Living In Joy Archives - Page 2 of 4

Heart-Centered Joy:Your Personal Magnetic Template

5 June, 2015 — Posted in: All About Chakras, Living In Joy Leave a Comment

10800698205_58a18efabb_z Chakras are wheels of energy that connect our physical body with our energetic body. Each of the seven major body chakras has a unique role to play in living a life of joy and inner peace. The heart chakra is associated with the feelings of connection, affinity, and universal love.

Within the heart chakra, each of us carries a tiny mirror image of themselves, your personal magnetic template. This template is a duplicate of the way we see ourselves and the beliefs we hold about our world. If we see ourselves as kind, then the template registers “kind” and magnetizes to us experiences, events, and people that are on the same frequency as kind. Like attracts like. If we believe that people are selfish and mean, the template registers that belief and brings mean and selfish people and events into our lives. If you say, “I don’t want to go to work today because I hate my job,” then it registers unhappiness, anger, or whatever emotion is attached to those thoughts. Your personal magnetic template records your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs and pulls like-minded energies into your space. This cycle repeats until you challenge a belief through inquiry.

Inquiry is the process of questioning a belief. It’s a process of deciding whether what you used to believe, have been told to believe or “should” believe, is what you do believe – right here, right now. Byron Katie in her book, Loving What Is, teaches a process of inquiry that I find very helpful. (https://www.thework.com). I also find that the name web we’ve used before (see post here) works too. As we unravel a belief through this process of inquiry, we change the vibration, the frequency of our thoughts. As we change our thoughts, so we change our magnetic template. We are no longer drawing to us, without question, thoughts that are untrue: “I must be rich to be happy. I’m too fat. Life is horrible because I don’t have a life partner.”

We attract new thoughts, new vibrations, to our space. Our personal magnetic template then changes and as our template becomes different, we become different. We act differently; we verbalize different statements; we are different.

This is how we start living a life full of joy and inner contentment. Change your template – change your reality.

The exercise of changing your magnetic template, is expanded upon in my book, Tame Your Inner Critic Find Peace & Contentment to Live Your Life on Purpose. I hope you will consider adding it to your must-read list. And I hope you will share this post with a friend or two! From my heart to yours.

Are You Living On the Outskirts of Joy?

30 May, 2015 — Posted in: All About Chakras, Living In Joy Leave a Comment

4710621230_3e632b06f4_z This month we are talking about how to live a life full of inner peace and joy.

Yes, joy – that soul-feeling of serenity and contentment that rises from the depths of your abdomen and radiates out into the world. When you are in joy, you are on your right path, living a life in alignment with your purpose, and your soul thanks you for it.

Yes, that feeling.

That’s what life is all about; living in joy.

But often we live just on the outskirts of joy. We think joy will come someday – when the kids are grown, when the new and better job appears, or when we are old enough to retire and enjoy the “good life”.

Well guess what – it won’t!

Joy needs nurturing. Joy requires permission to exist. And if you don’t give it permission now, it won’t stick around. You’ll wake up someday in that new and better job and find that joy doesn’t reside there.

It never did.

Joy is a feeling of the soul. This profound sense of well-being and inner peace is not part of the world of doing; it’s part of the inner world of being. It exists in the inner world of your thoughts and feelings.

Thoughts and feelings are energy and energy is housed in the energetic body, your aura. Every living thing has an aura, and as we understand and accept this invisible world of “other”, we gain an appreciation for how we are both physical and energetic beings.

I think of an aura as the energetic space that surrounds and penetrates each person. It extends about 2 feet in all directions – above our heads, behind us, in front of us, and below our feet. There are seven major energy centers (actually spinning disks or vortexes) called chakras that connect our energetic body to our physical body. These bands of vibrating energy provide information to your endocrine system, regulating your hormones and balancing the energy within your physical body.

The third chakra is located between your belly button and your upper sternum. It’s often associated with will power, self-empowerment, bringing your desires into physical form, action, and drive. It’s your power center and just like a car needs gas to run, it needs fuel to manifest your dreams and desires. This fuel is your life force energy. (see previous post).

