My Daily Meditation Practice

I started a daily mindfulness meditation practice a couple months ago after 5 years of meditating on and off and wow, it has brought so much grounding, spaciousness, and clarity into my mind.

It’s a simple practice with 3 steps:

1. Take a seat.
This means coming into your body and into awareness with being here now. I had been meditating with a stack of blankets and pillows, feeling a bit wobbly, and my meditation teacher @dinaviesalazar suggested that I get a buckwheat meditation cushion. This one from @florensicollection came into my life and I freakin loooove it (Frida loves it too 😻 and we both love how it’s a woman owned business based in Austin TX!)
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2. Bring your attention to your breath.

3. Whenever the mind wanders, note it as thinking, and simply return to the breath.

Sooo I’ve been meditating on and off for 5 years and we hear things like “clear your mind” and get caught up in this loop like “oh sh*t I’m thinking again, bad! Go back to the breath!” and all of that mental looping creates more chaos and make us feel like if we think, we’re doing it wrong. I’ve even had people tell me “I’m bad at meditating, I can’t clear my mind.” Haha welllll that’s part of the practice.

It’s a practice of compassion and observation. Our mind naturally wanders and we’re simply the observer to notice where it goes. And when it does wander we simply notice it, and with kindness, gentleness, and compassion, we go back to the breath. Over time, we can keep our attention on our breath for longer and longer, while remembering that every day is different. It’s like weight training for the mind, building the muscle to stay grounded and centered no matter what’s happening around us.

Some days my mind is an unruly child that does NOT want to sit and notice and those days are challenging, but I also know that by simply showing up, I’m creating a pattern of consistency, reliability, and trust within myself.

💖

How Are You Celebrating Yourself?

Celebrating you for crossing one thing off your to-do list.
Celebrating you for writing one paragraph of your book.
Celebrating you for sending out that email.
Celebrating you for making one new connection.

It's the little actions that create habits and become a new way of being.

In my work with my clients, we start every session with the question "what are your wins and what are you celebrating?"

We (my clients and myself) all have a pattern of perfectionism.
To only look at what's next without looking back at the work we've accomplished.
To keep our work hidden until it's absolutely perfect before showing it to the world.
To wait and wait and wait in inaction until everything is perfectly lined up, until we get approval, until the moon is in the right phase and all the planets are direct, before we finally DO THE THING.
To accomplish MAJOR things and still think "yeah, but... it could have been better" or "yeah... but I still haven't done XYZ so it's not good enough yet."

If we only wait until the final final final thing is completed or accomplished, we're showing our psyche along the entire journey that it's not good enough. When we finally DO get to that thing we've been wanting, it falls flat and we're dissatisfied. We feel like there should still be more, because that's what we've been training our brain this whole time.

If you have a pattern of perfectionism and imposter syndrome, I invite you to start seeing how you're already doing The Thing, and after each small victory, ask "how can I celebrate this?"

It might be as simple as a 10 second butt shake around your living room, or arms up in the air in a victorious "YES!"

You got this. You are on your way and I'm celebrating you!

x
Mona

Feeling of Fulfilment

That feeling of fulfillment that you’re searching for?

Maybe you’re looking for it in the next job, the perfect partner, where you live, or the next vacation.

But it’s just that- a feeling.

It comes from within you.

From slowing down enough to quiet the external voices.

To clear out the noise long enough to hear your own heart.

It comes from full presence and connection with your inner and outer world.

It’s in hearing your own breath.

It’s in feeling the subtle hum of your body.

It’s in watching a father teach his daughter how to skip rocks.

It’s in the way the sidewalk glitters.

It’s in the sprouts in the cement cracks bursting to the light.

It’s in the fur of your dog’s ear.

Fulfillment is right here, right now.

Pause long enough to feel it.

Recieving

.:: R E C E I V I N G ::.
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How do you receive love? Rest? The story of Monet in this booklet is helping me flip my perspective around work and rest, work and play, and judgements around laziness. I often feel like when I’m resting or not doing anything, that I’m being lazy, and then I fall into this shame spiral that causes me to numb out in front of Netflix for an entire day because I’m so overwhelmed. But if I allow myself a true reset WITHOUT guilt and shame, then creativity just FLOWS. Astrologically speaking, we’re coming out of a period of rest but I still find this message equally important.
.:.
How are you receiving right now? How do you want to be receiving? Do you allow yourself to receive? Is it uncomfortable to receive? How can you practice so that it gets a little easier each time? What possibilities are there if you allow yourself you receive with your whole heart?
.:.
Sacred Rebels Oracle by @alana_fairchild
Artwork by @autumnskyeart

Transformation

Happenstance or kismet? 

On Saturday, my YTT class picked spirit animal cards. Out of a deck of 50 or so, my friend Cat and I both got the butterfly as our spirit animal. When I came into work today, I was given this gift from my co-worker who just got back from Costa Rica. I have not spoken to her about butterflies or my spirit animal. It couldn't be more fitting and it made my day. 
Here's what my butterfly card said:

TRANSFORMATION

"Get ready for a big breakthrough"

"It's very possible to go through major changes calmly and willingly when you view them as natural and hold relentless positive expectations. Whether in the darkness before the storm of emergence, the process of coming out of the self-created cocoon (which occasions some struggle at times), or the full and glorious expression of the new "you," it's faith in the wisdom of Great Spirit and your conscious resonance with Source that will be your guiding force. There's no need to identify with or feel constricted within the cocoon or by the darkness before the light—it's only a phase! The truth is that you're birthing each and every moment. Yet sometimes there are larger cycles that incorporate so many unexpected twists and turns that it can at times seem momentous and frightening. You may feel scattered, uncertain, flitting from this to that, with seemingly no thread of continuity that you can grab hold of. It's worth it to pause at those times, enjoy the richness and beauty of it all, and have absolute trust that this is a natural progression for your soul's development. What is coming to fruition each and every time is more and more of the true Self that is your destiny."

Additional associations: Rebirth; Vibrancy; Reincarnation; Colorfulness