: 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 … ).
There Will Never Be Another :You:
Posted: August 26, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: Authenticity, Body Image, Doctor Who, gratitude, healing, health, Identity, kindness, love, Media, meditation, Mindfulness, OCD, Omaha, passion, Power Yoga, social media, teaching, writing, Zen 9 CommentsThe privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are-
Does our reflection in a mirror define who we really are? What about the mirror at work, in the car, the one that magically adds twenty pounds at the department store? Becoming uncomfortable in some way or another with our own behavior, as our thoughts and emotions gradually take over. This discomfort, what we feel out in public, maybe … Is another other aspect of who we really are, perhaps this is even our authentic self?!?
How do we know which reflection is real? Thoughts and feelings that originate from the authentic self, while uncomfortable at times, also bring us peace when we pause to listen, and accommodate the wishes of this kind and gentle voice.
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As someone who has felt guilty about my appearance in one way or another throughout life, I begin to feel deep resentment even as I’m feeling guilty. I find myself uncomfortable with this resentment because it isn’t “kind” nor is it any “good” … This identity I’m striving for. Although, if I begin to see that the resentment is actually telling me that I’m doing “things” out of guilt and a false sense of responsibility, that I don’t quite have the compassion to accommodate, or even the desire … I might even allow it to help me choose to stop obeying the guilt as if it were the only right thing to do.
After a few moments, a deep breath or two – Peace, and this Peace is all the evidence I need of my true authentic self.
Daily Meditation:
At what point do we stop asking what is right in our lives, and start asking what is real?
Boy at the Window
Posted: March 6, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: blogging, Buddhism, compassion, exercise, family, fitness, free range, freshly pressed, gluten free, happiness, health, hipster, hope, life, love, lululemon, marathon, Media, meditation, Mindfulness, motivation, musings, natural, nature, Omaha, paleo, passion, perspective, pilates, Poetry, Prose, Richard Wilbur, running, trail running, walking, winter, yoga, youth Leave a comment…
Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes
Returns him such a god-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to Paradise.
The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,
Having no wish to go inside and die.
Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.
Though frozen water is his element,
He melts enough to drop from one soft eye
A trickle of the purest rain, a tear
For the child at the bright pane surrounded by
Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.
Hornear con CultFit
Posted: September 6, 2013 Filed under: Random Workout | Tags: biking, blogging, crossfit, cycling, exercise, fitness, fitspiration, free range, freshly pressed, friends, happiness, health, life, love, lululemon, Media, musings, nature, Omaha, passion, pilates, running, trail running, whole foods, WOD, writting, yoga 15 CommentsA true genius admits that he/she knows nothing-
I remember the events as though they happened yesterday afternoon … I was confident that healing my battered body would be easy and competing at a high level once again would be a cinch, but then, I tried myself once again. I thought of myself as impervious to illness and injury, but then I destroyed my back and ruined my 35-year-old knee. I believed that I had put these injuries behind me, then recently I experienced a painful event like so many that happened in the past. Injuries and setbacks can be humbling experiences, if we listen and pay attention to them.
“Humble Pie” is as good for your body and soul, more so than organic food, yoga, riding a uni-cycle and running at 6am. Do you feel like discussing humility in the most positive sense this morning? The self-effacing, not self-abasing sense? If so please leave a comment below …
Notes:
Real folks, real passionate – authentic folks (the exact opposite of fitspiration) find it challenging to shed a few pounds in a healthy manner, learning to quit abusing their bodies is even harder. I thought it would be easy because of this “thing” called willpower, the very same willpower that kept my broke ass – well broke, for so many years.
If your ego has been damaged by the setback(s) life likes to serves our way, a little “Humble Pie” may serve as a more preferable flavour …
Be well and please take care!
He was the kind
Posted: September 5, 2013 Filed under: Random Workout | Tags: Adventure, art, blogging, compassion, Creative Writing, culture, kindness, life, love, lululemon, lust, Media, meditation, mental health, musings, natural, Observation, Omaha, passion, philosophy, pop culture, Prose, running, simplicity, Stefan Zweig, trail running, whole foods, WOD, writting, yoga 7 Comments… of young man whose handsome face has brought him plenty of success in the past and is now ever-ready for a new encounter, a fresh-experience, always eager to set off into the unknown territory of a little adventure, never taken by surprise because he has worked out everything in advance and is waiting to see what happens, a man who will never overlook any erotic opportunity, whose first glance probes every woman’s sensuality, and explores it, without discriminating between his friend’s wife and the parlour-maid who opens the door to him. Such men are described with a certain facile contempt as lady-killers, but the term has a nugget of truthful observation in it, for in fact all the passionate instincts of the chase are present in their ceaseless vigilance: the stalking of the prey, the excitement and mental cruelty of the kill. They are constantly on the alert, always ready and willing to follow the trail of an adventure to the very edge of the abyss. They are full of passion all the time, but it is the passion of a gambler rather than a lover, cold, calculating and dangerous. Some are so persistent that their whole lives, long after their youth is spent, are made an eternal adventure by this expectation. Each of their days is resolved into hundreds of small sensual experiences – a look exchanged in passing, a fleeting smile, knees brushing together as a couple sit opposite each other – and the year, in its own turn, dissolves into hundreds of such days in which sensuous experience is the constantly flowing, nourishing, inspiring source of life.
– Stefan Zweig, The Burning Secret and other stories
CultFit 