sit and chat or calling a friend and just listening.  I cultivate gratitude by sitting in the grass and taking in the nature that surrounds me - hugging a tree and being One with my surroundings.

Here are 3 ways to build this GRATITUDE muscle:

1. Practice even when you don't feel like it. 

"One of the mistakes people often make in our culture is thinking you have to feel grateful to practice gratitude," says psychologist Miriam Greenspan, author of Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair.  

Whatever we can find to focus on as a prayer of gratitude – I’m still breathing, I have a roof over my head, I have friends I can reach out to, the sun is shining – shifts our body’s experience to the light, where LOVE resides.

A Gratitude Practice rewires our brain to look for good things.  The body remembers the sensation of searching for blessings and the feeling of joy and peace it brings.  Doing the same practice day after day hardwires the experience into long term muscle memory.  It becomes something you choose to do to start your day in a positive way

2. Thank you. 

Bless everything and everyone you see.  No matter what it seems like on the surface.  The simple practice of saying these two words – under my breath or out loud – has a way of chahahanging a situation and bringing LOVE into the picture.   These two simple words – saying them, thinking them, feeling them – raises our Abundance Consciousness. 

3. Imagine what life would be like WITHOUT a certain blessing in our life.

Imagine not having hands or eyes or the use of our feet.  Sometimes, I take for granted that which most needs to be appreciated.  I forget about the blessings of living in Florida and the wonderful weather we experience.  I forget about the OMazing trees in my neighborhood and the wildlife that inhabits it.

For me, I am blessed to have my parents still living and in my life.  I am blessed to be able to breathe with my own two lungs.   I am blessed to be typing this right now so I can shahahare with you what I know to be true for me.

Gratitude reminds me that we are all One - spiritual beings having a human experience on this Heaven on Earth right here right now.

All is very good, very good, yay – as I pray for Gratitude, my Attitude gains Altitude.

                      

Art of Doing NO Thing

 

  

Rest and laughter are the most 

spiritual and subversive acts of all.    

Laugh, rest, slow down.

                             

 -  Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

I've spent years perfecting the Art of Doing No Thing - one of the most difficult things I've ever had to learn to be.

First, I thought doing no thing was taking a day off work and lounging around the house - watching TV, reading a book, catching up on household chores.... I realized I was still doing something.   

I incorporated napping into my schedule.  I would lay there on my bed and while my body was at rest, my mind was running thousands of miles an hour.  Feeling guilty for all the things I should be doing. Not giving myself permission to just be.

I incorporated guided meditations during naptime - listening to someone's voice take me on a journey of the inner recesses of my mind - focusing on a mantra and tuning into the musical soundwaves.  Gradually, my mind slowed down.  Emptied out a little bit.  I realized that I didn't need to sleep.  I just needed to be still.

My dog encouraged me to go outside.  We would sit on the grass doing no thing - listening to the wind blow.  Feet naked in the ground - watching the tree branches sway.  When thoughts would come up, I would watch them and bid them peace and farewell.  Taking a deep breath and focusing on my environment - the luscious grass, the cool earth, the trees providing me with shade.

Laying back on the ground, watching the clouds dance.  Turning over on my stomach, observing the ants marching up and down grass stalks. A whole ecosystem below me - holding me up and providing me comfort.  Connecting my nature to Mother Nature.  It felt so peaceful and energizing.

I realized that slowing down and resting gave me more energy and stamina when I shifted into being a human doing again.

I began to seek other ways to find this delicious peace of resting - this pleasureful sensation of feeling loose and present in my body - relaxed yet aware.

I found it in laughter.   When I have a good laugh, it's like I shaHAhake all my cells up and down.  Everything jiggle and joggles and gets moved about.   A delicious chaHAhaos of breath erupts resulting in peace and pandemonium within.   

In the beginning, to have a good laugh laugh, I watched funny movies or listened to a comedian.  While that helped, it kept my mind going with all sorts of stimuli.   Laughter Yoga - laughing for no reason - brought me the stillness of mind I was seeking.  Engaging my body to function in a way that was pleasure-full to my soul. Creating a sensation of mirth within that would overflow outside of me and make a wonderful sound.

We live in a culture where we are taught to do, do, do - rest is seen as being lazy.  We live in a world of seriousness and stress.  Laughter is not the norm.  Both of these birthrights - Rest and Laughter - taken away as we grow up to fit into our society.

Yet - we seek it.  We crave it.   The pleasure of stillness - of being, resting, laughing.  When we hear it and experience it, it lightens up our soul.   Yes, Anne Lamott, I am a subversive, a pleasure Revolutionary to my core.   Woohoo!!!

