Discovering your personal bliss

In New Orleans recently, a friend of mine experienced what he described as one of the top ten best moments of his life. We were in Café du Monde in New Orleans during the wee hours of the morning, enjoying beignets and café au lait.  My friend’s wife noticed an employee had rolled the largest mixing bowl we’d ever seen into the room where we sat – and then walked away. It seemed that we hit Café Du Monde at perhaps its quietest hour, and the staff were in the process of cleaning. The mixing bowl seemed next in line.

To say that my friend is a “fan” of raw dough would be an understatement. While we may all enjoy a little raw cookie dough or brownie batter from time to time, he delights in all raw dough.  His eyes absolutely lit up to see this giant bowl before us. Within the bowl remained some of New Orleans classic beignet dough, a pastry favorite in the French Quarter. My friend walked over to the bowl and scraped out a spoonful for his enjoyment. He was absolutely giddy with his discovery and savored every tiny morsel of his find.  He was ecstatic. His joy sprang from the combination of tasting one of his favorite things (pastry dough) and the purely random experience of getting to “steal” it in the middle of the night from a giant bowl the kitchen staff happened to wheel within ten feet of us. He was delirious with joy.

The experiences that create bliss for each person are so unique.  None of the rest of us felt inspired to taste the dough ourselves and may have even been a bit incredulous at his response. However, witnessing him experience so much bliss at this find – and hearing him describe his delight with such emphatic, wide-eyed enthusiasm – had us all smiling and often hysterical with laughter for hours to come.

Watching him giggle about how much fun he had taking the dough and how much pleasure he experienced tasting it, I wondered to myself, “What could I do at this moment in time that could give me the same incredible high? What could delight me to the tips of my toes such that I would dance a jig in celebration?”

I didn’t figure it out that night, nor have I since returning home a few days ago. But the question lingers. In my mind’s eye, I can still see my happy, happy friend giggling and as full of joy as I’ve ever seen another person. And I wonder.  . . What simple act could I do that could bring me so much bliss? And if I knew what it was, if the desire surfaced spontaneously within me in a simple moment of time, could I allow myself to do it? 

Entering each new moment of each new day, may we all discover and embrace whatever opportunities arise to experience our personal bliss. Enjoy!

Spring nourishment... by Guest Blog Writer Tracie Nichols

Spring is a time when nature’s returning abundance reminds us how well nourished we can be by our relationship with the rich and loving Earth. In the spring we have the chance to work with the energies of season and place to sweep away dusty habits and thoughts, finding the bright shoots of new nurturing practices for ourselves. Through our relationship with nature we are encouraged to ground deeply. We are prompted to remember our intrinsically wild nature...our deeply embedded need for the rhythmic patterns of stillness and movement our bodies remember, but our minds often forget.


As a practitioner supporting the well being of clients & patients, this relationship with the natural world offers you firm ground to stand on as you do your work. It helps ease feelings of isolation, connect you more deeply with your intuition, and discover a powerful spiritual expression. I’m speaking from personal experience. I live immersed in a flow of conscious relationship and communication with the natural world, and that keeps me grounded and centered, clear and focused. It helps me find a balance among the demands of my day as a business owner, educator, consultant, wife and mother, and spiritual woman on an ever expanding journey.

I bridge people and nature, teaching awareness practices co-created with the energies of nature. These practices offer people ways to reclaim that relationship for themselves. This vibrant spring, I’d like to share a simple awareness practice with you. I invite you to gift yourself with this experience of grounding into the compassion and gratitude radiating from the Earth daily, when you first wake up or when you are preparing to sleep. You and the natural world have so much to offer each other, truly!

• Sit or lay comfortably. Allow yourself to turn off technological distractions.

• Bring your awareness to your breath, inhaling gently for about 8 seconds, and exhaling gently for about 10 seconds. Continue focusing on your breath until this breathing pattern feels comfortable (usually just a few more breaths).

• With each exhalation allow your loving awareness to flow through your body toward the Earth - visualize roots finding their way into the soil, if it helps.

• With each inhalation notice that you can sense a loving, compassionate awareness from the Earth - visualize roots reaching out and touching yours - nourishment flowing between you, if it helps.

• Breathe into this growing sense of connection, allowing it to expand, feeling it in your body, knowing it in your heart.

