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4/30/2020
Day 1: InvitationLive in the Orange Zone - Day 130 Days of Self Study, Meditation and Reflection Welcome to day one of Live in the Orange Zone. This 30-day meditation and reflection practice is going to evolve. I'm just going to get you started today with the nuts and bolts of what we're going to do together. I want to say that the mission, the vision behind us doing this, is that we have this time that's been very precious to us, to put a pause, to be doing things differently. Take this time and to mindfully move forward into stepping back into our normal lives, even though our job sites might look the same or the people that we've been missing look the same, we've changed during this time. Orange Zone is all about shifting out of normal patterns of being in the body and the breath and in our thinking-feeling self, into new possibilities, better ways of being, more kind ways of being, more loving ways of being, more happy. Here's what I'm going to ask you to do. I'm going to ask you to have a sacred time every day. It doesn't have to be long, could be five minutes. Some days you might wind up staying for 10 or even half an hour. It’s the time that is important, that you choose a time and call this your sacred time that you are giving to yourself. The second thing is to create a sacred space. I have a lot of space that I would consider sacred in this house, but this one I created specifically for this 30 days. It's in a different place than my other meditation places. And I have things that I've chosen for this time. My orange flowers, of course, the Phoenix I made for my father years ago, our picture, and all the things here I have placed because they're important to me in what I want to be living today and what I want to step into in my future. Mindfully choose what you want for this specific 30-day invitation. I want to say most of us that are joining probably have a meditation practice, have a yoga practice, maybe a time of journaling and reflection, but like a new year, this is such an important and special time that I want to create something that's specific to your life right now, in this moment, today, and how it will affect your tomorrow. The third thing is a journal. I know you probably have some laying around the house. This is one a dear friend gave me a couple of years ago that's very precious to me, but there's lots of empty pages in it. I know that I can start today with day one, put the date and begin my practice here. This is really part of the fourth thing, which is just to give ourselves svadhyaya, sva meaning self, dhyaya meaning getting close to yourself, self-study. For me to have this time every day where I'm silent, where I'm not doing anything, fixing anything, figuring out anything, helping anyone else, but just sitting in silence with myself is so important. When we sit with ourselves in meditation, in silence and devotion, sometimes what comes up is surprising to us or something that's incredibly relevant to how we want to step forward. So to put pictures, to put quotes, to put lyrics, to anything creative you want to put on here that's part of what starts to come up for you during this time. And as well, I want to encourage everyone to watch the video below because that's going to have the quote for the day which can also be part of your reflections. That quote might speak to you. Even though you've heard...we did this four years ago, this is a 30-day meditation that T and I put together quite a few years ago. We've heard the quotes before. The first quote is by Albert Einstein. We just talked about it a couple weeks ago, but it speaks to us differently as we go through different parts of our life. Enjoy the quote that you'll have every week. The time is precious. We're making this commitment together. I know for myself, oftentimes I start things and then I don't stick with it. It's kind of one of those things that's part of our human nature. So the fact that we're doing it together makes it more powerful. I promise to be giving you all kinds of fun, creative, different things to look at, think about, and do. I'm going to pull in some of my dear friends and some of the things that they're doing and just get really creative, get in our Orange Zone here, move some furniture around and plan to move into this new chapter of our life with some possibility, optimism and new beginnings. I look forward to our time together. Day 1 Inspiration Today's inspiration comes from Albert Einstein Today, see your life filled with miracles. There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Click the links below to find out more:
The Orange Zone - A 30 Day Practice - YouTube Playlist Daily Inspirational Quotes for 30 Day Meditation Blog Post: What is the Orange Zone? 4/29/2020
Day 2: Practice Silence & ListeningLive in the Orange Zone - Day 230 Days of Self Study, Meditation and Reflection Welcome to our 30 day commitment to our living in the Orange Zone. I am here in my special spot that I'll be in for 30 days. I'm in front of my little altar that I created this morning. I woke up early, which is really not easy for me, to do my little 10 minutes and light my candle and my devotional time. I'd ask all of you to get a journal out and just start writing quotes or thoughts, or whatever is coming up for you. This was my day one. I am now starting to journal on day two. The quote that we're going to use today underneath for the 30 day meditation is one of my all time favorites. It's a translation of a Taoist passage. It's actually very unique by Dorien Israel. Most of you will remember, I've been sharing this with all of you for years, and the timing is so perfect because it's monarch season where the little caterpillars are going to start to emerge from the eggs. We all get to watch them grow and get fat and get fat and get fat until they make a little jay. Their imaginal cells, which is miraculous. we'll talk about this in the 30 days, start to form antennas and whatnot until it becomes this amazing monarch butterfly. The Taoist passage talks about the caterpillar having a sense of something within him that is beginning to change. I feel like that's what we're doing right now as we begin to go back into our normal that won't be normal, it'll be very different, that we can feel a sense of something has been shifting in the last few months for us or in the last few weeks. I want us to have time to really listen to what that is. Part of the commitment for us is to have our devotional time and our journals and our meditation. I think an important aspect of that