Filling in with your fuel, your unique life force energy, allows your body and spirit to thrive.

But often we mistakenly feed our body and soul with sugar – sweets, candy, cookies, sugary drinks – as a “pick me up”. This tricks our body into thinking that we’ve given it the correct fuel. But our soul knows the difference! It isn’t tricked by this fake sugar high, it’s asking for the real thing – your unique blend of soul food – your prana, your life force energy.

Think about when you crave sweets. Is it when your body and soul need nourishing? Instead of taking that 3:00 pm candy break, try instead to sit for 3 minutes and breathe in Golden Suns of life force energy. See what that feels like first!

So glad you’re here! If you want to learn more about chakras, joy and inner peace, you might be interested in Tame Your Inner Critic, Find Peace & Contentment to Live Your Life on Purpose.

Golden Sun of Joy

25 May, 2015 — Posted in: All About Chakras, Living In Joy 2 Comments

Living a life on purpose is living a life in joy. It is knowing, deep down in the seat of your soul, what brings you joy. As you focus on that which brings you joy—and as you allow yourself to express this joy through your job, your family, and your relationships—you will attract more and more events and circumstances that are in alignment with your purpose.

Instead of focusing on what brings us joy – we often focus on what brings other people joy! Those of us that are nurturers and caregivers are especially vulnerable to giving away our life force, our prana, to our family and friends. It may be very satisfying to give to others, but if we don’t give to ourselves too, then we may find ourselves depleted, tired and unable to fuel our dreams.

Our third chakra located in the solar plexus region is the storehouse of our internal fuel – both physical and spiritual. By using the energy tool of the golden sun to fill ourselves up with life force energy, we then restore our bodies and our souls to full potential, allowing us to give to our friends and ourselves.

Fueling Your Joy: The Golden Sun

Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor and your eyes closed. Take a couple of deep breaths. Relax and just be.
Bring all of your awareness into the center of your head. This is your special meditative space. Between your ears, behind your eyes, this is your space. It is for you alone. If you feel that all the thoughts of things to do and places to be start to encroach on this space, just tell those thoughts that you will be with them in a moment or two. Watch them leave your space.
From this space in the center of your head, start to count each breath. On the inhale count one and on the exhale count two. Inhale again and count three, exhale and count four. That’s all. Inhale and count, exhale and count. Breathe. Count each breath.
Take a couple of deep breaths. Imagine that your body is surrounded by a cocoon of energy. It stretches out about eighteen inches around you in all directions. Put your arms out to your sides and imagine this bubble of protective energy reaching out from your body to your fingertips. See this bubble all around you; above your head and below your feet. Know that this cocoon of protective energy is your space. You are safe here.
On each inhale continue to center and on each exhale ground to the earth. Imagine your grounding cord attaching to your hips and dropping to the center of the earth. See this hollow tube of energy reach all the way down through the earth’s crust, attaching solidly into the core of the earth. Feel it draw you deeper in your chair as your body begins to relax.
Intend for your body to be at peace. Feel your jaw relax, and your shoulders fall away from your ears. Ask for any tension you hold in your body to be released down the grounding cord. Feel yourself sink deeper in your chair as you allow yourself to be at peace.
Breathe in and center, bringing all your awareness to the center of your head. Breathe out and ground, allowing all tension and tightness to ease.
Breathe in and center, breathe out and ground. Be in stillness and peace.
Now imagine a giant Golden Sun above your head. See the sun filled with golden light. Imagine that this sun is about three times the size of your body. Place a giant magnet in this sun and ask this magnet to call back your scattered life force energy. Let all your energy return from your job, from your family and friends. Feel all that energy zoom back into the Golden Sun.
Imagine the Golden Sun bringing your scattered energies back to a vibration that will be just right for your body.
Fill this Golden Sun with relaxation, peace, abundance, gentleness, whatever quality would be most beneficial to you today. See those qualities permeate the sun, vibrating in a wonderful harmonic, which will be perfectly attuned to what your physical body needs most right now.
Pop the Golden Sun and let all your energy and all those qualities flow into your body, filling every cell and membrane. Allow the excess to move from your body out into the space around you.
Feel yourself refreshed and vibrating at your optimal frequency, enveloped in a cocoon of energies that are just right for you. The world around you can be full of chaos and turmoil, but you, in the center of your aura, filled up with your energy, can be at peace—free from stress and unease.
Sit in this wonderfully peaceful place of fullness for a moment or two. When you are ready, open your eyes. As you come out of meditation, intend for this stillness, this sense of peace and knowingness to carry forward with you into your day.

