: Cranks : Giving
Posted: November 21, 2014 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: Cranksgiving, cycling, Food Bank for the Heartland, Giving, Gratefulness, holidays, kindness, Omaha, Omaha Bicycle Co., Thanksgiving, yoga 11 CommentsYou can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving-
Please join me tomorrow – November 22nd – at 11a.m. @ Omaha Bike Co. for Cranksgiving!!! What in the world is Cranksgiving?!? Its one part bike ride, part scavenger hunt, and most importantly – part food drive. You’ll need to dust off your bike, gather up a few bags, a bike lock and about $15-$20 to buy the food, which in turn goes to the Food Bank for the Heartland. A classic win-win situation if you ask me!
Not in our fair city, Omaha, Nebraska this Saturday?!? No problem! There may be a Cranksgiving in your neck of the woods!
Come on out and remember – First cup of coffee – tea – whatever is on me!
Daily Meditation:
Just in time for the Holidays – Limited Edition :CultFit: Holiday Tops!
These shirts are pretty cool and will come in handy when its time to stuff a few stockings, wiping down your yoga mat after class or cleaning up around the house. No matter how you choose to “use” them – All proceeds will be delivered by yours truly, to the Food Bank for the Heartland.
: Higher & Higher :
Posted: October 29, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: blogging, Canada, compassion, cycling, Cyclocross, exercise, Fall, family, free range, freshly pressed, Gratefulness, happiness, hipster, kindness, love, lululemon, Media, meditation, Mindfulness, motivation, musings, natural, nature, nebraska, Omaha, passion, pilates, simplicity, social media, Star City CX, time, Twin Six, whole foods, Winnipeg, writing, yoga, Zen 6 CommentsYou are — your life, and nothing else-
A little over two years ago I stopped planting myself on the couch and turning the TV on for no good reason. Very seldom do I pay attention to the pathetic, dreadful “news”. I am picky with whom I choose to spend time with. Something happened in my life that I fail to put a finger on, and even now its hard to put into words to share with you. I realized there was a deep-rooted issue with my soul, my true-self. It was as if my soul, was raw, torn, ripped wide open. As if my true-self needed a “special” kind of time. We often think of time as a linear aspect of our lives … 0400 in the morning – Time to rise and eat breakfast , 0900 – Second breakfast, 1200 – Workout over lunch … As the cadence of time marches on, we fall prey to time – Time truly dictates our life.
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Bringing balance to body, mind, and spirit has never been more important to me. With this intention, I packed my bags last Tuesday and set off for a long weekend of cyclocross racing in Winnipeg – A beautiful city nestled near the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. Winnipeg is an idyllic oasis on the eastern edge of the Canadian Prairies, the spirit of Winnipeg perfectly aligns with its inspiring surroundings. A city, simply being …
This exhilarating excursion nine hours north of Omaha, NE included boundless adventure at every turn. Between the company of close friend(s), practicing at Public Yoga, an endless amount of delicious food, the support of a large, cheerful crowd, laid back fellow competitors and the great outdoors; only served to deepen my connection to simply being. My weekend transformed into an eye-opening experience that both heartened and challenged me.
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Do you recall when you last fell prey to marching in step with time? Maybe it’s when you stopped looking at your iThingy every fifteen seconds, or better yet, when you fully surrender to a state of flow during your morning yoga practice or whilst training for your next big event? A moment in which you stop counting breaths and checking Strava for a little bit as you exercised your creative muscle(s) – that “thing” between your ears.
This is when time stops pedantically chugging along, and being begins. May you take a moment to bathe in the beauty of simply being this morning.
Daily Meditation:
This beautiful “thing” called life presents to us the opportunity to slow down and savor the concept of being. Even when counting the miles away driving from Omaha to Winnipeg (642 … ).
Kindness
Posted: October 2, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: Buddhism, compassion, Gratefulness, gratitude, kindness, meditation, Naomi Shihab Nye, Poetry, Prose, Talking Voice Inside 2 Comments: When a friend opens a random page in your life :
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Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Daytime Dilemma
Posted: March 6, 2013 Filed under: Random Workout | Tags: blogging, exercise, fitness, free range, gluten free, Gratefulness, gratitude, happiness, health, hipster, Humility, intensity, kettlebell, kindness, life, love, marathon, meditation, motivation, natural, paleo, passion, pilates, running, trail running, walking, whole foods, WOD, yoga 9 CommentsFinally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind-
We’re going to talk about courage, mindfulness and being vulnerable, again for what seems like the millionth time. Scurry along if you like although it would be nice if you stuck around for a minute or two.
Going out on a fragile, weathered limb, chances are you’re not perfect. Big deal, you are vulnerable to the whims of the world. What makes you courageous is that upon waking up each morning, you are willing to step into a wide-open space, without a care in the world.
Here’s the bit I hoped you stuck around for: Authentic folks really do not want to see perfection; We want to feel and share connections with others. When we try to present ourselves as the perfect version we can possibly be (like all of your Facetube friends)? We leave little to no room for creativity, failure, humility and error. Seriously Dear Readers, look around yourself this morning at the yoga studio or at the starting line this coming weekend. It’s in the effort of trying without the fear of failure that we know what works and what does not, it’s a process that we begin every morning. Each day, each moment is unique.
If we feared failure, we’d never roll out of bed, show up at yoga class and step out into the world. Life is more interesting when it is risky, rich and served messy. Life is not a box of hand dipped artesian truffles.
Notes:
I would like to leave you today with the following thought: Take the time to present yourselves with a wide open, pure heart today. Display your inner kindness in such a way as to actually move other folks to bare, pure emotions.
CultFit 