Year: 2005

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I would like to share a saying from my first yoga teacher, “An attitude of gratitude is prayer in action.”

‘Tis the Friday before Thanksgiving. For the first time ever, my parents will be out of town, leaving “the kids” to celebrate on our own. Despite my ripe age of 41, this feels oddly grown up.

I will miss my parents – they are the best. At the same time, I feel excited about being with my siblings and watching all our beautiful children run around and enjoy themselves.

The energy of the holiday will be different, but I’m sure just as sacred.

This weekend I am attending the “Celebrate Your Life” conference. It is amazing. So far I’ve seen Carolyn Myss, Wayne Dyer, Doreen Virtue and others. Today, I get to see my beloved Deepak Chopra.

My sister Michelle and I are there together. Although there is a year and a half between us, we are like twins. We speak the same, laugh at exactly the same time and look people intensely in the eyes when they speak. We often joke that the two of us together are like a dessert that’s too sweet – appealling at first, but quickly too much…

What I have learned at this conference is that the only difference between the brilliant people speaking and the rest of us is that they have developed good habits. One such habit – for the truly powerful speakers – is meditation. Meditation gives us the power, courage, insight and will to make choices in alignment with our highest selves.

The voice of intuition gets louder each time we tune in during meditation – life will lead if we let it – it seems so simple and elegant.

My baby sister’s birthday just passed – she’s no longer a baby, but for some reason I frequently call her Anna (my daughter’s name) by mistake…

Anna and I spent Sunday morning painting butterflies as part of my sister’s gift. We used watercolors and chalk and ended up with a bunch of beautiful, vibrant, butterflies in different shapes, sizes and colors.

So many things about creating those butterflies inspired me. Having fun with my daughter, creating beauty with color and texture, and the butterflies themselves – perfect symbols of life after life.

My sister loved her gift – a simple bulletin board for her home office with the butterflies pinned all over it. She’s going to use it for pictures of her own baby who is growing and changing so fast.

Today as I started to meditate I found myself thinking about money. Making money, saving money, investing money… It occurred to me that I spend a lot of time and energy thinking about what I want. It’s always something – to be more fit, to have more, to achieve more.

Quickly I realized that I was swimming in materialism while trying to meditate. I dropped my awareness down deeper into myself and affirmed, “my life is overflowing with abundance.” At first I didn’t feel it, but something in me would not budge until I felt the words I was saying. So I started to think about all the blessings in my life – too many to count.

After a few minutes I felt it. When I was done meditating I went into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. I noticed my beautiful fruit bowl that my brother and sister-in-law made me years ago full of bannanas, pears, and apples. I grabbed my favorite coffee mug out of the cupboard. It’s purple and says, “prosperity” on it.

I can still feel it and am so grateful that I remembered all that I am and all that I have.

I have a passion for business. With my father and grandfather both business owners and me the first born girl always wanting to hang around my daddy, it got into my blood. Recently I read two business books that inspired me. The first is “True to Your Roots”, an account of Fetzer Wine’s evolution. The other is, “The Company We Keep”, another memoir about a sustainable home builder in Martha’s Vinyard.

Sustainable living is more than consuming less and recycling – although this is important beyond belief. For me, it also flows into self-care and relationships. It is why we nurture ourselves and each other – so that we can grow rather than wilt. My spirit is hovering around this topic with excitment and possibility.

I am showing my communication students the movie, “What the Bleep Do We Know?” The movie is thought provoking in the way that it looks at the relationship between quantum physics and spirituality. I would highly recommend renting the DVD if you havn’t already seen it.

One scene looks at the molecular structure of uniquely labelled bottles of water. Under a microscope, the water in the bottle labelled “Love” looks like beautiful snowflakes, while the bottle labeled, “I hate you, you make me sick” looks like poison. Our bodies are made of mostly water. The implications for how we communicate with ourselves and each other are astounding.

Thanks to my dear friend Lisa who informed me that he was coming, I GOT FIRST ROW TICKETS TO THE BABYFACE CONCERT!!

Some things you just have to announce to the world. Just call me “Juicyfruit.”

How many of us strive and struggle to reach our goals? One thing I’ve learned from my own “over-striving” is that it doesn’t help. In fact, it hinders progress. Striving invokes constriction. A visual representation might be a narrowing of one’s vessel or container like a skinny triangle.

Keeping our container’s open – more rectangle or oval than triangle – involves adopting a relaxed stance. Because we are such a cerebral society, you can usually feel tightness in your head when you’re trying to hard.

Today my intuition encouraged me to enjoy the ride. Just writing it makes me smile.

It is a beautiful, cool Saturday – the first real hint of coolness after a long summer. Where I am usually thrilled to have a morning dedicated solely to writing, this morning I found myself longing for adventure. I checked my cell phone a couple times to see if anyone miraculously called to see if I wanted to go for a ride on a Harley or hot air balloon. No luck.

I decided to take my laptop on my patio and write, the closest I could get to adventure. Now I am going to go for a run in the park rather than my traditional Saturday yoga class – whew, I’m really on the edge now!

For me, even the smallest variations in routine can provide much needed freshness into my day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get to ride on a Harley…