Affirmation of the Week

 

GROUNDING PROMPTS 

How often do you feel joy in your life?

Is it enough for you?

Do you feel worthy of feeling joy? In what ways?

What would make you feel worthy?

What do you feel joy about?

What does joy feel to you in these experiences? In your body? In your mind? In your soul?

What blueprint can you create to make you feel joy any time you want? Paint it, draw it, write it, photograph it, record it, sculpt it… to have with you at hand. It is your own chosen permission to feel it 💜💜💜

Journaling Prompt

 

GOING DEEPER 

Do you usually let yourself influenced easily by other people?

If so is that everyone or certain people that tend to influence you? If certain people, who are they to you?

Do you wish you could just have the courage to stand by your own opinions and not be wavered unless for a good reason? Why?

By changing your mind to suit other people’s opinions, what do you wish to accomplish? How has it been working for you so far?

What does it say about you? Are you happy with that?

What can you do to change this?

What are you afraid of when you don’t voice your opinions and change your mind to conform with other people’s views?

What boundaries do you need to put in place for your opinions to be respected?

What do you need to let go of?

What difference would it make to your life and how you see yourself to feel your true voice is heard and your true self is seen?

What is your true voice like?

What is your true self like?

What can you do this coming month to move forward this?

Affirmation Wednesday

 

For the last few months, I have been feeling depleted, without energy. While the current situation has obviously been trying for many people around the world on many levels, I have been lucky enough to stay at home, actually doing things I enjoy. So, to me, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why I have been feeling so tired. I have had periods of inactivity followed by many periods of productivity, so not turning into a sloth and not burning myself out running around like a headless chicken. I just can’t pinpoint it. I have been focusing on my health with healthy eating (which I usually do), meditation (which I also usually do), daily taichi, workouts every other day (at the moment I am following the Yoga Burn Core program, 3 days a week). I have also introduced recently an energy medicine practice and breathing exercises that I add to my meditation, as well as night time healing activation. Yes, I will admit, I don’t go outside, I don’t get fresh air very regularly. Could it be that? In any case I have been trying to stick to routines, introduce new ones in the hope that my vitality will turn up and grow exponentially. But it’s not coming. I get peaks and then drop back down. With this week’s affirmation, “I heal myself with love and respect “, I think that I finally got it. I’ve been going around it the wrong way. Yes, you need to organise and introduce healthy habits, but not in desperation, forcing it upon yourself to do it and beat yourself up if you miss one session. You need to go through the whole process of healing “with love and respect “, for your body, your mind, how you are currently feeling, what you are going through, what you feel is right and exactly what you need at that particular moment.

A totally new perspective for me, used to planning and organising and ticking boxes off my precious to-do list. I’m not sure yet how I’m going to go about it. I have started a “checking in/checking out” journal to take into account my current state and what I have planned to do. Will that be the answer? I guess I’ll soon find out.

Where do you feel you are right now as far as your healing is concerned?

When you say the affirmation to yourself out loud, does it feel true to you?

What does healing yourself with love and respect mean to you? What does it look like?

What do you feel is missing so that you can heal yourself with love and respect?

These journaling questions, I hope, will help you explore the background for the affirmation to set in. For weeks I felt some of my affirmations not really speaking to me, and I found out that it was because I wasn’t connecting to them fully. Asking myself these types of questions have helped me see where the affirmation fits in to my life, my current state and my feelings. You don’t have to have all the answers - as you can see from my intro, I certainly haven’t. And that is all OK. It is all part of the process, part of the magic...

Insight Timer App Review

Today, I'd like to do my first review on this blog and I have chosen to talk about my favourite meditation/music app which I have been using for over a year now.
As you may know from a previous article, meditation is an integral part of my daily life and the Insight Timer app, I have found, has been supporting my needs very well.

While my meditation practice has a specific structure, I find that I rarely use the app for actual meditations instead of my established Ziva practice, but more for the vast array of relaxing music available on this app. Seriously, it is a gold mine! I will play longer pieces for my evening wind down or even during the day when I feel anxious, stressed or overwhelmed. I also like to listen to calm music when I read as, I have come to realise, it helps me relax while I'm reading and helps me focus more. The "Evening Fire" instrumental song by Loula Taylor is my favourite go-to background music for my Ziva meditation; it is exactly 20 minutes, just like my meditation session, which makes it perfect for me to gently time my session. The music is also not distracting which is very important.

But let's have a look at this wondrous app that is now a full part of my well-being kit.

The app is available both on Google Play and Apple App Store. It is free to download and use, but a subscription is also available (monthly, yearly) to be able to access content offline and have availability of courses (they are not accessible if you are on a free account). You can start with a free trial period before you decide to subscribe, if you want access to every option available on the app. I did the trial, cancelled it before the end of the trial period and then received a half price offer on the annual subscription (at that time, annual was the only option offered for Premium). This is how I am currently on a Premium account. It will expire in August this year and, unless I get another good offer like this one, there is a fair chance that I will stay on the free account, just because there is still so much you can access.
The free account gives you access to all the meditations and music so, in my books, that's fantastic to start with. There are thousands of teachers, musicians and meditations available. You can search by type, length, teacher, style, keywords, which makes the search very efficient in quickly finding what you're looking for.

