What does “abundance” mean to you?

Abundance can relate to material possessions, such as having lots of money, comfort, wealth – and it can also relate to a mindset and heart-set of gratitude, freedom and enoughness. ???

Abundance means “overflowing” – in other words, having more than enough. It’s a knowing, a feeling and a trust in the fullness and beauty of life within and around us. ?

It’s opposite is a feeling of contraction, scarcity and fear.

Truth is, having all our material comforts and possessions in the world will not inevitably lead to happiness and fulfilment.

Instead, Abundance comes from acknowledging the great gifts that we all have within us and all around us. ?

When we feel abundant – with love, connection, support, inspiration, nature, beauty… only then can we feel truly happy and free! ?

So how can we cultivate more of an abundance mindset & heartset?

The simplest path to feeling abundance is to practice daily gratitude and appreciation for life in its fullness as it is, and also practice trust in the process and great mystery of life.

Take a few moments to consider and/or journal about your relationship to abundance, both in the material and financial sense, and also in the spiritual and heart-based sense:  

?Where in your life do you feel abundant?

?Where in your life do you desire to feel more abundant

?What are you grateful for today?

?Where do you lack trust in life?

?What are some ways that you practice trusting more in life, in yourself, in the ever-unfolding mystery of life?

Let’s Practice: Laksmi Meditation with Abhaya / Fearlessness Mudra

Lakshmi is a goddess from the Hindu tradition who represents, wealth, love, beauty, grace, and lovely things. She is the goddess of abundance and is happy to be generous with us especially if we treat the earth and all of her splendours with tenderness and respect, and that we notice and delight in the wonder around us, the people we love, and that we listen to and honour the longings of our souls.

For this meditation, we emulate the mudra – energetic gesture that the image of Laksmi is expressing through her two front hands to help us cultivate a sense of abundance,

• Sit in a meditation pose with your spine nice and long.

• Raise your right hand shoulder height, palm facing outwards, fingers extended pointing upward, in a gesture of opening and receptivity. The wrist is bent at a right angle with the forearm. The left hand is hip height, palm facing downward in a gesture of giving and letting go.

• Take some deep breaths to allow the flow of prana – life force energy – to fill you up with courage and peace.

• Relax and make yourself comfortable.

• As you inhale feel yourself receiving abundance in your life through your right hand, and as you exhale, feel yourself giving it all way.

Hold this position for 5-10 mins everyday, or as long as you can, and then release gently.

? Notice how you feel:

Are you more calm and relaxed?
Do your emotions feel settled?
Do you feel more abundant
Do you feel more fearless?

Awesome Abundance Quotes

“Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.”- Wayne Dyer

“If you look at what you have in your life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”- Oprah Winfrey

“Riches are not from abundance of worldly goods, but from a contented mind.”- Nazr Mohammed

“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.”- Tony Robbins

“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”- Lao Tzu

“If you want love and abundance in your life, give it away.”- Mark Twain

Any of these resonate with You?

Which do you love the most? Let me know

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“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” – Confucius

What is Sankalpa?

Whether it’s a New year’s Resolution, or simply an intention you’ve been asked to set at the beginning of a Yoga class, practicing self-inquiry, and getting clear on your personal, emotional, physical and spiritual growth mindsets can have deeply positive and often immediate benefits on your daily life.  

Sankalpa or focused intention, is deep inner resolution to allow for evolution. It is a way of planting seeds that align our wisdom, will and action to help bring more depth, meaning and significance to our practice.  

Establishing your sankalpa is a powerful way to build and strengthen a bridge from where you are now, to where you want to be. The more you are able to look within for the answers and make shifts in your life that are guided and nurtured by this self-inquiry practice and the inner wisdom that arises therein, the more narrow this gap becomes. 

Unlike a goal, sankalpa is not about quenching of a thirst for more money, or losing those 5 pounds. Instead, it is a profound way to connect to your highest truth and your BEST SELF, from the depth of your soul to be able to realise your most heartfelt desires. 

When your sankalpa arises, be willing to sit with it, feel it, cultivate the willingness to put in the work needed to align yourself to it. Then practice. Our resolves are nourished with practice and focus.

When you are clear on the “WHY” of your promise to yourself, you begin to more naturally show up for yourself and begin to track your follow-through progress – then your journey with practice can begin to flow with more ease. You tap more into the pure FLOW! 

Remember, when it comes to making a promise to yourself, adopting a new habit, a big life change, or moving through transition, the process, “the journey IS the destination”.  Enjoy the process, and let go of any expectation of how your sankalpa may or may not unfold.

How to Awaken your Inner GPS:

For me, it’s been quite helpful to think of programming my sankalpa in terms of programming my inner GPS – my inner navigation system, like I would in a car trying to reach a new destination.  

Step 1 – Let yourself be quiet for a few intentional moments. 

Take a few minutes to just focus on and slow down your breath.  Give yourself a few moments, to clear away the busyness, the hustle and bustle, the to-do’s, the what comes nexts….and be here now.

Step 2 – Program your Inner GPS

Get your journal or simply consider the following question for a few moments, in terms of your body, mind, heart and soul:

What do I really want?

