The Practice of Gratitude

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gratitudeYou only need to do a quick Google search on the “science of gratitude” to see that there is power in being thankful.

Many spiritual teachers (myself included) often assign gratitude journals to help us look for those things to be grateful for daily.  When we move into a place where we be in gratitude for the smallest things we can shift patterns, thoughts, and limitations in the moment.

One of the struggles that I see in this exercise is that we often try to force the practice.  We open our journals, and we sit.. stare at the blank page, tap our pens… and feel the resistance that is sometimes present in spiritual work.  One way to breakthrough this is to start where you are, “I am thankful for this journal, I am thankful for the ears that allow me to hear the tapping of this pen… (then deeper), I am thankful for my resistance, I am thankful for the thoughts that are moving in my mind, I am thankful for my struggles today and I am thankful for the contrast they offer my life, I am thankful for life…”

You can also write the same things more than once.   Our tendency is to try to find new things everyday to be grateful for… doesn’t have to be so.  Try to take the circle of gratitude outward, but do so when you are ready.

We have our journals, we have our affirmations, and most of that exists in the conceptual.  We have found gratitude, now it is time to extend it and to LIVE it.  Sharing gratitude is powerful, and makes it real.  Saying, “Thank you” to those you encounter, saying to loved ones, “I am grateful for you.”, doing acts of kindness without expectation of return, all allow us to experience gratitude.  When we take gratitude off the paper and out of the mind it becomes real.

What are you grateful for today?  How are you going to Live Gratitude today?

You are Loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

Namaste and Blessed Be.

Mike

 

Finding Stillness

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thIn a world that is moving at the speed of thought, where do you find stillness?  How do you define this sometimes elusive concept?

I find stillness in yoga.  There is movement occurring with my body, but my mind and my awareness are centered within.  There is stillness on my mat, the earth she holds my space and keeps it sacred.  I can feel the space between the inhale and the exhale, and stillness rests there.

I also find stillness in the hustle and bustle.  Every morning I get on the metro train and make my way to work.  I like closing my eyes and getting lost in the rumble of the train, the ambient noise of those around me, feeling whole within that presence.  Sometimes stillness is not about holding ourselves apart from the world, but going into it more fully.

There are times when we need to rest the senses, to take a break, to reconnect to self.  This can be as simple as a warm soak in the tub, or taking a trip into solitude.

How do you define stillness, and where do you find it?  Where does it find you?

You are Loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

Namaste.

Mike-

Touching Oneness

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onenessThe other day at the metaphysical shop I manage I had the joy and opportunity to talk to one of customers about oneness, and what it means to be connected to “the all”.

The conversation started with him asking me about meditating and using meditation to enter into higher states of consciousness and alternate realities.  Usually when someone brings this type of discussion to the table my first question is, “Why do you want to go to those places?”   His response was, “Because I want to feel like I am one with everything.”

Often in “new age” paradigms we look at these “jumps” in consciousness as ways to access a higher state of connection to those around us, to the world, or to God Herself.   Ram Dass states it best, that as we move “up” through these realities we are actually just entering into other states of illusion.

So, as we sat, I aligned my souls, and asked my intuition what the best answer would be in this situation, and this is what she said:

“Beloved, as your feet touch this beautiful earth you are connected to all that is.  As your lungs take in the air that sustains your life force you are connected to all that is.  All that is exists here, and now.  The leave the beauty of this reality is to escape true oneness, here oneness is tangible.  When you leave the body, the oneness you are feeling is temporary, brief, and powerful.  Your purpose is to find that same connection here.”

We both sat with this for a few moments, and took a deep breath… made a point to feel the earth beneath our feet and appreciated the oneness we were able to encounter.

We often forget that we live life in this reality.  We have to find those moments of connection here in this plane of existence.  Everything on earth is connected beneath our feet, our sacred Mother Earth holds all.  Our breath is our shared religion.  We all breathe and share the air around us.  The universe pulses to that primordial exhale, that big bang of creation, the inhale was the gathering of the forces needed, and here we are… an extension of that initial orgasmic breath.