OUR STORY - PATIENCE

I love praying and setting my intention for what I desire in my life.  Last week's JOY prayer was a powerful request to the Universe to amp up the volume and make me an instrument of shahaharing.    Which makes me a A LOVECat as defined by Tim Sanders, a people-centric business expert.

What is a LOVECat?  A person who shahahares their INtangibles - knowledge, network and compassion.   By shahaharing my joy this week, my energy level increases.  My stress diminishes.  My body relaxs and I feel peaceFULL.  I shahahare what I know  - I contribute what makes me hahahappy - I cheer what brings joy. I am I am a LOVECat.

Today, as I celebrate Loverboy's birthday, I feel blessed to be his wife and part of his life.  I feel blessed for this computer which allows me the freedom to express myself and the electricity that runs this device and the wires that connect me to friends and family all over the world.

This week I pray for PATIENCE with myself.  This week I pray for PATIENCE with my process as I shift from what I do to who I be.  

Last week I prayed for JOY and what I got was a week full of opportunities to be joyFULL.  Monday morning, I visited with my SoulMama and practiced yoga.  I got a Thai Massage (also known as yoga for lazy people) by MamaGoddess Kan. To perfect the trifecta of women, I met SisterGoddess Barbara for a swim and laugh in the ocean.  I got to stretch and laugh and hug some OMazing women.

On Tuesday,  I laughed under the trees with Loverboy and his father and some Wild Succulent Men who held the space sacred for the HAHA.   Blessed to be in the presence of my OMazing trainer DonnaMadonna, I worked out twice.  I kicked, I punched, I crunched, I danced.  I sweat out my toxins and felt my cells jump for joy.  I connected with two OMazing healers via telephone  Brother from Another Mother Ubi and SisterGoddess Mary(my fertility coach) helped me clear my thoughts and focus on my path.  I laughed, I cried and I sweat with some OMazing peeps.

On Wednesday, I spent time in the park under trees with GingerMama.  I hugged my laughing peeps and then whisked myself and SisterCroneGoddess Margo to the FontaineBleau for some pleasure research.  I laughed, I hugged and I relaxed in OMazing company.

On Thursday, GingerMama and I walked 5 miles in the early morning.  We laughed with our peeps by the ocean and came home just in time for a fabulous sunset walk with the GingerMama. In the presence of dog/God energy and laughter - what a day!!!

On Friday, it was time with my Sisters of Light as we prepared and created sacred space and an agenda for our Goddess Circle.  A dip in the ocean and a nap and a sing along at my neighbor's to prep me for date night with LoverBoy.  Singing and dancing with my Sisters and my Elders and in the Sea.

Saturday Gentle Yoga with SisterGoddess Yolanda and a drive to Coconut Grove with LoverBoy for some raw food goodies.  Birthday dinner for LoverBoy with his parents.   What a gentle loving day with OMazing Goddesses and family.

Sunday swim at the ocean with SisterGoddess Camille and SisterGoddess Barbara, produce shopping at the Farmer's Market, Dance Church with SisterCroneGoddess Margo, and then a Goddess Circle with SisterGoddess Zayna and SisterGoddess Carole and 12 other SisterGoddesses - woohoo.

This is my life.  It is simple and delicious.  Exercise, fun, beach, nap, girlfriends and family.  Yum.   I am so grateful for these opportunities to play and heal my body.  I am so grateful for all the hands that touch me or ears that hear me.  I am so grateful for LoverBoy and our families.  I am so grateful for the women in my life who help me love me more.  The deeper I delve into my gratitude, the more I receive. 

I ask.  It arrives.  I set forth an intention.  I create a reality.

All these opportunities to connect and be and play and appreciate what is my reality - this Heaven on Earth right here right now.

Meditating with Oprah and Deepak, I feel this need for PATIENCE.  The Universe is asking me to take a gentle PAUSE.  To GO SLOW.  To BREATHE and LEAN INTO my life.  Feel more.  Be more.  Do less.   Take the time to do the things I do well and master what I do. That is how I have excelled at my marriage, 16 years of love and laughter with LoverBoy.  

PATIENCE is also about seeing the big picture.  It is not all ways apparent - in fact, sometimes we only get what we need to proceed and take a baby step forward.  More is revealed as we put in the time and effort to ease in.

This week, I pray we have the PATIENCE- an expectant gratitude for what is about to be.

I pray we have the PATIENCE to explore our lives with compassion -  blessing our hahahabits and behaviors for getting us where we are right now.

I pray we have the PATIENCE to celebrate who we have BEcome.

