Monthly Archives: July 2011

Being yoga vs. doing yoga

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People generally “do” yoga. They go to classes, take their place on their mats, and do the poses…they are dealing with the body. Which is one limb of yoga. It may be easy to do a back bend, balance in a tree pose or strike a warrior pose.

Being yoga is harder. It takes a strong and willing spirit to be patient, compassionate & understanding to yourself & others. It does not require a mat, or being at a class at a specific time.

It requires an open heart, a quiet mind and awareness.
There…is the work.

These united states of CONFUSION

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I find myself in one of the many STATES of CONFUSION.

In my piece of the world, these states can look like:

Lethargy

Over excitedness

Needing to shop

Wanting a drink… Real bad!

Needing to eat chocolate, or cake, or the whole loaf of bread

Deep sixing Self Care so that I become a wreck within a short while.

Well it’s been a few weeks and the Confusion persists. I have tried
many of the above coping mechanisms and must report that
THEY ARE NOT WORKING!

they are not working.

So what now?
Here is what I am not willing to do:

  • I will not become an alcoholic…that is just too big of a hole to crawl out of.
  • I will not eat myself out of house and home… Losing all that weight
  • I would gain would be an even deeper hole to crawl out of
  • I do not have the energy I used to have for over excitement… I get tired rather easily these days… Opps… there’s the lethargy!
  • BTW Lethargy is also out… I refuse to become the lazy slob I used to be before I found triathlons and marathons ( at 50 I transformed myself from a lazy slob and became a triathlete and marathoner).

So I will do what I know best… I will follow the simple steps I laid
out in my book, The Indrani Principle, Inhale Life Exhale Joy.

The system that I wrote about in my book, so many years ago, is one that I STUMBLED upon, while STUMBLING thru my life and challenges.

After morphing from couch potato extradordinaire to elite athlete and then to author, life coach, business owner yada yada yada, I find myself stumbling yet again. I seem to be tripping all over my decisions. I am accepting blame for all kinds of accusations. I am
even convincing myself that somehow I have not been ” good enough”.
AND THEN something glorious happened… I was yet again accused of something and I felt my eyes do some rapid fire blinking as if to say…

Wait!
What?

Then I woke up from the known trance of
“This TOO is your fault!”

Ummmm… nOOOOOOO…. I reject your hypothesis. I bear no fault here.

So let me quickly outline the formula that I stumbled upon, 8 simple principles… Simple does not mean easy.
U…Ultimate principle
I…Intuition principle
F…Focus principle
E… environment principle
I…Intention principle
C…Creation principle
P…Planning principle
Y…You principle.

Tune in next Saturday for a guided tour of how to use these simply powerful principles.

Until then… I will enjoy my current state of confusion, knowing well that there are some juicy lessons here for me. The bigger the
confusion the bigger the lesson.

 

Love and light from Indrani and her iPad!

(photo credit middleastpost.com)

Auntie Em, Auntie Em its a twister!

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I have been in a storm today. Projects whirling around, phone calls, feeling the tug of going in one direction, then another.

Have you ever had a day that seemed like a tornado? Stuff is flying around, work, family, responsibilities, just day to day life circling, flying…. Feeling manic watching debris flying not knowing where to start. But we need to remember in the middle of that tornado is calm.

So when we feel like we are in the middle of the storm, if we take a breath we will find the calm in our heart center we are seeking and can move on from there.

LOST

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I lost about 6 months’ worth of intellectual property. I had about 75 written blogs and classes and general musings in my notes on my iPad.

How did I lose it?

Here is the sad story:

I had a defunct email on my iPad and was deleting it to install my new email address (which BTW is: Indrani@indranislight.org) and when I hit delete, not only did the email go away but all my notes aligned with the email disappeared also.

I looked helplessly at the emptiness of my NOTES section. I could not even remember all the great stuff I had been writing over these 6 months. Even this blog is brand new but was supposed to be something else. I did not freak out, because it would have been no use. I did not yell or act ugly when the apple genius told me that there was nothing he could do. I recognized the truth when I heard it. It was just one of those things.

Is this the first time I have lost work? No. But it was the first time that I had lost this much work. I had to re-focus my energies and decide what to do next.

What was needed?

I needed a blog and soon.

What should I write?

