Inner Smile: An Enlightening Ancient Healing Practice

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Inner Smile: An Enlightening Ancient Healing Practice

You can feel an opening, a softening, a somatic expansion in the body, when you 'imagine a smile'.  I love Master Meditation Teacher, Tara Brach's guidance during meditations when she offers the cue to, 'imagine a smile in the heart'. She clarifies that this inner smile is 'not as a way of cover up anything, but rather to make room for what is.' 

In fact, smiling is used as a healing and meditation practice by many ancient cultures. Taoists have long believed that having a smile on your face and directing it inwards towards your organs and inner body is essential to good health and longevity. 

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Instant Renewal: Breathe Into The Fresh, New, Now

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Instant Renewal: Breathe Into The Fresh, New, Now

Breathing is our connection to Life!

Even Science is supporting the wonders of the breath. The FDA has approved breath-training as a recognized treatment for hypertension, and there are thousands of research reports stating that conscious breathing reduces the negative effects of stress, relieves anxiety, depression and chronic fatigue, helps manage fear, phobias, shock and grief, improves concentration, and increases one’s sense of wellbeing.

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WILLIAM 101: Love Is In the Air

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WILLIAM 101: Love Is In the Air

Mohonk Mountain House is a three-mile drive up a beautiful, winding, narrow and sometimes heart rate inducing, mountain road. For almost a decade I've been leading retreats at Mohonk.  And, while it’s long been one of my favorite places, I often wondered how an emergency is handled when you’re three miles up a mountain.  One April, several years ago, I found out. 

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CREATE SPACE FOR CHANGE: THE LIFE CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP

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CREATE SPACE FOR CHANGE: THE LIFE CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP

In Clutter's Last Stand, Aslett states, "Getting the clutter out of your life can and will rid you of more discouragement, tiredness, and boredom than anything else you can do." 

Ask yourself how many things you are holding onto just in case you need them. Make a plan to go through your whole house slowly (maybe one room a week). Don't look upon the cleaning as a chore but as a chance to let "the new" into your life. Get rid of things that are no longer of use such as pens out of ink, expired medicine, outdated foods, old perfume or makeup, clothes that might fit someday. Remember, just because you bought it once doesn't mean you have to keep it forever. 

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Stretch Your Love Muscle!

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Stretch Your Love Muscle!

There is plenty of scientific research substantiating how love can benefit us physically, emotionally, and mentally, as well as socially!

When we feel more loving or grateful we actually release hormones that help us to relax as well as connect more deeply with others.

However, when most of us consider love – being in it, having it, experiencing it - we think of it as something that is dependent on our relationships and conditions with others. 

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The Heart Whisperer: Sweet Breath

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The Heart Whisperer: Sweet Breath

I've used variations of this practice for years and it is very effective for helping to create a tactile experience, a somatic experience, of what it feels like to sit with a soft, unguarded heart center.  It brings us back and forth between physically posturing ourselves so our chest oscillates between over closing and over opening. 

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Instant Gratification: Metta meditation magic

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Instant Gratification: Metta meditation magic

Science confirms what many of us already know: a regular practice of meditation can actually increase your brain’s capacity to exercise patience, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness. In fact, research from in a study from Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that meditation helps to positively change areas of the brain that are important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processing.

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