• Notice how still and deep this feels. Notice how your breath softens. Notice how your sense of belonging grows, here, in this connected state of being. You are nourishing and being nourished, You are loving and being loved.

• Breathe here until you feel complete.

• Offer gratitude. Repeat often. Share liberally.

Tracie Nichols, M.A. teaches people how to fall in love with themselves again...by falling in love with the Earth again. She teaches how to lovingly transform the world...by lovingly transforming themselves. Her work transforms the pain & anxiety of isolation, of not belonging, into grounded peace and vibrant living by helping people remember their intrinsic, intuitive relationship with the land. She does this through private consultations, classes, public speaking and writings. Tracie invites you to connect with her through her website alchemyfortheearth.com, or by email at info@alchemyfortheearth.com.

Cat Wisdom: It’s Always a Good Time to Play or Take a Nap

Sometimes we can get so caught up in the stream of tasks we “must do” that we neglect the principles of living a good life that our feline friends know quite well. My two cats Lucy and Zoe teach me a lot about how to stay well. Some of my favorite kitty lessons include:

•          You can never take too many naps.
•          Naps spent snuggling with people or animals you love are the best.
•          Play is essential.
•         Although running around and jumping through the air can happen in the midst of play and get your heart beating fast, play is NOT a chore (because cats don’t do chores or know that “exercise is good for you”). Instead, play is a joyous adventure.
•         It is almost always a good time to play, and even when you aren’t in the mood to play, it’s still fun to watch people and see the silly stuff they do to try to get your attention.
•         When someone comes home and you haven’t seen them in a while, run to the door and greet them to let them know how much you missed them.
•         If you want something, ask for it. If you don’t get it, keep asking. If that doesn’t work, find creative ways to get the person’s attention until they DO give you what you want.
•          Never underestimate the power of being sweet and adorable on the behaviors of others.
•         When you’re with someone you love, there is nothing else you need to do and nowhere else you need to go.
•         Nothing is so stressful that play, a nap with a loved one, or a good meal can’t fix it.

What have the animals in your life taught you about life?

Healing your Body Using Your Mind – by Guest Blog Writer Jasmine Kaloudis

Illness in any form is nothing more than our negative energies choking off so much of our Life-flow that cellular damage results. The body is not separate from the universe, so when we think a thought, the vibrations run through the body as well as everywhere else. If those vibrations are in harmony with our body’s intrinsic programming for well-being and vitality, the cells thrive. But if it’s negative energy we are projecting, the cells can’t remain strong enough and don’t perform as well.

Without the high frequency energy of life force necessary for them to survive they eventually weaken and die before their time, no longer able to replicate normally. Illness exists in a state of dis-ease. Someone has flowed more negative energy than high frequency energy. If you find a generally happy person, you usually find a very healthy person. People who are sick have shut themselves off in some degree from their own life Life-force energy by letting in negative thoughts from fear, guilt, blame, hate, worry (and the energetic resonance of those thoughts).

Anytime we think of anything, we’re flowing out some kind of positive or negative energy (feeling). Whatever we’re feeling, we’re attracting, on an energetic level. Then we live with the results. The vibration (or emotional resonance) that comes from our thoughts have the power to magnetize vitality or disease. The more thoughts we send out, the more powerful these vibrational clumps become and they start to draw into their whirling centers anything and everything of a similar vibration Like attracts like, whether it is something you desire, or something you don’t want.

To turn illness around, you must start to use trickery with your mind to shift it into creating higher vibrations (that come from focusing on feelings of gratitude, love, appreciation) to begin their process of regeneration. This is not a cure-all. It is simply a beginning. The key to reversing anything within the body is to get your focus of what you don’t like or want and get into the “feeling place”; for even though positive affirmations and visualization will help, learning to shift your own energy is paramount.

The trickery is much like writing a new script. You have to learn to consciously change the kind of energy or vibrations you are emanating since most social-conscious thinking (and feeling) is based on fear and lack. You can call this Flip-Switching your energy (vibrations). So here are two basic ways to flip-switch. You can do these at your desk (while facing a computer screen) or in the car, lying in bed or really anyplace…..so no excuses for not having a place or time to practice. (Are you committed to your excuse or are you committed to feeling better?)

1. Flow Appreciation- Focus on a part of your body that you are not happy with. If you have a bad back, then start to FLOOD your back with appreciation. Make yourself feel the frequency change in your body. Feel adoration, respect, gratitude and love pour and emanate out from you until you feel a buzz throughout your body.

