Guided Meditation for Birthdays and Everyday Renewal

This latest podcast meditation Guided Meditation for Birthdays and Everyday Renewal was recorded with my meditation group. It was inspired by the birthday of the woman who had inspired me to start the group many years ago. As I was ending the meditation, I found myself saying, 

"We’ve experienced the sense of aliveness. We’ve been reminded of renewal. We’ve given thanks and taken into our hearts the many gifts life has given us and we’ve planted a seed for the time to come. And we can carry that aliveness and sense of life and miracle of life with us now."

Although this meditation can have special meaning on your birthday, it's something that you can use on any day to renew your sense of gratitude and wonder. I hope you enjoy this meditation as much as the group did and would love to hear your experiences with it.

Join the Sleep Revolution!

I am a devotee of sleep. Sleep is so high on my list of priorities that I'll often forego a "fun" night out because I'd rather enjoy the simple pleasures of the next day rather than a couple hours of excitement. This may seem extreme, but there it is. I so love going about my day fresh, simply feeling good to be alive, enjoying a clear mind, stable emotions and a happy body. It's not that I'm a total stick in the mud who doesn't ever do something that will compromise my sleep, but this gives you some sense of how much I value it. (And if I miss a few nights of good sleep, I am sure to make it up.)

From what I've been reading of late, I'm lucky to have had this priority in terms of its impact on my health and well-being over the years. It hasn't just enhanced my quality of life, it's contributed to my health and productivity in numerous ways. Since I hope the same for you, I encourage you to read Arianna Huffington's new book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time. The book, released today, came to my attention because our iSleep Easy app is recommended in it. That was good news for us, of course, but it's even better news that this book has the potential to bring the importance of sleep to everyone's attention and vastly improve many lives as a result.

Trouble sleeping? Many of us find a good night of sleep elusive. My devotion to sleep partly grew out of many years of insomnia earlier in life. I tried many things and found many ways to fall asleep more quickly and sleep more deeply. Much of the inspiration for our iSleep Easy app grew out of my own experience.

If you aren't already, I hope you will be inspired to give sleep the priority in your life it deserves. You deserve it.  I hope you'll join the "Sleep Revolution"!

How Meditation can Help You Move Forward after a Loss

Last week I was interviewed by Lois McCullough for her free online summit "Unstuck & Unstoppable -- How to move past your past, get off the emotional roller coaster and create a life you love". Each day of the event features a different expert offering inspiration and positive steps to take for someone who wants to create a new life after a loss.

You can hear the interview with Lois if you register for the summit, including a special guided meditation done for summit participants. While speaking with Lois, I shared two important tasks anyone must accomplish to move ahead after a loss, and how meditation helps.

Task 1 - Mourn the loss completely. Grieving a loss takes time and energy, and unless you've done it thoroughly your energy will be bound up and it will be hard to move ahead. The only way through grief is straight into the heart of it, and that means feeling the painful feelings all the way. In doing so you cooperate with the body and mind's natural healing process, and when you've done this enough, you will naturally start to have more energy to move ahead.

How Meditation Helps - Meditation will help you to relax into the feelings of loss, letting them flow through and resolve. It will help you to stay centered, giving you an anchor so that you are not lost in the sea of grief. For Task 1, you might want to listen to our Guided Meditation for Grief.

Task 2 - Find the Spark of your Passion and Let it Grow. You may already be involved in fulfilling work and activities, but you may have lost your enthusiasm for them. Now is the time to reconnect. Or perhaps you are challenged to find a new direction, new interests that engage and fulfill you. In either case, you need to connect with your passion. Time to find what sparks your interest, your joy in life, and when you sense that spark, nourish it with your time and attention.

How Meditation Helps - Meditation helps us to settle down and experience ourselves more clearly and deeply. In meditation, you can connect with even the faintest spark of a passion you didn't even know was there. It can help you to recognize feelings you may not have been aware of. For Task 2, you might try the Enhance Your Creativity Guided Meditation or Guided Meditation for Intuition.

The guided meditations mentioned are all available on our Meditation Oasis podcast. You can register for the free online Unstuck & Unstoppable Summit here -- http://bit.ly/206iUH3

Rest in Stillness Guided Meditation

Stillness is at the very core of your being. In this new podcast meditation, you will be able to discover stillness in your own awareness.

As you listen to the Rest in Stillness meditation, you will be guided first to notice what is being perceived in the present moment -- sounds, thoughts, feelings, sensations. Then you will become aware of the stillness in the background of these experiences. Everything is experienced in awareness, but usually we are lost in our perceptions -- sights, sounds, thoughts, emotions -- without noticing the awareness at the basis of our experience.

With repeated practice, you will start to notice quietness in the midst of noise, stillness in the midst of activity, as you go through your day. Let us know how the meditation goes for you. We love to hear your experiences and are happy to answer any questions.
 

Welcome to our new website - reflections on change...

Welcome to our new website! Many of you have been using our website for years. Most of you listen to our podcast and may have been surprised by the change when you came to listen. We hope you were happily surprised. I imagine reactions will range from happy excitement to disgruntlement. I know I get irritated when things are not in their usual place in the grocery store. It's so easy to go in and head straight for what I want when everything is in its usual place. Please let us know if you can't find what you are looking for. Almost everything from our old website is here, but simplified. Hopefully the new website will be easier to navigate.

Creating something new fills me with a happy, fresh energy. There's a joy in the process of something new emerging. But bringing in the new also means letting go of the old. It reminds me of when get got our latest car. We really needed a newer car and it was so much nicer than our old one. But there were some sentimental pangs - the old car had taken us on so many memorable journeys and served us well. The old website was, well, old. It didn't represent us well anymore. But it was built with love. And the hardest thing was that in the transition we lost thousands of comments left by our visitors. Each comment was meaningful and special to us. Chances are you won't notice that your comment is missing, but if you do, know that we loved hearing from you and hearing your thoughts. Do feel free to comment again!

Last but not least, we built our old website ourselves. You might even miss that "homemade" look, but it was high time we had a logo and a more "professional" face for the world. So here's a shout out to Yesh & Tash for our beautiful logo and new website.