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.
💖
Viewing entries in
Self-Love
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
She asked, “do you ever doubt yourself? Or compare yourself?”
And I bust out laughing.
The answer?
Every. Fuckin. Day.
I quit my 9-5 corporate job in October to pursue running my coaching and yoga business full-time while also moving to a new city (all or nothin’ babe).
It has been such a hard journey that’s dug up alllllllllll of my unhealed shadows to be faced. Even things I thought I moved past came up for healing on a deeper level.
The thought, “maybe I should go back into corporate design…” has crossed my mind nearly every single day.
I get caught in the endless scrolling on social media, seeing what the other coaches from my training program are up to and I compare compare compare, feeling shittier with every swipe.
Comparison shows where I am still insecure. It used to be around my body. I would scrutinize how I looked in photos compared to my friends, compared to past versions of myself, never satisfied.
Now it’s around business since I’m not yet where I want to be and wondering every day what I’m doing wrong, forgetting to see what I’m doing right.
I’ve embraced that fear, self-doubt, and comparison are part of the process. Maybe comparison goes away, but fear and self-doubt doesn’t. In honest conversations with people I admire who are doing the things I want to be doing, I’ve learned that fear and doubt still affect them. It shows up every time we edge our comfort zone.
This is where discernment comes into play. Is the doubt and fear showing up because I’m on the wrong path or because I’m doing something new and uncomfortable?
It’s usually the latter.
The knowing that I’m on the RIGHT path is an expansive and grounded sensation in my body.
The fear and doubt of stepping out of my comfort zone show up in my head as racing thoughts and anxiety. It’s heady and airy and spins me dizzy.
I thank the fear for trying to keep me safe within what’s known and familiar. I take a deep breath and remember that I’m capable, that I’ve done hard things before, and that I can trust myself now.
I am safe. I am okay. I can handle anything that comes my way.
Thanks @dariaxtaylor for asking the best questions and taking THE BEST photos of me.
And just like that, in a single week, I started a dream job and also laid my dog to rest.
The entire month of July, I was holding so much excitement for life-changing possibilities with the new job AND so much grief as I watched Jeff get sicker by the day, from a high energy dog who could play and run all day to one who could barely stand up or lay down without immense effort.
The practices I’ve done over the years in meditation, yoga, and therapy, have all been training me for this period of time. Every day over the past few weeks, I’ve allowed myself to dive into the depths of grief, to feel my heart ache, and express full-body sobs AND dance and laugh and jump around like a loon overcome with joy.
The depths to which we allow ourselves the gift of feeling our shadows of grief, sadness, anger, guilt, and shame, is the height in which we can experience our light of joy, freedom, abundance, bliss, and love.
It’s okay to feel it all, even at the same time.
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.
.:: R E C E I V I N G ::.
.
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
.:. TAKING UP S P A C E .:.
I was at one of those order then sit restaurants. It was busy with lots of people standing around, waiting for take out orders, but only about a third of the tables were taken. I was there by myself and wanted a booth but the only one available was a 4-top. In fact, most of the tables were 4-tops.
.:.
My mind immediately went to how I shouldn’t take a big table in case other people wanted to sit. I found a little 2 person high top that was in between other people and then I stopped.
.:.
Wait a second. There are so many empty tables. Why can’t I just take the one that I want? Why do I feel the need to cram myself in between a bunch of other people and use this little table? I turned around and took the 4-top with the booth seating.
.:.
How often of you try to make yourself as small as possible?
How often do you accept second best?
How often do you think that you are not worthy of nice things or what you really want?
.:.
You are worthy of the 4-top booth. You are worthy of taking up space. You are worthy of being seen and heard. ✨
Stillness is okay too. In fact, it’s necessary. Life has been turbulent for far too long. Allow yourself to rest without guilt. Still does not equate to stagnant. If you look closely, you’ll see that there are still waves, smaller actions happening. Stillness may be uncomfortable. You may enjoy the swells of hurricanes, but even those have a moment of calm. You are exactly where you need to be. There are lessons to be learned even if, especially if, you allow the stillness and the quiet.
Our retreat leader, Camille, asked the group who has ever felt self conscious about their body. And it looked like that scene from Mean Girls when they were asked to “raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by Regina George.” Every. single. hand went up.
Look inside- what do you see?
I see a girl
who was caged,
broken and scared.
Do you ever feel suspicious or cautious when things are going well? Are you waiting for the other shoe to drop? Do you doubt that good things can happen to you?
Seasonal affective disorder is no joke. The depression feels like a deep ache in the core of my being, a permeating sadness regardless of how good life is.
My time in Costa Rica on the Jungle Goddess retreat was more amazing than I imagined it could be. I experienced love and connection at a whole new level. It was a week of love, connection, loving words, feeling like I belonged, feeling accepted, feeling safe and held and cared for.
No more of this "means to an end" bullshit. What the hell is the "end" anyways? I resolve to stop putting my life on hold until I achieve this thing or that thing. I resolve to stop trying to fit my life into a plan. We all know how plans go.
For years, I had taken someone else's belief about love as my own truth. "Love is when you care about someone so much that you would sacrifice anything for them." Sounds poetic. But upon further investigation, I realized something deeply disturbing about this belief.
Relief that the past is behind me and that I no longer have to carry it with me.
Relief that the present and future are brighter and filled with more love than I knew possible.
Relief that my reality is no longer filled with fear.
The story. The script. The line. The lie.
The one that whispers so sweetly that I've always let it in. The one that waits just at the edge of my mind, jumping in at every chance.
When someone else is sad, I try and fix it, try and find the source of it and make it all better. Is it because of my own inability to sit with my sadness?
I just hit “send” on an an application to be a photographer on Yoga Journal’s Live Be Yoga Tour. What an amazing end to 2016.
I’ve struggled with my body image, confidence and self worth for most of my life. I believed I was ugly and needed to lose weight. I put my self-worth in the way I looked.