MEDITATION – Page 29

Nourishing your spirit is not unlike nourishing your body and is just as important. What you put in directly relates to how you feel, how much energy you have and it shows on the outside as much as how it affects your insides! You could call this blog ‘food for thought’. 🙂

I don’t think there’s anyone out there who would starve themselves on purpose. You get hungry, you eat! Your body needs food, water, vitamins and nutrients to survive. When you give your body everything it needs you physically feel better and have more energy to get through your day. If you don’t eat (or drink) , your body becomes stressed, it growls at you, you may feel light-headed, nauseous and you lack energy. The same goes for if you eat huge portions or foods that aren’t good for you . High fat, fried, sugary foods or eating an amount of food that would feed a small army leaves your body feeling much the same as when you are hungry although you may have to include feeling bloated and lethargic to that mix!

You know you need nourishment and healthy foods to survive and feel good. Have you ever considered how and what your spiritual energetic body needs for nourishment as well? Do you feed your spirit each day with nourishing thoughts and replenishing your energy or do you starve it and allow any old thing to come in and weigh you down? Do you wait until you are worried, sick, stuck or overwhelmed to feed your spirit & soul what it needs? This is very much the same as dieting and depriving yourself then bingeing! Trust me when I say it doesn’t work! The growth process goes much smoother and moves faster when you give yourself what you need every day.

What and how you eat affects spirit & soul as much as what and how you feed your spirit & soul affects your physical body. It is very much a symbiotic relationship! Nourishing spirit & soul is as easy as doing things you enjoy, keeping positive thoughts in your mind and of course a daily meditation practice.

There is ongoing scientific research on meditation and its effect on the body. The findings prove in measurable terms what many of us already know to be true. Did you know that studies done by Yale, Harvard, and Massachusetts General Hospital have shown that meditation increases gray matter in the brain and slows down the deterioration of the brain as a part of the natural aging process? Quieting the mind and feeding your spirit clears out ‘free radicals’ and acts as an antioxidant for the soul!

An interesting non-scientific study done and experienced first hand by yours truly, ME, is that when you feed your spirit what it needs, you no longer need to feed that child like voice in your head that constantly tells you it needs REAL “food” for comfort (or any other emotion you feed) to try to feel better. That little voice does not have a body so feeding it only leads to YOUR body getting larger and in a sense covers up what really needs nourishment….YOUR SPIRIT!

Connecting to the earth, the universe and your body creates a natural flow and clears out & nourishes the spiritual body all at the same time. There are no calories to keep track of and no portion is too large! Nourishing spirit and bringing in more of your spiritual essence changes everything from your mood to your body and increases how much energy you have to create! If you don’t believe it, check out the science that proves it! Better yet…in the words of a famous commercial in the States; Try it, you’ll like it… 🙂 ~Shine Your Light Debbie

Inspiration on the web:

Debra is a gifted clairvoyant reader, spiritual healer and intuitive coach providing insight and guidance to clients around the world. Based in Chicago, Debra also leads meditation workshops that help people awaken to their own truth and spiritual gifts. For more information please visit her web site SpiritLightInsight.com

The following post was written and posted by a student on her blog after attending my LOVE: Let it Flow meditation workshop. I loved it so much that with her permission I’m re-posting her photos & personal thoughts about what she discovered. She took the pics while walking home after the workshop….the universe works in wonderful ways! Thank you Claire!!!

(I took the above picture walking home from the el today; it was part of hundreds of valentines strung along the fence at a local school. Thank you, anonymous student!)

“…and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should.”

I shared this quote a few days ago when I felt lost — when I couldn’t find the energy to tell you so in my own voice. Simple as that. I was having a difficult time believing that anything was unfolding, much less the Universe. I felt stopped up and stuck, kicking and screaming at the bottom of the proverbial winter doldrums barrel. Perhaps that sounds a bit melodramatic — but it wasn’t a great week.

Then I saw the Max Ehrmann quote, and it gave me pause. I knew something was unfolding, even if it was happening in the background and was not yet clear to me. And I had to have faith that given time, patience, intuition, and the love of the Universe, I’d be clued back in when the time was right.

As you may have guessed, the time was right today.

I went to a meditation workshop this afternoon at Yoga Now, lead by the bright and vibrant Debbie Taitel. It was, in keeping with the upcoming “holiday,” a meditation workshop about love. Was there chocolate to be passed around and chit chat about potential Monday evening plans? Of course. But the real focus of the afternoon was about love as an energy, love as a vibration, and the love that we have for ourselves. After all, if you don’t have authentic love for yourself, how do you give it out to anyone or anything else? Common sense, right?

Debbie asked us if we loved ourselves unconditionally. I was in the front row and didn’t look behind me, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who shook my head “no.” Which, truth be told, breaks my heart. (Oh em gee, no pun intended!) Do you love yourself unconditionally? Do we even know what that means? In various ways, I feel like I’ve said this all before. We compare, we measure, we “should” ourselves to death. We say, “I could’ve done better,” or “I hate it when I…” or “I’ll never be…” You can play that game all day long. But what about unconditionally loving our humanness?

I’m not saying that we should naively sail on through our lives, patting ourselves on the back and exclaiming our unrelenting fabulousness. That’s not love; I don’t even know what that is (maybe narcissistic personality disorder?)! What I am saying is to love our beings, to love this unfolding, even when it feels less than desirable (to put it mildly). As I was walking home from the workshop, I felt my mind begin to play its regular games; the self-doubt, the self-criticism. I was judging decisions I had made about the day, about my weekend, decisions that, when it comes down to it, hold very little bearing on the grand scheme of things. And right there, crossing the street, I thought to myself, “I love you, no matter what.”

I love you, no matter what.

But just because I said it once (or twice) doesn’t mean from here on out, I’m good to go. Building a true love for ourselves takes time, I think. And I know that I have a tendency to tie my blog posts up into nice little bows, but I don’t have a bow today. I do, however, have a different perspective of what I’m capable of. And isn’t that how change begins? The idea of loving myself and loving my process of “being” unconditionally is one of those propositions that makes my head hurt because I just can’t.completely.grasp.it. Kind of like astronomy, which I took twice (for fun, both times) and still do not understand. It’s just…out there. Literally! 😉

That being said, the Universe is unfolding as it should, in the same way that I am unfolding as I should (not “should”)…even when I have weeks that make me feel like I’m moving backwards rather than forwards. I am moving how I need to move. I would not have gone to that workshop today if I wasn’t ready, in some capacity, to strengthen the love that I have for myself and for my human experience.

So…I’m going to try.