New Entry Here

As I’m working on one blog and quickly updating another, I am remembering one year ago, about where I left off…

Funny to think I was thinking about life coaching at that time… and I still am and do actually.

However, When I look at this picture – the reason I posted it – is because it says everything about what the outcome of life coaching is to me actually… and how I love the simplicity and joy of just being.

The honest truth of smiling, being a kid, running down a hill, being outdoors, enjoying family …. sometimes life gets out of hand and we feel like we might need some help. But everything we need is already right there just waiting to be found <3

Yoga Life Coaching

Do you want to tune in to your intuitive nature? Would you like a deeper connection with your friends, significant other and family? How about improve your position at work?

A Yoga Life Coach™ can help you live your best life ever.

HOW DOES YOGA LIFE COACHING™ WORK?
Yoga Life Coaches™ are trained to support your agenda and needs while helping you to dissolve the life-long blocks, troublesome patterns and limiting beliefs that prevent you from moving forward with the life you really want.

Every client receives one complimentary session with their coach of choice.  This first call is used by both coach and client to determine if the collaboration is a good fit for both parties.  Depending on what you, the client, wishes to achieve, the coach may refer you to another coach who is better suited to your needs.

After your initial call, if you choose to move forward, you will set up appointments with your coach at the intervals which make most sense to you.  Most clients start out with weekly sessions, then graduate to fewer and fewer sessions until coaching is complete.

On every 30 minute coaching call, you and your coach will co-create forward momentum and design activities that you will complete between sessions.  Coaches choose powerful questions so you can self-discover what your next doable steps are in any given moment.  A coach can also hold you accountable to necessary action steps, but YOU, as the client will direct the coach in how he/she can be most helpful in your transformation.
You will be amazed at what you already know and how you can expand into immediate action and results with the support of a trained coach.

IS YOGA LIFE COACHING™ DIFFERENT FROM THERAPY OR CONSULTING?
A Yoga Life Coach™ is not a therapist or a consultant.   Coaches will not give you advice or tell you what to do.  Coaches do not promote “wishing for” or “manifesting” theories as sole strategies towards what you want.  You have to be willing to take action, declare what you want to the people around you, and be honest with your coach in order to move forward.
Deborah’s brand of coaching is called Yoga Life Coaching™ because many of her coaches are also trained in yoga and incorporate yoga, meditation and wellness into the coaching, as appropriate.

For what it’s worth, it is true that I have been personally trained by Debbie Williamson, the creator of Yoga Life Coaching. It was an amazing experience and Debbie helped me learn more about my natural abilities to help other people be the best they can be and unblock their negative patterns so that they can begin to live fully and with fewer and fewer limitations. Debbie’s program is registered with the internationally recognized International Association of Coaching.

Hey…

So getting through 6 months of yoga training which went above and beyond asana and meditation has been so good for me. I did a forty day challenge where I had to ‘be mindful and set goals’ which led me to pretty much eliminating gluten, meat and alcohol. One of my favorite things to do was check out a variety of yoga classes and also to check in with my gratitude. It is so easy to say how difficult something is and worry about looking foolish, but the reality is that if you are able and determined you will get there. There’s never any rush, but there is only this one life. I see a lot of people take things for granted…. I’ll tell you, it sucks when you no longer have that thing to take for granted… if you know what I mean…. and I think you do.

Ive been thinking a lot about the spirit and about laughter and love and lightness. These photos are from a fun day at Power of Your Om when Adrienne had Ben and Tori come to perform live during a class. Best part?  how nice it is to have such a low key setting everyone barefoot working hard humbling ourselves and having such a human beat and vibration radiating out of Ben’s guitar right through us.

The Un-Day

Today may be “un” day. Maybe it is mind clearing – or unclearing. Last night and this morning I was thinking and un-doing the food stamp experiment. What does the food stamp experiment make me want to do? Drink Booze. Booze: a very ‘un’spiritual word. So gritty. So grease on your sweaty coal miner machine shop face. So numb until it doesn’t matter that your hungry kind-of-word.