Here is a quick exercise to embrace the oneness all around you:

  • Stop and breathe deeply.
  • Exhale just as deeply.
  • Feel the earth beneath your feet.
  • Take a slow step forward, feeling your foot fully connect to the earth.
  • Now the other foot.
  • Breathe in.  Feel connected fully to the air filling your lungs
  • Breathe out.  Feel the air you exhale fill the space around you.
  • Feel the limitless earth kissing your feet.  Feel the presence of all that walks this earth, all that has come before, all that will come after.
  • Feel the air around you embracing the limitless space around and above you.

You are Loved. You are Beautiful. You are Divine.

Namaste and Blessed Be.

Mike

 

 

Defining Wellness

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What is wellness, it is a word that we hear tossed around a lot in fitness, nutrition and spiritual circles, so let’s take a deeper look.
Wellness (as defined by dictionary.com)
1.the quality or state of being healthy in body and mind, especially as the result of deliberate effort.
2.an approach to healthcare that emphasizes preventing illness and prolonging life, as opposed to emphasizing treating diseases.
wellness2There is a reason the fitness industry is a multibillion dollar a year industry fitness and wellness are overwhelming topics.  Even in the above definition you will see several trigger words that can often act to cause confusion and a surrendering of power to those you think know more than you.  When engaging fitness, wellness and nutrition it is of course important to seek out guidance and information, but we MUST still engage our intuition and discernment.  Too often do I see people toss out intuition and discernment with the promise of quick results, and impossible goals.  In the above definition you see the following:  state of being healthy, deliberate effort, and prolonging life.  These phrases are ones that can cause the most confusion when making the decision to move into a place of greater health and well-being.
One of the first things that you should do is make a commitment to YOU.  What are your reasons for wanting to move into greater states of health.  If you do not have a journal by now YOU SHOULD. Journals and logs are your best friends on the spiritual journey, and fitness/wellness are part of that journey.
Keeping a journal is one of the first ways to bring wellness into your life.  A commitment to daily logging of your calories, your workout routines, but also your intentions, moments of gratitude, your emotions, insights, dialogue with your intuition, anything and everything.  A journal is sacred space, and too many of us keep a separate journal for each aspect of our lives, this can often divide us.  Keeping one journal (for at least a while) where you write everything allows you to get an overall picture of where you are.  I know many people like keeping electronic journals, but often with these you only get narrow focus on what is right in front of you, non-electronic journal allows you to flip forward and back, to shift around, add notes to, cross things off.
One of the reasons I am stressing the importance of a journal is that you’re going to need it for the next part of this blog.
In order to move into wellness, healthy living, and fitness you’ll first have to define what these are to you.
What does healthy living mean to you, what does it look like, feel like, and what would it take for you to move in that direction?   These are questions to meditate on in your journal.  Contemplative meditation allows us to arrive at our own definitions.  When we OWN wellness, fitness, and health we can begin embodying those principles.  We know where we are, and are less likely to linger in murky waters.  Remember also that your definitions can change daily, and should.  As you grow and evolve on your path to wellness, so will your definitions.  What changes are you making, and what is changing you.  Some days emotions may dictate you take a day off, others those same emotions may dictate a powerful workout to burn off energy.
What are your intentions for moving towards wellness, fitness and healthy living?   Intentions are more important than goals.  Often when it comes to fitness we set goals that may seem impossible, “I am going to lose 15lbs in 3 days!”, or “I am going to work out 7 days a week for 6 hours a day” or any number of the passing fads that present false promises and unrealistic goals.  Intentions are much deeper, they are in the moment, they have greater purpose and we can live them now.  An example would be “Today, my intention for my great work of wellness is to love myself through the movement of my body, to nourish myself with greens, and to breathe in this moment fully.”  Intentions can be single words that you carry with you through the day, “Today I carry love in all my actions, thoughts, words, movements, and nourishment”.  Find what works for you.  Setting intention allows us to have a place to start, it allows it to show up daily and to commit to our life fully.  In a later article I’ll talk about setting positive/healthy goals that are in alignment with your intentions.
Make lifestyle changes.  Wellness and Fitness are a way of life.  When you feel healthy, whole, and nourished you are able to rest more fully, engage your life with more passion, and wield magic from a place of full power.  Your journal allows you to look back on your journey, to see where you were, where you are growing, and where your struggles exist.  It allows you to find appreciation and compassion for ourselves.
In coming articles I’ll take these ideas deeper, we’ll move towards lifestyle changes, and as always feel free to post your questions in the comment section below.
What holds you back from moving towards health, wellness, and fitness?
How do you define health?  Wellness? Fitness?  Are these definitions mutable or are they rigid?
You are ALL loved.  You are ALL Beautiful.  You are ALL Divine
Namaste and Blessed Be.
Mike Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

