Stick Your Finger Into More Cakes in 2020! (and don't be afraid to ask;)

A few weeks ago on the way back from teaching my 6:30am yoga class, I stopped in at one of my favorite local Health Food stores.

I love how quiet it is in those early morning hours and feeling the beginning bustle of the lovely employees getting nourishing food ready for customers.

I was hoping to get a rotisserie chicken, so I asked one of the employees in the deli if they had any ready. He was a large stoic fellow, probably of Pacific Islander descent. He said they would be ready in about 10 minutes, and I decided it would be worth the wait, so I stuck around.

There was a cake sitting on the counter where we were discussing the chickens and I noticed that it was sweating profusely (as cakes often do in the Southeast). I asked him if they were throwing it out. His reply was “no, it’s for display, do you want a piece?” I was feeling particularly frisky this morning (as I often do) so I replied “no, but I do want to stick my finger in it!”

He without pause or reaction…completely deadpan, responded “okay." He pushed the cake towards me.

Now. I feel I need to explain a bit further before we continue. I haven’t eaten cake or sugar for that matter for a few decades. And honestly I never really was a big fan of it and given what I know now about what it does to the body, I just stay away from it.

I DO, however, love sticking my finger into cakes, pies, brownies…whatever. Feeling the gooey goodness and the different layers and the texture in a tactile way is very satisfying and just feels yummy (and it’s pretty annoying to the people whose desserts I might happen to stick my finger in…you can ask my sister;). I guess it’s my own way of experiencing the culinary creation.

Back to our story. If you remember, my stoic friend had just very matter of factly given my strange request of sticking my finger into this pristine (though very sweaty) cake the go ahead. I kinda couldn’t believe that he’d said yes, so my response was an incredulous “Realllllly??” “Sure.” Again…completely deadpan response to this very out of the ordinary request. So. I took a nice deep breath, poised my finger over the cake, and deliciously pressed my finger into the icing, first layer, second layer…third. Oh. So. Satisfying. Took my finger out, wiped it off, he grabbed a spatula, cut out the piece with the hole in it and dumped it in the trash, immediately turned around and picked up my (now ready) rotisserie chicken and handed it to me. I smiled and said, “Thank you, you made my day!” “No problem,” (still no smile or anything). He turned around and went on to his next task and I smiled and walked to the checkout with my chicken.

As I was sitting in my car in the parking lot, I took a few moments to savor all the FUN and sheer ABSURDITY of the whole experience. First of all, well…BEST MORNING EVER…and secondly, I fully recognized the importance of ASKING. I had the impulse to make a request that was completely off the wall. I thought he would just laugh and think I was joking. But he listened and said YES. In essence, I had a desire, asked and was open enough that Universe provided the window to receive the manifestation of that desire through my wonderful deadpan deli friend.

We all have these off-the-wall, sometimes absurd desires that we may think are impossible or that no one will understand or honor. Or perhaps not so off the wall. Maybe they just feel out of reach or like we can’t possibly create them or allow them in. Give yourself some credit. Don’t be afraid to ask (and…you’re actually always asking even if you don’t verbalize it…more on that in another post;). If it’s a “no” right now…it just means you have some more getting happy and lining up to do. My goal in the whole finger-in-cake interaction was to have fun and to play with my fellow human being. Approaching it that way, you can only win, regardless what the answer is!

What is a fun, silly, off the wall desire you have? How can you play today? What is something you are afraid to ask for? Remember that to Universe, there is no request too silly, too big or too small.

