Mindfulness and Relationships

Mindfulness is an important tool to have in your toolkit for many reasons and with many widely known benefits. One use and benefit of mindfulness is its impact on relationships. When it comes to relationships, mindfulness is an important tool for you to be able to use.

It can help you to manage stress that can come with tensions or even conflicts that can occur in relationships. It will increase your sense of well-being and connection with your inner core essence, and give you better focus, meaning that we are able to be more fully present for our loved ones when we are with them. Mindfulness improves our active listening ability, the ability to listen with every pore of our being and so improve our communication skills. It increases our empathy and compassion, resulting in us becoming more understanding and accepting of the other person’s views, opinions, and experiences. We can make our relationships our spiritual practice by putting these mindfulness components into practice. By focusing on mindfulness on a regular basis, our relationships will also reap rewards.

There are a variety of techniques for beginning a meditation practice including:

• observing breathing

• repeating a word, or phrase (mantra)

• focusing on an image held in the mind

• or on an object such as a candle flame

• or on a sound

 Keep it simple. When your mind wanders and gets filled with other thoughts or worries, notice that it is happening. You may wish to acknowledge it to yourself “oh I’m thinking again” and congratulate yourself for bringing yourself back to the meditation focus. You are the sky and your thoughts are the clouds that are drifting across the sky.

 You can try a basic meditation technique such as the one below. Even just sitting in meditation for a few minutes on most days, will bring some benefit. You can gradually increase the minutes as you are able. If you feel you are not able to sit then try a walking meditation, with or without your loved one accompanying you.

Simple Meditation Technique

Find a comfortable position, even sitting in a chair is fine, and take deep slow breaths. The breaths should begin and end in your stomach. 

Say the following words to yourself in your heart, with each slow breath:

                Breathing in, I know that I am alive.

                Breathing out, I am grateful.

                Breathing in, I know that I am here.

                Breathing out, I am living in the now.

                Breathing in, I know that I am connected to the earth.

                Breathing out, I am balanced.

If you wish to try a guided visualization here is a link to one that I’ve written that fits with our theme on relationships. It’s called the Water Meditation http://bit.ly/2KDY3G7

By nourishing yourself and replenishing your well of energy and reconnecting with your core essence, as you are aided in doing by your mindfulness practice, you will be better able to be fully present for your loved ones when you are with them. Your mindfulness practice will help you with your active listening when your loved ones are speaking with you, and help you to manage stress when tensions or conflicts arise. Your development of compassion and empathy will also be strengthened. For these reasons, having a regular mindfulness practice is an important component of not only our spiritual practices but for our relationships.

5 Ways to Celebrate the Seasons of the Year

Celebrating the seasons of the year helps us to deepen our connection with the universe and earth and in doing so, to deepen our connection with ourselves. By reconnecting with our inner core essence and the earth, we are able to be more fully present for our loved ones when we are with them, better manage stress, and have an increased sense of well-being.

You can prepare for your celebration of the season by considering what this particular season means to you. Each season is associated with a different time and stage of the year and the natural cycles and also different holidays and festivities that may inform your feelings towards it.

What does a particular season mean to you?

Spring is a time of renewal and rebirth, starting anew, also associated with spring cleaning and decluttering, preparing for our gardens, and enjoying the first signs of spring arriving as the early flowers, or buds beginning to open and certain birds returning. If you live in a location with snow and ice filled winters, perhaps you are used to a Spring thaw, when the big build-up of snow melts. There is a sense of rejuvenation as those of us in colder climates get outside and enjoy the warmer weather.  What will the rebirthed and renewed you look like?

Summer is a time of lush bold foliage and blooming gardens, enjoying hot summer weekends at the cottage or in our backyards, perhaps a barbecue or bon fire with friends and loved ones. We can honour the summer season by making the most of it. If you live in a location with a relatively shorter hot summer as I do, and longer cold winters, you really want to make the most of your summer by getting outside as much as possible. You can connect with the earth and universe by going outside earlier in the morning and in the evening to avoid the hottest part of the day if that is a concern for you or if you are walking a dog who doesn’t do well in the heat. Walking barefoot either in your backyard or on a beach at a lake will help you feel connected to the earth, sitting by a bon fire, meditating outside, gardening or even just sitting and reading or writing outside are activities that will help you feel more connected to the earth and universe. What are some ways that you can feel an inner joy and child-like delight this summer?

Fall or autumn is the season known as harvest time, as we reap what we sowed. Using the fruits and vegetables by preparing them to be used during the winter is something that we don’t all know anymore as not everyone knows about canning and preserving but if you are interested in this books and videos online can assist you in learning or ask an older relative or neighbour for some tips on how to do it. The act of canning and preserving or freezing foods to use during the upcoming winter is another way of connecting with the earth and universe.   

