Tag: meditation

A simple daily practice

by Karen, posted in health, no fear, writing

I learned this daily practice from a webinar that Bob Proctor gave recently.

This is my interpretation of the process:

*Write down 10 things for which you are grateful.

*Send loving-kindess to 3 people who feel challenging to you.

*Sit for 5 minutes and ask for guidance for the day.

That’s it.

I decided to use a special journal/notebook that I had already, hoping that seeing it every day will remind me to do it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this practice. Do you think you will try it? I am on Day 3 so far and I am enjoying it very much. It doesn’t feel burdensome, as some other daily practices I’ve tried in the past have.

 

My first radio interview at Elemental Energies with Chris Ann

by Karen, posted in author, books, local fun, Meditation, Metaphysical healing, my one word, no fear

I had the good luck to be Chris Ann’s Radio adguest on her live radio talk show last night on unitedpaganradio.net (WUPR). What a great experience! Chris Ann made me at home from the moment I entered her studio. We talked about my book and my other writings and doings.

We also discussed ways of manifesting things that you want in your life.  I mentioned different methods I had tried over the years on my path to publishing my book, like making vision boards, meditating, creative visualization. A big one that I forgot to say was MIND MAPPING. I will talk more about this in a separate post.

I was shocked to hear how many listeners we had! There were 20,089 listeners in 129 countries. What the whaaaaatttt??? Isn’t that amazing? 🙂

If you missed the show, you can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/karen-maffeo-creamer/k-m-creamer-one-brave-thing-interview-with-chris-ann

I’m happy to share that my book One Brave Thing is now available at Chris Ann’s store, Elemental Energies with Chris Ann and Jeff, 27 North Berwick Road in Wells, ME! Stop in and buy one! While you’re there, pick up a crystal or two, just because!

Meditation 101

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, health, Meditate

FullSizeRenderI started meditating a few months ago as part of giveit100.com  I put in my 100 days and then guess what! I didn’t stop. I kept on going. I meditate every day now (sometimes more than once).

I am a meditator.

What was different about this time? I got out of my own way. I stopped defining ‘meditation’ and surrounding it with rules. I just practiced it.

Everything is hard before it is easy (paraphrased from a Jack Canfield book The Success Principles).

What do you need? Just to practice it.

I have recently decided that it’s okay to sip coffee in meditation. No one is looking. Or cares.

I love meditation because you already have everything you need: body? Check! Breath? Check! Coffee? YES! Sometimes!

 

New kid in town

by Karen, posted in Angels, local fun, my one word

abionesMaybe you, like me, have wondered about the new signage in front of a house on Rt 1 in Wells, the one that says The LoveLight Center.

What’s up with that?

I saw a flag waving “OPEN” at me yesterday so I took a chance (remember, I’m brave in 2015!) and ran in. I met the most lovely woman, Emily Karparis, who mentioned that the interior is still evolving, but then she took some time to introduce me to the space and invited me to come again.

Which I did. Today.

🙂

I have so many good things to say about The LoveLight Center! The little shop inside, Abionesa, has so many of my favorite things on display! Every one of women that I met who work there are so welcoming! The playing of the crystal harp for which I was lucky enough to be present was very powerful!

In this post, I’m going to tell you about the Angel Room. For ten bucks, you can sit in the Angel Room for (up to) fifteen minutes. And do what? Think. Meditate. Pray. Listen. Ignore the pleading bleats of your cell phone. Appreciate the beautiful blue color of the walls. Contemplate the enormous crystal (like, ‘as big as your head’) on the table in the center of the room. Watch the vortex of swirling snow outside the window.

I did all of these things.

It was worth every cent.

Before you enter the room, you can pick up a typed affirmation from the basket, or choose a stone to hold, or just ‘come as you are’. I chose the affirmation-if the universe had something to say to me, I wanted to hear it.

Here’s what it said:

IMG_1057

 

 

 

 

Done.

There are pictures of the Angel Room on their Facebook page. Check it out. Oh, and stop by and say, Hi!

 

My 100th day

by Karen, posted in health, no fear, yoga

IMG_0933Today is my 100th consecutive day of meditating.

One hundredth. Consecutive. Day.

I know, right?

Prior to this, my meditation practice never lasted more than a few moments, if it occurred to me to do it at all, and then sometimes it consisted only of the thought,”Gee, I really should meditate,” or even better (or worse), “Meditate”.

But this time I really did it. Every day.

What I learned:

  1. There really are benefits to a daily meditation practice.
  2. I notice myself taking long, deep, full breaths now throughout the day, autonomically, not purposefully.
  3. I can be calmer during (some) storms-during an awful situation recently, I had the very clear thought: “Even though this is happening all around me right now, I am okay.” Of course, at first I was annoyed that I couldn’t remember what the circumstances were but now I see that this forgetting is the gift. Remembering that I knew that I was still OKAY, THAT is the lesson. The upsetting events don’t matter in the end.
  4. Like I learned with NaNoWriMo, I am a gal that needs structure. The structure of giveit100.com.
  5. My blood pressure prior to the 100 days was hovering around 180/110. Midway through it had dropped to 118/76. Hello? Can you say NORMAL? For the first time in years?

My yoga teacher and friend, Kristen, told me that meditation would be good for me and that I should make it a regular part of my yoga practice. Seven years ago.

Who says I’m slow to change?

Oh yeah, my husband. So, shhh.