2. Inner Smile Jump-Start. (Best to do this in private) Put a meaningful smile on your face, the kind of smile you’d have at seeing a newborn baby or watching puppies tumble and play. Feel it grow warmly inside of you until you’re encased in the glow of a gentle inner smile. While encased in this state, flow gratitude and love towards the part of your body that needs healing.

Just using these techniques once will not be a miracle-cure. It took a lifetime to get the thought and fear-based emotional habits and patterns you have and it will take discipline, commitment, faith and practice to heal as well. It helps to have a supportive buddy that you are practicing these with so you can check in with each other on your progress and keep each other inspired and accountable.

Throughout her 15 year yoga practice and teachings, Jasmine Kaloudis has experienced how yoga is a tool which allows us to experience our selves more fully and more richly. To learn more about author Jasmine Kaloudis, visit the website for her business, Synergy By Jasmine, at http://www.synergybyjasmine.com/.

Remembering our brilliance

It is important to remember our reasons for entering our profession. The desire we have to help others, early inspiration from some of our own teachers, a "calling" we may have felt to bring healing to those in need, a love for and fascination with people and the natural world. A passage I find uplifting that reminds me of my own gifts - and a passage I love sharing with clients to encourage them to see the best in themselves - is the following one by Marianne Williamson:

"Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God; your playing small doesn’t serve the World.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the Glory of God within us.  It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone, and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Reading inspirational words

One thing that nurtures my resiliency as a helper is to read inspirational writings. I have a collection of favorites (so far in my travels). Today, I want to share one with you. Here goes:


The Invitation
By Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It does not interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It does not interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
If you have been opened by life’s betrayals or
have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips
of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful,
be realistic, or remember the limitations of being human.

It does not interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself,
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day,
and if you can source your life from God’s presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,
Yes!!

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me to know who you are, how you came here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me
and not shrink back.

Welcoming Whimsy into Our Lives

Life can be so serious at times. Working as a healthcare or healing arts professional – or as an educator, clergy, or caretaker – is tremendously serious work. We devote ourselves to facilitating healing in others, teaching them, inspiring them, helping them confront real life challenges and personal dilemmas. The genuine intensity of the work can sometimes influence our perception of the world and those around us, such that we may begin to see most of life through a “realistic” lens (that those outside our profession might consider “bleak” or “dour”).  The concept of vicarious trauma explains this change in our perception as an inevitable shift in worldview that stems directly from our exposure to the suffering in the world.  Working in the service professions requires a great deal of resiliency and stamina.  While the change may be inevitable, there is also much we can do to counter the effects of vicarious trauma. One very important action, I have found, is to celebrate the victories in our work. I keep letters and emails from people who have shared the story of their overcoming and their gratitude for the role our work together played in it. It’s important to remember that, while there is indeed pain in the world, there is also healing.

Another strategy I find particularly helpful in countering “the serious effect” (what I call the pattern whereby those of us engaging in deeply serious healing work become overly serious ourselves) is through allowing, welcoming, and even seeking greater whimsy in my life.  As I’m using it here, I define whimsy as silliness, playfulness, dreaming, fun for the purpose of fun alone.  No one is being “saved” when we are acting whimsically. I see whimsy as the opposite of seriousness – it offers lightness where seriousness can be quite heavy. As an opposite, whimsy has a lot to offer those of us anchored in the weight of our serious work. I encourage you to invite more play and whimsy into your life.

How do I enjoy whimsy in my own life? Silly hats help. Goofy movies can be a joy. Creating cartoon voices for the children’s books I read – well, that’s great entertainment. Whimsy to me means unnecessary by definition – and therefore really fabulously fun! One of my favorite whimsical activities happens during a monthly Creative Writer’s Meet-Up Group I host. We play a round robin story-writing game in which we all start a story simultaneously and write one to three sentences. Then we pass the papers to the next person and add one to three lines – and so on until each person’s story gets back to them. Then we read them aloud, to much laughter and amusement. These stories have no purpose other than to be fun. We don’t save them or build on them or make them to be something they are not. They are random and hilarious and fun to create. Whimsy at its best.

Today, I invite you to welcome more whimsy into your life - in any and every way that strikes your fancy.