If you’re like me, you may find yourself sitting more and more of the day. At my desk, in the car, in a waiting area. Personally, I don’t like sitting for very long and tend to move around a lot. I also know I’m not as ergonomically cognizant as I should be, which sometimes results in reminders that appear as body tweaks - lower back pull, tight shoulders, or hands and fingers flaring with carpel tunnel.

As we sit about the day, busy in our mind, the body can go virtually unrecognized. For today’s Try It On Tuesday, periodically pay attention to your body. Notice its position, the level of ease or comfort you feel in it, or how stable its support. You can set a reminder for the top of each hour to do a check in; noticing sensations or perhaps a slouch, splayed legs, a bent ankle, or tightness in the shoulders. Then, if it feels right, switch this energy by taking a moment to stretch and create space for something new and refreshing. Doing this throughout the day makes nighttime resting easier and releases mental tensions that would otherwise get caught in your physical being.

Mind and body are intimately connected. Ease in one creates ease in the other. Enjoy!!

Peace,
Shanti

Shanti Douglas
Mindfulness & Stress Management Coach
Eden Energy Medicine Certified Practitioner
8 limbs Holistic Health, LLC

     Swoosh, crunch, swoosh, crunch, swoosh, crunch. You walk down the street these days and that's all you hear. It can be deafening! Some support your step with their suppleness and flexibility. Others are left shattered in a pile of 1,000 crumbled pieces.
     Even though they are part of nature’s whole, each leaf has enjoyed its own life cycle. Some have been able to maintain a more enriched state evidenced by their continued flexibility, even at the late stage of finding a resting spot on the ground. Others have dried up long before they were finally released from the tree.
     As we turn to look at our own leaf-ness, what is our state of flexibility or brittleness? What are those things that keep us soft and supple so that we are able to bend when bending is needed or to land without bruising or breaking? If we work with many people, how have we been able to stay flexible in an environment that may drain us of our moisture? Conversely, how are we when we move about our day in an arid way, sucking the moisture out of ideas, people, and even ourselves? For some, arid-ness can be gauged by the speed of reactivity to requests and information, perpetual absenteeism, or being hyper-focused and self-absorbed with complete disregard of the larger circumstance.
     Unlike the leaf that has already fallen, we have the ability to rehydrate when we find we've run dry. We can stop to drink in the wonderful elements of our simple existence and absorb what is needed right now. Purposeful pauses and breathing breaks support a steadiness when harsh winds blow. Opening to the "don't know" mind can offer possibilities not seen before and ease the need for things to be our way. Simply noticing our assumptions, judgments, and aversive view can free us from their brittle consequences. Hydration of body, mind, and spirit can be as simple as that.
     As you move through your fall day today, take inventory of your leaves; those that are flexible and supple and those that are dry and crumbly. Notice your personal weather report and whether you are swooshing or crunching. Generate presence, beginning from your feet.

Sending you lots of peace,
Shanti

Shanti Douglas
Mindfulness & Stress Management Coach
Eden Energy Medicine Certified Practitioner
8 limbs Holistic Health, LLC

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ~ Anais Nin

Do you ever put off making a change until the situation is so bad that you feel like you have no other choice, where you’ve backed yourself into a corner and are now using the intensity of the situation to finally propel you to take action?

I used to do this all the time. I would wait for things to be so terrible and ugly that I couldn’t stand it anymore. Only then would I make a change and shift in a new direction. Rock bottom had to be hit before I would rise like a phoenix and take care of myself. Somewhere in there was a warped strong-hold, my “worker ant” mentality gone awry. It also reflected my lack of self-worth and my secret belief that I didn’t deserve to be happy.

Ya, this didn’t work so well in my marriage or other relationship shifts that needed to happen. It also kept me from exploring more amicable and suitable paths of recovery and hopeful living. Thanks goodness I’ve learned to change this way go being, for myself and everyone else around me. It’s definitely made a big difference in the level of drama and trauma in my life. Now I’m more often compelled to reflect on my situation and to change things as I move along. Tweaking the small steps is a lot easier and feels a lot better than waiting for the shit to hit the fan.