And that is pretty much what the experiment made me feel, hungry. I wanted potato chips and junk food – I would have gladly eaten a few McDonald’s hamburgers (Gross!)

So what does a healthy $5 a day life look like? Rigid discipline – discipline I don’t have! Breakfast is coffee and a greek yogurt bought on sale. Lunch is a smart dog and a piece of lettuce and whole grain bread and 8 oz unsweetened soy milk. Dinner is spaghetti and marinara with a few pieces of lettuce and tomato on the side and water, maybe an apple.

So Im on day three, day four maybe. I asked the kids yesterday whether or not they were going to do this with me. I told them they’d have to try to live on $1.50 per meal or perhaps $4.50 per day. They were so innocent in their response and yet so real. “Oh my gosh! I can’t do that!” Then the other one chimed in with a “I can’t do that because I go to dad’s and who knows what he’s going to make.” Back to the younger one, “I can’t even eat the school lunch on that much!”

I had it all figured out: $1 Greek yogurt with extra protein would keep me fuller and coffee would be a perfect breakfast, a slice of bread and one 50 cent smart dog and an apple for lunch figuring a slice of bread costs me about 10 cents I could sneak in a shake or a slice of tomato or something every now and then. Dinner could consist of a few slices of turkey or tofu, some carrots and lettuce or maybe broccoli or a mushroom. Yesterday I actually splurged my whole allowance on my lunch – I figured lunch would be the best place to splurge since it was right in the middle of the day.

The result was that today I was completely hyper and upped the coffee and ended up wanting to cram everything in sight in my face. The good fortune of being a parent is that the kids don’t always finish everything they were going to eat. Technically I was just not being wasteful.

Still they did not stop looking at me as if I were a crazed woman. When we talk about it, being the capitalist little children that they are, they would say, “Well, are we going to be paid for performing this experiment?”

“Well, no,” I’d say. “That kind of defeats the point of learning what it feels like. You could write a report on it, or talk about it with your teachers or classmates. You could read about it some and learn about what it means.”

“Well, are we going to be *paid* to write a report?”

“Uh, nooo.”

“No, that’s okay then,” they said.

Divinity of Sound

When I first heard the yogi say, “Without two things striking, you do not get sound” I thought of love and friendship. Sounds strange perhaps, but we slip and slide between so many people and instances and things every day that it can be rare for something to actually “strike” me, to make me take notice. I observe and watch passively often with a mindfulness to not take things for granted, but the engagement and initiation and want of things is more rare. The engagement and play tumbling reaction together causing music – we can only hope it will be good. When it is, there is beauty. Something deep to be grateful for. The goodness may last a day, or maybe a lifetime. To recognize it is to be thankful. And then, to think, sound is divine to the yogi.

So it is called Ahat naad, this sound that is caused by things striking, or plucking. However, there is a deeper sound, a sound of all life. This sound is singular and does not require two things to strike in order to exist. It is the humming of life itself, the essence of existence -this sound. That is called Anahat naad, ‘naad’ being sound.

This singular unstruck sound is like the wholeness of our selves. If you sit quietly in meditation – no matter where you are – you can know this sound and feel the divinity. No matter what language you want to use, the existence of this can be known. The more you can visit this, I believe, and develop the wisdom within the singularity of self and the universal sound of life, the more you will come to know love. It is important for us, especially us, as the human species, to use our gifts and not hold back. Sometimes in order for us to overcome our shyness we must work on being more and more whole in ourselves.

Funny, as I was thinking about this, the homily in church today was a parable about the master who gave his servants talents – some created more, but one buried his and hid it away out of fear. This man was scolded and thrown out. I thought this to be harsh as it would seem more appropriate to have pity on the man and help him learn courage. The message, however, was great. There are so many obstacles we must over come, but no more than in nature and in the wild world – they are just different. Finding strength can be a challenge.

Meditating on the divinity of sound and knowing the sound of life where no vibration is perceptible. This is heard through the deepest cognitive systems of our being – the outer expression is the music we create.

