Yoga and meditation can help us get more comfortable with ourselves, bringing us a sort of ease even with our dis-ease, bringing love, acceptance, and kindness to it.
Yoga and meditation bring the transformative mirror of love and acceptance to our life and to those around us.
I have a lot to learn from this kind mirror.
Though not satisfied with what is, fear disdains change and action. It thrives on inaction and things staying very familiar.
Contentment, on the other hand, is happy with what is, satisfied, and yet it joyfully and enthusiastically reaches out and tries new things.
Let us grow our contentment through our yoga and meditation practices and kindly challenge our limiting fears. . . one asana, one breath at a time.
Our inner story like a revolving turnstile spins within us over and over.
Let it not be our mantra.
Rather find a mantra that stills your story, that let’s you even momentarily step out of or stop your story and your obsession with it. At the very least, this can be a thankful reprieve from it.
Such a mantra can be. . . wait for it. . .
life changing!
Envy’s foothold is our discontent, our unsettledness not finding satisfaction.
We look outside ourselves seeking the content we cannot give ourselves.
The antidote is valuing and appreciating what we have.
Looking outside ourselves, we miss what is right here in front of our very nose–all we have.
When we value what we have, we find the value in it.
First notice of envy’s foot in the door, shoe it away with contentment!
To read more about the second yoga Niyama, santosha, contentment, click here.
Yoga and meditation can help us to begin to see every day as though opening a gift from Santa!
(And the practices help you tend your inner Grinch who might want otherwise!)
I did not realize my own unrest until I practiced contentment–with this moment just as it is.
Peace of mind and this practice of contentment are a marriage made in heaven.
What if like snowflakes to ice crystals, we were all very unique and individual expressions of the same consciousness or light?
“Namaste!” The light in me honors the light in you.
Everything else is different.
In this time of often frenzied gift buying and gift giving, it’s important to remember your presence is the greatest gift you can give.
What presence do you bring to this holidays’ celebrations?
Contemplating this might just be our greatest gift of all. . . .
When starting and maintaining a regular at-home yoga and/or meditation practice, start small.
A little is a lot.
Try just a few yoga poses and/or maybe 5 minutes of meditation 3 to 5 days a week. And then work up from there, if and as you feel the urge.
It took water a long time to dig the Grand Canyon.
Yoga and meditation bring an evenness, a steadiness, in the midst of all life including its extremes.
The Every Day Yogi 