How about for you? What changes have you ignored that would be really important for your happiness and that would really add value? What uncomfortableness are you still shoulder-high in… a job that’s not fulfilling, a relationship that needs a re-work, a life passion unfulfilled??

We don’t need something to go wrong in order to change. We don’t have to wait that long, for the forces of drama and trauma to invade our life and drive us to switch things up. We are each too valuable to give up on ourselves and our dreams / desires so easily. Don’t let the comfort of others keep us uncomfortable.

Need some guidance or a reflective mirror? Let me help you take charge and once again feel confident in the importance of you.

Love and peace,
Shanti

Shanti Douglas
Mindfulness & Stress Management Coach
Eden Energy Medicine Certified Practitioner
8 limbs Holistic Health, LLC

     Deep, slow breaths... purposefully trying to relax my body... bringing my mind to a neutral, even happy, place. Tapping my Triple Warmer 3 (TW3) point, breathing for 10, then tapping some more. Ahhh...and finally, for the first time in a long time, no tears running down my face and no death-grip on the leather arm rest. Phew and yeah!
     These are some of the calming tools I brought into my dental session the other week when I had to have both a crown and a filling replaced. Not anyone's idea of fun but, for me with an extensive dental history and a deep visceral reaction (no need to go into unpleasant details), a more disruptive experience.
     What was different time? Arriving with my mindfulness and meditation practice in hand, I also now invoke some Eden Energy Medicine. The TW3 "Fear Point" shown above is an acupressure point that runs along the Triple Warmer meridian. this meridian is, among other things, responsible for our fight/flight/freeze. Tapping here helps to relieve that stress / fear and, along with the breath, can bring a greater sense of calm to an otherwise high-tension moment. Simply tap that point 10 times with your other pointer and middle finger, pause for a few breaths, then tap it another 30 times. If fear is still prominent, try the same sequence on the other hand. For me, it worked like a charm. (Insert big smile.) I'm very grateful for this energy support and also grateful for my dentist and staff. Life would not be so pretty without them. And while I still dislike being in that office (and luckily it's much less), it's now much more comfortable.
     So try TW3 tapping the next time you are in a fearful / anxious mind place and see how your energies change. I'd love to hear your story so please share with comments below!

Love and peace to you!
Shanti

Shanti Douglas
Mindfulness & Stress Management Coach
Eden Energy Medicine Certified Practitioner
8 limbs Holistic Health, LLC

