In every sorrow, there is always a deep lesson to evolve the soul. There is always a customized dharma teaching available to us, when we know how to unravel the truth behind our reactions to it. 

Live Inspired teaches you how to tap into an endless supply of life force energy to support your body and mind as you develop the eyes to see your life from a more awakened, evolutionary perspective.  

You are not alone on this journey. As your ally and guide, I am with you every step of the way. As many years as I’ve done this type of work, I’ve always found that the journey is never over. There is always more gold to mine. As you are going through this, I am also going through every process, every exercise and every meditation. It’s my ceremony so that I can hold a larger, more coherent field of resonance for you, to make your journey smoother and deeper because, where I can’t go, I can’t help you to go either. 

What to pack: I suggest you buy a special journal for this course, one that you really like, that makes you want to pick it up.  

• You’ll also want to download the meditations to your MP3 player so you can listen with headphones, anywhere.
• You’ll receive short videos of targeted energy practices that you can do at home or work so, create a small space (or maybe just a head space) for that.
• Most of all, reclaim space in your day for these practices. Ten minutes before going to bed for journalling, ten minutes of energy exercises in the morning or instead of coffee in the afternoon and a five minute meditation break during the day.
• It’s more about consistency than time and, really, it’s mostly about helping you to start viewing your life with different eyes. Your reclaimed space to engage in these practices is not taking time from one thing for another in an already time-starved life.
• You’re reclaiming sacred space for you to honor what’s most precious, the jewel within you and that makes Lived Inspired our shared ceremony. So, let’s open the sacred gates and begin!

These Nine Acts of Ceremony are from Dr. Jane Ely, Native American Shaman, healer, author, my good friend, god mother to my son and co-ceremony elder for many years. 

1. Set the theme. What is one thing in your life that you have always wanted to change but haven’t been able to? Look for a recurring problem around health, relationships, career etc., rather than an isolated incident. This becomes the Intention that will be the focus our 26 weeks together. Write an Intention Statement that is similar to an affirmation. Play with the wording until it resonates in your body and fills you with a force of your entire Being.
2. Agree to leave ordinary reality behind. Everything is a teaching. It arises for a reason, and it is full of meaning. Begin to see the unfolding of reality for it’s richness and beauty. This primes you for seeing Truth.
3. Enter sacred space. Normally in ceremony, we invoke the sacred energies in the ceremonial space for the duration of the ceremony. During this course, set aside a special time and place during your day to reflect, journal, practice the exercises and meditate. Sanctify this space now by cleaning it, creating an altar of objects that are meaningful to you, asking for the support and guidance that you need and blessing it with your good intentions. Each time you enter it, welcome the holy in as well. Invite the sweet fire of inspiration into your life. You can do this however you want. Maybe one day with flowers, another with a song or a simple bow of the head. This is your daily ritual of connecting with the field of inspiration and becoming. This can be your permanent sacred space where you can continue to seed, tend and harvest your inspiration, long after you have finished the course.
4. Instruction. Every week has a teaching or an experience, a reflection and a time for silence and integration. Allow yourself this time within the container you’ve created for your transformation. Please be playful and innovative with the teachings. You do not need to do everything, everyday. This is not about rigidly adhering to all the rules, it’s about you discovering your unique connection to source.
5. Enactment. Let yourself journey through the experience, the meditation, the inquiry, the prayer, the dance, whatever it is, give yourself fully to it. Let the experience wash over you like a wave. Suspend (don’t banish) your cynicism, disbelief and embarrassment. If it’s there, fine, so be it. Just don’t let it stop you from fully having the moment.
6. Celebrate the experience. If you can give yourself fully to the enactment, you will be lighter, have more insight, be moved to receive what you’ve been given ( even if you don’t understand it yet) and now is the time to mark the giving with song, dance, happiness, tears of gratitude, or relief. Make it a practice to celebrate small things honestly. That way you become a magnet for bigger and bigger goodness to come.
7. Give thanks to the energies of inspiration, creativity and healing that have come to assist. Give thanks for the inspiration, insights and opportunities that will continue to present themselves and enrich your life and the lives of those you touch.
8. Return to ordinary reality transformed. Mark the closing of your sacred time with a ritual that feels organically right to you. Some suggestions are: a closing of the ceremony with 3 chimes of a bell, a gong or a drum, blowing out the candles, a chant such as OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti, Amen etc. This helps you mark the transition from ceremonial time to clock time. It helps you to fully come back to ordinary reality as the bearer of the treasure or the knowledge. It prevents you from being like Jack climbing down the beanstalk without the Golden Goose. If we want to be nourished by these journeys, we must be able to return home with the treasure. This stepping across the threshold is your moment to be the bearer of the light, to bring the light of spirit into the world.
9. Integration. This takes time, it takes living in your everyday world, just a little bit differently, with a lifeline tethered to the sacred. You don’t need to know anything yet. You just need to breathe and keep moving forward. Be patient. Soon things get easier. People start asking you if you’ve changed your hair or lost weight. Well, you are lighter but not because you’ve lost weight (although you may lose a few pounds effortlessly – it happens). You are lighter because you have changed your relationship to light. You carry more of it as the Fire of Inspiration burning within you.