We give thanks during Thanksgiving (where I am, in North America) and reflect on our gratitude as we come together with our loved ones. Perhaps keeping a gratitude journal is something that you would enjoy doing this season and would speak to your soul. It can also just be 30 days of gratitude or 7 days of gratitude, it is important to do what works for you.

Winter time is often associated with festivities and celebration around religious holidays and new year’s celebrations. Also a time of cooking and baking for those celebrations and perhaps exchanging gifts with family and friends. Later winter can be a time of planning our gardens in our heads or on paper , and planning vacations to be taken later in the year. It can also be a time of needing more rest and having less energy if the days are shorter or we are exhausted after the hustle and bustle of the holidays. If you enjoy winter sports or walking outdoors, it may mean a time of outdoor joy and activity for you and this will help you to connect with the earth and universe.  How will you look after yourself to get through the winter season?

5 Ways to Celebrate the Seasons of the Year:

Celebrate each equinox, the Vernal (Spring) equinox, Autumnal equinox, the Summer solstice, and the Winter solstice. Take a moment to pause and reflect on it. Read on to get some ideas of celebration rituals.

Incorporate a celebration ritual into the day made up of one or more of these activities:

1.              Choose seasonal activities that bring you joy and help you connect with the earth. Perhaps as part of your celebration ritual for the first day of that season you will choose one or two seasonal activities. Some examples are outdoor walking or sports, crafts using the natural materials available to you outside at that time, such as winter wreaths, summer wreaths made from grasses and wildflowers, art and writing using the natural world around you for inspiration for your visual art or poetry or songs. And cooking seasonal dishes.

2.              Gratitude journaling for that season. Write a list of things that you are grateful for specific to the season. The list can be as long or as short as you like, just let it flow, brainstorm, and you may be surprised how much flows out of your heart onto the page.

3.              Write down your intention for that season? What do you plan to do this season. Also write at least the first few action steps that you need to take to make the plans happen.

4.              Meditation centred around that season. Either find a guided meditation online, in a book, use the ones in my guided workbook (available for free, see below) or get creative and write your own. It doesn’t have to be long, even just a few minutes long meditation will help you to reconnect with the earth and the universe.

5.              Art journaling for the season. Draw or collage an image or images to depict what the season means to you in your life right now or your intention for this season. Or you can just draw and collage a celebration of the season, depicting the visual images that you think of when you are in the season.

By incorporating some of these activities into a ritual the day of a solstice or equinox, you will be celebrating the season. And in doing so you will also be reconnecting with your inner core essence, and deepening your connection with the earth and the universe.

You may wish to download my free 33 page PDF:  Guided Workbook: 5 Ways to Celebrate the Seasons of the Year. It includes workbook activities and a meditation for each season to help you reawaken your creativity and reconnect with your inner core essence while you celebrate your Earth connection and the seasons. I keep my free resources, and this PDF Guided Workbook, available for download, in a free resource library. The library is open to everyone for free, all you need is the password to get in, which you can get HERE. or at http://www.fionaharbour.com/library

Enjoy!

7 Tips on How to Have a Beginner's Mindset

A beginner’s mindset is when you have the open attitude of a beginner, no matter how much you already know or how expert you already are on a topic. It’s looking at our task at hand (or even the whole world!) through childlike or beginner’s eyes, with a sense of wonder and excitement, and with a fresh new view.  Beginner’s mindset is also known as “Shoshin”,  a term from  Zen Buddhism.

Having a beginner’s mindset is beneficial for a number of reasons. When you are looking at things with a beginners mindset then you can learn more than if you are in thinking in the “I’m already an expert mode”.  You pay more attention than if you think you already know everything about that topic.

To become a master at a subject you must revise what you believe you already know about it and be continually learning, open minded, and willing to accept new perspectives, driven to learn more, instead of being right all the time.  The mindset of a beginner cultivates this. As well, you are more open to opportunities and possibilities than if you think you know the outcome or have assumptions about what will occur. It helps you to see things as they are instead of as you think they are.

Another benefit of beginner’s mindset is that you are at peace with being a beginner, with not knowing. This helps us to practice mindfulness. And the sense of inner peace that it brings assists with managing stress, our own expectations in what can sometimes be a busy and confusing world, and gives us a sense of calm and well-being.

You can strengthen your ability to have a beginner’s mindset in the same way you would as strengthening a muscle. Here are 7 tips on how to have a beginner’s mindset.