     “The Miracle of Mindfulness”… the miracle of showing up for your life as it is right now… noticing what’s there… in all of it’s many forms… with deep awareness and acceptance.
     You hear me say (or write) variations of this quite frequently but what is mindfulness really? While there are thousands of studies quantifying the beneficial impacts that mindfulness has on the physical and mental body, work productivity, concentration, relationships of all kinds, and overall health, and while we cognitively understand mindfulness to be present to this moment, again, what is it really?
     Stepping away from the view that it is a tool that will help us achieve greater goodness, we must, if we are to truly understand mindfulness, realize first and foremost that it’s an embodied practice. It is a state of being, not a performance enhancement too or a therapeutic technique.
     Recently I spent six days at Blue Cliff Monastery in New York with 400+ practitioners living as many moments as we were able to in mindfulness. I say “as many as” since, no matter the strength of our practice, there seems to be an ebb and flow in and out of this practice of presence. “The Miracle of Mindfulness” was the retreat’s theme, celebrating the publication of this titled book by my teacher and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh 40 years earlier. Out of the 400 retreatants, about one-third were brand new to a retreat in the Plum Village tradition, a tradition which emphasizes integrating mindfulness into everyday normal activities and occurrences. Each moment of life is an opportunity and a gift so why not show up and be more fully aware of them?
     The retreat day begins and ends in silence - an opportunity to connect with the voice inside - and in between we are fed with nurturing practices such as mindful meals, sitting and walking meditation, working meditation, Dharma talks (teachings), and sharing from the heart. Each step along the way is an opportunity to recognize our wholesome and unwholesome mental formations (ideas, thoughts, judgments, labels), i.e. discursions that typically hold us back from an open view of possibility. As we mostly seeking to control and reformulate our surroundings, there’s a continual backdrop of mind chatter that works to unconsciously sort and categorize our experiences, pulling or pushing our mental and physical resources into all sorts of directions in an attempt to make life more to our liking. In the retreat setting we are gifted with a slower pace, making it easier to notice this habituated mind activity and to create attitudes of openness and curiosity, awakening us to the many details we miss as we busily go about our day. We have an opportunity to notice our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sensations of all kinds, all aspects of ourselves that are lost in the commotion of mind and body multitasking.
     There is so much depth to the simplest of things - drinking tea or coffee, walking, bathing, picking up things, noticing a landscape, eating chocolate. How is your moment of life when you are sipping your tea in the bright sunshine? Noticing… what responsibilities are weighing heavily on your shoulders and in between your "should" blades? Can we soften our body just a smidgen and return to the tangy flavor of our tea, drinking in the refreshing elements of Nature in the tea leaves and rain clouds? How are we now?
     Each time we let ourselves open to experience what is in front of us, we capture a part of ourselves that we would otherwise have missed. We get to know what’s underneath and behind the busyness that has become our habit and, for that wonderful moment, notice the Self that is noticing the self. As we bring more and more awareness to ourselves and our experience, even if it contains pain or uncomfortableness, we can begin the journey of taking care of our true selves (behind the roles and ego) more fully. This awareness of self is the first step in healing the pains and points of suffering. From this place, understanding and then reconciliation may arrive. In this way, mindfulness is a miracle for, with the simplest of attention, we can gift ourselves the preciousness of our life.
     So try this on. For a few minutes right now, stop what you are doing and bring awareness to your breathing. You’ve been doing it all day long and it’s been supporting every action you’ve taken. As you pay attention to it, don’t do anything different to it - just leave it as it is. Now also sense your body with the breath, noticing the subtle movements of it as you breathe in and out. Staying here for a few minutes, let everything else settle down - your mind, your thoughts, your to-do’s. The only thing to do in this moment is to pay attention to yourself, breathing. Stay here and rest. Open to being and breathing. What’s there that you may have missed before? What miracle of mindfulness is yours?

Love and peace to you!
Shanti

Shanti Douglas
Mindfulness & Stress Management Coach
Eden Energy Medicine Certified Practitioner
8 limbs Holistic Health, LLC

     Happy September!!! I can't believe it's already a week into it. I'm not quite sure where the summer went but I think that's a pretty typical reaction. After this week of heat I'm happy to have Fall arrive - my favorite season. The air gets crisp, fresh apples arrive, and jeans are an option during the day. Those first few weeks of being able to wear them without feeling like they're glued on is amazing...and flannel. Gotta love the flannel. OK, can you tell I'm getting into a very happy state here as I dream on and on about Fall?
     One of the other things that comes with Fall is the energy of moving inward. It's the season where we begin to harvest what we've been growing over the past few months. It's also an opportunity to make any necessary changes before winter hits. Emotionally, relationally, physically...what do we envision will provide the most abundant and healthy nutrition and what do we need to do now to access that? Fall is a perfect time for change, for detoxing, for bringing in more elements if that is needed.
     So many of my friends are going through changes right now - lots of divorces, unemployment and careers shifts, and significant health issues. None of these changes seem small anymore. The stage of infancy has passed and they are at big junction points. While none of my friends are in complete joy over their situation, they do seem to be embracing this time. Each one will be stronger for their situation and will come into "their own" after this. Their changes and challenges are tough but each one of them is meeting it head on with acceptance, strength, and love. Beyond my compassion, I'm excited for their new prospects and what might evolve for them.
     For me, I'm doing the same. I'm fortunate enough in this moment to not have big life changes but I'm still in process. My shifting is of a lesser magnitude but it's still there, brewing underneath. One of the observation I've had recently was that my vibrational level was much lower than I would like. That might sound strange but different states of being carry different energy frequencies (see David Hawkins' book Power vs. Force for more on this). Love is a high frequency and hate is a low frequency. I've been attracting things that weren't for my highest good so, as of my recent Continuation Day, I've decided that I'm going to be my best client. Yes, sometimes I do fall off my wagon and not always follow my own advice. It's just me being human and also a great way to affirm how to get back on track. We all ebb and flow and what better tool to share in my work with others than my own experience. It's all I can really ever share anyways.
     So, as summer starts to close, take in the harvest of your highest and best self. Fall is the perfect time for personal reorganization and reaffirmation, finding the supports that nurture whatever you need. There's still time to add lots of goodness to the mix so don't be afraid or shy to grab what you need.

