Archive for the 'Meditation' Category
A presence of Love
Author: Callie
This is a truly beautiful video … do take 15 minutes out of your busy day to watch this
read comments (0)Handmade journals from photographs
Author: Callie
We have limited stocks of our lovely A5-size unique, handmade journals up for grabs in February … down from £11.95 to £5.95 plus p&p.
Why are we so heavily discounting them? Because we are trying to whittle down as much stock as we can before building works (and chaos) begins!
The journals are made by hand using recycled white paper, mulberry paper and photographs to give a special place for 40 pages-worth of notes of your thoughts!
The same photograph is used for the front and back of these A5 journals, and each journal has a ribbon page-marker with charm. The spine is covered with recycled cord or denim material and covered front and back with transparency film for protective purposes.
As each item is handmade with love, no two journals will ever be the same – colours of spines and ribbons may vary from those shown on our online store.
The journals make a divine gift for yourself or for your loved ones, perfect for recording treasured moments.
Please visit our online store: www.holisticfeathers.com
The idea for these journals came during a healers retreat in Scotland in Summer 2009; most retreat participants travelled with hand luggage only and when it came to noting experiences and teachings, beautiful notebooks or journals were not available to note down our insights and thoughts.
Whilst at the retreat, Moonpoppy (me) developed a love of photography and was delighted to take some stunning shots of the surrounding Bay. From these photographs, I made birthday journals for friends and they were received so well, the idea for making the journals available for others was borne, incorporating as many recycled material as possible.
I hope you enjoy using the journals just as much as I love creating them for you.
Meditation: Busy with email?
Author: Callie
Whle you read your email messages, remember to breathe slowly and focus your attention on your breath.
Make the out-breath two times longer than the in-breath. This will immediately calm you.
“Kind Words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless” ~ Mother Teresa
(c) Office Yoga – Darrin Zeer
Reflections: Repeating patterns and cycles
Author: Callie
Shared with Mary’s permission …
Today I find myself reflecting on repeating patterns and cycles: I have been extremely busy with my new work, my studies and all the other normal things that we all deal with in life.
The starting point was recognising a repeating pattern of stress building up and reflecting on how/why I allow this to happen and how I can apply lessons learnt in the past to lessen the effects or better still stop it happening.
I remember long ago reading a quote attributed to a wise teacher (though I do not have a name), along the lines of:
“Everyone benefits from meditating for 30 minutes every day, except when you are especially busy, then you must meditate for 60 minutes every day.”
And another one:
“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”
Attributed to both Jim Goodwin and Sydney J. Harris (from www.quotegarden.com)
Both these remind me to take the time to sit back and review what is happening, if things keep repeating themselves there is a reason and I can take back control and change that if I choose. Also when I feel most stressed or under pressure, that is when I most need to do just that.
For you: some questions to think and/or write about in your journal:
· Are there any repeating patterns in your life at the moment?
· Are they ones that you choose, or ones you have slipped into?
· Are they having a positive or a negative effect?
· Do you want to change anything about these patterns?
· If so what? Write some actions that you can take, and do one
now!
Moving on to other sorts of cycles, many of them seem fixed laws of nature, and so they are but even within those there are variations and even the potential for surprises. For example driving home yesterday in the early evening, I caught a glimpse of the full moon rising – it was low and magnified by the atmosphere and so large and extraordinarily beautiful that I gasped with surprise and delight at the sight. A few clouds drifted past as I caught more glimpses on my journey and the moon continued to change in size and colour as it rose.
I later heard on the radio that this full moon also looks particularly large as it is closer to the earth than usual, so even those ‘fixed’ cycles of nature can offer surprises and delights when we take the opportunity to notice. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time (and with a clear sky) to see what is apparently the brightest moon of 2010, see more in this article if you are interested. If I studied astronomy for closely this would not have been a surprise to me of course, but even so it would have been a sight to savour.
Spring will soon be coming in the northern hemisphere and autumn in the south, and connecting with the cycles of nature is for me one of the most effective ways of putting stressful events behind me.
Getting out for a good long walk is a type of meditation, feeling part of the larger pattern of nature puts the ups and downs of daily life into perspective. There are always surprises to delight us if we take the time to really see: the flash of a bird’s wing, snowdrops peeping through the snow, green shoots of daffodils, the glorious colour of autumn leaves.