The Power of APPRECIATION

The Power of PRECISE Appreciation and Gratitude. I love my early morning drives from southern Indian Land to Uptown Charlotte to teach my awesome yoga classes . It takes about 40 minutes (at 5am, so no traffic, woohoooo!) and I use the time to talk to the Divine, to set my intentions for the day and to go on Rampages of Appreciation. This morning it was deliciously foggy and soupy, and the lack of visibility gave me an opportunity to appreciate how circumstances in our lives can bring us into the present more fully. With the lack of visibility I was really forced to be present and focus (or take a little detour into a ditch, ha!). So rather than getting grumpy about the fog I found myself feeling playful and appreciative of it (this comes naturally now because I practice Appreciation every morning). I loved the way the fog hid the future of the road from me so that as I arrived in each new moment it was a surprise…and a surprise…and a surprise. The way it softened the edges of the beautiful trees and bushes along 521 and then along Park Road. The fact that *teeny tiny particles of water were floating, suspended in the air (huh…that’s a miracle in and of itself!) and the way the light from the lamp posts streamed through and bounced off of those teeny tiny particles. And then I started thinking about the fact that WE HAVE ELECTRICITY and how stinkin cool that is! So I rambled on about how amazing it is that we have currents of electricity that run into our houses and supply us with light and with heat and with the ability to cook yummy things and to watch fun TV shows and to light the road. And then I started thinking of all that goes into that incredibly intricate system and all the people that work diligently to bring that electricity to us. And then I started thinking about all the people who came before and the fact that the idea and execution of harnessing electricity to utilize it in useful ways started with just a few people who were willing to experiment and take risks and open up to possibilities. Wow! And on and on and on!

You can maybe possibly see how when you start with something simple and get *specific about what you Appreciate and Love and are Grateful for about it, you really get the juicy goodness from it. You can keep milking one little thing for all it’s worth. What you will find is that when you start your day with this deep, juicy Appreciation, your day flows more smoothly. You feel more at ease. Your interactions are pleasant. It sets the tone for your whole day! It may be a bit of a stretch to begin with and I do still have days now and again where I *just plain don't feel like being Appreciative...I feel like being grumpy. And that's okay too!

Take a look around you right now. Choose an object. It can be a pen. It can be a person. It can be your pet. What - *specifically* - do you Appreciate and Love about it or them? What *specifically* makes you Grateful for it or them? When you get Precise you really get the juiciness of this Practice. And you’ll start to do it not because it’s “spiritual” or the “right thing to do” or whatever. You’ll start doing it because it FEELS good. Because it sets the tone for your day. Because it reminds you of what a precious, amazing, incredible world we live in. And Practice it about yourself! What do you Love and Appreciate about yourself?

Have a beautiful day. It’s all so good. *contented sigh*

The Power of Non-Habitual Movement

We went to a friend’s concert a few weeks ago (they’re awesome, btw, you should check them out…Chatham County Line). It was outside at a local Greenway, lots of families, lots of kids running around, we had a great time. One of the best things about it was watching the kids dance!! They were movin around, jumping up and down, running this way and that, takin off their clothes (love that about little kids!) and just having a BLAST moving to the sound of the music! And they didn’t care what it looked like (especially the younger ones). They were just moving for the joy of it.

Moving our bodies is so important. Not just to develop muscles and keep in shape (which is good too;), but because it gets us out of our head! And when we try new movements and just LET GO of trying to do it “right”, we actually create new neural pathways. It does even more than that…it loosens up the energy in the body and mind, it allows new possibilities in, it gets you used to letting go of set patterns. It really SHAKES IT ALL LOOSE!!!

This is a great example of non-habitual movement. The Omelette Dance! We love Modern Family…

When I was younger, my brother and I did a morning dance every morning (well, we weren’t THAT young…it was not too long ago!). We just got silly and danced around in weird ways. It felt so good! These days, my honey and I have a dance party every morning for 5 minutes. I put on different kinds of music each day and we just mooooove to it. We have so much fun!!! I purposely do things sometimes that look goofy or weird or uncoordinated.

I like doing it in the morning because it gets me energized and excited for the day. It has a way of cranking up a childlike enthusiasm that makes me ready to go and jump into life.

Try it out! Put on some music and just run around, jump up and down, crawl, make faces, act like a monkey, try out some sweet dance moves…whatever gets you moving. And if you’re tired or have a physical disability, do some facial ballet. Or finger dancing. Whatever works, just get that energy going!

Oh yeah, when I was looking for Luke’s Omelette Dance, I ran across these guys who made up their OWN Omelette Dance years before the Modern Family episode…awesomeness!!

What does YOUR omelette dance look like?