Getting In the Flow and Honoring the Path

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Getting into the flow.  We use this phase a lot in yoga, and it often pokes its head up in other spiritual circles.  What does it mean to be in the “flow”?

For me, being in the flow means honoring my many parts, coming into alignment with self, and engaging my path fully.   In honoring my path, I am streamlining, focusing and giving attention to those parts of self that need to be watered and fed.  This blog is one of those parts of me that I am going to start breathing new life into.  I am also going to be doing a new show on my BlogTalk Channel focusing specifically on what it means to be a Yoga Witch.

I am also going to make this a place where we can grow as a community, as a family, to learn to make magic of our yoga, and to let our yoga be the embodiment of our great work.

I want to hear from you.  What are things you’d like to hear about?  The topics can be nutrition, fitness, spirituality, witchcraft, healing, etc?  Feel free to leave your ideas in the comments section below, and I’ll be checking back frequently.

I am also planning on doing book and video reviews, and posting meditations and yoga flow sequences.

When the time for growth, evolution, and change presents itself it can be a scary venture.  This is the time to step into power, and to claim who we are fully.

What are you resisting?  What are you honoring?  What helps you step into power?

 

You are all Loved.  You are All Beautiful.  You are all Divine!

 

Namaste

Mike

The Magick of OBW Exercises

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So, unless you’ve been in the fitness world the abbreviation OBW might not mean much… but it is one of the most powerful, but often overlooked ways to engage the body.

OBW means Own Body Weight exercises.  Using the body itself as your gym.  It is working out and engaging fitness in its most basic form.  Simplicity is often overlooked.  OBW workouts engage the core, an example of an OBW exercise are push ups.  Many people use the gym as an excuse or as resistance to working out.  Yoga is working out through the OBW method.  We use the body as our equipment.  In a push up the core is engaged, the weight of the body becomes natural resistance, our bodies work.  No gym is necessary, no machines, nothing other than time and what you naturally have at your disposal.

We often overlook the simple things, even in our craft work we often try to make things too complex.  When there are too many moving pieces we get away from the core of our work.  OBW exercises prep the body for using machines.  Understanding where we hold energy allows us to engage magick without the dependence of tools.  OBW exercises are also foundational.  Pushups, planks, squats, dips, pull ups–these exercises are foundational to strength training.   Going back to our foundational spiritual practices allows to access a deeper power.  It helps to reconnect to our roots, and this gives us the power of foundation.  It lets us collect those parts of self that we may have forgotten were there, we can tend the garden of our spiritual experience, check the soil, and create new growth.

What are your foundational practices?

I’ll be posting some specific workout routines in the coming weeks.

You are loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine.

Fueling Practice with Intention

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yogablog2Most people come to yoga class for the physical workout.  The body feels alive after moving through the asanas, energy is raised, and we settle into meditation to close practice.

At the beginning of class I like to have my students take a moment to center on the breath and set an intention for their practice.  On the inhale we bring intention into alignment with the breath, on the exhale we extend intention out into the world around us.  Setting an intention as we go into our practice allows us to practice with purpose.  We can also dedicate the energy of our practice to a place in the world, or someone in our lives that might need a little extra energy.  When we move with purpose we have a greater connection to our bodies, our minds and our spirits.

I also recommend my students keep a yoga practice journal.  Writing down the intentions back into the world when we leave our mats.  With each breath we take we pull our intention down into our bodies.  Each out breath pushed intention into the world, and fueled with movement gives birth to creation.  Yoga means “to yoke” or “to unite”, but what are you yoking yourself to.  Often people come to class to escape, or they bring their problems to the mat hoping to work them out.  If you focus on a negative thought as you move through practice you’ll be breathing that thought into all aspects of your being.  Shifting to a positive affirmation allows us to align with purpose and not defeat.

