Audio Meditation to Open Your Beautiful Heart and to Calm

We had crrrraaaaaazy weather here in Charlotte (and the whole Southeast) last week, especially on Thursday. Tornados, high winds, flooding, lightening, mudslides, hail…I half expected to look out the window and see the four horsemen of the apocalypse galloping amidst the clouds and waving trees! With my Healing Codes coaching and Touchstone coaching I work with clients all over the world over Zoom or the phone and I had several of my awesome clients on this particular insane weather day. When I work with clients I need to be super tuned in and and have an open heart to assist them in the best way possible. On this day, we were under a Tornado Warning (which means “take cover, a tornado is pretty likely!”) for a good part of the day. So as I’m working with my lovely clients I’m having to keep an eye on the weather because at any moment I may need to duck into the closet under the stairs so that I’m safe from a tornado. Staying present with my clients in the midst of this chaos took some doing! So occasionally we had to take a break for a few moments while I check the weather and make sure I’m not about to be swept away to The Land of Oz (though THAT would be a fun adventure!). And then take a few moments to close my eyes, breathe, recenter and ground myself so we can move forward again in a meaningful way.

We fared the weather just fine (we always do…I’ll post on that phenomenon another time!) and the whole experience got me thinking about how important it is to be centered and “grounded” in order to be able to fully open our hearts. I love walking around with a completely open heart in my life and everyday interactions when I can, but I also know that if I do that without being rooted and centered that it can feel a little raw. A little TOO open. So there’s this wonderful balance we can find of calmness, connection to the earth, and at the same time, this heart that is completely open and giving and receiving love.

You can use the yummy meditation below to find this space. I suggest doing it whenever you feel you need grounding, if you find you’re having trouble in one of your relationships, if you don’t know what to do, or…if you just want to feel good;. The seed mantra for the heart is “Yam,” pronounced “yum.” You can experience “YUM” in your life by opening your heart. Give it a shot and let me know how you feel afterwards!

The Power of Having a Morning Ritual

Ooooohhhh, it’s getting cold here! We’re well below freezing tonight and tomorrow night. I’ve tucked all the plants in and told them their bedtime stories, covering them lovingly with light blankets to protect them from the frost.

Right now I’m loving the cold weather. It means I get to start my ritual of hot hot morning baths, which is sooooooo yummy! I get up super early (around 5), turn on the heater in the bathroom, grab my Intentions/Appreciation journal and my favorite pen (very important), light some candles, turn on some soothing music, and draw my bath with the warmest water I can tolerate. Add in some epsom salts, baking soda, vitamin C powder, and essential oils (usually lavender…just can’t go wrong with lavender). And while the bathtub is filling with this delicious soothingness, I sit and write. I do this almost every morning. And if I don’t do the bath, I try to *always write down my intentions for the day and lots of things I appreciate.

Then, my sweetie and I meditate, do a short powerful workout and some yoga and…we’re off!

There is so much power in this simple practice. I’d gotten out of the habit of doing it for awhile and I can definitely tell a difference. We’ve talked about inertia before and this is the perfect example of how inertia can be our friend or our foe.

Have you noticed that if you wake up and immediately start looking at emails or are immediately bombarded with problems that the rest of the day tends to feel out of control and like you’re putting out fires all day?

Conversely…when you take the time…even just 15-20 minutes…to center and think about delicious things, your day will go much much more easily.

Since I’ve been doing my morning ritual again, my days have been absolutely PHENOMENAL!! All in all, it takes me about an hour and a half, but again, you don’t have to spend that long. I’m just finding that I’m having so much fun and reveling in the yummy yummy of it so much that I want to keep on with it! So sometimes I do.

If you don’t have a morning ritual yet, start simple. Meditate for 15-20 minutes and then write down 5 things you really love and enjoy.

If you’d like something that’s a little more substantial, here’s what I do just about every morning:

1. Write down my intentions for the day. These are BROAD intentions. Things like: “Today I intend to have fun.” “Today I intend to love and adore myself unconditionally as much as possible.” “Today I intend to focus on what it is I want.” “Today I intend to play.”