1.       Listen and learn instead of trying to show off your knowledge

2.       Ask questions instead of making assumptions

3.       Consider the answers to your questions as a grey area instead of black and white.

4.       Forget what you think you know about the topic and approach it from a fresh point of view of learning with a clean slate instead of already being an expert

5.       Adopt a viewpoint of childlike wonder and excitement

6.       If you feel it is a challenge to adopt a viewpoint of childlike wonder and excitement, then a technique that you may wish to try is to pretend you are an alien anthropologist from another planet, here to study earth and how we do things. You know nothing about the topic at hand and are learning with fresh eyes.

7.       Practice mindfulness, and living in the moment. Be in the moment mindfully and it will be easier to have a beginner’s mindset.

Practicing these tips on having a beginner’s mindset will help you more easily slip into the beginner’s viewpoint mode and enjoy the many benefits that it brings us such a sense of mindfulness, enjoying the present moment, learning new things and challenging our existing patterns of thinking and knowledge to be able to learn and master aspects of a topic or task at hand. Seeing through the eyes of childlike wonder at the world around us will keep us enjoying learning and making exciting discoveries as we pursue our lifelong learning with a refreshing zest for life.

Spring Renewal and Spiritual Transformation – Taking Care of our Goddess Selves

Spring is a time of renewal and rejuvenation for all of earth. Not only the trees, plants and nature, but us as well. We feel the miracle of spiritual transformation even if we do nothing, the simple fact that it is spring gives our souls nourishment and renews us. We can help the process along by taking some simple actions.

1)      Begin our spiritual mindfulness practice again if we let it slide over the winter months. No guilt and no admonishing ourselves, just begin.

2)      Increase the amount of whole healthy foods we eat, whether we are simply eating more fresh raw vegetables or using our juicers or making delicious nourishing recipes.

3)      Nourish our spiritual goddess within by enjoying ourselves and having fun. Whatever you find feeds that energy within you, find something and do it. Going for a walk in nature and simply looking at the renewal around you, smelling the fresh air, dancing, writing, art, using aromatherapy, going for a spa session….anything that works for you. The importance is in nourishing your spiritual goddess energy within, so that it grows stronger and you feel more YOU!

 Spring Affirmation

I feel that I am rooted in the Earth and growing.

There are buds on my branches that are new beginnings.

I know that I am connected to the Earth.

I am a part of the trees, water and soil.

Ancient and elemental, I am also new and young.

Breathing in, I know it is a new beginning.

When We Can't Sit Still to Meditate

When we can’t sit still to meditate….

When I am asked: What do I do when I want to meditate but I can’t sit still with (or without) my thoughts for more than a few minutes?

My answer is: Fine! Begin where you are with what you have. That holds true for many things in life and is the answer here. You only need to meditate for as long as you can right now. Even if you start with five minutes or two minutes, wherever you are at right now, and slowly increase as you are able to over time, it will reap benefits for you. Increase from 2 to 5 minutes to ten minutes then 15 minutes over time, and you will be amazed by the sense of calm that you feel.

You could try to meditate for five minutes combined with a walk in nature. Or Instead of sitting and meditating you could go for a walk in nature instead. You may feel more able to sit and meditate after that but even if not, the walk will bring you many benefits.

I love to walk! I have a dog and so I walk regularly but I also feel that walking outside, whether it be city streets or nature walks, is a form of meditation for me. Walking is so simple that it is often overlooked as a mindfulness activity but it is a wonderful way to support your regular meditation and mindfulness practice.

Carving Out Time For Creative Activities

My number one tip for this is to schedule it in and stick to your routine. If you just have a vague idea that at some point you will get something done, it probably won't get done anytime soon. By making an appointment with yourself, and writing it down in your calendar, appointment book, or entering it into your phone or scheduling system, you are more likely to stick to it and actually accomplish it. This works!        Especially for those of you who juggle many demands on your time and competing priorities. 

If you need to do something over a few sessions or on an ongoing basis, try to schedule multiple sessions at the start, or to set it up in your system as a recurring appointment. If you just do the creative activity once, then you may not go back to finish it. However if you schedule it in for the first of the month every month, or every weekday at 7:00 for 3 weeks, for example, then you are more likely to accomplish the task.

By having regular appointments at the same time every day or week, you can accomplish a task such as creating content for your information product, whether it is writing a book or e-book, creating an online course, painting, crafts, photography, or other.

Even just waking up one hour early and writing for an hour each weekday, will reap results in the longer term. Six months from now that will be 120 hours that you will have spent working on your project. By doing it at the same time every day, you are establishing a routine that makes it become a habit, and much easier to stick with.

