mercury retrograde in Virgo
Mercury retrograde is in Virgo. Time to discern between your analytical brain and your intuition. If you are overly critical and a perfectionist, this one could turn your world to shreds. Go with opportunities to shake out the old routine and expect it to be challenged: people not behaving how you would want them to, unexpected messes, more traffic, your schedule shifting unexpectedly. This is a maintenance period for old problems to surface so they can be solved and healed. Our lives don’t have to be ruined in the 3 week cycle. Retrogrades can be empowering. It’s a training in detachment, going with the flow, finding your own space of quite, depending less on others and surrendering to planetary cycles. Come October we will all be laughing, telling stories of how crazy September was, and moving easily forward on our path ….
Free Low Back Workshop! This Sunday
Yoga for a Healthy Happy Lower Back
July 25th ~ Sports Club LA, 2-4pm
Free to members and non-members!
Understand the elements that lead to back pain and enjoy simple yet powerful techniques that will lead you to a happy, healthy lower back.
Sports club LA is doing a summer yoga workshop series and it’s exciting that non-members can come and enjoy the club and take the workshop.
Please bring friends who maybe have back pain and have been afraid to try yoga. This is an all levels healing experience.
I am really excited to share this workshop with you, and I hope to see a lot of you there!
Love,
e
Sports Club LA 2-4pm
1835 Sepulveda Boulevard (Between Santa Monica and Olympic Boulevard)
Los Angeles, CA 90025
310-473-1447
Tips for Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies
- softened butter is not melted butter. Butter should hold it’s shape, but be mushy, not a pool of oil. If you’re organized, put it out on the counter several hours before or overnight
- let your flour and salt get to know each other before added to the mix. They like to bond. Mix them together as your first step and let then hang it out.
-Soak your eggs in a bath of warm water for 3-5 minutes before adding them. Room temp eggs mix better with sugar and butter.
- Add 1sp of hot water to 1tsp of Baking soda. Add that paste to the mix right before the flour joins.
- don’t over mix
-refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, to 24 hours before baking. It helps the gluten settle and gives a more professional cookie. If the dough is too warm, cookies will spread into each other and make a big runny mess.
YUM!!!
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda mixed into 1 tsp hot water
2 cups chocolate chips
mix flour and salt. let sit. beat (i use a stand mixer) butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla. Add baking soda paste. add flour mix. and chocolate chips. mix until it’s an even colored dough. put in fridge until you can’t wait anymore and then bake.
Bake at 350 till you smell them and your nose says to your belly..i need to eat that. maybe like 8-11 minutes.
blogstipated / breath
I got a little blogstipaed. Backed up. I blogged several times a day in my head. Never made it out shoot. It’s a curious thing about Creativity, and it’s evil sidekick Laziness and how the two battle the art of expression.
What I’m mostly into these days is breathing.
Unlocking the ribs is like unlocking our full potential. And just like potential, It’s a feeling that never ends. There will always be a little bit more space to be found, a little bit more of ourselves to be explored. In fact, I heard today from a wise man Jose Stevens, www.thepowerpath.com, that the negative counterpart of the ribs is arrogance. When we feel like we know everything there is a contraction that occurs that limits our full range, and it can be seen in the ribs themselves. A tight, shortened, upper resperitory breath. It is rare to see people who breath into their back body; middle/lower back, kidney region. Babies do it, animals do it. Yogis do it. Singers do it. But your average texting/rushing/planning/consuming/accelerating Los Angeleno does not.
And, as a culture, I would say: We’re pretty full of ourselves. We kinda have to be in a way. To be sucessfull and move forward at this rapid pace. There is rarely time in the rush of our lives to drop down into the earth of our breath and explore that innocent state of the unknown.
Imagine if every office meeting began with 5 minutes of deep breathing? A moment of suspended time when everyone in the room dropped their arrogance. The breath flowed into the pit of the belly tapping into unknown potential of the intuition. The heart muscle slowed it pace, surrendering feelings of fear around being judged. The ribs reached wide into new possibilities. The lungs were inspired and free. And from that place, action was taken.
It’s why yoga science works. Freeing the breath, then taking physical action. It’s teaching us something about how to be more humble, wise, and full of possibilities.
Of course it doesn’t happen automatically.
The person who rushes to class, gets there late, pushes people out of their way to get their spot, leaves their cell phone on, overextends and forces their poses, leaves during savasana, slams the door and cuts you off in the parking lot with their Prius that has a Namaste sticker on it, does not get it. Life is all about your intention.
These days I’m breathing a little slower, wider, deeper. I held my breath a little around blogging. Got caught up in my own brilliance, took it too seriously, and the whole thing froze. So from my ribs, to my fingertips, I’m stretching wider, and watching what shows up.