2. Spend 10 minutes writing down things I love and appreciate. These can be as simple as running water or oranges. Or it can be a person. Anyone! Maybe the lovely checkout lady at your grocery store. If you can, write down a few reasons you love and/or appreciate it/them.

3. I lurvs my hot baths, so when it’s chilly out I take one filled with the goodness outlined above.

4. Meditate for 15-20 minutes. This can be guided or not. You can listen to music if you’d like to…or not. I like to mix it up.

5. Do some exercise. I love doing my High Intensity Interval Training followed by a little yoga (some days I’ll do a full yoga class as well, but that’s a lot;).

There! Now…you are ready to start your day. Fully and completely. I know not everyone has the time to do that much, so take what you’d like from my morning ritual and create your own. It is SO very worth it.

Your October Guided Code with Lorrie

Join me for your Guided Healing Code for October.  We'll do it together, just follow along!

Remember that Healing Codes are more powerful and effective when they are customized to you personally.  You can find out how to get personal sessions with Lorrie.  

Make sure to check out all the latest blog entries, too…soooo much good stuff in those!

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!

Quick, Easy, HEALTHY Dark Chocolate Recipe

My honey and a friend of his are heading to Harleyfest in Milwaukee today (yes indeed, we like to ride motorcycles!  Well...right now he drives...I ride;).  The drive is 14 hours from here in SC/NC, so I made m'Honey and his friend some meals and snacks to take on their drive up and back.  I always so appreciate having nutritious food on the road instead of eating stuff that makes me feel crappy.  So I go super easy for the meals.  Boiled eggs, crispy bacon, pimento cheese (I'll share this recipe at some point) on coconut flour bread (will also share that recipe) with some romaine lettuce, bagged spinach and pre-cooked snausages (wow, I had to *un* autocorrect that one five times!).  

One of the snacks...I've been promising several of you this specific delicious and nutritious snack recipe for awhile now...I'm sorry it's taken awhile!  

Guess what it is???  

CHOCOLATE!!

Awww, nuts.  You probably already guessed that from the caption.  It's worth it!  As far as sweetener, I leave that up to you.  We all have different tastes.  I like my chocolate super bitter without a whole lot of sweetener, m'Honey likes it with...you guessed it...a l'il bit of Honey;)  Test it out for you.  I've tried using sugar alcohols (xylitol, erythritol, etc), stevia, monk fruit, and my body just doesn't like any of them.  So we stick with very small amounts of natural sweeteners.  You do what works for you!  You can also play around with the coconut oil-to-cacao (or cocoa) ratio to find what works for you.  

Easy Dark Chocolate Recipe

Serves: 12

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Organic Cocoa Powder
• 1/4 cup Organic Coconut Oil, melted and cooled slightly
• 1/8 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract (I like more...again...up to you)
• Maple Syrup or Honey or stevia or erythritol or xylitol or whatever...your choice.  And your choice how much.  We use very little.  
• 1 pinch Salt

Process

1. Mix the melted coconut oil into the cocoa powder in a small bowl 1 Tablespoon at a time. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl periodically to make sure it all gets incorporated.
2. Stir in the vanilla, sweetener and salt.
3. The way we like to do it...pour into a reused, cleaned gallon sized ziplock baggie and flatten out.  You can, of course, also get fancy and put the mixture into chocolate forms.  I've tried a many times and I still like the simplicity and aesthetics of the ziplock!
4. Put into the fridge to set completely.  If it's in a baggie, make sure it's on its side so it can flatten out.  Leave in fridge for at least 3 hours.  
5. You can also put in the freezer if it's in the baggie and you're in a hurry;)  In that case, wait for an hour and then either go to step 6 or put it in the fridge.  
6. Take it out, have the visceral satisfaction of breaking it up while it's in the baggie, pour the shards onto a plate...and enjoy!  
7. Store in the fridge.  Coconut oil is super healthy but the melting point is very low, so it will be a runny mess otherwise.  

Notes

I love to add a dash of cayenne pepper and cinnamon.  You can also experiment with lavender, banana, coconut extract, nuts...lots of options!  

How did it go for you?  What are your preferences? Let us know!  

