Centered On The Heart Chakra

The heart chakra is personified by the colors green and pink. It signifies your personal center of healing, compassion, love, acceptance, and gratitude. All the gentlest and most caring of emotions emanate from within it. Your heart chakra is most appropriately located in the center of your chest just above your ribcage. I like to imagine a strong green outer shell resonating around my heart chakra's energy center which is a pink soft and vulnerable core. The pink represents caring and a softer approach, while the green wisely acts as a filter to strain out less pure elements, or people or things that it senses mean us harm, while also acknowledging their right to exist and be. When we activate our heart chakra fully, we are able to both love closely and at a distance without judgment or fear and we broaden our horizons away from bias. We truly and freely enjoy the love that comes our way and express our love for others with completeness and honesty. My goal today is to meditate on opening my heart chakra. Just think of all the good we could do if we all worked on opening up our hearts and letting out the gifts of our unconditional love to the world.

Photo Credits: Dynamite Imagery

One Minute Meditation

I've learned meditation doesn't have to be a long drawn out process. Of course having the time to sit in Seated Cross-Legged Pose contemplating your existence would be nice if you had the time, but sometimes that's just not practical. I like to occasionally take my meditation in strides. Maybe I'm riding in a car, or I have a moment before my next client and only a moment, or maybe I'm sitting in the a waiting room somewhere? I find these times are the perfect excuse to find a bit of Zen in a brief centering meditation. If you are weak in a certain chakra, use this opportunity to reflect on the color associated with that chakra and for 1-5 minutes, or however much time you have free, focus on that center of energy and that color. Remember to close your eyes and take it seriously even for the few minutes that you have. An example would be, if you were wanting to strengthen the root chakra, draw your attention to the base of your spine and imagine the color red emanating from that spot and expanding in a clockwise, circular motion all the way down to your feet like a crimson spiral. Then see if you can quickly envision the other chakra spots from orange to violet. Don't spend anymore then 5 minutes on this exercise. The idea here is to effect improvement slowly and a bit at a time. I love doing this simple meditation because it clears my mind of anything I'm stressing about and helps me to focus on having a brighter day; which brings me that much closer to owning a peaceful inner being.

Cyber Yoga

Technology is an amazing thing! I just completed an online yoga session with Swami Ji, as he told me to call him for short. His full name is Swami Mahavanam Saraswati. He has studied various disciplines including Yoga, Vedanta,Tantra, and acupressure. It was a privilege to have learned from him. Swami Ji is one of the yogi's on a very cool and informative website for yoga called Divine Wellness. Click here to check them out. They have online yoga classes that you can sign up for, of which the first 2 yoga classes are free of charge (no credit card needed and no catch). Thereafter, if you choose to continue, you can subscribe for more classes for a fee. The session was unbelievable and the Swami Ji was so educated and serene to work with. In a non-judgmental way he gently guiding me through a valuable hip-opening session that really increased my flexibility. I was impressed by his calm manner and friendly grasp of the complexities of yoga knowledge. I highly recommend that any yogi beginner to advanced try this service out. Browse the site and register for the free membership so that you can deepen your your yoga practice by working with yoga gurus straight from the birthplace of yoga which is India. You'll be so glad you did. And since I won't be going to India anytime soon, I have a feeling that this website will become invaluable to me.

Photo Credit: Lobster20

Healing From The Inside Out

With everything that I am doing I have confidence that I will discover the path to enlightenment. I'm using the energy of my own body to rejuvenate itself daily. It's something that is a steady and sure evolution towards a better me. EFT is so instrumental in my journey that although I'm sure I would've found an alternative, it's benefits cannot be denied. I puts me in a clearer and more secure state of mind and arms me to face the stresses and any negative vibes that might come my way. That being said, I love Brad Yates. Today I'm going to focus on his EFT sequence for letting go, entitled Letting Go and Letting God.This is an amazing EFT session that will help you to release stuck energy and promote a general feeling of calm and well-being. You don't have to believe in god to do with EFT session. You can simply put your trust in the universe and the fact that what will be will be. So enjoy surrendering to a power higher then yourself even if that power be Mother Nature. Let go...

Photo Credits: Dan

Learning Each Day With Yoga

Am I still doing EFT everyday? You betcha! However, I am of course delving daily into the subtleties and complexities of my yoga practice. I love referring to a really cool site called Yoga Journal for guidance in my yoga journey. It is the online accompaniment to a hard copy magazine of the same name. Yoga Journal's website lets you explore poses in depth and get a handle on proper alignment, as well as assess the personal benefits that you can glean from a pose so that you can tailor make a practice session that fits you perfectly. Yoga Journal online also has a slew of articles that will help you to integrate the yogic lifestyle into something that works for you, exploring breath-work, health concerns, general interest topics relating to yoga, and even videos to show you how-to's. I regard this website as a staple to my yoga education. I regard Yoga Journal as another step in my goal of becoming a yoga instructor in the summer of the coming year. My yoga practice is helping me achieve my goals one day at a time.

Red Is For Root Chakra

Today is all about connecting with the color red in every aspect. During my chakra meditation I focused in on the color red while imagining it swirling from the base of my spinal column all the way to the tips of my toes. I did this while taking a root chakra soak that I made with eucalyptus essential oil, fresh lemon, essential oil of lemon and of rose, a tincture of parsley and 1 cup of baking soda and 2 cups of epsom salt respectively. This bath stimulates detoxification of the endocrine system which is directly connected to the root and sacral chakras.Afterwards I drank a tea infusion of nettle and burdock root. It really cleared my system and helped to open up blocked meridians in my body.I also went to the store and purchased some red fruits and
veggies. Apples, red tea, and tomatoes for a tomato, balsamic vinegrette salad made with organic olive oil went well with dinner, as well as organic kidney beans and brown rice. The combination is chasing my prediliction for anemia away and reviving my energy center. Yoga with a slant torwards lower body work as a healing balancing agent is also working immensely. I'm walking, breathing proof of the body's ability to heal itself using energy work.

Photo Credit: Suat Eman

Energy And Chakras

Raising Kundalini energy is a challenge -- one that I'm taking on with full-speed ahead. I've learned that it's OK to have set-backs in yoga and in health because those mis-steps help you to further align yourself with your steady progress and your growth to change and expand.My focus is to strenghten and broaden my root chakra. With that in mind I've been working with various poses such as Janu Sirsasana (Head-to-Knee Forward Bend) to build the stamina in those areas and help me become more grounded in my 1st chakra. Strongly imagining the color red swirling clockwise from the beginning of my root chakra all the way to the tips of my feet during my meditation has been of great benefit as well. I still have a ways to go but starting with meditation and sound therapy has put me on the road to healing. Exploring the relationship between massage and chakra therapy is another part of my journey. Pulling all these resources together is having a synergistic effect that is profounding changing my approach to health. Going ahead I know that blending several different methods together to create a whole picture is where my path will eventually lead me.

Photo Credits: Federico Stevanin