(c) Mary Lunnen – Dare To Blossom
Our review of Mary’s book, Dare To Blossom: Review – Dare to Blossom: Coaching and Creativity
Journals: HandMade With Love By Moonpoppy
(c) WurzelDave 2009, Somerset
Abundance with the New Moon, January 2010
Author: Callie
I was a little bit … errr … keen this New Moon to share the abundance cheque ritual with everyone! So keen, in fact, I announced it yesterday (Thursday!)!
No need to worry, you have a full 24 hours in which to write your abundance cheques out from 7.11am this morning (UST), Friday 15th January 2010 … and I will also share with you here links to:
* the original abundance cheque ritual from Holistic Feathers, along with
* a beautiful free meditation from Orindaben, and
* a blank abundance cheque from The Secret which you may wish to use, rather than use up your own personal bank cheques (checks)
Two new items have slipped onto my abundance wishlist this January – both hearfelt, one entirely luxurious and one (I am sure is) my destiny.
The Kiss Travelwrap
My vision of home
So meditate today with the beautiful New Moon energies and watch abundance in every shape and form come to you over the coming days.
Free meditation from www.orindaben.com
Abundance cheque template from www.thesecret.tv
Meditation increasing in popularity
Author: Callie
Quakers, Buddhists, agnostics, Hindus – they’re all doing it. Over the last few decades, meditation has evolved from a fringe practice to a mainstream stress-reduction technique that might be recommended by your family doctor.
In Washtenaw County, you have your choice of a wide variety of meditation classes and settings, ranging from the Zen Buddhist Temple in Ann Arbor, to a Quaker center in Chelsea to the Washtenaw Community College Health and Fitness Center.
Nationally, meditation is among top three alternative health methods used by Americans. According to a 2007 survey sponsored by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (a division of the National Institutes of Health), more than 9 percent of Americans say they meditate. Only herbal supplements and deep-breathing exercises are more popular.
Meditation and health benefits
Carol Blotter, a meditation teacher based in Chelsea, brings to the practice both a Quaker perspective and training in techniques based in Eastern spirituality. She has led meditation workshops and retreats at the Michigan Friends Center in Chelsea and at Deep Spring Center in Ann Arbor.
Blotter pointed to author and researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn as a pivotal figure in the mainstreaming of meditation. Kabat-Zinn is the founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Blotter noted that other scientists had studied meditation, but added, “Zinn really packaged it up … Americans like something with scientific approval. He created a program called mindfulness-based stress reduction,” she said. “And you’ll find it in an awful lot of hospitals these days. Statistically, it’s phenomenal the impact meditation and mindfulness have on an individual’s health.” (Holistic Feathers also offers similar techniques on an individual and group basis)
Kimberly Michelle Johnson has been teaching meditation at the Washtenaw Community College Health and Fitness center for about a year. Johnson also mentioned improvements in health as a major benefit of meditation. “Stress reduction has such a big impact on overall health,” she said. “It can aid in lowering blood pressure, assist in chronic pain reduction and help to relieve insomnia.”
The Ann Arbor Zen Buddhist Temple typically attracts up to 50 area residents for meditation meetings on Sunday mornings and as many as 30 on Sunday afternoons, according to the Rev. Haju Sunim (Linda Murray), resident priest.
Haju Sunim, who helped found the local Buddhist temple in 1982, said she sees modern students use meditation as a way to survive the stresses of everyday life rather than as a route to enlightenment. She said that even with that more secular aim, meditation has benefits. “It can be very helpful as people learn to pay attention to the myriad of things that arise in their body and mind,” she said. “People often judge themselves and say they’re no good at meditation because so many thoughts are coming up, and they can’t calm their minds. My response is that it’s part of the process. Meditation is something that allows us to see and then to work with what comes up.”
Meditation as spiritual practice
Johnson’s Thursday night classes are designed to be accessible to students from a variety of backgrounds. Participants scan the body for areas of discomfort and pay careful attention to deep breathing. “The meditation and relaxation techniques can be helpful no matter what your religious or spiritual tradition,” Johnson said. “Students are welcome to tailor the practice to incorporate their personal spiritual beliefs.”
For example, she said, the students can express their spirituality through their choice of mantra. The mantra could be an Eastern-style “Ohm,” a Christian phrase like “God is love” or simply “Let go.”
Blotter said that what people get out of meditation depends on their motivations. “The wording, the practices that are used and the intention are all different because there are so many different kind of people in this world,” she said.
For many who are just discovering meditation, Blotter said, the emphasis is on feeling better immediately. However, for some, meditation might morph into a more spiritual practice over time. “The modalities of meditation really expand along that whole continuum from ‘just give me something to do to make me feel better in this moment’ to ‘help me live my life with more honesty, clarity and openness from the heart.’ Many people start with the motivation to ‘just fix this one thing right now,’ and, over time, it changes into an awareness of a spiritual nature.”