10 Predictions for 10 years to come
- the oil spill will be regarded like 911. an awful turn of history that changed our lives forever
- more people will do yoga
- yoga will be regulated and billed to insurance (yet I will resist this, and refuse to convert)
- cursive writing will be phasing out
- more people will grow their own food
- restaurant menus will be electronic
- the phone book goes extinct
- travel becomes more limited
- shamans replacing doctors in guidance towards well being
- genetically modified foods are labeled in this country
Strength to Change
In yoga, a spinal twist is about creating change. Changing the positioning of the vertebrae from their resting place to something new. Changing the spacial relationship between the pelvic girdle and the shoulder girdle. In order to do this, there must be a lot of strength in the core and spinal muscles. We all have the ways in which we twist with ease. And we can do the same twist over and over, for years, without making any difference. The weak muscles get weaker, we become even more tight and restricted. In order to break this, we have to power up a tremendous amount of strength, and make it move.
Our lives function in pretty much the same way.
We are stuck, restricted, blocked, tired. We want to change, but we keep repeating the same moves; same relationships, same bad luck, same poor choices.
To change, we need strength from our core. It takes a lot of that core chi sometimes to really move ourselves out of the darkness. Our patterns are deeply ingrained in us. Often we have no clue what we are doing wrong, we just know we feel bad and our lives are not flowing well.
The good news is: we can build strength. Just like pumping weights to contract and develop a larger bicep, we can develop ourselves into stronger individuals.
Here are the 5 ingredients to building personal strength.
1. Disciplined awareness practice: yoga, meditation, prayer, and/or martial arts.
2. Diet, Nutrition
3. Positive thinking
4. Supportive friends
5. Guidance from a wiser source; Therapist, Rabbi, Shaman, ect.
1. A disciplined awareness practice helps us to SEE OURSELVES. To step outside of the box we live in and gain insight. It gives us the chance to push the “STOP” button so we can consciously take action from that aware place, as opposed to mindless actions that get us in trouble time and time again.
2. Diet is everything. We can’t eat a bunch of sugar, fried food, processed food and expect our systems to feel good. Our moods, our thoughts, our emotions are all being affected by what we put in our bellies. If you start your day with a pot of coffee, then don’t eat until 4pm then don’t expect to be in that great of a mood. If you are searching for clarity on why your life sucks, but you eat foods that bloat and constipate you and you only have a poop every three days, you are NOT going to get your brain clear until you get your bowels clear. I could go on and on about this… you get the point. See a nutritionist if you have no clue where to start. www.elissgoodman.com, she’s the best.
3. Your brain can be your biggest ally or your worst enemy. It’s just one big computer that needs some programing to function in a positive way. Give your brain a new download with a positive mantra. It need not be some long hindu chant. It can be ” I’m ok. Everything in my life is perfect just the way it is” or ” I am healthy, I am strong”. Just hear yourself say this in your head, come back to it when you are feeling dark. Train your brain out of those negative loop cycles.
4. If you take the 5 people closest to you and mix together all of their most doninate characteristics, you will get a good refelection of who you are. If your close circle of 5 are all ass holes, all depressed, all broke, all addicts, all wounded, you need to do a little releasing. Pull away from those who are the biggest mirrors of the negative. As you work to better yourself, you will draw in more positive people. It is very hard to change for the better when everyone around us is stuck in a dark place.
5. We need someone that is higher in consciousness than us, to help guide this sometimes turbulent river of life. We need someone to reflect back to us our sub-conscious actions. This can be a therapist, a spiritual guide, or whomever that you deem suitable. We need help, we cannot navigate the river alone. We have behaviors and beliefs we are blind to. We need someone to help us to see ourselves beyond what we can envision on our own.
We all have certain areas where we are strong, areas of weakness. Take a moment to reflect on the list and see where you can stand to improve. Perhaps all of these areas could use a little tune up.
When we build up our core, we can move ourselves with great speed and intensity. We can transition from what is stagnant and toxic into what is fresh and purposeful. We can not only move our spine to release impure energies, we can shift our lives for the better.
Here’s to being STRONG and to use the summer for positive change. To twist away and ring out the old crud that no longer serves. To awaken our full potential!
"Many of the choices whether conscious or subconscious regarding creativity; what to create, what to destroy, what to change, what to keep; have provided for a new platform from which to operate. This is a very fertile time where whatever is seeded by conscious or unconscious intention will certainly grow and expand. The last full moon was an important time to become clear about these intentions as influences were already in place for their conception and growth. This month there is no holding the process back so it is imperative you focus on the positive aspects of what you wish to create."
Terace read my mind
Terace read my mind. Yesterday afternoon I had the thought of blogging. I am always writing in my head. Writing and Choreographing. Always. The thought of having a blog seemed neat, a place to express my insight on things: Blue-Green Algae + Healing torn tendons, Shamanism + Facebook, Oil Spills + Overdosing Pills. Things like that. Things about my cats. And a general place where I connect to you, hear your feedback, answers questions and share.
This morning Terrace Facebooked me. “Erin, do you have a blog? I want to be more a part of the conversation you are living with this world.”
Pretty much, that was the sign I needed. I am grateful to you, Terrace, for hovering over my brain, picking up this thought and delivering it back to me.
I love how we remind each other of who we are.
I love how simple life gets when you listen to the signs and just let it flow.