is silence. Today is about listening. To make sure that maybe at the beginning... I'm going to do it at the beginning and the end - you could do it however you'd like to, that part of your commitment to this time sitting and reflecting and meditating and practicing the Orange Zone, which is moving into possibility is to listen to what's going on in your gut and in your heart. In order to do that, we have to shut all the noise out of our normal lives and responsibilities, so maybe even people in phones and put all of that aside. Just sit in silence for a few minutes and to listen. This morning, when I was practicing, I was sitting here, this is actually my bedroom, and I just heard so many different birds. They were all birds, but there must've been five different songs going on from different types of birds. It had a message for me. In that, when we find the silence, maybe it just feels like medicine to be quiet and to just listen to ourselves in silence and nothing. Other times we might find that we start to speak and we hear things that we want to communicate with ourselves, our external selves, our internal selves. It's like, "Please listen to me. I have something to tell you. It's super important if you'd just listen." That is our gift from this beautiful passage today. I hope you get a chance to watch it. I'll include the text on here and to maybe even journal today a little bit about that, that caterpillar who has a sense of something within it is already beginning to shift. Write about what within you right now is beginning to shift. Can you feel that? Can you just write about that? Can you just listen to that? Day 2 Inspiration Today's inspiration comes from the Tao de Ching The Tao turns the tides Click the links below to find out more:
The Orange Zone - A 30 Day Practice - YouTube Playlist Daily Inspirational Quotes for 30 Day Meditation Blog Post: What is the Orange Zone? 4/28/2020
Day 3: Adding GratitudeLive in the Orange Zone - Day 330 Days of Self Study, Meditation and Reflection Welcome to day three of Living in the Orange Zone. I wanted to share my journal as I have been every day. I have been taking some orange paint and a brush and just stroking across the top, very artistically and creative, to represent what the orange zone means to me for the next 30 days. It means to step out of my patterns and out of locked ways of being into new possibilities, new ways of thinking, new ways of holding my body, new ways of seeing my world through a different lens. The orange for me every morning, is a different meditation. This is a new chapter for me, this is a new beginning. So far, we have a sacred time, we have a sacred place, and we have sacred silence to begin our meditation. I would like to add to that. The next thing we add to our meditation is gratitude. I've been doing a gratitude practice for years. I know many of you have as well. Let's take this gratitude practice and put it in this frame of orange, which is “new beginnings”, and choose something that represents that for you. I chose shells, I chose shells and sea glass from all over the world. I've been collecting for years and I picked out 30 of them and put them in a beautiful bowl that my friend Tamara made for me. They are sitting on the altar. Every morning after my silence, I take a shell and I hold it to my heart and I say thank you for my mom. I just sit with love, how much I love her and how grateful I am. Then I choose the next stone and I say, thank you for my Papa. I just sit with looking at him and, and feeling my love for him. And then I go on to where I live, that I put my toes in the sand today. I like to encourage you when we do our gratitude practice to choose a couple shells that represent something new, so that we're constantly scanning our days and the moments of our days for that new thing that we want to be grateful for. I just saw Hawk fly by and am grateful that the hawks live in my neighborhood, and are such inspirations to me. We're adding this beautiful practice that is going to change our moods. It's going to change our body chemistry. It's going to lift our sense of having some control over how we train our mind to think about the moments of our day. When we're finished, we'll go back to our silence, your lighting of your candle, all the things the same, and adding this gratitude practice. The quote for this week was by Emerson. You have your time to also reflect in your journal about the quote, about your gratitude, about listening, lyrics, anything that comes up for you today. Just be open to shifting and things changing. I know for me, I keep telling myself, you know, move the furniture a little bit Di, and move out of the normal way of seeing it. So today I just had 20 minutes where the beach was still open. I jumped in my Jeep and drove down there and got to put my toes in the sand. That felt to me like I got out of this pattern of how I teach zoom in the morning. Something that's simple, but it shifted my day and I was so glad that I started my day that way. I invite all of you to join me living in the orange zone today. Day 3 Inspiration Today's inspiration comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Bring some peace into your life. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Click the links below to find out more:
The Orange Zone - A 30 Day Practice - YouTube Playlist Daily Inspirational Quotes for 30 Day Meditation Blog Post: What is the Orange Zone? 4/27/2020
Day 4: Set IntentionsLive in the Orange Zone - Day 430 Days of Self Study, Meditation and Reflection We are on day 4 of our 30 day Living in the Orange Zone. We have committed to a sacred time, a sacred space, sacred silence and listening, and yesterday we added gratitude. Today we're going to add sankalpa, which means to set intention, or prayer is also a way of setting intention. I feel like it's important because it's a way for us to reach out through our feeling self and thinking self to what we want to draw into our lives. I know for many of us this has been a really incredible unique two months where maybe we've started to realize more and more what's important to us and what we want more of or less of in our life. That's a good place to start with setting some intention around bringing that into our future. I like to use things that are tangible, of course, I'm encouraging all of you to. I have chosen some stones that I found on the beach. I'm starting with two intentions for myself. As I find more things that I want to bring into my life and I want to set intentions around, I'm going to include more heart stones. But for today, I'm bringing in