Now, you have opened up a holy space. You have given yourself permission to step out of ordinary time and enter the time dimension of possible futures so you can stake your claim for what you want to manifest. You have created a container for your embodied evolution into living and being the light of inspiration. We are ready to begin week one of Live Inspired. 

With every heart beat, we have the opportunity to affirm and celebrate our lives and our purpose for living.  

Yet, sometimes, even when we think we are doing the ‘right thing’, it can be done harshly or abusively or it could be the wrong choice all together. 

Marshall McLuhan said, “ We become what we behold, we shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” Later in the course, we’ll look more deeply at the power of choice and what it means to consciously choose and act from the level of cause. For now, we’ll focus on learning to use the tools we already have. 

A great yoga teacher, Nevine Michaan says that any tool, let’s take a hammer, can be used for harm or good, depending who is using it and for what purpose. 

Much has been said about the need to purify oneself through the practice of yoga and that this purification process will lead us to enlightenment. We’re told to keep practicing and, eventually, when we are purified enough, enlightenment will happen.We try to wash the body and mind clean from the cravings of the ego, to dissolve into oneness in our meditations and hope for the best. But, these methods were not designed for the kind of intense responsibilities and worldly demands of a modern life.

So, does that mean we are left with yoga as just exercise? Does it mean we either aspire to be ego-free or just give up doing ego work all together? Besides, if The One is in the many, if it is omnipresent and unable to be divided, then is it not also in the parts of us we wish to purify?

What if we took a different approach and made the ego our friend, not our enemy? Perhaps loving, not disowning is the answer.

Loving is inclusive, not blind. In fact, loving makes it easier to be truthful and discriminating.

You get to make clear choices without deceiving yourself and without the kind of violence that labels a part of you unclean or unworthy. You get to be honest with yourself about what you want to work on because it’s the part that needs more loving, not less.

‘Santosha’, the fifth niyama (a way of being to cultivate- part of Patanjali’s 8 Limbs of Yoga), means contentment.

Contentment means loving the process, the moment and all the so-called imperfections that are really just messages to love more.

What if we began looking into the inner workings of our egos in a very gentle, loving way?

What if we began to see the patterns of our behavior that don’t support our health and well-being, that undermine our confidence, our connections with others, or our bank accounts?

What if we simply watched ourselves, from a bird’s eye view and saw these patterns, not as bad, but maybe just not giving us the results we really want?

Take baby steps this week.

Maybe you have an apple instead of a cookie. Maybe you commit to meditate at a certain time this week. Maybe you catch yourself in negative self-talk or blaming a loved one and you simply disengage and take a deep breath instead. In this way, you consciously enter, breath by breath, into a living relationship with The One.

Then, you are content.

It may be the way you disconnect from someone who’s presence would be nourishing but you’re too busy or too worried about something else.  

Or maybe, for another day, you put off doing something that makes you happier or healthier. 

Note these patterns in your journal, much like a doctor would when taking a notes. Please don’t judge yourself. 

“I practice one religion and that religion is kindness.” His Holiness The Dalai Lama 

Pick one thing, one way you deny nourishing yourself, you disconnect from your vitality or your joy or one way you realize that you’re doing harm to yourself.  

If you can dig a little deeper and discover what the payoff is to that behavior, great, you’re ahead of the game (because we never do anything without a payoff, even if it’s not in our best interest, it’s serving something else). 

For now, we’re declaring a moratorium on the choices that harm us and the inner voice that criticizes those choices. Refrain from making those choices, as best as you can AND be kind. 

There is a part of us that’s in need of kindness lying beneath the choices and the voices and the payoff.  

There is a part of us that is longing for inclusion and wholeness.  

Simply love it like you would if it were your baby crying for attention. Don’t try to change it but do look deeper for the message that part of you carries. Is there some other way, besides frustration, crying, anger etc. for that energy to be expressed? 

Drink more water. Ideally 9.5 pH water, at least filtered water. Drink eight 8 ounce glasses per day. We’ll talk more about pH later , and the health benifits from establishing an alkaline diet. 

Finding Your Golden Shadow: The Golden Shadow is that part of ourselves that is too good to own. It’s what you admire or maybe even envy in others. When we act “as if” it were ours, it becomes ours because it’s inherently in us anyway, just as it’s opposite. Write down the names of the 3 people you admire the most. Then make a list of what qualities you admire about them. Choose the top 5. This is your list of the qualities of your Golden Shadow. Pick one quality each day and act ‘as if’ it were yours. 

The Embodiment Break: Take at least one Embodiment Break a day. Pause, close your eyes, engage the breath as deep, easy and slow nasal breaths, sit up straight with both feet squared and making conscious contact with the floor. Think of each foot like a 4 pronged plug (ball of big toe, ball of baby toe, inner heel and outer heel) plugged into the giant electric socket of the Earth. Feel the energy in your pelvis, legs and feet. Relax your jaw, shoulders and hands. Quiet your mind and feel how solid and substantial the body is. Feel the life of the body, heart beating, food digesting, cells taking in nourishment and releasing wastes. Appreciate the wisdom of the body to maintain these continual processes for you. Besides the world you are usually aware of, there is this ongoing miracle called your body. Let your awareness and your energy rest here for 2 minutes and then, return to your day, refreshed. 

“May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature.”