Peace and LOTS of joy in Being.
Shanti

Shanti Douglas
Mindfulness & Stress Management Coach
Eden Energy Medicine Certified Practitioner
8 limbs Holistic Health, LLC

     This past weekend I spent Saturday a most wonderful Day of Mindfulness at Rose Apple in VT and, as it always seems to be, the Dharma talk was perfect and felt like it was directed right at me. Brother Zohar shared insights about time... actual time and storyline time.
     Actual time is a fact. It's contained fully in the present moment. It doesn't direct us in any way and, with its simplified self, moves along at a consistent and measurable pace. Storyline time, on the other hand, is directly connected to the story of us and the forward motion that most of us have in our approach to life. It's the back story of why we rush through things, task master the objects in front of us, and seek to gain control of our experience. We're moving forward out of this ever-present moment into anticipation of the next moment, spending little time here and now.
     Storyline time prevails when we are searching for joy and happiness outside of this moment. We think that it is somewhere else. There may be an uncomfortableness here and now, an aspect of grief or sadness, an emotion of dissatisfaction that is searching for harmony. Instead of residing in the Now to reconcile that, we unconsciously search for this freedom in the next moment, feeding a habit of striving that leaves us even more unfulfilled.
     Take a look at how you receive each moment of the day. From observation of my own experience, I feel like I'm under an invisible time pressure much of the day. Even though I'm great at calendaring and leaving space, there's still an essence of this push to get things done and onto the next. As a business owner, there are many details that I need to attend to and that involve planning future events in order to maintain a consistent level of business activity.
     The continual calendaring of my day, however, brings about a momentum of moving from one activity to the other that can be challenging to stop. The dribble of  "after I get these things done..." is a common quote I can replay over and over in my mind when it's time to settle down and really take a break, to stop the locomotion of doing and let go into pure being, a being that goes well beyond the body stopping. The result is a relationship to time that can be scattered, shattered, and multidirectional with an element of dissatisfaction to what is right now. And underneath this striving can be a level of fear, unworthiness, agitation, and a general sense of joylessness.
     This isn't to say that planning and taking care of things isn't important but it begs me to notice how much time and mental effort is spent in the subtle search for happiness. Even with an active mindfulness practice, staying here and not escaping into Doing can be challenging. Fortunately my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh so eloquently reminds me with this quote above which is so true. Stopping to be right here, it is possible to live happily in each moment and still get things done. It all rests on the attention and intention I am placing in the moment, reverting from getting caught up in my own story and the master manipulation of my experience.
     Time is as it is. All the rest is just a mental construct. Time is something that we can't get back, no matter how much we try. As I continue to age, this becomes more prevalent in my consciousness. Perhaps this has added to my sense of rushing. I seek to have so much peace, love, and harmony in my life and, instead of seeing that it's right here right now, I am being pulled by my habit energies to seek it out. Look, look, though! In the mirror resides all that I need and, when this is my footing, I can walk safely into whatever arrives next.
     Yup, and that's why we call it  "practice". Simple but certainly not easy!

Peace,
Shanti

Shanti Douglas
Mindfulness & Stress Management Coach
Eden Energy Medicine Certified Practitioner
8 limbs Holistic Health, LLC