Hello! I’m so happy to share that I am joining forces with Greg Kennedy, Executive Director of the Ignatius Jesuit Centre, to offer you something truly special. Imagine a retreat designed just for you, where you can escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life and rediscover what truly matters. We’ve planned this three day retreat with so much care to ensure that you’ll take away the tools you need to engage with technology more mindfully. Enjoy affordable rates, delicious vegetarian meals and 600 acres of beautiful countryside at Loyola House.
If you’re thinking about organizing a retreat for your team at work in the future, we’d also love to help. Our retreat can be tailored to fit your company’s needs perfectly. Together, we’ll explore ways to boost productivity, foster mindfulness, and strengthen your team’s bond through fun activities and meaningful conversations.
Join us on this journey in April – We can’t wait to welcome you.
If you received an envelope of messages from me for the month of December in yoga class, the message marked December 28th (yesterday), promised a link to some of my favourite Einaudi songs. Here they are one day later 🙂
Here is a short Spotify playlist of some other favourites.
I hope you are having a beautiful week. I can’t wait to get back into the yoga studio.
Are you ready to start a gratitude jar? It’s easy.
Choose a jar or bowl.
Cut up pieces of paper and have a pen handy.
Select a time(s) of day (upon rising, just before bed or at mealtimes) to add to the jar.
Select a day/time to begin (what about today, Dec 24th?) and then a time to read them (what about on New Years Eve or January 1st?).
This could also be an ongoing practice that begins anew each week or shared verbally over dinner during family gatherings.
What sort of things should I reflect upon and include in the jar?
Consider recent-past events and answer the question, ‘What three things happened today that I am particularly grateful for?’ Strive to reflect upon things unique to each day opposed to a general list of gratitudes repeated over and over. Maybe it was laughing with someone, having a really good cup of coffee or finding a parking space close to the entrance of a shop.
Choose an activity dedicated to noticing things as they arise. If you go for a walk each morning, for example, plan to look for things to be grateful for ‘in the moment’. This might include: the sound of snow crunching under your feet, sunlight filtering through the clouds, smiling at someone you pass along the way.
Set aside time for deep gratitudes about loved ones, life circumstances and passions. An exercise that I have found valuable and done many times over the years is to write a love letter to myself with awareness to my aliveness. It may sound odd but imagine that you are no longer in a living body yet still capable of writing a love letter of gratitudes to your living self. If you can get in the right headspace, the result is a letter full of wisdom seen through seeing eyes.
Let me know if you explore any of the suggestions. I would love to hear about it in the comments or when I see you next.
Below is a Christmas story I came across that made me laugh.
Last Christmas, grandpa was feeling his age and found that shopping for Christmas gifts had become too difficult. So he decided to send checks to everyone instead.
In each card he wrote, “Buy your own present!” and mailed them early.
He enjoyed the usual flurry of family festivities, and it was only after the holiday that he noticed that he had received very few cards in return. Puzzled over this, he went into his study, intending to write a couple of his relatives and ask what had happened. It was then, as he cleared off his cluttered desk that he got his answer. Under a stack of papers, he was horrified to find the gift checks which he had forgotten to enclose with the cards.
Helping others can be an informal affair. Opportunities for regular small acts of kindness are of course only limited by your imagination. Giving can be a boomerang; just when you think you understand who is helping and who is receiving the help, the tables can quickly turn. As cliche as it may be, giving can be its own reward.
I really like Mary Oliver’s quote, “Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.” It makes me think of one of my favourite children’s books that I found when my daughter was little called, “Have You Filled A Bucket Today,” by Carol McCloud. The basic premise of the book is that there are healthy ways to fill your own bucket so that you don’t rely on dipping into or emptying other people’s buckets but instead help others fill their buckets too. (If you have a little person to still buy a gift for, this book is beautiful.)
Deciding to give to others could be as simple as smiling at people you encounter throughout your day, opening doors, complimenting someone on their amazing work, allowing someone to go ahead of you in line, or giving someone the last piece of cake.
You could also informally give your time or offer a specific skill. Help a neighbour shovel their driveway, pick up groceries or run errands for someone you know who needs the extra help, do some accounting work if that’s your strength, start a GoFundMe page for someone who might not otherwise make that step themselves without your help or organize a meal rotation/delivery for a family in an acute crisis.
Volunteering as a group might also be fun on an on-going basis for a specific event/organization or as a one-off like a spring garbage cleanup or planting trees on earth day.
Steps to finding a more formal volunteer opportunity:
Know the skills you have to offer
Ask yourself, “Why do I want to volunteer?”
Be realistic about your availability
Decide where and how you want to make a difference
Start small and go from there
If you live in the Guelph/Wellington area, here is a local volunteer directory that could connect you with an opportunity perfect for you. Also have a look at Volunteer World’s, Volunteer in Canada suggestions or at the skills-based volunteering site Volunteer.ca.
I hope this post helps if this is something you are interested in. Let me know if you find a great opportunity. I would love to hear about it. If you have suggestions for informal ways of giving to others, post that in the comments too.
As promised, here is a Christmas Freeze Dance playlist. If you have reluctant participants, dance around your kitchen instead while you make dinner and throw in a few handstands. If you are done with holiday tunes, put on whatever moves you.