What is my most heartfelt desire?

How do I want to FEEL?

How do i want to help others to feel?

What do I wish to bring into my life?

What new life-supporting habit  – thought pattern, relationship, skill, routine, self-care regime – do i want to add or amplify in my life?

What habit, thought or behaviour do i want to release from my life?

What do i need to let go of? What’s holding me back?

What is it that I truly want from this short and precious life?

What are the things that light me up and make my heart sing?

Step 3 – Purify – Prepare your Vehicle

Once we’ve programmed our GPS with where we want to go, and before we put the car into gear and let it follow the map, it’s important to make sure our vehicle is in optimal running order 

This is the self-care piece of the puzzle.

Consider the quality of your day to day life.  How are things running?

Are you well-hydrated, are are eating well, sleeping enough, surrounding yourself with people who uplift you to rise to your best self? Are you in positive clear environments.  Make an y upgrades you deem necessary for the journey to run as smoothly as possible.

Step 4 – Begin the Journey / Turn on the Ignition!

It’s time to turn the vehicle on, and go forth in the direction of your dreams.  Who do you need to be in order to actualise these intentions? What steps do you need to take? Create an achievable action step.  Then do it again. One foot in front of the other – keep showing up.  Persistence and presence are the key to making sustainable lasting changes in your life.

Step 5 – Trust the Mystery / Believe / Let go

Once everything is in motion, the exact route may unfold differently than you may expect.  In fact, life very rarely goes exactly to plan, as we’ve all so tangibly experienced this year.

What’s important it to practice the art of Trusting the Process.  Easier said than done.  That can be one of your intentions – to TRUST MORE IN THE MYSTERY.  Trust that Maps is gonna get you there eventually.  Trust that there is a greater intelligence operating in life, that is beyond our limited human comprehension.  Trust that simply doing your best to show up with love to each moment that presents is enough. 

Just as google maps has for me at least, on so many occasions, led me down unexpected routes, and sometimes completely wrongs turns and streets, eventually, ideally, we reach our GPS’s programmed destination. 

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3 Practical Tips to Create your Sankalpa

1. Make your intention Personal – This is all about YOU

What do you want to get out of your home practice in the next couple months?

• Be my BEST Self / Live my BEST life
• Be more authentic, kind, compassionate
• Feel more present
• Master my emotions and heal core wounds
• Improve physical, emotional and spiritual flexibility
• Reduce pain
• Manage anxiety, stress, depression
• Grow strength
• Improve mental function
• develop openness of heart and mind
• Something else?

How do you want to FEEL?

What is the deeper FEELING behind what YOU want. If you want to commit to a daily yoga practice, perhaps it’s the feeling of presence or openness you want to invite into your life. 

Or maybe you want to be fully free of suffering and think starting a Yoga practice could help with that.

2.  Keep it simple and concise: Phrase your intention positively & in the present tense – 

Keep your sankalpa simple and memorable so that you can go deep working with it over and over if you like. 

Rather than focus on what you want to release, let go of or change, focus your awareness on the energy you are currently cultivating – how you want to be feeling.

E.g. I am / feel: …Worthy / Free / Enough / Balanced Joyful / At Ease / in Peace / Healthy and Well / Connected / Relaxed / Rejuvenated / Recharged / Present / Empowered / Supported / in Flow…

3. Ritualise it. 

When you have found the right intention for you, it will feel expansive and resonant. Feel into that. Marinating in your sanklapa will take you and your commitment to the next level.

Take a moment to bring in the sacred. Acknowledge the mystery. A simple ritual to consecrate your intention can be simple – turn to your intuition and trust yourself. 

Perhaps you light a candle, some incense, share some insightful words or prayer of gratitude.

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Create your Sankalpa – Let’s Practice Together:

Preparing:

• Take a few moments to consider your Sankalpa and get clear on what you really want. 
• Set your timer, and take 5 minutes NOW with your journal. Feel free to share in the comments.
• Write point form or in sentences, in as much details as possible, your sankalpa, your resolution to evolve and integrate these qualities more into your life. 
• Place it where you can see/read it every day – This is the best way to keep your sankalpa present and fresh in your awareness. Make it beautiful if you feel inspired!

Journal/Ask-Yourself:

• What is inspiring you to create a sankalpa right now? What needs aren’t fully being met in your life?
• How do I want to feel?
• What do I really want?
• What is my heartfelt desire?
• What qualities do I want to grow and nurture in my life?
• What qualities am I hoping to grow within myself this year?
• How much time am I willing to commit to practice on a daily basis?
• What are my top 5 excuses or reasons that will likely come up and deter me from fully participating/being present for my practices?
• What are my top 5 challenges or distractions to Yoga/meditation in general?
• Am I willing to face the inevitable resistances and challenges that arise along this journey? How?

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Ready to Get Clear, Deepen your Practice, Feel more Balanced and Resilient & Align to Your Sankalpa & Purpose?

Please Join us for the Upcoming…

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Embracing Change
7-Day Self-Paced Self-Love Virtual Retreat

Self Love & Self-Care from the comfort of your own Home!

