Earlier this week I was sitting in the drive up waiting for my coffee and I got to thinking about how much time I spend thinking about the future. Where we are going next, what task is next, what bite of food is next, what class to teach is next, what thing to do is next, what worry is next, what dreadful event is next, what is next?!
Wait.
What if instead I just sat with the sun blinding me, enjoying the song on my radio (Bruce of course), and allowed myself to BE.
I am all for planning and strategizing but sinking in to the moment was awesome.
Lesson of the day? Don’t rush the moment to get to the next thing. Enjoy this thing!
The Immune System and the Lymphatic System work synergistically to protect the body from harmful pathogens and disease.
What are these systems?
These systems include many aspects to our body; white blood cells, bone marrow, the spleen, tonsils, adenoids, appendix, thymus, lymph, and lymph nodes. When our immune system is working properly, it is able to identify a threat and engage in a series of responses designed to eliminate the pathogen from entering targeted cells and tissues.
Lifestyle choices can either strengthen or weaken the immune response.
Nutrition is an important factor in having a healthy immune system because cells need vital nutrients to safeguard the body.
Did you know your essential oils have a chemical footprint similar to the human body, therefore, they have the unique ability to help the immune system bring itself to balance? Essential oils are fat-soluble (lipophilic) so they are able to penetrate the cell membrane and back up your immune system when you are feeling a bit run down.
There are so many uses for just these ten essential oils! And the great news is these come in two of my favorite starter bundles. Plus, when you get started with me, I hook you up with some awesome education and mentoring so that you know exactly how to use them, a free wellness coaching session, and a welcome package to get your started! You will also be part of a great community of people striving for wholeness.
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom – Marcel Proust
For years I have wanted to share a story about a man who has made a profound impact on my life during the month of March when it is the Brain Injury Awareness month, but have struggled to find the words that capture the essence of him and also be sensitive to never want to exploit his life, or his injury.
Every once in a while if you are lucky, you meet someone who touches your soul in a place that you may have not otherwise even known existed. I had been teaching yoga to people with brain injuries for many years when I met someone who reached something in me that is not easily described. Of course, each of my students who have arrived for yoga have brought something unique and often profound to my life, but one man in particular has really found a place in my heart.
It has been my method while I teach yoga to people with brain injuries to not ever ask how they sustained their injury. It is not that such a huge event in their life does not matter to me, but I do not need to know the details. I do not need to know even what their life was like before the injury. Instead, I prefer to just know them as they are now. I want to know what they like, what they dream of, what bothers them, what they long for, what brings them joy, what hurts and what they love. In time as we work together it is not uncommon for the details of the injury to be revealed, or the life they had prior to the event, but it is not something that I seek out. Just as I rarely seek to learn about someone’s past, because it is now that I want to know and be part of.
Each time I was leaving the long term care center that I frequented weekly to teach adaptive yoga I would often see a man with the most beautiful blue eyes sitting in his chair watching hockey reruns or slowly walking through the corridors, grasping the hand rail, sliding his left leg along the linoleum floor. I would greet him and I would usually get the same response, “hi….yep yep”. Always the same answer. One day I asked him if he wanted to come to yoga and this time, he gave me an adamant, “nope nope”. This exchanged continued for nearly a year. Always “nope, nope”.
Then one day, I got a “yep yep”.
That was the beginning of a friendship and a blending of two people bringing out the best in each other. In time through his amazing family and his own sharing, I learned about his life before his accident and it is my honor to share it here.
My friend Jim was just a young man with his whole life ahead of him. A recent college graduate, a great new career at a bank, and a nice home. This elite athlete who had his eyes on an Ironman, who was a former college hockey captain, and friend to anyone was welcoming in a life that many dream of. Surrounded by an incredible family, life long friends and a passion for being a competitive athlete, the younger Jim was a man full of dreams that he knew he could achieve.
But, in a split second, the life he created was shattered. A training ride on his beloved bicycle changed everything when he was struck by a car. After months and months in the hospital and in rehab, Jim was able to regain some of his skills and returned miraculously to his love of running. With the help of his family and friends, he was able to do some of the things he loved and had some amazing successes through his recovery.
