Peace – What are you looking for?

Peace and a way to share it – What are you looking for?

Peace - Azul Yoga - Goldilocks Blog - Florida Beach Sunrise

 

I travel forty five minutes by car to the area of woods where I plan to hike. I drive up a hill and park next to an old overgrown cemetery. I open my door and step outside to a green grassy knoll. The sun is shining overhead surrounded by a bright Carolina blue sky. I instantly feel more at peace. I head to the opening in the woods, an begin looking around, noticing the beauty of nature. I breathe deeply, wanting to take it all in.

The head of the trail is lined with wild flowers; yellow, purple, and white. The trees are of all sizes, and as I walk further down the path, the trees start getting bigger, taller, wider. It’s becomes darker here as I begin walking deeper into the woods under this thick folliage of trees, with just a few streams of light shining through. The wind is gently blowing, creating shadows of the leaves as they dance on the dirt path.

I continue walking further and deeper into the woods. I notice a large dark grey rock up ahead. As I get closer I see a rich green moss covering one side, a spring is near, I can hear the water trickling over smaller patches of rocks. I keep walking, and with just a few steps I can see the water from the spring as it moves across my path. I step over it’s only a few inches wide but the ground is wet, and I marvel at the beauty of nature self sustaining, feeding itself.

The path begins to climb in elevation… My sense of peace deepens as I continue going deeper into the woods. I keep walking. I keep climbing in elevation. The path curves to the left and then back to the right. I keep moving forward, zig zagging my way up the mountain. As I near the top I can see that the path ends, and if I want to get to the top I’m going to have to use my hands to climb up the last few feet. And, I do, I make it to the top of this ridge. I love that it’s level an expansive and sunny up here. I walk closer to the edge of the other side. Here I’m looking at the most amazing vista of mountains and valleys for as far as I can see. I look down below and see a river gracefully winding through the base of the mountains, and when I look up to the sky, overwhelmingly, I feel a grateful energy of being alive. I breathe it all in.

Over the next few months I come back to this mountain as often as I can to cultivate the peace within me, and as I do I begin feeling this urge to practice yoga at the top. I don’t know why, because I don’t know anyone who practices yoga.

At home I begin hearing a chanting inside my head yoga, yoga, yoga, like in the classic movie Animal House where they shouted toga, toga, toga. I must of talked about it out loud because one day a friend gave me a VHS tape, of a thirty minute gentle yoga class, and a way too small foam yoga mat for my 5’8″ body.

I begin practicing it everyday and as I do I noticed how great I feel, peaceful, calm, serene. Just what I needed after feeling sad, alone and bitter for so many, many, many years. At the end of the practice, not wanting this feeling to go away, I innately sit up and meditate in the silence and stillness of my body and mind. Some days I sit for just a few minutes, some days for a very long time.

It was shortly after I began practicing that my life began to change in a big way. I was loosing everything that I had, but I didn’t know it yet the universe was really was working in my favor. I dove deeper into the practice, and found even deeper moments of peace. Once I realized how simple it all really is, it made me a little angry at myself for all the years I wasted living an unhappy life.

When you find something that gives you that gift, after all of the years of suffering, you want to share it out to the world. You want everyone to feel the peace within. I’ve been looking for ways to share it with others ever since. Because once you find something so good, so wonderful, you feel as if you have to share it out to the world.

As I continued my journey of yoga and meditation, I began noticing more, and having more awareness of habits and patterns. For instance, I would of never been able to have this realization and be on the path to living my dharma, if I didn’t lose everything I owned. I never would of voluntarily walked away from what I had sacrificed and worked so hard for. Just like noticing the correlation here where I use the words “sacrifice” and “hard” to describe a negative event.

As I was diving deeper into yoga and just finishing up my 200HR training. I once again started having this urge or feeling to begin practicing every morning at sunrise. I voluntarily taught the sunrise class at the studio where I trained. So for two days a week for a year I taught, hoping to cultivate the habit. At the time, I thought it was more of a Yoga thing where the ancient yogi’s said to get up and practice before the sunrise, because of the energy at that time of day, gives you most benefit.

Time continued on, I took a lot more training, taught a lot more classes and I moved, but the voice continued. Share the peace you found within. Create the habit of practicing at sunrise. Since I had moved closer to the beach here in South Florida and thought it was a shame that I had hardly been going, I decided to go to the beach at sunrise every morning to practice and meditate. And it was so beautiful and awe inspiring that I again felt like I needed to share.