You don’t have to wait for class to set and breathe in intentional space.  Take a moment right now and do this simple meditation:

  • Focus on an intention, a positive word, an affirmation
  • Take a deep breath into the body, down deep into the core of your being
  • Hold the breath for a count of 4
  • Exhale just as deeply as you inhaled, let your intention embrace the reality around you
  • Continue this process for as long as you need.
  • Even just doing this for a single round is powerful.

Doing this process at the start of the day allows you to bring connection into the start of your day, the same is true if you do this before bed and take intention into the dream world.

You are Loved.  You are Beautiful.  You are Divine!

Namaste

Michael A Brazell

http://www.soulinteraction.com

http://www.facebook.com/yogawitch

http://www.michaelbrazell.com

michael@michaelbrazell.com

 

Learning to Trust

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trustThere is an energy of change moving through all of us.  You can feel it in the air, and see in those around you.  I know I’ve been feeling the call for deeper connection to spirit, to my path, and to my practice.  Change is not always a pretty thing, sometimes it is harsh, visceral and can be difficult.

I’ve been going through my own changes over the past few weeks, but thinking back on some of these changes, the seeds were planted years ago.  My life is constantly evolving, and I love this process.  The one thing that I do notice about my life are the things that remain.  There are constants that make up my purpose and are guideposts on my path.  Those constants keep me grounded in moments of change, and as an experiential learner my changes usually are more visceral.

A few days ago I made the decision to leave the yoga studio I’ve been teaching at for over a year and a half.  It was a difficult decision, but one that needed to be made.  I feel that my life is transitioning quickly.  My guides, guardians, souls, angels have been speaking to me with greater frequency, and the message they have been repeating over and over again is:  Trust.

Trust does not come easy.  This is evident in any yoga class.  We often struggle to trust our bodies within the asanas (postures).  We have to learn to trust our instructors, trust our mats, and even trust that the floor will indeed catch us if we fall.  We have to trust that the breath will sync up with the movements, and that we’ll be able to make it through the more challenging postures.  Trust does not come easy, but it comes.  Eventually we forget that we did not have trust, it becomes part of the process, our minds become more at ease… and then we get introduced to new postures, ideas, and concepts that challenge us.. yoga is an action of magick, and extension of trust.

Challenge helps us to identify trust, to encounter her and to sit with difficulty.  Letting go of one part of our lives allows space for new things to enter, and that is where I am finding myself.  I am going be dedicating a lot of time to creating a solid yogawitch.com community and engaging the unfolding path before me.  There is fear, but that is okay.  I trust that what is opening up for me is the most positive and most powerful, because I trust my soul unconditionally.

In the next few weeks I’ll be posting videos, meditations, poetry, spells, and much more.  I also want to hear from all of you!  If there are things that you’d like to see me discuss, videos that you’d like to see, and even if you just want to say hi!  You can contact me via this blog, or at:  theyogawitch@gmail.com

What is trust to you?   What is changing in your experience that causes you to sit with/challenge trust?

As always-

You are Loved.

You are Beautiful.

You are Divine.

Namaste.

Michael A Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

www.michaelbrazell.com

www.soulinteraction.com

www.blogtalkradio.com/michaelbrazell

NaPoWriMo Poem

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Cherry blossoms,
Floating like butterfly wings,
Winds kissing the tress,
Beautifully impermanent,
We are speck of dust in the eternal dance,
Spinning and floating like wind kissed blossoms,
Only here for a moment,
An kiss from our mother’s lips,
A whispered prayer,
A beating heart,
Silence.

NaPoWriMo Poem

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I asked the moon to shine, she blushed bright beautiful golden yellow…  Her light kissing my cheek, sneaking trough the clouds, the stars, they danced a jig to the pitter patter pounding of my feet, I am a promise break dancing its way across he sky…Bright beautiful speck of start dust, spinning tornado of infinity… break me open like a piñata.. I am sugar sweets on the inside, hurry and get your fill… There isn’t much to go around, but my pieces if planted in a garden will grow roses… and thorns… Pricking fingers.. My petals kissing your nose… the Moon… she’s still blushing.. Beautiful