April 2012: Crystals

☀︎☀︎☀︎

Today

Flowers & Kids

Wolf Rules

Life, la laa la la-la

Creativity Without Fear

23 Other Emotions

1. Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

2. Opia: The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

3. Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

4. Énouement: The bitter-sweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

5. Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.

6. Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.

7. Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.

8. Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.

9. Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

10. Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

11. Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.

12. Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening

13. Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.

14. Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.

15. Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.

16. Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

17. Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.

18. Rückkehrunruhe: The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.

19. Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.

20. Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

21. Liberosis: The desire to care less about things.

22. Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.

23. Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

(list via leavingmybody)

Adjust Accordingly

Make a list of things

that make you happy.

~ ✭ ~

Make a list of things

you do everyday.

~ ✭ ~

Compare lists.

~ ✭ ~

Adjust accordingly.

Move Into The Next Chapter Of Life

 This is a great article about setting positive intentions instead of harsh resolutions.
Read the full post by Miann Scanlan on the Free People Blog, here.

"Each new calendar year grants us a symbolic clean slate: a chance to start fresh, assess what wasn’t serving us in the year prior, and reset intentions for the year ahead. With all this energy buzzing around us this time of year, it’s easy to get caught up in the idealizations that the sense of newness holds.

 We receive so many incoming messages from the media stating that the start of each year is the only chance out of our Earth’s entire orbit around the sun that you receive to shape a new and better you. It’s that dangerous now-or-never attitude that can cause us to place unnecessary pressures on ourselves.

 This attitude, one that I previously succumbed to and adopted, actually made me nervous and apprehensive about the new year. The overwhelming fear of failure would hold me back from even setting resolutions at all.

 As always, be gentle, loving and kind to yourself. We already know the power of positive affirmations. So harness this energy to set positive intentions as opposed to harsh resolutions. Let this time of year be a time where you welcome in new energies, rather than trying to totally annihilate old habits.

 I created my intentions around how I wanted to feel, rather than how I wanted to look or what I wanted to have. Do you want to feel inspired? Perhaps you want to feel a sense of community, or self love."

 Try writing a new type of list for yourself this year.

5 Decorating Mantras

1. The closer something is to your body, the better it should be.

2. Surround yourself with quality, not clutter.

3. Every room needs something living.

4. Honour the acts of daily living. If it's a habit, make it beautiful.

5. Life should sparkle. Every house needs bling.

via Moon to Moon 

Stop Consumerism

Benefits of Deep Breathing

18 Benefits of Deep Breathing
by Ash Srivastava via one powerful word

Breathing correctly is not only important for living longer but also to have a good mood and keep performing at your best. Let us look at the benefits of deep breathing and why you should make it part of your everyday living.

1. Breathing Detoxifies and Releases Toxins
Your body is designed to release 70% of its toxins through breathing. If you are not breathing effectively, you are not properly ridding your body of its toxins i.e. other systems in your body must work overtime which could eventually lead to illness. When you exhale air from your body you release carbon dioxide that has been passed through from your bloodstream into your lungs. Carbon dioxide is a natural waste of your body's metabolism.

2. Breathing Releases Tension
Think how your body feels when you are tense, angry, scared or stressed. It constricts. Your muscles get tight and your breathing becomes shallow. When your breathing is shallow you are not getting the amount of oxygen that your body needs.

3. Breathing Relaxes the Mind/Body and Brings Clarity
Oxygenation of the brain reducing excessive anxiety levels. Paying attention to your breathing. Breathe slowly, deeply and purposefully into your body. Notice any places that are tight and breathe into them. As you relax your body, you may find that the breathing brings clarity and insights to you as well.

4. Breathing Relieves Emotional Problems
Breathing will help clear uneasy feelings out of your body.

5. Breathing Relieves Pain
You may not realize its connection to how you think, feel and experience life. For example, what happens to your breathing when you anticipate pain? You probably hold your breath. Yet studies show that breathing into your pain helps to ease it.

6. Breathing Massages Your Organs
The movements of the diaphragm during the deep breathing exercise massages the stomach, small intestine, liver and pancreas. The upper movement of the diaphragm also massages the heart. When you inhale air your diaphragm descends and your abdomen will expand. By this action you massage vital organs and improves circulation in them. Controlled breathing also strengthens and tones your abdominal muscles.

7. Breathing Increases Muscle
Breathing is the oxygenation process to all of the cells in your body. With the supply of oxygen to the brain this increases the muscles in your body.

8. Breathing Strengthens the Immune System
Oxygen travels through your bloodstream by attaching to haemoglobin in your red blood cells. This in turn then enriches your body to metabolise nutrients and vitamins.

