Photo Credit: Noelle Dass (Artimals) https://noelledass.com/

 

Click below for the AUDIO of RESET Wednesday Meditation, 8/2/23

Hold Out Your Hand by Julia Fehrenbacher

Let’s forget the world for a while
fall back and back
into the hush and holy
of now.

Are you listening? This breath
invites you to write the first word
of your new story.

Your new story begins with this:
You matter.

You are needed — empty
and naked
willing to say yes
and yes and yes.

Do you see
the sun shines, day after day
whether you have faith
or not, the sparrows continue
to sing their song…
even when you forget to sing
yours.

Stop asking: Am I good enough?
Ask only: Am I showing up with love?

Life is not a straight line
it’s a downpour of gifts, so please —
hold out your hand. 

 

How to Open Your Heart by Jeff Foster

Do not try to open your heart.

That would be a subtle movement of aggression toward your immediate embodied experience. Never tell a closed heart to open; it will shut more tightly to protect itself, feeling your resistance and disapproval. A heart unfurls only when conditions are right; your demand for openness invites closure. This is the supreme intelligence of the heart.

Instead, bow to the heart in its current state. If it’s closed, let it be closed; sanctify the closure. Make it safe; safe even to feel unsafe.

Trust that when the heart is ready, and not a moment before, it will open, like a flower in the warmth of the sun. There is no rush for the heart.

Trust the opening and the closing, too, the expansion and contraction; this is the heart’s way of breathing: safe, unsafe, safe, unsafe; the beautiful fragility of being human, and all held in the most perfect love.

Click below for the AUDIO of RESET Wednesday Meditation,7/19/23

Click below for the AUDIO of RESET Wednesday Meditation, 6/28/23

Excerpts from the book, Meditation: Calming the Mind by Bob Sharples

The Nine Round Breathing Technique

In this practice, you imagine that you can alternate your breathing through one nostril at a time. Over time, it can help you help you gain more control and focus on your breath.

For three rounds (a round is made of an in breath and an out breath) of breathing, imagine as strongly as you can that you breathe in through the left nostril and out though the right. For the next three rounds of breathing, reverse the process: breathe in through the right nostril and out through the right. For the final three rounds of breathing, focus on breathing in and out through both nostrils. 

It can be helpful to use this simple focusing technique for a few minutes at the beginning of a meditation session. 

Except from Chapter 6: Deepening the practice of mindfulness

The practice of mindfulness meditation focuses on our actual life experiences rather than a single object of concentration. It takes the experiences of our life and helps us to establish a meditative understanding of, and relationship with, these experiences. As we build confidence in this practice two things start to stand out.

Firstly, we become more skilled at noticing what is present in our life. In mindfulness meditation practice the instruction is to keep coming back to the present moment, observing what is here rather than what we would like to be here.

Secondly, we notice what happens to all the experiences of our life as we observe them. We begin to  see that things don’t last very long. The breath never stays the same; sensations in the body come and go, and increase and decrease in intensity; emotions are fluid and constantly changing; the mind is forever moving between the past and the future with only the briefest stops in the present.

Why Meditate? 

The feeling of balance comes from experiencing in meditation, that for a while, everything in life is at rest and simply in its place: the body relaxed and at ease, the mind calm and peaceful. This state of balance is not one we can easily stay in at the start – the world calls us back all too soon; but it is possible to bring back a feeling of equilibrium that can flow out into your daily life.

Click below for the audio of RESET Wednesday, 6/14/23

Click below for the audio of RESET Wednesday, 5/31/23

Click below for the audio of RESET Wednesday, 5/10/23

Click below for the audio of RESET Wednesday, 4/26/23

Click below for the VIDEO of RESET Wednesday, 4/19/23

Click below for the audio of RESET Wednesday, 4/12/23

SURRENDER MEDITATION (10 mins)

I’ve Learned by Maya Angalou

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.

I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.”

I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.

I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Peace by Sara Teasdale

Peace flows into me

As the tide to the pool by the shore;

It is mine forevermore,

It will not ebb like the sea.

I am the pool of blue

that worships the vivid sky;

My hopes were heaven-high,

They are fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold

When sunset burns and dies,

You are my deepening skies;

Give me your stars to hold.

Re-set Poem by Yvette Perry

I keep learning this lesson: moving forward may require tracking-back,

Walking the stone-strewn paths I already traveled, still burdened with all the weight of work.

When back again at my journey’s start, I zoom out for the aerial view,

See more than one path before me, and now choose the one with the sign marked “Who I Am”

Wielding my tiny flashlight and wearing a belt of brand new tools,

Again I walk — 

Now with a lighter load, now on a smoother road:

I changed m mind, I changed my heart, I re-set my intention.

This lesson keeps teaching me: to find my way forward, make my way back.