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!

Happiness Begins Here

Happiness Begins Here – Yoga – The Art of Living Life – A Life Filled With Peace

  When I ask someone what does your perfect life look like, or what do you want for your spouse or children. The short answer always is ” to just be happy”.  Happiness is what everyone wants. It’s the ultimate quest in life, and yet it’s always here for us. All we have to do is to decide to be happy. I know I’m making it seem way easier than we make it to be. We somehow have let the thoughts in our mind trump what we can realize our actual reality that is.

For instance, let’s say your a teen age girl, and a group of girls are over on the other side of the room. You begin to hear them saying things like how funny you dress, or how you’re so short or so tall. They make fun of your laugh, how you talk, and they just continue to go on and on, as they laugh and giggle. The problem is that we have somehow conditioned ourselves to allow our feelings to become hurt, and then we allow self doubt to enter our mind about who we are. We become sad, upset and depressed. Then we replay the conversation over and over again in our heads, and we start believing.  When our only true fault is listening to them with anything other than detached awareness, and with a knowing of who they are.  I know it can be hard when something is said that we believe resembles something that we feel bad about ourself, (which we shouldn’t either – let’s show a little compassion for ourselves – people!) Like feeling too short or too tall, but again it’s only in the mind, in our perception. Because the reality is that everything “just is”. There are many things and people that you’ll be able to find that are much shorter or taller than you, or people who dress like you and those who don’t. Who care’s – we are who we are – own it, be proud of you and celebrate yourself as a unique individual.  

Remember it’s only words that were spoken. Don’t allow the words to hurt you.  Don’t let them play over and over again in your head. They are not going to physically come up off the page, or out of someones mouth and come over and hit you on the head. Have the awareness that they are only words. Have the awareness that you can detach from the word, you don’t have to let the meaning affect you. Know the source, remember the source, remember who they are, be kind to them and carry on.  We get to realize that our reality is that they still have some work to do, and that we are just fine. We obviously have enough money to eat, and a place to sleep, if we have enough money to own some sort of electronic device to read this blog. In fact, the fact that we can read should be celebrated. So in essence, at the most basic level, we are more than fine. Start becoming more self aware. Monotor your own thoughts, shift them to the things you have to be grateful for, shift them to the life that you want to create. Hold your vision to that thought. Keep walking the path of your dream, and celebrate the uniqueness of you. This is where happiness begins. 

Just a thought…

Love Goldi

 

 

Goldilocks Blog – The Divine Quest

  Goldilocks Blog – The divine quest between not too much and not too little, and how to live our lives “just right”

Recently I was asked the question about my blogging and yoga teacher status –What are you doing and why are you doing it? What makes you different? What do you stand for?  Which in turn left me blank for more than a few moments.  I know I started writing the blog because I wanted to inspire myself and others to live their “just right” lives. Then I became a yoga teacher, and in the process I became aware of a deeper understanding of what that all means to live our lives “just right”.  I know as a yoga teacher I teach because I want to help people live in an effortless state of being, and not in necessarily achieving a perfect handstand; but I’m not sure my writing or teaching really reflects the message of living our lives, just right in an effortless state of being. In other words, helping everyone find that peace within. So it’s with this new clarity that my blog and teaching will now be focused. Merging together to deliver the message that has become so clear to me. But how exactly I’m going to do that – I’m still not sure…

I do know however, with every fiber in my being, how simple it is to live this life happy, and with ease and grace. It’s so easy and yet our minds complicate it with thoughts. When I teach my yoga, I give tools that can help with this – mindfulness, focused concentration, postures to help strengthen our bodies and mind, breath work to calm us down and clear out some of the mental chatter. I also know through the repetition of the practice and coming back time and time again to the mat, we continually learn and adapt. But I still hear some of the students talk, they’re still are not getting it. Some just come to gain strength, to stretch, or maybe just to say that they practiced yoga.  I know we all have to start somewhere, and I know it can take years for some, and I guess I need to admit that it did take me many many years. But is it possible to communicate all that I now know in an easier and more effective manner.

To live a happy and fulfilled life we must have health, and the clarity and freedom to live pursuing our self expression that is unique to us. What is it that we like to do? And are we doing it.

Our “just right” Goldilocks life comes from this place within – inner peace with who we are and what we have now.  Not in getting to an exotic location, or having the perfect spouse, the perfect house, car, or even job. Of course that would be wonderful, to have it all, in that way too. But you could be at the most beautiful location in the world, have a great spouse, house, car and money and really it’s possible to still not be happy. 

So the real work, the work that needs to come first is living within our Goldilocks being, the person that is happy within ourself now, where we are now, and with who we’ve become now in this present moment. Really owning it! 

It’s challenging when we live constantly reminding ourselves with what has happened to us in the past that made us who we are, but do we ever truly look and embrace the being that we’ve become and who it is that we’re becoming, without thinking about the past. Everyone has a story, a past that has made us cry and has brought us joy. We should embrace the person that we’ve become though all of it, and stand tall in the now.  

So for now, let’s take a moment to get to know ourselves a little better.  Maybe welcoming ourselves as if we would somebody that we would really like to get to know. Then accepting ourselves with compassion, again as if we really, really wanted to be close to this person. Then taking a moment to breathe love in, and breathe love out, with this person, and allowing this love to permeate every cell in our being, and then accepting ourself just as we are, and just for the pure pleasure of it.

Just a thought, and always with love,

Goldi