Gratitude

It is so important to take time to think about the things that we have to be grateful for as part of giving thanks to the universe. Feeling and expressing gratitude has health benefits both physical and psychological, not to mention spiritual. Health benefits include better sleep, and a more optimistic outlook which is linked to a strengthened immune system. 

It increases our self-esteem as it balances the resentfulness we may sometimes feel if we compare ourselves to others. It also open us up to more relationships, because expressing gratitude can help us to foster new friendships. It strengthens the relationships that we already have.

And feeling and expressing gratitude can increase mental toughness and our resiliency.

You can give thanks in prayer, in your journal, through art, through writing poetry and many other ways. Here is a poem that I wrote to give thanks.

I AM GRATEFUL

 Feeling the gentle breeze

And hearing the wind rustle the leaves

Shimmering greens in sunlight

Feeling the connection

The circle of the Earth

Of life

Of nature

I am the earth

I am the wind

I am the trees

Living in the moment

I am here now

To enjoy eternity

A bird calls

An insect whirs

I am grateful

For this moment

Accessing Mindfulness During a Busy Day

During a busy day, it’s wonderful to take some time out to balance yourself.  By centring ourselves and reconnecting with our inner core essence, we are also able to make decisions that are truly right for us, and our loved ones. But sometimes there isn’t time to do this during a crazy busy day. Our business or life decisions are made on the fly as the world spins around us and we are caught in the thick of things.

The solution is to practice balancing and centering on a daily basis with a mindfulness practice. Then, when you are in stressful situations or making decisions on the fly, you will be better off even if you can’t take time right then to balance yourself with a timeout for your usual techniques.

 This will increase your overall ability to find tranquility even when your day gets tough and busy. And to be in touch with your own intuition during your day.

 So it is best to have a daily mindfulness practice. This will help you to reconnect with your inner core essence, find balance, and centre yourself, even if your mindfulness practice is for small amounts of time.

 Think of it as building a muscle. The more you use that muscle, the stronger it will be, and the more useful you will find it.  When the world feels like it is hurtling past and you find yourself in the thick of things, you will discover that having a daily mindfulness practice or daily ritual of centring yourself in some way, means that when stressful situations crop up or major decisions need to be quickly made, your inner core essence, intuition, and sense of balance, are more accessible for you. You will be more able to find tranquility even in the midst of a hectic day.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time each day on your mindfulness practice. Just spend as long as you can manage.

5 Ways to Take Exquisite Care of Yourself During the Holiday Season

The festive season is such a busy time of year. Now, with Christmas fast approaching, I thought I’d share with you 5 Ways to Take Exquisite Care of Yourself During the Holiday Season

1.       Sit down and enjoy a cup of tea or your favourite soothing hot drink. Yes this may seem obvious but some of us begin skipping it during the day at this time of year when we can really use a few minutes rest.

2.       Have a bath and in the running water put a few drops of your favourite essential oils. I love using a combination of spearmint and lavender.

3.       If busy you doesn’t have time for or doesn’t want a bath, try just soaking your feet after a hectic day. Sitting on the side of the tub and soaking your feet in water with your favourite essential oils even for just 5 or 10 minutes can do wonders.

4.       Write a gratitude list of 5 things you are most grateful for this holiday season. This can be combined quite nicely with the first item on the list, sitting down and enjoying a cup of tea or soothing hot drink.

5. Write an affirmation for the day that will help you to get through what can be a hectic rush. Write it in your journal and or then where you can see it throughout your day such as on your phone, or on a post it note that you stick somewhere really visible to you. It can be something as simple as a reminder to yourself of what Christmas and the holiday season is really about. Or that you are in control of the food that you eat. Choose whatever works for you. Here’s a blogpost with more on using affirmations: Give Affirmations a Chance.

Mindful Eating

Mindful eating involves paying attention and focusing on the act of eating, the food, the colours, textures, and tastes. It involves shutting out distractions which can commonly be things such as the tv, radio, or video games etc. It can result in a calmer mealtime which can mean less anxiety, and a greater sense of wellbeing.  Another result of mindful eating is that it is known to often decrease the amount of food that you consume. Mindful eating is an important tool for anyone interested in weight loss through being more mindful of what and how much we eat.

During mindful eating one also pays attention to and listens to how one feels and this way we can learn to better ascertain when we are truly hungry as opposed to eating for purely emotional reasons. We can also better determine when we are full and need to stop eating instead of continuing to eat to the point of overeating. It takes practice and the more you work on mindful eating at your meals the easier it will become. Like building a muscle, and just like building your ability to meditate, it will get easier the more you do it. It is another important tool to have in your mindfulness toolkit.