His next hurdle would be the massive seizures that would prove to take away the progress that he had gained physically, and with his language and memory. More work, more struggles and more setbacks.
When I met Jim he had recently suffered a massive seizure that caused major damage to his brain. His language was stuck on a constant loop of repeating the same phrases over and over, or he would have outbursts that were either bouts of laughter that was uncontrollable, or fits of rage. Physically, he was struggling to walk and use his left arm. Cognitively it was hard to say what he was able to retain since his ability to communicate easily was greatly impacted.
When a portion of your brain is removed and the misfiring neurotransmitters from repetitive seizures, it is a miracle to witness all that he is able to do. He may not remember what he had for breakfast, or what year it is, but he can tell you the details of his favorite hockey team, the names of his beloved college buddies, or the exact model of hockey skates he prefers. He will laugh at your jokes and even crack a few himself.
It is hard to capture the resiliency of his spirit. The best way I can describe it is despite all of the struggles and all the loss he has endured, his spirit is as loving, as devoted, as connected, and as grateful as it ever was. His smile can light up a room and the second you remind him that he is a champion, he beams and tries even harder. His confidence in himself marvels me.
I have never once heard him complain about his life. Never once. Instead, he is a light. He bears goodness on anyone in his presence. He brings out the best in me, I know that. He has become my version of the charming gardener who brings out happiness and blossoms in me.
Jim’s life was on the path much like yours and mine. In an instant it was all gone. And yet, he is the kindest, most humble man, who always shakes my hand to thank me and say goodbye as he looks me in the eye. He could have given up. He could have become bitter and resentful. Instead, he is pure grace and pure light.
One day while I was on the floor at his feet working his very stiff ankle, he whispered something to me. I couldn’t hear him so I asked him to repeat it. He quietly said, “I forgive her”. When I asked him who he was talking about, he said, “the girl who hit me with her car”.
Can you find that kind of grace and forgiveness? Can you live your life without a complaint? Can you be resilient to the tragedy and loss of your own life? Take a lesson from my friend Jim. He knows the way.
When I took a course with Brene Brown in 2016 I learned the power of a personal manifesto and have fallen back on the beautiful creation that I wrote during the class many times since then.
Manifesto
I recently returned to the manifesto through the lens of my business and how I want to show up in the world, and who I want to surround myself with.
Being self employed is hard and it requires diligence that cannot be explained unless you know first hand the ups and downs. By linking arms with people who share an equal vision for humanity, for compassion, for striving to be the best human possible, I know that I am living in alignment with my deepest truths.
I would love to share visions with you—whether that is through yoga, wellness, business mentoring, or just giving goodness. If you’re looking for a passionate way to make a difference, let’s talk.
Svadhyaya asks you to suspend looking outside for perceptions of yourself, and instead, look at your inner life–your beliefs, your priorities, and your actions.-Suzan Colon
The term svadhyaya literally means ‘one’s own reading’ or ‘self study’. It is is the fourth niyama of patnajali’s sutras and has the potential to deepen our yoga way beyond the mat. My favorite translation or definition of this beautiful inner work called Svadhyaya refers to any activity wherein we quietly study ourselves and reflect upon our actions, thoughts, emotions, motivations, aspirations, desires and needs in pursuit of a deeper experience of our lives and our own selves.
The physical aspects to the yoga practice offers the perfect opportunity to explore svadhyaya.
To create each posture you must move and place the various parts of your body into a shape on a rectangle. You could do this without any real engagement or awareness, carelessly going through the motions while your mind is a million miles away, or you could work towards staying present with each and every moment as it arises. You could notice how the body responds to being aligned a certain way, observe physical sensations, watch how your mind reacts to what you’re doing with your body, experience any emotions that show up, and listen to the ebb and flow of your breath.
Often when we’re practicing yoga on the mat discomfort—or sometimes pain—becomes evident.