Happy Sunday!
P.S. There is a version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Jack Johnson (track #16) on the playlist above that absolutely resolves a childhood heart-ache for me; the other reindeer are called out for being mean to Rudolph! I love the added lyrics 🙂
Tonight I am leading a meditation and sound bath experience with the very talented, Leah Glatz. It is the last full moon of the year (December 8th) which means we have moved through a full month cycle of experiences WITHIN a full year of experiences. Some of those will continue to unfold for you and others will only add to your mental clutter and physical fatigue. It is to your benefit to let go of whatever it is you no longer need. The full moon represents the completion of a cycle every month and it is a nice reminder to intentionally let go at that time.
Decide to drop your emotional dramas and the stories you tell yourself. If this still seems too vague…
Things to release: Limiting beliefs and habits, guilt, regrets, overwhelm, fears, worry, anxiety, judgements, resentments, grudges, gossip, physical clutter, controlling behaviours and masks you hide behind.
If you were not able to attend the session tonight (space filled up quickly) or you would simply like to participate in a letting go ritual of your own, here are some ideas:
Take a few full, slow breathes with the deliberate intention to let go of physical tension on every exhale
Create a mental or written list of things you would like/need to let go of
Symbolically release the list. You might use your imagination and cut a cord connecting you to whatever you wish to let go of or write a physical list on a piece of paper and then rip it in tiny pieces or burn it.
Let me know if you do this. I’d love to hear about it 🙂
* If you don’t have Spotify, check out these songs by Lisbeth Scott off her album, Om Sweet Om: Abundance, Release, Peace, Om Mani
December offers an opportunity to reflect on what the previous eleven months has taught you. It can be a time to explore your own basic goodness and the impact you can have on the world when you practice awareness and act with positive intention.
The last month of the year can also feel stressful.
Yoga and meditation practice as self-care
Each morning after I wake up, I do a few basic things and then I sit on my meditation cushion with a blanket across my knees and sometimes also across my shoulders. Some days I settle in easily and other days I am in a constant dialogue with my body and mind. From what might appear to be stillness, there can be so much restlessness. The value in sitting is to practice on the days that feel peaceful as well as on the days that aren’t. It is a way to practice ‘being’ in all my varied seasons.
Practising yoga offers similar opportunities through movement. Transitions to poses and within a pose are expected. A busy mind might settle down from the awareness of hands here, strength there and length in another place in the body. There may be the recognition of the stories you tell yourself, how you bargain and judge on how to stay or move away from this pose or that one. There is the steadiness of the breath and the heart beating; an increased awareness (and maybe appreciation) of aliveness.
On those days that presence shimmers during meditation or a physical yoga asana practice, a coming home to yourself is no longer illusive. It can feel so good to be in your own skin with the volume on the mental chit chat turned waaaay down. Alone or in a room full of people practising together in presence, there are some days you can almost hear the crackle of magic. It is so tangible, so beautifully real. It is inside ‘being-ness’ that all else drops away and ‘being at one with’ simply is.
What an extraordinary act of kindness for yourself and those around you to practice this. Awareness is a radical kindness that begins with you and ripples out into the world in all directions. Find the ways that help you become more aware. I hope this month you get some fresh ideas to bring into 2023.
One day, when I was a kid, I was at the shopping mall with my mom and we saw a ‘famous’ soap opera actor signing autographs. The role he played was a rockstar and he was there that day dressed the part with his leather jacket and feathered hair. The response to him was rockstar-esque; lots of screaming and security.
Photocopies of his picture were handed out to everyone and there were also copies scattered all over the floor. I noticed a lot of people were stepping on his handsome face in their eagerness to meet him. When I got up to the front of the line and it was my turn to get his autograph, it was nothing like I imagined. He asked me my name but then wrote a different name on the picture. I was too shy to correct him and also strangely fascinated that he was wearing such heavy make-up. In that brief exchange while he was signing someone else’s name to my page, I just blankly stared at him. I wasn’t star-struck or impressed. I just kept thinking I was sorry to be playing along. It didn’t seem fair to anyone.
Have you ever been right in the middle of something akin to this? Have you ever seemingly woken up amidst something that felt like a sham? Is it worth a continued investment of your energy to maintain the expectation? Ask yourself in your quiet moments, who really benefits?
Maybe this, in part, is what I love about Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Famous. The connection between ‘being-ness’ and fame has an eternal quality that my heart recognizes and affirms so readily, like, “the cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds…,” while the “pulley” and “buttonhole” remember their own worth.
Isn’t your true life’s work to let go of external validation and explore your inner guide to being? Is it ever too late to begin? To begin again?
Today I am leading a special meditation class with Sound Healer, Leah Glatz. I teamed up with Leah for Yoga Fest last month to provide a guided meditation and sound bath experience for yoga students. It was so magical I couldn’t wait to do it again. Check out Leah’s website to learn more about all the wonderful things she offers.
Above is a link to the guided version of the gratitude meditation that will be shared live tonight. (This is work I am doing currently with Mindku, a Corporate Wellness Company.) Experience a sense of awe and gratitude for the complexity of your human body, for others and the world around you. This meditation helps to develop feelings of compassion, kindness and empathy while inviting you to be open to the beauty and mystery of being alive.