I pray we have the PATIENCE to laugh at our lives and takes ourselves lightly and enjoy the process.

Because it's all about the Bass....

JOY TO THE FISHES & THE DEEP BLUE SEA

"Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves

 to recognize how good things really are."

Marianne Williamson

I have a gift  - a talent - something I took for granted for so long because I thought it came easy peasy to every body.

I know how to access my JOY.  I know what it feels like in my bones - I know how it feels to open my heart.   I know how to shahahare it and spread it so others feel it too.  

It's something I practice daily.  I jump for joy.  I dance.  I sing.   I laugh in the sea.  I lay back in the water and let her hold me gently.  I open my mouth and make a sound - hahaha.   I hear it with my ears submerged under the water.  Feeling vibrations in the waves as I flow.

I didn't realize that peeps have become disconnected with their joy.  Misery does love company and peeps love to complain and focus on the one gray cloud in the sky rather than the vastness of  blue and the occasional white cloud ballet.

Most people think that JOY is something outside of us - to be found or acquired.  Actually, it's an energy we knew how to access as children and over the years, we forgot.

JOY is a fire from within. An energy of HAhaHAppy that gets ignited by touch, smell, sound and memory. It's a feeling - a birthright - that we get from the simplest of things.

JOY is about finding the pleasure right NOW. Accepting ALL that is in our lives with grace. Surrendering to the circumstances with gratitude.   For me, this means focusing with an attitude of gratitude on everything that is within and surrounds me. Enthusiasm for my time RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW on this heaven on Earth. Joy at the simple pleasure of being alive and breathing.  Joy at the freedom I have to rise and stretch.  Joy at putting my fingers in paint and plastering a piece of paper with color.  Joy at the opportunity to sing with the birds in the early hours of dawn.  Joy to move and shake and dance - woohoo.

I've spent the last ten years of my life remembering how to shift my focus from outside of me to within. Learning to redirect my energy and attention to a vibration of gratefulness for all the abundance I am blessed with.  Doing this with kindness and compassion for me as I delve deeper into the OMazing miracle of life.

This last week, on Day 12 of Oprah & Deepak's 21 Day Meditation - the theme was Living Laughter.  Deepak shared that: "pure, innocent laughter is the most obvious sign of the joy we feel in our hearts. It is also a powerful and instant way of spreading that joy all around you."  

This gift is so easy and yet so difficult to achieve.   It is so much easier to complain and stay in the negativity. It takes work to shift this mindset and raise our altitude.  It takes just a MOMent to open the heart and share our true nature.   There is no other way to the LOVE that we are.

This spiritual discipline of HAhaHAppy - LAUGHTER - keeps me in the flow of bliss.  I connected to this truth years ago.  I saw people's eyes light up with laughter and I wanted this magic in my life.  I wanted the lightheartedness of spirit that I felt and the energy of ecstasy that I witnessed.   As I let go of things that no longer served me and became a Master at the Art of Doing Nothing, I built my laughter muscle.  I remember recapturing the feeling of childhood and expressing my joy through laughter. It felt so good to relax muscles and organs and just be free to express my heart's haHAhappiness.  Today, the joy i feel in my heart shows up as laughter on my lips - a deep appreciation for all that I have and am in this moment.

"Joy to the World, all the boys and GIRLs.

Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea,

Joy to you and me."

- thahahank you Three Dog Night (see video below)

Sustainability is Key

On Friday, flying home from Germany, I had the opportunity to watch Happy Feet.  Again.  I forgot what a great little movie this was.  A penguin using his dancing feet to create movement that causes chahahange. Mumbles the penguin remained true to himself and found that people responded to his passion.  Here was a penguin who believed he would find answers and help his tribe thrive by being himself.

Germany was a culmination of seeds planted long ago by who I was then and am still becoming.   After hearing the Dalai Lama live in Fort Lauderdale in 2004, I walked out of there with his words on my mind.  He asked the audience how can we have peace in the world when we do not have peace within our families?

At the time, neither of my parents were talking to their siblings and I had peeps in my family that I knew by title but not by person.  For example, my aunt.  She and my Mom, her sister, were barely talking - thinking they had nothing in common.  I found that what they had in common was me.  I called my aunt - told her I wanted to get to know her better, and flew out to Germany to do just that.

I ended up working in her new restaurant and sharing the couch with my new cousin, Blitz, a black Doberman.  I got to know my aunt as an adult and peer - as a friend and a niece.  I worked hard - listened to stories - shared moments.  The past came to meet us in the present where we could shine the light of love and make a change.   After 11 days, we definitely respected one another and found out that we truly liked each other as well.