9. Breathing Improves Posture
Good breathing techniques over a sustained period of time will encourage good posture. Bad body posture will result of incorrect breathing so this is such an important process by getting your posture right from early on you will see great benefits.

10. Breathing Improves Quality of the Blood 
Deep breathing removes all the carbon-dioxide and increases oxygen in the blood and thus increases blood quality.

11. Breathing Increases Digestion and Assimilation of food
The digestive organs such as the stomach receive more oxygen, and hence operates more efficiently. The digestion is further enhanced by the fact that the food is oxygenated more.

12. Breathing Improves the Nervous System
The brain, spinal cord and nerves receive increased oxygenation and are more nourished. This improves the health of the whole body, since the nervous system communicates to all parts of the body.

13. Breathing Strengthen the Lungs
As you breathe deeply the lungs become healthy and powerful, a good insurance against respiratory problems.

14. Proper Breathing Makes the Heart Stronger
Breathing exercises reduce the workload on the heart in two ways. Firstly, deep breathing leads to more efficient lungs, which means more oxygen, is brought into contact with blood sent to the lungs by the heart. So, the heart doesn't have to work as hard to deliver oxygen to the tissues. Secondly, deep breathing leads to a greater pressure differential in the lungs, which leads to an increase in the circulation, thus resting the heart a little.

15. Proper Breathing assists in Weight Control
If you are overweight, the extra oxygen burns up the excess fat more efficiently. If you are underweight, the extra oxygen feeds the starving tissues and glands.

16. Breathing Boosts Energy levels and Improves Stamina

17. Breathing Improves Cellular Regeneration

18. Breathing Elevates Moods
Breathing increase pleasure-inducing neurochemicals in the brain to elevate moods and combat physical pain


How to Breathe properly?

In order to breathe properly you need to breathe deeply into your abdomen not just your chest. Even in the old Greek and Roman times the doctors recommended deep breathing, the voluntary holding of air in the lungs, believing that this exercise cleansed the system of impurities and gave strength. This certainly is of great value to you in your work in the world. Breathing exercises should be deep, slow, rhythmic, and through the nose, not through the mouth. The most important parts of deep breathing has to be regulating your breaths three to four seconds in, and three to four seconds out.

1. Inhale through your nose, expanding your belly, then fill your chest. Counting to 5
2. Hold and Count to 3.
Feel all your cells filled with golden, healing, balancing Sun light energy.
3. Exhale fully from slightly parted mouth and feel all your cells releasing waste and emptying all old energy. Counting to 5.

Schedule your deep breathing exercise just as you would schedule important business appointments. Set aside a minimum of two 10 minute segments of time everyday although you can begin with two five minutes segments if you prefer.

Honouring yourself enough to schedule time with yourself is the first step in mastering stress. Tend your relationship with yourself and your relationship with life and with others will be enriched and deepened accordingly. Remember to share with your children and all your friends and loved ones so that they too can reap its untold benefits.

Ah Yes, The Cha Cha Cha

7 Cardinal Rules For Life

1. Make peace with your past
    so it won't disturb your present.

2. What other people think of you
    is none of your business.

3. Time heals almost everything.
    Give it time.

4. No one is in charge
    of your happiness. Except you.

5. Don't compare your life to others
    and don't judge them, you have no idea what
    their journey is all about.

6. Stop thinking too much.
    Its alright not to know the answers.
    They will come to you when you least expect it.

7. Smile.
    You don't own all the problems in the world.

Inspiration ~ part 1

Living ~ Life

Slow Down, Live Better

The Slow Fix

Practical Tips to Being More Mindful

10 practical tips to start being more mindful right now:

1. Take a couple of minutes to notice your breathing. Sense the flow of the breath, the rise and fall of your belly.

2. Notice what you are doing as you are doing it and tune into your senses.
When you are eating, notice the colour, texture and taste of the food.

3. When you are walking, tune into how your weight shifts and the sensations in the bottom of your feet. Focus less on where you are headed.

4. Don’t feel that you need to fill up all your time with doing.
Take some time to simply be.

5. When your mind wanders to thinking, gently bring it back to your breath.

6. Recognize that thoughts are simply thoughts;
you don’t need to believe them or react to them.

7. Practise listening without making judgments.

8. Notice where you tend to zone out (e.g., driving, emailing or texting, web surfing, feeding the dog, doing dishes, brushing teeth, etc.). Practise bringing more awareness to that activity.

9. Spend time in nature.

10. Notice how the mind likes to constantly judge. Don’t take it seriously.
It’s not who you are.

What exactly is mindfulness?

A very good article here, on HeretoHelp.bc.ca

by Marian A. Smith

"Sweetheart"