I started posting a photo everyday on Instagram, and about six months into doing just that I ran into a friend on the beach. She told me about a new broadcasting app called periscope, and went on to say
that she felt like she needed to share that information with me. I was already sharing on many social media sites, and was hesitant, but with my intention of sharing peace out into the world, I started broadcasting every morning a little yoga or meditation. As I sat their nourishing my own body and soul at sunrise, I began to nourish other souls as well. And, within no time, I started trending and not quite yet a year latter I have around 30,000 followers. It has given me the opportunity to teach at a large national yoga event, and the opportunities keep coming.

I still want to find more ways to share peace out into the world, and as I do I will continue with the lessons that I’ve learned along the way.

Allow yourself to flow through life with ease and grace, detach with awareness, listen to the voice within, trust your instincts, know your intention, and let go. And just like watching the rising sun, after some time, you will look up or look back and say, wow, look how far I’ve come!

Goldilocks – Moments of Time 

Look who came to my Yoga class this morning, so magnificent, so present, so serene…so grateful. 

later I  was at a meeting with a lot of beautiful people, we were at the top floor in a beautiful condo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. No one noticed the large family of dolphins swimming by. I mentioned it and granted we were trying to acholmpish a few things, but still no one looked to see. 

In this case I probably shouldn’t have interrupted the group, I hate to be that person that stops the forward movement of the group but it did remind me that always around us, there is something magnificent to see.  

Don’t forget to look around 

Just a thought, 

With Love, 

Goldilocks 

Mercury in Retrograde

  

Mercury in Retrograde – Whew!

If you’ve read my blog before you may know that I’ve get up every morning to meditate at sunrise on the beach. Yesterday, I woke up anxious and then became excited and anxious when I went outside to see an orange glow in the sky, knowing that I still had a good twenty minutes before the sun would rise. Trying to stay calm which is usually really easy for me at 6 am, I headed to the beach, but I noticed an impatience’s, an irritability that had been plaguing me for several days, and where normally I would calmly follow the car ahead of me I sped up and went around them. When I came to the light that leads me into the beach parking it turn yellow way before I went through it. I parked and thanked the divine that I live close to the beach so that I didn’t injure myself or anyone else. I also took notice of this crazy manic energy that I was feeling, and became disappointed in myself, because I for goodness sake, am a yoga teacher, and I was showing up to the beach to MEDITATE! It WAS only 6am and there was only one other car on the road, in my one mile trek to the beach!  I told this to two other teachers, before a yoga class I was going to teach, who usually thinks of me as being very peaceful and serene, and they both responded back in harmony, that they too have been experiencing something similar. 

It reminded me of an email I receive from Carol Allen, days earlier. Carol is a Vedic Astrologer, who’s messages are always right on, and I highly suggest that you subscribe to receive them. I met Carol Allen years ago at a writing retreat in Carmel, led by her equally inspiring sister Linda Sivertson.(Who if you have a book inside you waiting to come out, she is the one to contact bookmama.com) I still don’t know a lot about Vedic astrology, but I do know that as evidence simply by the rising tide with the full moon, that planets do have an effect on us. I read Carol’s email’s and she tells me about whats going on, so I don’t have to learn. In this email Carol talked about Mercury being in Retrograde until June 11, but it’s effect would still be felt because Mercury would not be away from Mars and Saturn until the 15th, which is today – Finally!!! Mars according to Carol, not surprisingly, is the planet of impatience, arguing, and fighting, but is also good for motivation and courage etc. Which not only answers why I was acting the way I was that morning but also embarrassingly why I had been in fighting mode a couple days before.  I’m not saying that there isn’t personal accountability to be had, but for those days when you don’t even understand why your acting a certain way – it may be because of the planets. This information also gave me huge relief while I was at Linda’s writing retreat. As it turned out all of us there, except for Carol, were Leo’s, and all had been going through a cycle of Saturn. Which is pretty much 7 years of bad luck, well – not really, although if you don’t know what your going through it can sure feel that way. Everyone goes through it during our lifetime in different aspects of our life, and it can be a good thing, a way of clearing out of everything that doesn’t serve you. In my case, I had been going through the cycles of Saturn in all three areas of my life at once. I definitely felt it. But until then, until I met Carol, I didn’t know anything about it. It gave me such a relief, to know that I didn’t create all of my mess myself. And, just as Carol said my time with Saturn ended, and I also began taking more efforts to place myself with positive thoughts, places, and things, and which if I would of done before would of lessoned the pain.  So just know that although we are personally responsible in how we handle ourselves their is more to life than some of us know. 

Today, I feel like this is the longest day ever and I’m sure Carol could explain that to us to, so to end on a really happy note, equally exciting as it being June 15th and out of all that mess, is to note the above photo which is what I saw yesterday, just before sunrise, after all my craziness.

With Love to you All – Happy June 15th!

Goldi