Every day I remind myself that I am in charge of my body and my Spirit. I can give to others without depleting my life force energy. Using the golden sun has helped me power my dreams and passions as I also nurture the people that I love.

Thanks for reading, and if this post resonated with you, please share it on your favorite social networks. Every share, like or tweet helps me reach more people who crave support in living a life full of joy and inner peace. If you want to learn more about chakras, joy and inner peace, you might be interested in Tame Your Inner Critic, Find Peace & Contentment to Live Your Life on Purpose.

Tapping Your Way to Joy

22 May, 2015 — Posted in: All About Chakras, Living In Joy Leave a Comment

happypeople This month we are discussing how the state of our chakras affects our ability to have a life full of joy and internal peace. We’re looking for that sustained level of well-being that surfaces as we align our outside activities – the world of doing – with our inner world of be-ing.

Each chakra plays a vital role in this dance of joy, but our second chakra, the home of our emotions, takes center stage. When this chakra is in balance, we can express our emotions fully and completely. Even the not-so-nice feelings are allowed room to be – to move – to be expressed.

This has been especially hard for me. I was raised to be “nice”, to express only those emotions that were socially acceptable and to stuff the rest. I know now that when an emotion is not allowed to be experienced, our body stores that suppressed energy as tension. I have recurring tension in my neck, shoulders and jaw. It’s hard to feel joy and inner peace when your teeth are clenched, and your jaw is clamped shut!

I’m not about to go out and yell and scream at my neighbor – that’s not who I am. (Hmmm….jaw clamped shut –could that mean that I don’t want to verbally express anger?) But I have learned that there are other ways to release this pent up emotion. One of the best ways is to use the energy tool of Tapping.

Tapping is a simple, useful tool somewhere between hypnosis, meditation, and acupressure. First, you’ll choose an unusually deep emotion, one that’s not serving you well, such as anger, resentment or jealousy. Then, you’ll recall the story – the experience – associated with this emotion. You’ll use this story, and all the emotion attached to it, as the base for your tapping experience. You’re bringing up not-so-good feelings, but this is how you clear them from your second chakra. As you talk about your feelings and tap on the various meridian points described in the accompanying video, the energy associated with the emotion is released from the affected chakras.

The video below, from EFT Practitioner, Julie Schiffman demonstrates how to tap. This is one of my go-to tools to help release those not-so-nice emotions such as anger, pity, resentment and jealousy.

After you’ve tapped for a while and told the story of why you are angry or jealous, you may feel a shift in your body. A tension point in your shoulder or jaw might release. You’ll know then that you’ve cleared a large part of the energy associated with this pent-up emotion.

I end each tapping session by tapping in some wonderful, self-affirming statements such as, “I am whole and complete as I am”, “I express my emotions fully and completely, allowing all tension to leave my body”, or “I love myself, just the way I am.” This positive re-set allows my second chakra to come back into alignment.

Living a life of joy and inner peace is possible – you just have to want it!

Tame Your Inner Critic Find Peace & Contentment to Live Your Life on Purpose includes over 40 meditations and exercises (including an exercise or two about tapping) that help you banish the shoulds from your life. Read more here

From Victim to Joy: Our Second Chakra

15 May, 2015 — Posted in: All About Chakras, Living In Joy Leave a Comment

Exploding_Rose_2 This month we are looking at the way our chakras affect our physical and emotional well-being. Chakras are wheels of energy that connect our physical body with our energy body. If any one of the seven major chakras is out of alignment, then the energetic system cannot function at optimum levels. This affects our ability to sustain those sought after feelings of well-being and internal peace.