There’s nothing as powerful as the present lessons to write about. In case you don’t think that this lesson can apply to you, let me give you some examples of stuff going up in smoke: You are counting on something happening in a certain order and out of the blue things change, like a vacation that gets cancelled, or you don’t get into the school of your choice, or your child decides that they are moving to another country and you don’t know how you’ll live without them… There are many ways to be lost.

You can bitch and moan or you can make a different plan. There are so many examples in life when stuff happens to good people, and I have no doubt that you are good people. I also have no doubt that you can use the brain in your head to come up with ways to cope.

The next best thing to do is to make a list of all that is still right with the world. This would look a lot like a gratitude list. Make the items as detailed as you can. It even helps to be grateful for that fact that you can remember that you are lost. What if you didn’t even know you were lost? That would look a little like dementia and that would be a little harder to fix.

So here are some of the items I AM grateful for:

I have use of my hands and can still type.

I still have a brain in my head that works pretty good and I can create new material.

I enjoy writing and have some readers who love to read what I have to say.

I did not lose my physical iPad.

I am sitting at the beginning of the last Harry Potter movie and writing this, while waiting for my baby girl with whom I have shared all the other HP movies. This just makes me all kinds of gratitude.

Do I still feel lost? Not so much anymore.

I have faith that I will create exactly what needs to be created at the right moment that it is necessary. In the meantime, I intend to just be grateful. Yep this is my plan.

Let me know what you can be grateful for.

Love and light from Indrani

Who is making you uncomfortable?

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Who looks you in the eye and says, “given your skills, you could do better…”

“You have enough leverage to really make a difference.”

“What would happen if you doubled the amount you donated?”

“Could you set aside the fear and go faster?”

“I know you’re holding back…”

It takes love and kindness and confidence to bring the truth to a friend you care about. If you’re insulating yourself from these conversations, who benefits?

-Seth Godin

A love letter

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It was just yesterday that I was preparing to give birth, or so it seems. In reality, it was 21 years ago. How is it that my brain can hold so many memories of a sweet baby girl?

First yawns

First giggles

First squeals of joy when she saw me

First tiny fists grasping my little finger

First attempts at nursing her

and the list goes on…

Then before I can understand what my brain is doing my mind goes to

First tea party

First swim suit

First sleep over

First day of kindergarten

First… oh so many firsts.

This thing that I am afflicted with is commonly known as Mother’s Love. I am blessed with the capacity to LOVE. She makes it EASY! My children have shown me how elastic and courageous and resilient my love can be. I can rise to any occasion where LOVE is required. I am at my very best when I choose to paint all of my challenges with love. My gift to this brand new 21-year-old is this (and I offer it to you if you need to hear it).

LOVE WELL. LOVE OFTEN. LOVE WITHOUT CONDITION.

BRING YOUR TALENTS TO ALL OF YOUR CHALLENGES, DO NOT LET A SINGLE TALENT GO UNEXPLORED.

KNOW THAT YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE A PLACE TO CALL HOME, EVEN IF I LIVE IN A CARDBOARD BOX UNDER A BRIDGE.

USE YOUR HEART AS OFTEN AS YOU USE THAT PRETTY HEAD OF YOURS.

BE PATIENT WITH YOURSELF, THE WORLD WILL BE HARSH ENOUGH, SO PRACTICE KINDNESS TO YOU.

KNOW THAT YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH.

KNOW THAT YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH.

KNOW THAT YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH.

May you be well. May you be peaceful and at ease. May you be free from suffering. May you be happy.

Love to you, my bright eyed child. You have made me a better Human Being. I am eternally grateful.

Be an explorer

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The celebrated Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Everest in 1953. He faced bitter cold, difficulty in breathing at altitude, equipment challenges.

In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl sailed a reed raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands to test a theory that people traveled by using only the materials and technologies available during pre-columbian times. He faced ridicule by his peers for the concept, faced the weather of the Pacific and finally his raft struck a reef.

Amelia Earhart in 1937 attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe. She had two prior attempts which included mechanical failures, unfavorable weather patterns, and always the fear of reaching her fueling stations.

So you are thinking, yes all these people are great explorers, how could I possibly add my name to that list?

When you do the work to explore your inner self are you facing the unknown. It won’t make the cover of National Geographic but it takes courage, guts, fortitude to look inside and see your truth. There will be times where you cannot think of putting one foot in front of the other, as Sir Edmund Hillary must have thought as he climbed Everest.

You may be ridiculed as Thor Heyerdahl was, but it did not stop him because he believed in his vision, his project and his mission.