 

 

 

100 days of…WHAT?

by Karen, posted in Midlife Crisis

IMG_9025I kept seeing the giveit100.com mentioned on…where? Facebook, probably. Finally I looked into it.
The idea is you make a ten second video every day of you doing your chosen activity and upload it to their website.
In one of the articles, a woman was telling how she chose doing push-ups. Day one she could barely hoist herself up off the floor but at the end of 100 days she was doing push-ups like nobody’s business, yada yada.
Well, that sounded pretty good to me so I signed up to give 100 days to some project or activity too.
That was two weeks ago.
I haven’t started yet because, despite encouraging emails from someone associated with the program to ‘just pick something”, I haven’t been able to.
Writing? Clean eating? Walking? Hula hooping? Gratitude?
I was paralyzed in the face of endless choices.
Until today. While i was out walking at the ocean today, the thought of what to do appeared fully formed in my mind.

Here it is: 100 days of meditating.

Wish me luck!

 

Midlife Monkey Mind

by Karen, posted in Angels, education, Midlife Crisis, Turning 50, yoga

I’ve been on overload these past few weeks, with my mind overly full of stress-inducing thoughts. Sleeping has been a challenge. Lying awake from 1:30-4:30am two nights ago, I trotted out all my tricks for putting myself back to sleep: saying my ABC’s, counting backward from 100, tensing and relaxing muscle groups, saying the So Hum meditation.

Today at yoga, the instructor coincidentally included the So Hum mediation in our class. My mind had been racing a mile a minute right up until I heard Kristen say those two words, when it screeched to a halt…for a second. I started saying the words: so hum…so hum…so hum…

Then I became aware of something interesting: although my mental voice was indeed repeating the so hums dutifully as requested, another channel in my mind was still gyrating with the monkey mindedness of my midlife brain. It never stopped. Even as my ‘good girl’ brain was desperately trying to fulfill the teacher’s request to meditate on the fact that “I am”, the ‘bad girl’ brain carried on obsessing with wild abandon.

Note to self: shut of the monkey mind when you meditate. It’s so much more effective.

Spaciousness (or: A Theory of Relativity)

by Karen, posted in book reviews, books, family, friends, health, Midlife Crisis, no fear, relationships, yoga

In the book What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, she talks about the idea of spacious days.

What a concept!!!!

Mostly, my days feel jam-packed to me, without a moment to spare for anything. That’s how I usually think about them, at least. My to-do list is longer than my arm. I suspect that other mothers feel this way as well, since today I heard my friend Donna (also a mother) say those exact words.

In yoga, spaciousness is sought in your body through postures, in your mind through meditation. I’ve been searching for spaciousness through yoga for 4 years now (I’ll let you know when I find it).

🙂

Four years seems like kind of a long time to me…but as a percentage of my age, it’s not that long really. Could it be that all I really need is an adjustment of perspective?

Back to yoga class: this week, our instructor Kristen happened to mention that there was a period of her life that she would gladly relive, which sparked a conversation among the women in the class on this topic. As some of them mentioned ages that they would be interested in repeating, I did a quick review: high school? No way! Early twenties? No thank you!  I soon realized that I couldn’t think of any time period of my life that I would want to live through again, but then I reframed the question: What was a happy memory?

When I asked myself this question, I got a very clear image in my mind. It was in the summer: August 1991. It was in the first apartment that I shared with my husband after we got married.  The sun was streaming in through the large windows in the dining room, shining on my infant son, born just a couple of weeks prior. I remember being in that room, gazing at the baby, standing in the sun, and realizing that I’d never been happier than I was at that moment. Twenty years later, I can still stand in that room in my mind’s eye, and still feel that happiness just as strongly as I did that day.

So, I guess time is relative, just ask Einstein. Or Liane Moriarty.

Or me.

🙂

Water torture? Not!

by Karen, posted in books, health

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” ~Wayne Dyer

Last night I was trying to shut off my (monkey) mind long enough to fall asleep when I became aware of a noise that at first I couldn’t place.

What was it? Oh no…drip, drip, drip….It was water. Dripping water, like of the water torture variety.  A little more investigation gleaned some annoying information: it was from somewhere outside. You know, so that it couldn’t be shut off. OMG. I could feel my blood pressure inching up as I was freaking out about my coming sure-to-be-sleepless night of listening to the drip-drip-dripping water (icicles melting from the roof) when I suddenly had another thought. This time though, it was a useful thought.

It was Wayne Dyer’s quote (above) that popped into my head. I had heard it earlier that day in an audiobook.  There was not a thing on God’s green earth that I could do at 10 o’clock at night to stop the dripping water outside, but hey, maybe I could change how I was thinking about the dripping water?

I gave it a try:

  1. I’m grateful for the roof over my head.
  2. I’m happy to be in my own bed in my own home.
  3. Maybe the dripping is not so bad?
  4. What if I try to meditate? I could say the “So Hum” meditation (the one that I know I can do without thinking too much about it).
  5. What if every time I notice a drip, I (mentally) say the word “So”, then the next drip, I say the word “Hum”, and so on?  Which at least gave me something constructive to do and actually might coax my blood pressure back down to an acceptable level?

Well…guess what! It worked! I still heard it, but it didn’t make me anxious or mad anymore. In an odd sort of way, it felt comforting. So here’s a corollary to Wayne’s quote: If you change the way you listen to things, the things you listen to change.

🙂