Mindfullness

So, here is a personal anecdote.

(hooray for keeping it real, right?!)

It has been my dream for almost 15 years to own my own spa and wellness center one day. Practicing all things skincare and living well from the inside out is my passion in life. Imagine a place, locally, where you can go to take yoga and fitness classes, eat a delicious lunch or grab a to-go'er of food grown in our very own organic garden. I'd grow all my own herbs for my body treatments, have my oil blending station in the loft, we'd put together wellness retreats over the weekends and have classes and spiritual counseling as well as various other forms of healing modalities available. I want to surround myself with people that also have the same wellness goals in life.
Exuding peace and calm at all intersections in life is one of my intentions.
But, it is just really hard some days - plain and simple.

My full time job is the exact opposite style of what I practice at The Refinery. It is fast paced, ego based and at times I turn into a crazy person who jokes about needing booze to get me through the day.

Essentially, I turn into a crazy purple minion with frizzed hair and lots of bellering. On the days I have clients at The Refinery following a day in the office, I need to do a total 180 and go from feeling frazzled and all alpha-dog like, to being completely grounded and full of zen. I get to do this withing a matter of just 30 minutes some days.

On the days I do not have clients, and I am not beign mindful of my energy, I bring that fast paced driven energy home with me to my family. It isn't always bad, as it's how I get so much done at home those days. But....
there are days where it has a negative impact on my husband and my girls.
There are days where I am so full of ego driven energy from making the goal at work, planning another tradeshow, doing a kick butt marketing blast, that I get all up in my own self and come home and start calling one too many shots in a very boss-like nautre. I'm in charge. I'm controlling the situation. I. Am. Calling. The. Shots. Here.

Some of you have heard of the balance between masculine and feminine energy. If not, no worries, I'm going to talk about it in another post! When I am in that energy field above, I'm operating mainly in a masculine frame of mine and it just will not work well with my husband's masculine energy. It's like we are two grown elk with our antlers locked. You can see where this would create issues.
Taking the steps to be aware of my own energy and how it impacts my family, in an effort to create a stable, safe and loving environment is a huge part of my day - every day.
I completely understand that this does not work every day. Not all days can be love and light days. Those are the days where you fight and make up (and now I've got Katy Perry in my head) and move forward. Or, those are the exact moments I am helping to communicate to you where you can take a step back and say to yourself
"Self, you are out of whack and this is not going well. Take a breather. Take those 30 seconds and unwind in order to reconnect my energy the way it needs to be in this present moment."
Then, try again. Re-enter the situation with a renewed sense of the task at hand.


There are lots of things that can pull at our energy throughout the day. So in the next few blogs, I'll be talking about how to recognize the distraction and how to set certain ones aside in order to maintain our new zen outlook on life.

“I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interferingnot even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.

And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

That’s the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.”
―Osho

{with gratitude}

Brooke