Hurricane Florence, The Power of Grieving

As Ready for Florence as we can be…

I’ve spoken to several friends over the past few days who have called, concerned about us here in North and South Carolina. And the best way I’ve known to describe the experience is that it feels like one of those darkly comic scenes of a man standing in the middle of a road yelling “nooooooo!!!!!” with a steam roller coming towards him at 1 mph. There’s a big part of me that’s just like “hit us already!!!”

Anyway, here south of Charlotte, we’ve already had lots of wind and rain and it’s only the beginning. And while there are certainly a lot of hardships for a lot of people, there’s also a part of me that weirdly enjoys the excitement and opportunities this kind of thing creates to become a closer-knit community. I’ve lived in the south off and on my whole life, so hurricanes are not a new thing. And there has always been that feeling for me. You find yourself talking to strangers in the grocery store, at the gas station, and communicating with people online whom you wouldn’t have spoken to otherwise.

Of course, I don’t want to ignore the fact that a lot of people are going to experience what we think of as loss. And I’ve actually been thinking about grieving a lot lately. Some dear dear friends of mine just experienced what we all think of as a devastating loss recently. Their son transitioned at his own hands.

When we experience loss as spiritually aware people, we know on the one hand that it’s not really a loss. We know that that person is still very much present and available to us. And that they are Pure Positive Energy now. At the same time, it really doesn’t help to try to JUMP to living in that place right away or to try to push down all those feelings.

We talk a lot here at Living From Inspiration about FEEEEEELING your feelings. Grief is one of the feelings we can sometimes resist the most even though allowing yourself to fully feel it is one of the most healing things you can do. The key is to ALLOW yourself to feel that grief. Not to resist it. Put on a brave face if you need to around other people (or don’t), but make sure you give yourself the time to really feel those feelings. And you know what? It takes as long as it takes! My mother transitioned unexpectedly several years ago and I can say with complete understanding that it took me a good 3 years to move through it. Now…at that point I wasn’t really allowing myself to FEEEEEEEL the grief, so it could possibly have taken less time than that, but that’s not the point. It takes as long as it takes and that’s okay.

The things we find (well, really that find us) on the other side of grief are so beneficial and really just…beautiful. Peace. Understanding. Such an incredible love for the other person. For the situation. And for ourselves.

And many times once all those emotions have moved through and the energy has shifted, we actually end up freeing up parts of ourselves that may have been “stuck” before. It’s quite interesting that way!

So if you’re experiencing or have experienced something you would consider to be a “loss,” please soften around yourself and your feelings. Give yourself permission to feel everything you’re feeling. Be so so very kind to yourself. And know that you are being taken care of and soothed by Source/Universe/God.

Always.

I’ll let you know how it’s going here…we’re having some nice big wind gusts right now and I can still hear the cooing of a dove. Oh! And we have these crazy yellow butterflies that fly around our yard in wild patterns when there are no storms (we call them “drunk butterflies”) and yesterday those crazy suckers were trying to fly around in all the wind we had yesterday!

One Minute Resistance Buster

So many fun things to write about to you!  But limited time!  So...right now...I give you a quickie;)

One Minute Resistance Buster.  Do you perhaps have a task or two that you just really don't want to do??  I never do.  Ha!  Totally not true.  

Flash back to grade school, inertia is  "a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line."  If it's in rest...it's going to be more likely to stay its state of rest. If it's moving...it's gonna be more likely to keep moving.  Surprise, surprise, this applies to actions as well.  If you've been putting something off, there's gonna be a lot of resistance around it and it's going to make it harder to actually DO it.  Good news is there is a fun, easy experiment you can do to possibly overcome that inertia and send it in the direction you want!  

Are you ready to have your mind blown?!?  Here it is.  

Set a timer for ONE MINUTE and do whatever it is you've been having resistance to.  For one minute.  Many times, you'll find that once you've started the action, it's easier to keep going with it.  You might even want to continue!  Whaaaat??  Yeah.  Super easy!  

And remember...even if you are putting off a task or project, or...whatever...that's okay!  It's always perfect timing. Be kind to yourself and let it be okay.