The Power of Creating

I love creating.  Love everything about it.  I've been spending more time welding fantabulous creatures and very VERY large metal flowers, and playing in junkyards.  (You can take a look at some of them here).  I also love everything about the process of finding the parts and pieces.  I've never really known anything about how cars work, but now that I've been taking them apart to use the parts (actually if I'm lucky, they've already been taken apart for me;), I just can't believe how intricate and incredible they are!  It's one of those (many) things we take for granted.  And once you look under the hood, wow.  Just boggles my mind that all these moving parts work together in perfect harmony to create motion and safety and functionality.  From the engine to the moving windows to the brakes and wheels.  

One of the other many many things that I love about the process is the people.  It's so much fun to share what I'm doing with car mechanics, junkyard managers, etc. and to see the interest and excitement in their eyes as well.  They are eager to help me find the best pieces, the most interesting things, and to describe what the pieces are and how they work in the machine.  It's become a beautiful collaboration.  

So...LFI theme for August is to get out there and do something totally new, even if it's just...going to a junkyard and looking at all the interesting pieces.  Or go take one Aerial Yoga class.  Or take a welding class.  And do it with the openness of a child.  It's all about the experience.  

Big love,

Lorrie

Your August Guided Code with Lorrie

We have so very many fun things going on here!  Including the launch of the new site.  I'm having fun learning new things every day, especially about how to bring you more and more inspiration.  New meditations, new courses, and new products!  For this month, I suggest trying something new...just for the fun of it.  See what happens:)

Big love,

Lorrie

Yummy Love Your Body Meditation

*If you want to get right down to it, scroll to the bottom of the post for the recordings*

So much of our experience here in this realm is related to our BODIES.  At the same time, so many spiritual teachings neglect the body.  Dating to waaaaay back, there are many teachings that the body, the physical, should be ignored or even rejected.  

And I say...*back up!*  Reassess.  Not only are these bodies assets, they are to be enjoyed (more yumminess on that in other posts).  They are to be...well...emBODY-ed.  That means developing a loving, feeling, symbiotic relationship with your body.  And I can tell you from serious experience that until you really accept and get into your body, you're going limit your expansion.  On all levels.  You and your spirit...essence...soul...higher self...source...god..."Big 'S' Self" (a friend of mine and I made that one up and it makes us laugh every time)...whatever you want to call it...are not separate from your body.  Source is flowing through your body at all times.  Your body IS source.  Which is not only a really beautiful thing, but also a really good thing.  Because that means you don't have to remind your heart to beat.  Or remind yourself to inhale and exhale.  You don't have to prod your liver to work.  You don't have to remind your stomach to digest.  

Now...you may have had some...not-so-good-feeling experiences with your body.  Anyone, anyone?  I say this in jest, cuz, well, yeah...we all have!  I'm happy to share my own experience, many of you are familiar with it (you can take a look at it here).  And I find that lots of times when we experience negative feelings we can disassociate from our bodies.  Whether those feelings are physical or emotional...well, we want OUT.  Which is totally understandable!  We just...disconnect.

We set up this experience perfectly before we came here.  We wanted to have bodies.  We wanted to be deeply connected with them.  Because we wanted to have a way to *know* how we feel about things.  We wanted a way to know when we are on track with our truth, with our desires, with our knowing...and when we're off track.  Other reasons too and we'll get into those at another time;)  

When you can FEEL your body...when you can FEEL your feelings in your body...you are so much more able to shift those feelings (physical and emotional) and to let them move through.  In fact, they will move on their own when you allow yourself to be with them!  If you try to ignore them or change them right away, you're doing yourself a disservice.  Because those feelings are there for a reason.  

Before we get down to it, I'll give you some backstory about this particular Living From Inspiration Meditation.  It's a super duper sweet story and one of my favorites, because it involves my gorgeous nieces.  

A few years ago, I was staying with my brother and his family in Albuquerque, NM.  They have this beauuuutiful big house with a casita in the back.  Every morning, I wake up and do my meditation, workout and then go to the main house and have breakfast with the family and always sit next to, you guessed it, my lovely niece, "A".  She's about 3 or 4 at this point (I'm so bad with ages, but I'm pretty sure).  So sweet, so beautiful.  I sit down on a bar stool/breakfast stool and help her up to the bar stool/breakfast stool next to me.  And she puts her sweet hand on my arm and says...