If we slow down, apply this form of self awareness, or svadhyaya, and truly contemplate what’s happening in our bodies and minds, pain becomes an important teacher. We can examine the subtleties of pain and begin to understand the difference between “bad pain” that is harmful and injurious to our bodies; and “good pain,” mild or moderate discomfort that we can stay with, breathe into and observe as it shifts and changes.
Since my first hip surgery in 2016, I have greatly avoided the physical practice and therefore, avoided this kind of deeper self-inquiry. Sure, I did some chair yoga as I taught my classes and I would occasionally unroll my mat but honestly it was more as a way to simply say that I am practicing. Truth is I wasn’t practicing at all. Or at least very often.
I might find myself being a tad more consistent and then another injury and another surgery would put me back in the same resistance and emptiness of anything closely resembling a physical yoga practice.
With great honesty I can say that as time has gone on I have made up a million excuses as to why I was not practicing a physical yoga. Some of the excuses were legitimate and some of them were downright falsehoods.
I missed my time on the mat a lot, but I still resisting it until recently when I began to choose time on the yoga mat. Rather than spend too much time in the morning reading and journaling (and avoiding the mat), I have since shortened that sitting time to spend more of my so-called ‘spirit time’ with myself on the mat. This inner work has been transformative to me in just a few weeks.
I began to feel like I had come home after years of being away. I felt like the dear old friend has returned and without any judgment she has welcomed me into the sanctuary of pure love and acceptance.
This morning as I was paying attention to the sensations within my body (while also fighting the grumblings of any ego based thoughts entering my mind about what my body used to be able to do or feel…more self-study), I realized this magnificent practice of self study is a gift that opens the doors to so many other deep discoveries. I found the voice speaking softly to me while practicing the way any dear old friend would speak; encouraging, kind, compassionate, loving. This beautiful friend reminded my body of all that it has endured and welcomed her back to feel and soak in the sensations as perfect and whole.
This is pure love! It’s so divine, so heavenly and so full of feminine energy. Plus it’s gorgeous!
Check out all the amazing essential oils included in this.
Rose: Opens the heart chakra and allows you to feel unconditional love. Creates a sense of well-being and calmness while awakening your ability for self-compassion, nurturing, and love.
Lemon: Opens the heart chakra to self-love and self-nurturing. lightens while uplifting your spirit and bringing clarity into your life.
Neroli: A natural tranquilizer and regulator of the nervous system that opens the heart chakra, uplifts your spirit, and encourages confidence, joy, and peace.
Marjoram: Restores warmth, self-compassion, and self-nurturing when feeling lonely or isolated.
Lavender: Helps you to relax, let go of the stress, and release fear, which fosters connect with the heart center and opens you up to more love.
Jasmine: Uplifting and joyous oil that balances the emotional system, soothes anxiety, and helps with depression and apathy.
Geranium: This emotional healing oil restores confidence and trust in others. It can help to heal a broken heart and open one up to love.
Ylang Ylang: This is a powerful remedy for the heart and releasing trauma from the past. This oil helps to release bottled up emotions that weigh heavy on the heart which allows for a more playful, carefree, emotionally connected and loving experience of life.
Tranquility Blend: Includes Lavender Flower, Cedarwood, Ho Wood Leaf, Ylang Ylang Flower, Marjoram Leaf, Roman Chamomile Flower, Vetiver Root, Vanilla Bean Absolute, Hawaiian Sandalwood. Encourages individuals to first reconnect with themselves and discover peace that lies within, and then to reconnect with the humanity in others. This brings a calm, tranquil, peaceful, relaxed, compassionate and connection person.
Rose quartz: Rose Quartz is the stone of universal love. It restores trust and harmony in relationships, encouraging unconditional love. Rose Quartz purifies and opens the heart at all levels to promote love, self-love, friendship, deep inner healing and feelings of peace. Calming and reassuring, it helps to comfort in times of grief. Rose Quartz dispels negativity.
