Guided Meditation • Visualization • Mindfulness

Imagine that you are standing on a beautiful forest path.

In your mind’s eye, you can see that this path is clear except for the dappled sunlight and the occasional leaf dancing to the rhythm of the wind.

This path is free of obstacles, and that it stretches all the way to the horizon and beyond.

Be on the path and say to yourself quietly, “I know that Power and the Presence of Spirit goes before me. It has made my way clear and It blesses all who come near me.”

Do this visualization often.

Have a beautiful, obstacle free, and blessed afternoon

Afternoon Meditation: The key to happiness is learning to want what you already have, rather than wasting your time wanting what you do not have.

This goes beyond just appreciating the moment.

“Wanting” is a visceral energy that is connected to our sense of well being.

Wanting what you don’t have creates a sense of lack, while wanting what you do have creates abundance.

I choose abundance.

For those of us who remember the days before cell phones, email, and Facebook the pace of life has quadrupled; and to keep up we’ve all developed the habit of multi-tasking.

We talk on the cell phone when we drive, eat lunch at our computers, text or watch the news during dinner,  and so on.

The idea of having to keep up with all of this new technology has taken over our minds, thoughts, and lives;  resulting in high and pervasive levels of  stress.

Multitasking breeds inefficiency and stress because your attention can only be in one place at a time, not ten places at a time. It also fragments your attention causing you to be unfocused.

Fragmentation and being unfocused is exhausting…and there is nothing worse than coming home feeling overworked, overtired, and over-stressed and yet nothing meaningful was accomplished.

How Meditation Helps

When you meditate regularly you learn how to focus your attention on the present moment. Thoughts, images, and feelings come and go.  You learn how to  rest your attention in the present moment and the body rests there too.

Try this:

When you notice that you are multitasking, stop, take a deep breath and ask yourself what is important right now.  What is the one thing that needs your attention right now.  Then do that!

Click here and experience a free guided meditation

Is freedom from judgement possible?

Is it possible to not feel pain when others criticize you, your ideas, or projects?

Is it possible to not to feel joy when others praise you?

Praise and criticism are two sides of the judgment coin. To let go of one, means you’ll have to get rid of the other.

I have a confession to make, I enjoy making others happy.

It feels good when my picky children say, “dinner was good mom,” and it feels bad when a project I’d spent hours on is rejected or criticized at a board meeting.

There was a time when my desire to please others kept me from saying what was really in my heart and mind. I would withhold the “truth” because I didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but really I was fearful of their reaction, fearful that I would be rejected.

My desire to please others became a trap.

My desire to please others started to change when my children became school age. I realized that no one would advocate better for my children than me, and so their needs became greater than my insecurities. I have had to confront other parents, teachers, coaches, and administrators on their behalf.

My meditation practice has been invaluable to me in dealing with judgments and confrontation.

Meditation has not only helped me to stay calm and centered, it has taught me to recognize the “me” beyond my fears, doubts, and emotions. That is, the practice of sitting, breathing, and being while letting my thoughts and feelings go, has carried over into all other aspects of my life!

Freedom from the judgement of others isn’t about not feeling happy or hurt, it’s about knowing who you are beyond the noisiness of your doubtful thoughts and your elated or hurt feelings. Freedom from judgement is about following your truth.

Meditation heals.
Just Breathe,
Krista

“Connecting with the Still Small Voice Within,” 8 Week Meditation Class starts January 25th and January 26th.

A relaxed body is a relaxed mind.

During meditation focus your attention on relaxing the face, shoulders, hands, legs. Conscious relaxation removes your attention from thinking mind.

Why? Because your attention can only be in one place at a time.

If you help with conscious relaxation the go toMeditation Storefor a free guided meditation.

Happy Holidays

I started my meditation later than usual morning.  As soon as I began, I heard both of my kids screaming at each other over the Wii remote.

Thoughts rushed in, “Why is this happening now?” “This shouldn’t be happening.”  “I should send them to camp.”

I felt anger radiate down the insides of my legs, my stomach tighten, and throbing at my temples.

I willed myself to stay conscious and not react by employing two techniques:

• Deep conscious breathing to allow myself to feel what was happening inside of me.
• “Positive Self Talk.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, my mind served up wonderful thoughts about fun upcoming class material, interesting articles to be written, meaningful conversations with friends, and art projects I look forward to doing.

I watched my body’s reaction to these thoughts: there was tension, deepening of my breath, euphoria, and a release of adrenaline that I recognize as tightness in my solar plexus and tingling in my arms and legs.

