Archive for the ‘spirituality’ Category

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.  by James Bryce

Summertime is great for sun drenched days and lingering by pools with toes dipped in cool waters.  It is an excellent time to give yourself room to breathe and little getaways even when you are staying home for the weekend.  What better time to catch up on some reading.  Especially when, like in the southeast right now, there are days where the winds swirl and the rain pours down outside.  Hurricane Bonnie, to you I say, read and be merry!

Here is a list of my summertime reading list.  A few books that feel timely for the time of year, summer season, and just plain inspiration for people contemplating life amid summer breezes or hurricane winds.  The following books are some good summertime reads.  Some because they are timely with cinematic re-creations coming out (eat, pray, love), some because they discuss the way we eat and our natural world (animal, vegetable, miracle), some because they reflect on how we care for ourselves and how we view our bodies (women, food, and god), and some just because they are fun, insightful, clever, inspirational, empowering, dreamy or invoke the feeling of childhood (anne of green gables).  And some just because they remind me of summer intensives in undergrad as a literature major (ahem, Jane Austen anyone?).

10 SUMMERTIME LITERARY INSPIRATIONS:

1.  Eat, Pray, Love.  by Elizabeth Gilbert 
2.  Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth
3. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
4.  Words That Matter by Oprah Magazine
5. The Bitch In the House by 26 women
6.  Mansfield Park by Jane Austen  
7. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery  
8.  Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by Daniel Amen  
9.  Official Book Club Selection by Kathy Griffin  

10.  Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser

“Tomorrow’s another day. And I’m thirsty anyway. So bring on the rain.” “Bring On the Rain”  as sung by Jo Dee Messina

As Jo Dee says, “A single battle lost but not the war, cause’ tomorrow’s another day, and I’m thirsty anyway, so bring on the rain.”  That song came on the other day as I was driving home, coming to a place where I realized that feeling lost is also a place.  In that place there is something to learn.  And when you learn it you are given the secret to not only learn to withstand but embrace the rain that life brings.  To know that tomorrow is another day and I was made, with resilience, and perseverance, to deal with the storms and learn the lessons in the torrent.

So, bring on the rain.  Timely, it seems, as the tropics are headed into what is estimated to be one of the worst hurricane seasons in a while and sitting on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean I am going to have to learn to weather the literal storms as well as the metaphoric.  And the cosmos seem primed to pummel me with a little of both.

What are we meant to learn from the rain and storms of life?  Almost everything.  We can enjoy calm seas, clear skies, and find gratitude in sunlight but we learn our greatest lessons about ourselves, our own capacity to be resilient and change, and our strengths/weaknesses and “stuck points” in the storms.  The storms of life tell us everything about who we are and where we are in our lives.

Faith and having a spiritually centered core is our own belief that we will persevere and our ability to be open to learn what we need to from the storms–even, and especially, when it is what we least want to learn.

My largest growing pains through my current uncertainty has been learning my own lessons despite my resistance to what I have learned.  Despite not wanting to hear, and in some ways not wanting to grow, the way I need to grow.  To know that “not now” doesn’t mean “not ever” and learning that I don’t have to live life at a sprint to get where I am going.  To learn that as much as I remind others to breathe in life I need to balance that with equal time for my own room to breathe.

What have you been avoiding in your own life {if anything}?  What storms have you had?  What did you learn from the rain?  Can you find a way to embrace the rain rather than flee from the stormy weather?  Consider dancing in the rain and finding yourself pulling yourself into the moment during life’s growing pains?  There is so much we can learn from the storms and we learn it faster when we embrace rather than struggle amid the drops falling down on our head.  It often seems that when we struggle to get out of the storm before it’s over we miss the lesson we need to learn and it just comes back two times stronger and more ferocious.  God, the cosmos, or whatever you call the nature of existence, seems bent on us learning and growing; it becomes more insistent the more we ignore.  The storms become more ferocious the more we run.

I think I shall take a breath.  I think I will stand in the rain.  I think I will stop living life at a sprint and see what happens when I stand still and embrace the warm drops of a summer storm.

Et tu?

You may have noticed the website/blog makeover that has been going on.  Today, Sunday, begins the launch of the new posting schedule {sunday’s post to follow later today} of THE MY EMBODIMENT BLOG.  I am very excited about the blog and website makeover and the integration of EMBODY MENTAL HEALTH {website:www.embodymentalhealth.com} & MY EMBODIMENT {blog:www.myembodiment.com}.

The official transfer of the website address will come later this week but all roads {virtually speaking} will lead to here when the address is switched so that whatever address you are used to using to find me & my work will take you here!

Om, Welcome, and enjoy exploring the many pages of this newly integrated site.  Some of the pages {including the products pages} will be updating with content soon.

• Check out the INTERVIEWS PAGE to explore the full bios & links to all the interviews so far in the BLOG’s INTERVIEW SERIES!
• Check out the RESOURCES PAGE for all of the Link Love and Sites to Visit!
• Get in touch to take part in an inspiring INTERVIEW,  write a GUEST POST, discuss COLLABORATIONS, or with any QUESTIONS via my CONTACT PAGE.

Happy Summer.  New Look.  Many Exciting Changes. Same Passionate Mission.

{Sundays}   Spirituality Sunday

{Mondays}   Mental Health Monday

{Tuesdays}   Creativity Tuesday

{Wednesdays}   Animals & Healing Wednesday

{Thursdays}    Yogically Thursday

{Fridays}    The 10 {List} Friday

{Saturdays}    Room To Breathe Saturday