Our second chakra, located in the lower abdomen is the seat of our emotions. Often this chakra is full of societal rules about how we are to behave. We are often told to “be nice” and express only those emotions that are socially acceptable. As a result, we’ve stuffed some of the not so nice, not socially acceptable, feelings deep within our second chakra. Often this stuffing results in a feeling of being trapped, unable to express our true desires. We play the role of victim shifting the responsibility to “society” or “they” instead of ourselves. We let the “I can’t” energies of our inner critic take center stage, as we repeatedly state that it’s not our fault because “they” set the rules. “They” are in charge, not us.

We know this is absurd. We know that as we think and feel we will be. We know that we are responsible for our feelings, but we are stuck in the muck of victim-hood.

When this happens to me, I realize that I have foreign energy (the shoulds, the judgments, the criticisms of others) in my space. As soon as I realize that I’m full of victim energy, I use my energy tools to remove this foreign energy from my space.

My tool of choice is Blowing Up A Rose. It’s a simple tool, one I can do anytime, anywhere and it really works.

From Victim to Joy: Blowing Up A Rose

1. Sit in a quiet place with your eyes closed. Begin by centering and grounding. On each inhale of your breath, bring more and more awareness to the center of your head. That space in the middle of your third eye is your personal sanctuary, a place of peace and stillness. On each exhale ground to the earth by imagining a cord of energy connecting your body to the center of the planet.

2. Inhale and center, exhale and ground. Feel at peace and in stillness.

3. Now, out in front of your closed eyes, visualize a rose. It can be any shape, any color. This rose has a magnetic quality to it. Energies of a particular vibration are naturally attracted to the rose. You don’t have to do anything; the rose will do all the work.

4. Imbue the rose with the intent that it will attract any victim energy that’s hanging around in your body, your mind, and your spirit. That’s all you have to do; ask the magnetized rose to draw your story to it.

5. Now watch as streams of energy begin to leave your body and head into the rose. You don’t have to do anything except watch. The rose is so powerful that it’s pulling all thoughts of “I can’t”, “They expect me to do it this way”, “Why do bad things happen to me” and “I’m not in control” out of your body. Intend for all thoughts of being the victim and not in control of your destiny to leave your body and head into the rose.

6. Watch as the rose fills up with the different streams of energy. When the rose is full, and the streams have ceased, then blow up the rose! Watch as it explodes into tiny particles of dust and disappears in front of your closed eyes.

7. Now, before you come out of meditation, you’ll want to fill in the gaps with energies that are in alignment with who you are right now. To do this, visualize a Golden Sun above your head. Ask for this Golden Sun to fill in with energies that are more in alignment with your true nature. Fill the Golden Sun with the energies of peace, self-worth, and permission to be you. Let those energies infuse the Golden Sun and watch it grow. When you’re ready, pop the Golden Sun and feel all those warm, validating energies flood into the crown of your head and then cascade throughout your body.

8. Sit with all this incredible energy for a moment, and then check to see if you feel different. Maybe you feel a little more in control of your feelings. Maybe you are a little less angry, or put upon. The rose has done its work by removing all those victim type energies from your body.

9. Now come out of meditation and stretch your body.

It’s hard to live a life full of inner contentment and peace if your second chakra is full of victim energy. So blow some roses and move into the most joy-filled energies of accepting life as it is, and going with the flow.

Thanks for reading, and if this post resonated with you, please share it on your favorite social networks. Every share, like or tweet helps me reach more people who crave support in living a life full of joy and inner peace. So glad you’re here! If you want to learn more about chakras, joy and inner peace, you might be interested in Tame Your Inner Critic, Find Peace & Contentment to Live Your Life on Purpose –