As I watched, I realized that the tension in my body was not only uncomfortable, it was similar to how my body reacts to some of negative thoughts and images that float through my mental screen.

Read the rest of this entry »

This month I was the subject of an interview by Mark Wilkinson for the December Issue of The Whole Person Calendar

Mark interviewed me about my latest CD “Guided Meditation for Relaxation and Inner Peace.”

In the interview, I give tips and insights into how we can find inner peace and balance no matter how busy our lives are….and most of us are busier than ever.

You can find the interview on page 46.

The December2011 issue features three brave and amazing women who are doing wonderful things to create peace and stability in their communities.

In The Whole Person Calendar you will also find everything metaphysical that is happening in Southern California.

I feel really honored to be a part of this amazing publication.

Thank You WPC!

Check it out and like me and The Whole Person Calendar on Facebook

This weekend I went to a fabulous workshop to experience “The Point Zero” painting method with Michele Cassou.  Michele’s revolutionary technique of process painting teaches us how to respond to the creative impulse within.  She says, “Creativity knows what you need, when you let it through, it gives you what you need.”  Love that!

I went to Michele’s workshop feeling open and excited.  The first day I painted flowers, trees, and a cow.  It was fun but far from earth shattering.  I noticed too that my energy level during that first day was really low.  I was hungry all day and I couldn’t wait to take a break.  When I asked Michele about it she said “Fatigue is not  uncommon.  What it represents is that we are fighting with our creativity, with our intuition.”

The next day when I arrived, I found myself painting trees, again.  Then I started to paint some mostly trite and uninspiring words, “God, Love, Sad…”  When I asked Michele if it was okay to the words she reminded me that we were to paint images.  I immediately felt at a loss.  She then suggested that I stay with the discomfort of not being able to use words to express myself.

I went back to the painting, wordless,  and had it in my mind to paint another flower when suddenly I stopped, my brush poised just above the paper.  In that moment I realized that because I didn’t know what to do I went right back to what I already knew how to do!  By doing what I already know, I wasn’t allowing the unknown to move through me.

This is exactly what we discuss in the journaling and meditation class.  Instead of paint however, we use a method called “Free Writing,” writing prompts, and guided meditations to move our awareness away from our conditioned/thinking mind.  Through writing and being still we exhaust everything we know about ourselves and the unknown Self emerges.

Connecting with the unknown Self, our source of creativity, is addicting.  Once you feel the newness, the insight, and the love moving through you, you want more of it. However, it doesn’t have to happen through the painting process or even the writing process.  My feeling is that any method that keeps your attention focused and in the present moment introduces you the great unknown Self.  It cannot help but to emerge through us.  As Michele says, “It’s just waiting to come through you.”

Namaste

Two weeks ago I watched a documentary called “Nero’s Guests” about the astronomically high suicide rate among Hindu farmers in India.

I felt heartbroken for the family’s and overwhelmed by the immensity of the problem.  I felt compassion for the reporter who was documenting this horror and I understood his hopelessness and anger.

When it was over, I sat there, and I prayed, “How can You God, by means of me, create peace in this situation?”  I cannot do anything effective, meaningful, or lasting without God.  This situation is too big and to perverse to handle on ones own.  But I am (and you are) the agent that God works through to create change in this world.

There are many horrors in this world and within our own minds. I cannot fix it all but I cannot turn away from the suffering either.  I must turn to the God within me and around me, and ask, ”What can You do, by means of me,” then I listen.

Listening in this way is done with the entire body. I listen to the anguish in India, I listen to my own fear, and I listen for God’s peace to descend upon me.  Sometimes this listening can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few years, “How can You, by means of me, alleviate this suffering?”

To receive from God I had to put away my judgments and ideas about what God wants through me.  Receiving then,  becomes a kind of refined listening, like being at the starting line waiting for the gun to go off.  Receiving is a call to action.

“Bang!” The gun’s gone off.  It’s time to give the gift that we, I, received from God, “How can You, by means of me, make this better?”

This is what I ”heard.” It has been my habit to turn too quickly away from the suffering of others.  My work is to see it, take it in, give it to God.  My work is to see God as the soul and being of everyone, to erase from my mind the idea of victims and perpetrators and to see only God. My work is not to be passive but active and to assist where I can and to give what I have.  For the farmers in India, I re-joined “The Organic Consumers Association,” because part of the problem there has a lot to do with how we live here. It’s a small gesture, I know, but I have to ask myself, “What can 100,000 small gestures create?”  God only knows. God only knows.

Namaste

p.s.

Join me tomorrow, November 9th at 11:00 am, for a peace meditation service at the Redondo Beach Center for Spiritual Living.