To navigate your heart and your life there will be failures, you may have to make several attempts like Amelia Earhart.

To explore you will be scared, you will feel fear, and so did these three explorers.

To explore your true self can be as steep a climb, as wide as an ocean, or as vast as the sky. You are an explorer in the truest sense of the word.

Add your name to the list!

Do you pledge allegiance… to YOU?

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We are about to celebrate another Independence Day in these United States. I am not a born American but I became a citizen of this, my adopted country, as soon as I could. For myself, I found MY personal independence here in the Unites States of America.

Why does America inspire so many to LIVE a full and complete life?

Maybe it is because the earliest Americans had to really scrap with the Almighty King George III to have the freedom that I enjoy today.

For a glimpse of a possible answer we must go back to the 1700s and what propelled the then British citizens, the Colonists to rise up and say to King George III, “Hey Dude… Enough is enough!”

Did the colonists unanimously decide to be independent in one fell swoop?

No, they did not…

Here is an amazing fact about the unanimous signing of The Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin tried to establish The Albany Plan in 1754 and it was soundly defeated, so that The Declaration of Independence was unanimously signed was nothing short of a miracle. We are told that “this coming together happened very gradually”. It seems that the colonies had a series of meetings each priming them for compromise. It was this feeling of oneness that made them a solid block.

Ben Franklin had tried back in 1754 to get the Albany Plan of Union passed and it was NOT supported.

According to the website I used, http://www.ushistory.org/us/9.asp, “This plan, under the slogan ‘Join or Die’, would have brought the colonial rivals together to meet the common threat of the French and the Indians. Much to Franklin’s chagrin, this plan was soundly defeated”.

The colonists thought themselves very much “British Subjects” yet they came together to DECLARE themselves free and independent of The Man just a few years after they rejected Franklin’s Albany Plan.

So what led up to Britain losing to a “rag tag group of freedom fighters”?

Can you imagine the surprise on ole King George’s face when the ship bearing the news that the colonists were winning arrived?

I imagined that he must have declared, in the vernacular of the times, “are you guys sh**ing me?”

From my research, I understand that the push for independence came about from a string of steps that the British made. Some of these are called the Intolerable Acts:

1 Boston Port Act

2 Massachusetts Government Act

3 Administration of Justice Act

4 Quebec Act

The Colonists were further pushed over the proverbial edge with the Stamp Act. This said that all official documents had to bear certain stamps and the costs were extremely probative. People could not even issue birth certificates without these added expenses.

The masses were getting restless. Hey King…you’re in for a bit of a fight, buddy!

Further Independence was not won in ONE epic battle. Rather it was a series of smaller battles, each one giving the colonists more confidence.  “How could the Americans ever hope to defeat the mighty British Empire in a military conflict? Americans faced seemingly impossible obstacles. When the guns fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775 there was not yet even a Continental Army.”

Some of the major battles of the American Revolution are:

April 1775 Lexington-Concord

June 1775 Bunker Hill

December 1775 Quebec

Oct 1776 White Plains

Sept 1777 Saratoga

Sept 1779 Siege of Savannah

Sept 1781 Siege of Yorktown

There are many more…

Why list any of the above?

This is, by way of telling you that Independence is a fight, that is worth it. Your personal independence is worth it. Your personal battles are worth fighting and you will gain confidence with each battle fought.

List your intolerable acts.

List your battles.

Begin to make your case.

Thomas Jefferson was a major writer of the Declaration of Independence, and he had assistance from John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R Livingston and Roger Sherman.

This amazing document has 4 parts

1. Preamble… Tells why the document is written, gives all the reasons why the people must support this.

2. Rights of all the people…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

3. List of Grievances…unfair actions of the King and Parliament and lists steps the colonists tried to take to settle these differences. This part ends with saying the King of England is “unfit to be the ruler of a free people”.

4. States that all the colonies are free and independent states.

So as I wish you a MOST HAPPY FOURTH… I invite you to declare your own Independence over your fears and the rules that are holding you back from living in true Freedom.

Here is a little formula to follow:

Write down some of the battles you have fought, give them some juicy names.

Write down some intolerable things that you have endured.

Get your peeps together, the ones who support you and begin the writing of your Freedom Document.

Write your declaration, change it as often as you wish, but keep working on it.

Send me your declarations and I will post some to my blog for the world to see.

Go forth and find your freedom wherever you may live.

Love and light from Indrani