I love spending time every month setting an intention and creating a crystal grid to reflect that intention. I have my grid in a center location in my home so that each time I walk by it I see not only its beauty but I am reminded of the intention.
This particular grid is for bringing the emotion of love into the space and everyone who lives in the space. This can be self-love, love for others, and everything in between. Unconditional love is such a beautiful feeling to experience and the stones chosen in the grid are perfect for that!
Crystal Grid for Love
Rose Quartz is the center stone in my grid and it is the stone of universal love. It restores trust and harmony in relationships, encouraging unconditional love. Rose Quartz purifies and opens the heart at all levels to promote love, self-love, friendship, deep inner healing and feelings of peace.
The next stone is Amethyst.Amethyst is one of the most famous and prominent crystals because of its beautiful purple coloration as well as its spiritual and literal meaning. The spiritual meaning of Amethyst is groundedness, tranquility, and calm. The literal meaning of Amethyst is “not intoxicated” – its name translates from the Greek word améthystos. To be tranquil and calm is a great way to invite in love. Amethyst is used often in dealing with addictions…and that can be of any type. I like to use amethyst when working with love because it helps to ward of the patterns that we can slip into that do not promote self love.
The next layer out is alternating green aventurine and clear quartz. Green aventurine comforts, harmonizes, protects the heart, and can help attract love in life. It is one of the premier stones to attract luck, abundance and success and lots of LOVE. The meaning is also linked with the heart plexus chakra, which makes it a powerful gem for calming negative emotions that often gets stuck in the heart center.
The Clear Quartz crystal meaning is known for its high vibrations. By clearing your mind, body, and spirit of any clutter, clear quartz can help you align with your highest self and live at your highest potential. Clear Quartz is known as the “master healer” and will amplify energy and thought, as well as the effect of other crystals. It absorbs, stores, releases and regulates energy. Clear Quartz draws off negative energy of all kinds and is perfect for promoting love.
The final layer is alternating more rose quartz and clear quartz points aiming outward..
This brings all the goodness and energy of each of the other stones and energetically sends it outward.
Not only can our sharp tongue be hurtful to others but also the words we choose can have an effect on how life unfolds for us. Remember, the two most powerful words we say are “I AM”, and whatever you say after that you’re welcoming in. Also, choosing certain words can have a subconscious effect to our minds and then our outcomes.
Many years ago when I was struggling to shed some weight, someone told me to stop saying “lose” (I want to lose 10 pounds), because our subconscious mind hears the word “lose” and that indicates we must go find it again. Swap out “lose” with “letting go” and the mind hears it as a finality rather than a go find. Cool, huh?
Another wise person taught me a powerful lesson that I still try to catch myself practicing. When I was struggling with hip pain between surgery two and three, I would often say “I am dying of pain…or my hip is killing me”. This beautiful man who had suffered two horrific brain injuries spoke quietly and said “Ms. Stacie why don’t you say instead ‘my hip is reminding me that I am alive’”. Boom!
Words are so powerful. Be mindful of how you speak them.
This blend works so beautifully to tap into the space of unconditional love. Apply to the heart, the wrists or along the spine to bring out all the good feelings.
Unconditional Love Blend
Rose: Opens the heart chakra and allows you to feel unconditional love. Creates a sense of well-being and calmness while awakening your ability for self-compassion, nurturing, and love.
Lemon: Opens the heart chakra to self-love and self-nurturing. lightens while uplifting your spirit and bringing clarity into your life.
Neroli: A natural tranquilizer and regulator of the nervous system that opens the heart chakra, uplifts your spirit, and encourages confidence, joy, and peace.
Marjoram: Restores warmth, self-compassion, and self-nurturing when feeling lonely or isolated.
Lavender: Helps you to relax, let go of the stress, and release fear, which fosters connect with the heart center and opens you up to more love.
Jasmine: Uplifting and joyous oil that balances the emotional system, soothes anxiety, and helps with depression and apathy.
Geranium: This emotional healing oil restores confidence and trust in others. It can help to heal a broken heart and open one up to love.