intentions around how I want to live my life moving forward with the changes I've gone through, to maybe, one of my intentions is to bring more balance into my life. It's been a great opportunity to think about what's most important and to know that I want to enjoy my work as much as I want to enjoy my time out in nature and with friends and having fun. I encourage all of you to set some intention around what is becoming more important to you and what you feel like you want to bring forth into your life moving forward. And set some goals around that and use those in your ... I'm going to be putting mine in my little bowl of shells that are also my gratitudes. So, every day when I finish my gratitude I'm going to set my intention and just visualize what I'm bringing into my life for the future. We get good at what we practice at, so if I'm constantly practicing being worried or upset, my life becomes very stressful. But if I practice being grateful, then I feel lucky, I feel blessed. And if I practice thinking about what I want to bring into my future, I bring that into my future. The quote I wanted to share with all of you is one of my all time favorites by Mary Oliver. She said, "I have refused to live locked in ordinary houses of reasons and proofs. The world I live in and believe in is wider than that. And anyway, what's wrong with maybe? You wouldn't believe what once or twice, I have seen. I'll tell you this, only if there are angels in your head will you ever possibly see one." I love this so much because it tells me that unless I am visualizing things here first, I can't possibly see them out there and bring them into my life. So I encourage all of you to join me. Think of angels, manifest angels, whatever that is for you. Set intention. Day 4 Inspiration Today's inspiration comes from Pattabhi Jois. Practice. Practice, practice, practice. Click the links below to find out more:
The Orange Zone - A 30 Day Practice - YouTube Playlist Daily Inspirational Quotes for 30 Day Meditation Blog Post: What is the Orange Zone? Live in the Orange Zone - Day 930 Days of Self Study, Meditation and Reflection We're on Day Nine of Living in the Orange Zone. And I wanted to start our inspiration today, our time together, to encourage each other to continue on our path with a reading by Mark Nepo that I shared last week, “To journey without being changed is the Nomad. To change without journey is a chameleon. To journey and be transformed by the journey is a pilgrim.” I wanted to talk about this idea of being on a pilgrimage. And so was looking at maybe going to India on a pilgrimage. Some people go to a special cathedral. The Camino de Santiago is this very famous pilgrimage, it’s hiking trails. For years, thousands of people have traveled on this. They call it the Camino, lovingly, from all over the world. I looked up on Wikipedia, “what are they doing?” What are all these people traveling on the Camino for thousands of years. And the one line I want to share with all of you is this, “many follow its routes as a form of spiritual path or retreat for spiritual growth.” And that is exactly why we are doing the 30 Day Live in the Orange Zone. Like doing a meditation practice alone or a yoga practice or going on retreats somewhere, walking the Camino. It's all this hope or intention that we are going to grow spiritually, that we're going to come become a better version of ourselves, a lighter or a more loving, a more kind, happier version of ourselves. And so I chose this when it felt like an important time, not just for me, but for our planet, for all of us to say we have been living this story of this virus that started in China and that is now a world pandemic. And many of us, if we're talking about the hero's journey, went through that initial Separation from our jobs, from our friends, from our normal way of being. And in the hero's journey, then the next part is called Initiation. And that's all of the the adventures and all of the challenges and all of the beautiful things that come out of that journey. And then this last bit in the Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell is actually called The Return. And the return is where we come back. And what do we bring back? Normally in any of the universal heroes journeys as we come back different, we are changed. In the Wizard of Oz Dorothy came back to the same farm in Kansas, but she wasn't the same. And there's so many beautiful real life stories, Nelson Mandela, Viktor Frankl, that I love to use in our teachings, of how they came back and what they gave back to the community. I wanted to say that it's important for me when I think about doing the 30 Day Living in the Orange Zone, a 30 day meditation practice and self-study, is it's not about the destination.It's not what's going to happen at the end of 30 days, like something magical happens. It's about the journey. It's about us walking this path together and making decisions to grow along the way and to take the gifts on our journey with us and forward. And in that, I would also like to share with you one word in Sanskrit. The word is Sadhana, and it means to practice. And so what I have committed to, what we have committed to together, is what I lovingly refer to as a practice. And in practice for me, it is very different from saying I go to this yoga class or oh, I have this, you know, meditation thing that I do here or whenever. It can be those things. It's definitely a meditation. It's definitely a breathing or yoga, whatever that can be for us. But, the difference when I say sadhana, when I say it is my practice, is it's not a class outside there anymore that I do, but it's something that belongs to me. I own it. I'm responsible for it. And so for 30 days, we've committed to be responsible for something that is going to transform us. That we are going to be different and changed and carry that forward into our life by very simple things that I would like to have each of you begin to call your practices:
I welcome all of you to continue this. We're on day nine of 30 days of walking together on this pilgrimage, on the path, and doing a practice that will transform us. Day 9 Inspiration Today's inspiration comes from an ancient Indian text. Silence brings us to our highest path When the five sense and the mind are stilled, and reasoning intellect rest in silence, then begins the highest path. Click the links below to find out more:
The Orange Zone - A 30 Day Practice - YouTube Playlist Daily Inspirational Quotes for 30 Day Meditation Blog Post: What is the Orange Zone? |
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