Here are a few screenshots of my Insight Timer to give you an idea of how it's organised:

As you can see, there is a Parents category with music, talks and meditations for children and teenagers. A really invaluable resource, especially in these uncertain times.

As I said, the search lets you search in different ways. Here are the default search options on the Search page:

Here are some of my personal favourites and recently played (there are MANY more but that would take an awful lot of photos for you to look at!):

Some of my faves teachers I follow, so far (there are thousands I haven't discovered yet!) -

Here is the Courses page (only available with Premium accounts):

And here is a look at the Account page and options:

As you can see, this app is very comprehensive and the materials availability quite diverse.

Since I have discovered Jacqui Prydie a few months ago, I have delved into the world of Affirmations and have been listening to one of her Affirmations meditations every night when I go to bed. You can see a few titles on my Recently Played screens.

What I love the most about Insight Timer, apart from the fact that you have gigantic access even with the free account, which is definitely not the case for other meditation apps, is the variety of styles that you get. Often, meditation apps focus on a particular style of meditation, exploring different aspects and with different courses, like the Headspace app, for instance, which was the first meditation app I actually used.
But Insight Timer enables you to discover and explore a multitude of meditation aspects, from sound therapy, to mindfulness, gratitude, affirmations, reprogramming, manifestation and mantras, to name but a few. There are also some very good talks about a variety of wellness and social subjects. I particularly enjoyed Justin Michael Williams "Forgiving Yourself", which is a big thing for me I need to work on, and "The Revolution Starts Inside" which I found very inspiring and beautiful.

I invite you to give this app a try, even if it's just staying on the free account.
You have truly nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Where Have Our Manners Gone?

Do you remember the good old days when men were holding doors and chairs for ladies, people were queuing and driving like civilised people, and Please and Thank You were automatic?

I do - my parents were pretty strict about politeness and manners, and I'm glad they were because, to me, they are a natural thing. They are a mark of respect to others, fairness and, well simple logic. Who would want to be treated disrespectfully and unfairly? No one that I know of.

However, these days, manners seem to be mainly a thing of the past, a rare thing. Kids push you to get on the bus before you, even if you've been waiting for over half an hour and they just turned up 20 seconds ago, people eating your lunch you left in the fridge at work for later... Only a couple of examples of bad manners that I have experienced numerous times. And when I say "kids", really, I mean every one from kids, to adults and pensioners.
People can be so rude nowadays and it seems from people's reactions that it's normal.

Lack of manners is one of my pet peeves. I absolutely HATE it (yes, "hate" and it is not too strong). My blood pressure goes up the roof straight away. I cannot control the impulse, but I do manage, after a few seconds, to gradually let it go - it takes a good while though! Another episode of unnecessary stress caused by others into our lives.
People shouting across the bus to have a chat - what the f**k?! Can't one of them move so they can sit together? Don't they notice that people don't need, neither do they want, to hear their conversation? I have my sound blocking headphones on listening to my music or audiobook full blast, yet I can still hear EVERY single thing they say!! Are they doing it on purpose? I mean, is it just me it bothers or what?
This is a flagrant demonstration of a total lack of respect for other people's private space, comfort and peace.

The world we live in is all about fast pace. Whatever you do, you got to be quick to move on to the next thing. Mobile devices are isolating people in their own little world, totally oblivious and even disregarding other people's world, values and boundaries. Social media connect people in such an impersonal way that you will find many "befriending" people they barely know, sharing every private detail of their lives. The rage of selfies, posting and sharing about your life seems to bring people's focus on themselves - blatantly ignoring whatever and whoever is not part of their world, alienating themselves from the outside world. How many Likes did my post or photo get? Surely, there should be more essential things to life than this.
No wonder people are losing their manners to others. We have lost the direct connection to others, whether we know them or not, and with that the basic understanding and respect that we should have for all human beings.

Let us not forget, we are all, after all, part of the same family, the same species, the same planet, we all share the same air we breathe, we all feel the same emotions when we win and when we lose. Manners, and therefore respect, are the manifestation of the values we share and our common belonging. By disrespecting others, we disrespect ourselves. Not one human being is above the others, we all get to realise that and learn it the hard way in some way or another at some point in our lives.

I remember one of my dad's school books that I still have - dated from the 1930s - teaching morality and manners, how to behave and treat others with the respect they deserve - that we all deserve.
Surely this should come back into the schools' curriculum for a new generation to rediscover and re-instill into the world the art of politeness, manners and respect. At the end of the day, manners don't cost anything and don't make you look weak or less than.

Please, that would be nice. For my blood pressure's sake and the sake of humanity! Thank you...