"Auntie Lala...I love your eyes...and I love your face...and I love your arms...and I love your legs...and I love your shoulders...and I love your hair...and I love your shirt...and I love your nose...and I love your fingers.........."

And she keeps going on.  And on.  And on.  For about 3 minutes straight.  Which is a looooong time for a 3-4 year old.  Just loving, loving, loving everything about me.  And oh!  I try to interrupt!  And say "I love your face...and your arms...and your legs..." She will have none of it.  She just keeps going...and going.  My only choice is to sit...and let it all in.  Which I finally do.  

It was so sweet.  So much love.  And I have never forgotten it.  *That* is how we can feel at all times.  Because Source is always flowing all that love to every single part of us.  

This meditation will help you get connected to your body and establish a loving relationship with it.  The first recording goes through instructions.  The second recording is the actual meditation.

In the instructions, you'll learn that as you're going through the meditation, if when you get to a certain body part you notice any pain, tightness, or resistance of any kind, pause the recording and take some time to just BE with the sensation.  Without trying to figure it out, without judging...just be with it.  Embrace it.  And when you're ready, start the recording again and keep going.  

So get comfortable, close your eyes, and melt into this. 

What is the Little Golden Thread? — Living From Inspiration

I've been studying this path - practicing it, really - for many years now.  And I love it.  I love every single moment of it (well, I do *now*;).  And now I don't even really think of it as a path.  It's a way of being.  It's like breathing.  It's who I am.  Which makes it effortless, for the most part.  

One of the most valuable things I learned about fairly early on is what I call the "Little Golden Thread."  

Let me tell you how I discovered it.  

For a long long time in my life, I was a PUSHER.  Oh, lawdy, me, boy was I good at pushing.  I always felt like I had to make things happen.  That I had to really work to achieve and to become who I wanted to be.  Yet I always knew and hoped that there was an easier, more elegant, flowing way of being.  A different answer.  

As I began spending more time meditating, more time letting go of old paradigms and creating my own life, more time playing and looking for the ways in which everything is being taken care of for us...and mainly, as I got quieter...I started to notice something.  

It wasn't there all the time. But when I was...

quiet...

gently appreciating...

resonating with something or someone...

I found there was a gentle tugging.  So gentle, so quiet, I may have missed it if I hadn't been quiet myself.  Before in my life I would have disregarded it or not been able to hear or feel it.  I realized it was a call.  And it was beautiful.  Shimmery, golden...my Little Golden Thread.  

So I started to follow that gentle tugging.  And what I found was that it lead me to the most wonderful experiences, people and things!  Oftentimes in roundabout ways that now make me laugh.  

There have been times in my life where I have experienced blow-your-socks-off miracles and creations I can directly relate to my intentions, almost to the letter and within a matter of hours or even minutes (I'll tell you about those sometime too!).  But what I've found is that this Little Golden Thread leads me in a way that is gentle and loving and I anticipate the path with easy joy.  It really feels like I'm being led by the hand by the most loving force in the world.  Towards delight.

These days, it's so integrated for me that it's just what I do most of the time.  The direction I go in.  I don't even have to feel the tug.  It's my built-in default compass and inspirer (yes, I make up words) to often-effortless action and joyful expansion in my material and spiritual life.  

You can connect with your Little Golden Thread, dear one.  It doesn't have to take hours of meditation or study.  Start simply, by appreciating the things in your life and focusing on what you love.  Feel the feeling of love.  Open your heart.  Take in all the colors and sounds and feelings and movements and people and tastes and smells as if they are your lover.  Commune with the Divine on a moment-by-moment basis.  Which simply means talking to your Great Love.  Simply.  Conversationally.  And if you find yourself out of sorts or grumpy or sad, be okay with that too.  Love those feelings as if they are small children - embrace them and be with them.  Let go of any stories or thoughts around those feelings.  Listen to or watch some of our free audios and videos to line up with your Connected Self.  Sign up for an Online Retreat or Sessions with Lorrie, those are very powerful ways to open up and get quiet and connected.  

When you do these things, you will begin to feel the gentle, playful, loving tug of the Little Golden Thread.