Taking time to pause today

When you pause today, remember to check with:

"The place that knows that it knows what it knows."

Remembering to Breathe

Why is breathing and centering our attention on our breath important?
Any spiritual work is about bringing the physical field, the emotional field, and the mental field into unity, into oneness. How does this happen? It happens through the breath. The breath is the spirit. The breath is the catalyst. The breath shakes things up and moves things. It keeps things moving. Every little cell is more alive and vibrating. I consider that we are a series of vibrations; we’re pure energy. When we’re plugged into the master current, to the big current, it’s held together by an invisible force called breath. So we want to make more and more space for our breath. The deeper you breathe, the more fully you’re alive.
- Gabrielle Roth

Remembering to Breathe

Healthy breathing is a powerful tool. It has a direct affect on our stress levels. When we are in danger our body responds with restricted breathing through shorter and shallower breaths situated more in the upper chest. Our body’s automatic response to a threat is to prepare to fight or run. Adrenaline courses through out bloodstreams, digestion slows and energy is diverted to our muscles. If we continue to breathe shallowly after the danger has passed, through habit or in response to ongoing stress, we deprive ourselves of a return to a fully relaxed state. We alter our body’s response to stress through our breathing. Today, pay attention to your breathing. Place one hand on your upper abdomen, the other on your chest. Take a full, deep breath in and notice whether your abdomen rises. Take 2-3 tummy breaths, 12-15 times per day: when you wake up, before and after you eat, when waiting in a line, at red lights, when you look at the time, during TV commercials, when you’re feeling frustrated or angry or bored or unhappy. To relax your autonomic nervous system: lengthen your exhalations and shorten your inhalations: inhale (count 1, 2, 3) and exhale (count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Find your own best rhythm. To energize lengthen inhalations and shorten exhalations.

Taking time to Laugh

Follow this link and fill in your first name.


Ø      http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~geoffo/humour/flattery.html

Place Like Home

I am creating art for my new show called Place Like Home. Home is an environment that allows you to be feel: safe, secure, contained, and connected with the world around you. There is a sense of belonging and you may experience the body sensations of being: centered, relaxed, free, nurtured, and empowered. It is an environment where you can put down roots: build a “home”, make long term plans, envision living there into the future and it becomes a place you want to return to. Images of “home” are images that make us feel connected and safe in a place.

On a day-to-day basis we collect, store and remember certain images that create certain psychological and emotional states. We all have a storehouse of images that help define who we think ourselves to be. They are stored in the body as sensations, in the emotions as states, and in the mind as memories and narratives. As Rumi said "we are unconditioned beings trapped in conditions." What is home to you?