Guided Meditation • Visualization • Mindfulness

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.”

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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.

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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