In September, Blotter helped run a fall weekend meditation retreat at the Michigan Friends Center. Blotter compared the fall retreat to polishing silver and taking away all the tarnish that can build up after time. “They can relax into nature, relax into spirit, have time to take a breath.”
Haju Sunim said that, in a Buddhist context, meditation is much more than a coping strategy. “We’re not meditating for the sake of meditating; we’re meditating to have some deep understanding of life and death,” she said.
She said that meditating in the Zen Buddhist Temple is qualitatively different than taking a college course or a meditation class at a recreation center. “Something very precious about our particular place is that it is a residential temple,” she said. “Residents… keep a schedule in the mornings and evenings so members can come in and practice if they want to.”
She said that in Asia, village life is affected by proximity to Buddhist temples, where morning prayers and bells rung for evening services set the rhythm of life. She said she hopes that the Ann Arbor Temple has a similar influence on its neighbors. “We try to set up a rhythm of morning and evening practice. I hope that just by virtue of osmosis… our presence here will be a little more helpful day by day.”
(c) Sarah Rigg – freelance journalist who writes regularly for www.AnnArbor.com
Article discovered at a fabulous online forum, Energy
Finding time for yourself
Author: Callie
I couldn’t resist sharing this Daily Om article with you all today … so hard to do, I know, but we really must find time for ourselves each day, even if it is only for 5 minutes …
Within each of there is a well of energy that must be regularly replenished. When we act as if this well is bottomless, scheduling a long list of activities that fit like puzzle pieces into every minute of every day, it becomes depleted and we feel exhausted, disconnected, and weak. Refilling this well is a matter of finding time to focus on, nurture, and care for ourselves, or “you time.” Most of us are, at different times throughout the day, a spouse, a friend, a relative, an employee, a parent, or a volunteer, which means that down time, however relaxing in nature, is not necessarily “you time.” Though some people will inevitably look upon “you time” as being selfish, it is actually the polar opposite of selfishness. We can only excel where our outer world affairs are concerned when our own spiritual, physical, and intellectual needs are fulfilled.
Recognizing the importance of “you time” is far easier than finding a place for it in an active, multifaceted lifestyle, however. Even if you find a spot for it in your agenda, you may be dismayed to discover that your thoughts continuously stray into worldly territory. To make the most of “you time,” give yourself enough time on either side of the block of time you plan to spend on yourself to ensure that you do not feel rushed. Consider how you would like to pass the time, forgetting for the moment your obligations and embracing the notion of renewal. You may discover that you are energized by creative pursuits, guided meditation, relaxing activities during which your mind can wander, or modes of expression such as writing.
Even if you have achieved a functioning work-life balance, you may still be neglecting the most important part of that equation: you. “You time” prepares you for the next round of daily life, whether you are poised to immerse yourself in a professional project or chores around the home. It also affords you a unique opportunity to learn about yourself, your needs, and your tolerances in a concrete way. As unimportant as “you time” can sometimes seem, it truly is crucial to your wellbeing because it ensures that you are never left without the energy to give of yourself.
(c) Daily Om
Callie says …
Well, as if there were ever synchronicity, it was running at full pelt with me today! As always, I draw an InnerSight card each day (no specific time, just whenever I feel like it) and today’s card was … Balance!!! I had to laugh at the Divine timing of this card. I share with you (below) what the Balance card said:
Balance
InnerSight: You have chosen to bring balance into your life. Maybe you are working too hard without sufficient time for play. Maybe you are not allowing enough time for what makes your heart sing, for the joys of life. Are you giving endlessly to otehrs and not allowing enough time for yourself? Are there imbalances showing in your life through fatigue, emotional exhaustion, or lack of laughter? Disharmonies – mental, spiritual, emotional and physical are caused by a lack of balance. Give yourself the space you need to come back into harmony.
Visualisation: Sit quietly and hold out your hands. The left hand is receiving and the right hand is giving. See coming into your left hand all the things that are lacking in your life; visualise all the things that you would like to do if you were to allow yourself time: pampering, holidays, walks in the country, more time with family, listening to your favourite music and so on. Hold the intention of coming into total balance now.
Guidance: Every day take time out for yourself – a quiet moment to bring yourself back into balance; a moment for you. Make sure that you are receiving as well as giving.
Your Ripple Energy Therapy is Nurture