First reunion in Germany - Mom, Auntie K and me

One seed planted and sustained with love and phone calls and emails.  Soon, another seed was planted.  I called my Mom on my birthday and thanked her for giving birth to me.  I invited her to Romania so we could visit my grandmother, my mama's mama.  Before leaving Europe, we stopped in Germany so the sisters could meet again.  And talk about the mother that they were estranged from.  Another seed was planted.

My aunt made the trek to Florida.  She came to enjoy the beach and the fabulous biking weather.  She came to know me and LoverBoy a little better.  She was even blessed to be here to witness and experience Hurricane Katrina.  More love, phone calls, time together and faith.  More seeds planted.

Me in Romania with my Grandma and her girlfriends

Two years later, Mom and I rented an apartment in Romania.  My grandmother joins us as does my Aunt.  It is a trip down memory lane - seeing places of their childhood and listening to their mother tongue.  We took a little excursion into the mountains to get a new sense of this place, these women and their experiences.  We spent two days in a old chalet - talking and eating - sharing stories and secrets - listening to details that had been missed and filling in the blanks that our bodies created to protect us.  A huge healing occurs - a shift - a peaceful surrendering to a new way of life.  

Two years later, the women agreed to meet in Vienna, Austria.  The matriarch of our family, my Mamama and her two daughters (my Mom and Aunt) and I rented an apartment for a week of family fun in Vienna. Again, we shared stories, we laughed, we cooked together and we mended part of the past.

The Sisters and Doggess Goddess Debby

Going to Germany this week was the blossoming of all the seeds of love planted in this family and getting to know the newest member of our family, Miss Debby.  Again, pieces of the puzzle were discovered as we weaved the fabric of our family lives and saw how each generation had left its mark on the next.  For me, I deeply desired this feminine healing of the family - this ability to connect and know we lived common history and are creating herstory.

What I've learned to be true is that seeds sprout in their own time. For me, sustainability of these seeds required discipline and focus. I found patience - a knowing or grace that things hahahappen in their own time instead of mine.  I found love - an open heart to however things appear on the surface.  I found faith - all the juicy stuff hangs out just below the surface enticing me to be in it for the long haul.

This week I felt a shift in the feminine in my family.  A beautiful chahahange of vibration as we let go of the past with compassion and accepted the present for what it is and opened ourselves up to the possibilities of the future.  We did this by laughing and crying and sharing and listening and eating, of course.  Yummy eating at my Aunt and Uncle's Restaurant, Wildhof, in the middle of a forest, about 15 minutes from Frankfurt.

Our Truth - The Genius Within

For those who already know me, I have a different way of looking at things.  I decided Society's ways of living my life were not going to work for me.  I did have employment where I went to a corporate office and tried to do the daily grind.  That did not work for me.

I got married and thought of starting a Family immediately.  That did not work for me.

I tried to go to law School.  The Universe had another plan for me.

I stopped fighting and trying to mold my life in the direction my Family wanted.  I stopped trying to be like the People I knew.  In fact, I accepted that I did not fit the blueprint of what my parents, school, friends, religion and culture expected of me.

I surrendered to being an outcast and doing things differently.  I realized that I was a genius of my own making.  I understood that my point of view was no different than any of those people who knew the world could not be flat even when that was the prevailing perspective.

Looking at the etymology of the word GENIUS, my Research finds it Comes from ancient Rome.  GENIUS was the guiding Spirit of a Person or Family (gens).  This noun is related to the Latin verb genui, "to bring into being, create, produce."  

That would make all women who give birth geniuses; all artists who create geniuses; all People who produce thoughts, ideas, books, buildings, etc., etc. ,etc. geniuses.  Anyone who touches the world or any of its inhabitants, plants and animals could be defined as a Genius.

What I know to be true for me is that Genius does not come from following the crowd or being in the pack.  Genius comes from branching out or taking the path less traveled.    Genius hahahappens when taking a leap of faith.  Genius hahahappens when I go within and I get a download - a Connection to my Spirit with Information that I couldn´t possibly know and yet, there it is.  A knowing beyond my experience in this lifetime.

Abraham Hicks through Esther describes GENIUS as alignment with deliberate choice.  Watch the Video below to hear her speak of it so so succintly.

 

 

For me, my GENIUS is wanting to come out - share my views of the world and become the writer that I was always meant to be.  So I pray this week for "accomplishment of a vibrational frequency with deliberate intent and  understanding the full ramifications of it" - this message that I feel compelled to shahahare with the world. 

And so I tune in, I trust myself and I Focus on shahaharing These thoughts that Play in my head and see if they bring peace to others as they have for me.