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly”. – R. Buckmister Fuller

We all know the cardinal rule: Everything changes always. Yup, We can definitely count on that, for the seeming better or worse. Everything in nature moves in cycles and waves.

And even though we intuitively know that, change can be hard to readily and easily accept and embrace.  

Let’s face it, this has been a tough few years – if not for you directly, then for many of your friends, family and loved ones. Whether you’re thriving or surviving, literally everyone is being effected in some way, shape or form.

As a collective, we’re being called out of comfort zones and invited into the great mystery of life in a whole new way. Some of us have lost our work as we know it, some of us have lost loved one.

Relationships are shifting, and what we’ve counted on as solid up until now – the ground many of us stand on – has been fully shaken. The future can feel sometimes dauntingly uncertain.

Many of us are asking ourselves how to be ok, how to find balance and connection, how to overcome stress and overwhelm, how to BE in relation to this wild moment in time.

Every challenge and change offers us the opportunity for transformation or trauma.  Sometimes both!

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So how can Yoga help us Thrive in Uncertainty?

3 Practical Keys

1) Yoga is a Practical Practice.   It teaches us Self-Discipline, Self-Care and Self-Love.

Focus on your own personal growth and transformation. Work on your self and your well-being. 

We are at the core of our own experiences.  All we can ever control, is our relationship to what each moment presents.  For most of us, finding and maintaining strength, balance and flexibility, in both our outer and inner worlds, requires deliberate PRACTICE. This will help you immensely to stay balanced, centred and grounded.

Yoga as a practice helps to teach us to keep watching the mind, and the stories we are telling ourselves about the moment – to watch the feelings, thoughts, and sensations arise and release identifications with them .  The practice is to keep coming back to the breath, and to open and move our bodies and move stagnation and stuck energy. 

Looking after your body, eating healthy whole, balanced, foods, drinking plenty of water, taking care of your hygiene, getting enough exercise are simple, beautiful and important aspects of our daily self-care regime, that when honoured, can help to build more self-love, respect and self-worth  Take care of your body.  It is the temple of your spirit. 

2) Yoga helps us to Consciously Cultivate Awareness, Presence & Adaptability.

So we can Allow, Let go & Create New Dreams

Lean into the discomfort.  Let all the feelings arise and breathe in to them. Allow the feelings of loss, grief, gratitude, nostalgia, emotion, endings, new beginnings. Let yourself be fully present with any discomfort. Practicing letting yourself completely feel whatever is there for you to feel in relation to the changes, whether you perceive them as positive or negative. 

Yoga as a practice is designed to help awaken our consciousness to the illusion of separation.  it is a pursuit of relinquishing suffering by virtue of come into direct awareness with our true nature.o slow. Breath into it.  Trust that it’s a process. And when you’re ready, start dreaming new dreams and growing towards more light and purpose.

Being able to witness passing thoughts as clouds moving through the mind, as one might in a buddhist mindfulness meditation practice, can help us to establish a space between a stimulus – a thought, feeling, or sensation – and our reaction. That space of awareness, creates the opportunity to instead of moving into reaction, we can cultivate more supportive responsiveness.

Dream. Plants and Grow new seeds. Cultivate them with your awareness and love. The Yogic practice of sankalpa, of creating intentionality in our lives, connecting with the ultimate feeling we desire to be experiencing or rise into – whether that inner calm and peace, or abundance and love – can really helpful in supporting the conditions for thriving.   

3) Yoga helps us to Strengthen & Resource Ourselves

To Welcome Connection, Support,  Learning, Letting Go, Growth and Transformation 

Our basic human needs for connection, belonging and purpose are still there, and are important ingredients to include in the recipe of thriving.  If you’re feeling alone, reach out – let yourself connect and be supported. I know it can be hard. Remember the ol’ adage “ask and you shall receive”.  You are not alone, even if it feels like it. People care about you – I promise.

Connect with community, support and let yourself be supported. A key component of a spiritual practice is to support yourself with a sangha – a supportive community of like-minded seekers who are committed to the path of love and evolution and help you to ask important questions, seek truth, and rise to your highest self. 

Stay curious. Breathe into it. What is adversity teaching you about yourself and life in general? What can you learn from your emotions, from what’s happening all around you? Yoga teaches us to reflect – svadyaya – to study ourselves, to know ourselves.  To see all the tricky ways the ego works to keep us in sufffering and separation. 

Yoga gives us mantras like “om mani padme hum” – a powerful mantra for peace and compassion from the buddhist tradtion.  The mantra translates as the “the jew is in the lotus flower”. The basic symbology of the lotus is a representation of the human journey – Rooted in the mud, the lotus rises in beauty and grows towards the light. In the other words, and in the words of Thich Naht Hanh – “No mud. No Lotus”. When we repeat this mantra, we practice replacing our negative or looping thoughts with this sentiment that we hope to realise – that even if we feel we are in the mud right now, there’s more beauty to the picture that we can’t yet see, that will be there as a direct result of having been in that mud.

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