Ego

The main goal in Yoga is to extinguish your Ego so as to become unbounded consciousness.

Yes, Yoga had an Ego even before Fraud did. It's the "I" in all you do. You need to get rid of your "I" to become fully aware. This is a cliff note explanation. If you want a much more thorough understanding read: The Bhagavad-Gita, or The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

This week has been a whirlwind of "I-ness."

The mindfulness retreat that I joined is excellent. It is reminding me that in order to be less egotistic, I have to take time for myself. Meditate, relax, and organize some thoughts in my head.

Hunter had a few guests, and introduced us to a wonderful practice. The guest interviews reminded the group that we need to practice our mindfulness before we can expect to achieve a result.

Everything requires practice.

The Deepak Chopra meditation experience is getting me closer to my meditation goals.

It's still not easy to blank my mind out and think about the mantra. There are a few reasons for this: The mantra is in sanskrit. It's said that just by speaking sanskrit your soul will be uplifted due to the beauty and expression of it's poetic sound. I know two languages: Spanish and English. That still doesn't help with the mantra. Every time I use the mantra, I forget what it means! I understand that the definition of the mantra does not matter, as long as you decrease your thoughts per minute when meditating. It's just that not knowing what I'm chanting in my head bugs the hell out of me.



Practice, Practice, Practice. That will fix the bugs.


This week I completed a day of review for my yoga training. The day was nice. My ego sky rocketed when I was able to assist in a handstand. Ha! Handstands are dangerous and if you don't assist right, you can hurt yourself and the student. Thankfully none of that happened during the periods I was incorrectly assisting that night! :P

The Live in the Now (LITN) program is not doing so well. I'm positive it's because I've added too many activities to my day. I've stayed so busy that I'm still making bad food choices.


Even my juicing was a bad decision:
What I juiced this morning was not appetizing. It was a disgusting green packed juice! Cucumbers, Celery, green bell pepper, apple, Carrot, Beets, and turmeric.
I didn't realize that taking a break from juicing would change your taste buds!
I wanted to add a dash of turmeric to the juice, but accidentally dropped a few tablespoons into my 12oz glass.
I'm hoping that my healthy-food-loving taste buds are intact and the accidental turmeric spill was the cause of the juice fiasco.
I'll attempt a better juice concoction tomorrow. It will be my breakfast replacement.



My ego is still an evil anchor for my goals, even so: it's a bountiful time for mindfulness and I'm going to try to slow down and piece what I'm learning together. That's what mindfulness is all about anyway, slowing down and being kind.

First Day

I feel victorious.

Today my mindfulness was achieved during driving and breastfeeding!

The whole time I was driving I was completely mindful. While breastfeeding my mind still started to plan away, and I day dreamed a little. It was only a little so, it still counts! Because of this success, I'm going to continue to work on completing two mindful moments throughout the rest of the week.

Today was my success day!

I was able to complete the first day of a free 21 day meditation practice

During the time my husband and daughter slept I did a very short yoga asana sequence:

3 sun salutations,
warrior two on right side,
side angle pose on right side,
a vinyasa flow
warrior two on left side,
side angle pose on left side,
vinyasa flow,
and a few cat and cows.


My belly dancing practice is back in action. I contacted Andalee to ask her about my belly dance musicality needs and she replied! I'm super stoked! I've really been wanting to learn more about the rhythms of all belly dancing music.

Remember that podcast I was listening to? If not, it's called: "Yoga Stories Project." The producer is offering a free 14 day virtual mindfulness retreat!


I'm extremely thankful to have found all of these resources during this Mindfulness quest!

I'm going to continue Living in the now (LITN) for a while until I get it down.
I'd like the LITN event's to be more frequent and lengthy as time goes on.

Living in the Now

I ran a red light tonight. 

Thankfully, there were no cops around and I did not hit another car. 

Living in the now definitely needs some work. 

I ran the light because I was listening to a podcast and started to drift off into the imagery of the story. This is my first week listening to podcasts, due to the new iOS upgrade. I never thought it would affect my driving! In the past I would listen to audio books during long drives, and this situation never occurred. Yes, at the time I did not have a one year old, but this was only a podcast! It's only 44 minutes of mindfulness. Haha. I once again seemed to turn it into mindlessness. 

 

 It's not the easiest thing to find a good podcast. Especially when you want interesting podcasts on mindfulness, yoga, buddhism, or positive parenting. I've been through a few already. The one that I was listening to is called: Yoga Stories. It's the best podcast I've found so far.

Well, after I ran the light, I did not turn off the podcast. I just made sure to remember that I am not in a lecture hall, I'm driving! 

I feel as if though I am running my own personal red lights, now more than ever. 

It's so easy to become a media and electronic junky even though you have more important things at hand. Goals keep getting pushed back. Hulu and Facebook seem more appealing then small moments of self improvement. Yes, sometimes I'd rather watch Modern Family rather than wash my face. It's sad (and disgusting), but true.

 

These new habits are affecting the minimal time I have to spend on correcting and improving old habits. I have even avoided the mindfulness goals I set previously.

So, I'm going to blog the different mindfulness habits until they are perfected.

Living in the now is a tough one.

It's tough, and I will have to work on this for the rest of my life. Ay.

This is my Living in the Now (LITN) plan:

Be AWARE

-Emerse myself in the activity at hand. 

- Forget about tomorrow and yesterday.

-Pay attention to feelings, sensations, thoughts and actions. 

-dont drift off into oblivion

How is this going to happen exactly? Practice. I have this lovely application on my iPad called inkflow. It allows you to take pictures and write or type on them. It's so helpful when note taking. Inkflow will be my documenting tool. There are many activities and events in a day making it impossible to log every single situation.  I will set my goal to two LITN a day and increase it after I notice I'm improving.

This sounds easy. I'll keep you posted on the results.