It is the cultivation of the culture within one’s self that they acquire the discipline to conquer any task they choose to pursue relentlessly. Sometimes it is difficult to really define the true purpose and once you unblock the unpacking of the intent of the idea, it is possible to further become flexible and open to the possibilities rather than fixated on something immaterial. It is this essence that holds the divinity. The structure of the raga in Indian music, for example, require such patience of gift and disciplined study with potentially much criticism as well as understanding of both the self and the metaphysical.

om. namaste. shanti om.

it is a smile from your heart and soul and a power within you.

Alice? Alice, are you there?

The journey and awakening is always unfolding. It is sometimes lonely, sometimes sad and sometimes fortunate. We are fortunate to be able to daydream, to be able to share moments of joy and pleasure and love.  This man tapped into something deeper, something she hid from herself.

This part of her was wild and quite uncivilized with fiery eyes. Fiery from her anger. But what was most complicated was the tenderness and subtlety about her. It was always as if she felt there were eggshells all around her that she had to walk gingerly upon.  Only then to occasionally satisfy the need to smash a few as a reminder she was still living.

She was afraid, full of fear actually, although no one seemed to know it. Her heart knew too much so she dreamt. She would dream of him: her gentle man. He would wrap his weight around her in warmth. She imagined herself turning to face him and watch her own hands as they would drift up around the nape of his neck and around his ears and onto his face and then he would kiss her.

Now she could be calm. Now her heart felt no pain. Her civility could return with grace. This warmth could carry her through a few barren winters.

She removed his garments in her mind’s eye and felt hers slip down her curves one by one onto the floor. She felt his hand in hers and they would move as one to a nesting place in the bedroom and the lights dimmed. She slept. The night was filled with green tea latte marshmallow kisses and cinnamon cream love and she saw through him. Whereas once he could smile as he killed, he was now distracted, softened somehow. He became like a surgeon who could now feel in his skin the pain and in his mind the fears of his patients. Something had opened him. He was seeking … something … was it the love? The acceptance? The forgiveness for his sometimes crude ways of going about things? He was just a man, after all. Once just a boy.

He walked over to the mirror and looked at a new self. He was a different self than the one he knew just a month ago. The month was over, as his contract was based on just a month, the dog barked, the alarm rang… she awoke. And he in his bed too found himself sitting upright strangely awakened. She hit snooze then contemplated her dream. She reveled in the thought of his love and her body softened as she remembered his touch.

He, now awake and up and dressing, gazed into the mirror. He was different: refreshed, confident, loved, strong…. He considered he might even be a little happy and at peace.

He knew he would have to return. He knew he would have to keep her somehow. What she was, really, was someone who wanted to be loved wholly and forever. And what he was, really, was a man who wanted to be out in the wilderness with her. He thought at times it would be impossible to make it work. What could they do?

She daydreamed of him. So far away, but always with her.

Haunted by things unforgettable

In close. Yours close. Yours inside something that is open that you need to close ~ what do you remember? Where are you? What are you trying to put back together and close? Leave it open. Re-member.

Accept it.

Out open mine. Out open everyone’s. Out open no ones. Whistle off in the quiet leaving breadcrumbs behind as it begins to fall into dark of night.

Nonsense birds silly flying thoughtfully past the willow ~ as dogs are barking cars whiz by the careless stream in our house. Nonsense birds quick cursive playing jokes on our eyes. Kissing breeze. Park walks a bridge marked with goldfish, lily ponds and weeds.

Tweeting cowardly, the old birds hum and tell secrets at the bar.

As the cows come home the nightingale strums cage bars and the emperor rests.

Today’s gone. Tomorrow is won. Yesterday is nonsense again.

Memories like a silent picture show flashed and rambled through her mind. The chicken she watched hatch from an incubator. The kitten she made a little mini bed for and soothed to sleep. The first day she went to kindergarten. The diamond-like stones she would collect from outside one of their many apartments. The floor that was wooden and rickety that she would play a game tip-toeing across the floor without making any sound.