Ylang Ylang: This is a powerful remedy for the heart and releasing trauma from the past. This oil helps to release bottled up emotions that weigh heavy on the heart which allows for a more playful, carefree, emotionally connected and loving experience of life.
Tranquility Blend: Encourages individuals to first reconnect with themselves and discover peace that lies within, and then to reconnect with the humanity in others. This brings a calm, tranquil, peaceful, relaxed, compassionate and connection person.
Rose quartz: Rose Quartz is the stone of universal love. It restores trust and harmony in relationships, encouraging unconditional love. Rose Quartz purifies and opens the heart at all levels to promote love, self-love, friendship, deep inner healing and feelings of peace. Calming and reassuring, it helps to comfort in times of grief. Rose Quartz dispels negativity
Do you ever wonder what people mean when they say “aromatic benefits”??
Your sense of smell is much more accurate than any of your other senses.
Your ability to smell comes from sensory cells called Olfactory Sensory Neurons, found in a small patch of tissue very high in your nose. Those cells connect to your brain.
Each of those sensory neurons has one odor receptor – and molecules released by substances around us stimulate these receptors. Once your neurons detect your molecules, they send messages to your limbic lobe of your brain.
Our sense of smell is 10,000 more sensitive than our other senses.
Scent travels faster to the brain with smell than it does with sight, or even sound.
The limbic lobe is a group of brain structures that is below the cortex of the brain – it includes the amygdala and the hippocampus. Your limbic lobe (system of brain structures) is directly connected to the parts of your brain that control many aspects of your body – hormone levels, stress, memory, breathing, heart rate, and more.
The only way to stimulate the emotional brain is through your sense of smell – which is one of the reasons why Essential Oils can work so incredibly well. Feelings of depression, fear, anger, happiness, joy and even anxiety all originate from the limbic lobe of the brain.
Essential Oils can help alleviate symptoms at a cellular level through their therapeutic properties. The stimulation of hormones and chemicals can drastically affect physiology and behavior.
Essential Oils responses are varied. They be stimulating (Peppermint), or calming (Lavender). Some are sedative (Cedarwood) and some balancing (Frankincense).
My Top Five for Emotions:
Roman Chamomile: Helps support feelings of peace, love and acceptance.
Cedarwood: Helps support healthy focus and encouragement while also grounding.
Lavender: Helps support relaxation and calming. This one also helps with communicating feelings.
Bergamot: Uplifting and will help support healthy confidence levels. This one also helping foster self love and self worth.
Frankincense: Powerful cleanser of the spirit – grounding and can help during times of negativity.
REFERENCES:
How do Essential Oils Affect our Mind and Our Emotions. Retrieved from http://www.biospiritual-energy-healing.com/essential-oils-affect-our-minds.html
You can learn more about the basics of essential oils here.
I had a wonderful day turning 50 filled with love and goodness. I woke up with a sense of wonder and excitement for this beautiful next season. And the journey continues..
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do— determined to save the only life you could save.
I have been spending a lot of time in recent weeks looking at my business and figuring out what matters the most to me.
Yoga is my heart and soul.
The practice goes far beyond touching your toes. In fact, I won’t focus as much on the physical aspect of the practice as I will on how we actually show up in the world. We use the physical stuff to help us see areas that might offer growth and healing.
Essential oils are a beautiful compliment to the deeper states of awareness that yoga offers.
Plus they are a natural, safe and effective way to treat our mind and body. You can also clean your homes in a non-toxic way. And, they bring people together in a beautiful way. I have met some of my dearest friends through sharing essential oils and helping others see their is a choice to their families well-being.
Gratitude is at the heart of who I am and something I teach other people to practice.
Developing a formal gratitude practice can be an amazing way to transform your life from a place of not enough, to more than enough.
This is my year of refining my business (and myself) and focusing on the areas that bring me the greatest joy. I realize I need to let some things go, and adjust slightly what is proving to work well. You know, take all that is good and sand off the rough edges to make it all great.
Want to be part of something I might offer? I’d love to connect.
