Ok, I admit I've been off of here for what seems like forever! Luckily, sticking to a do-only-what-you-need-to-do basis has finally pushed me on track school, fitness, and sort of nutrition wise, but, can you blame me? It's almost halloween! The candy's EVERYWHERE! I have to defend myself you know.
Last night I went for my first official jog, and at first I was despising my self for ever setting that alarm. (Will explain later.) After I pressed the play button on my ipod though and actually started to jog I remembered just why I had been so into jogging for about a year and a half in high school. I can't remember what stopped eventually stopped me but, goodness gracious, I am hella glad I started again. I covered a distance of about 1.5 miles walking and jogging, because, well, I'm not all bad-ass, just mostly bad-ass. Luckily just as I made it a few yards from the door I saw my dad who was walking our youngest dog Huck. We seamlessly traded off his leash just as I passed him, catching Huck by complete surprise! Poor guy, he kept looking back the whole way for Dad! When we got home he was so good and patiently sat while I got his pinch collar off but the second he was out of it he sprinted for the sliding glass door to make sure Dad was there. So cute. He's such an adorable little punk. <3 <3
Anyways, what finally got me on track is what gets me on track almost every semester except this semester I had to take it one step further. Normally I make a study and exercise schedule for everyday of the week and am pretty good at sticking to it, but this semester because of a larger work load I set an alarm to remind me of the beginning time for each activity. I felt kind of embarrassed about it at first and I admit that my id is still fighting with the idea of doing anything but sleep, eat, and be entertained, but my super-ego really gets an extra kick out of these alarms! :D If I don't meet an alarm or if I ignore an alarm I end up feeling entirely guilty, woo manipulation! As a result my exercise schedule has changed to better fit my actual schedule and budget.
To make my schedule work I have to wake up at 5 which I've succeeded at! A MAJOR feat for me. I had to kick myself in the ass to get there though. For some reason, despite that I know this about myself, I've been refusing to set the three alarms I know I need. You see, for me to actually develop a waking habit different from my normal one I need to set three alarms. For 5 o' clock I had to set my first alarm at 4 o' clock, because the first one is always the one I hate the most and is always the one I choose to ignore; my second alarm is set at 4:30 so that I don't get a chance to actually fall back asleep, after that alarm goes off I know I won't be able to fall asleep but I know I'm going to try anyways or I'm gonna lay in bed with the excuse that "my cat will get cold!" and accidentally doze off; the third alarm at 5 is my no-turning-back alarm, because there are no more alarms after that and I know if I accidentally fall asleep I'll be in BIG trouble.
At five I get out of bed and do pilates/ core strengthening exercises and sometimes I throw some upper body work outs and yoga in there as well. Every other evening I'm planning to jog what use to be my regular route, which I'm proud to say started yesterday. :)
For my foodie portion of this blog I'm gonna tell you about all the foods I've made this week! On saturday, or maybe it was friday... or sunday?? I think it was Sunday, I made spaghetti with ground turkey meat sauce and it was DELICIOUS! I normally don't like anything made with ground turkey but I suppose the up-side of cooking your own food is that you can make what you don't like taste the way you like. I'll get around to posting that recipe. I'm also hoping that my blogs will soon contain pictures! I just have to master food photography and we'll be in da' business. :) I started to make cinnamon sugar beignets on Saturday only to finish Sunday morning because of a wedding I went to that evening so maybe I'll share that recipe with you as well. Even more exciting than all of this is what I have going on tomorrow though! Halloween Party! Meaning Halloween themed food! I found a recipe for marbled bundt cake that employs all my favorite colours of Halloween, and am planning to make moist honey cupcakes or maybe sugar cookies as well because I really really really want to use my sprinkle stencils! >.< I'm also in charge of making spaghetti sauce for cheese and portobello mushrooms. Yummmm. Oh, and I almost forgot my most exciting inventions for tomorrow. I bought a very cheap drink dispenser from World Market which I'm planning to fill with cranberry juice and (drum roll please!) dry ice! <3 I'm so excited about how this will make the buffet table look! I was also thinking of buying some of their pop-top coloured glass bottles for the soda or whatever else but I thought it might have been a little over the top if I did so, reluctantly, I left them there.
On a completely separate note from any of this, just as I almost reached home this afternoon the most beautiful feather I'd ever seen floated down right in front of my car! I quickly got home and parked just so I could run back to pick it up. :) I feel so blessed to have found this feather! I feel completely unblessed to have this fly invading my space the way it is though. It's been in here bothering me for two whole days! If it were like any normal fly I wouldn't be annoyed but it's running into my face and landing all over me! Why can't it just leave me alone!? Not only that, but it's silent-flyer up until it runs into me. Jerk fly, I'll meditate on you later but I'm letting the world know that I think you're a jerk anyways because no matter what lesson I learn from you you still annoy the hell out of me.
Showing posts with label spiritual. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spiritual. Show all posts
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Cleansing
There are many methods of cleansing and I suggest you do a lot of research and small scale experimentation before you give up and choose to not cleanse at all. A general trend in cleansing is to ground yourself, which I find really important. I use a tree grounding technique where I imagine myself with roots pulling energy up from the earth as well as leaves that send energy back down. Another trend that I've noticed is the use of four elements, however I prefer to use five. Five?! That's right, not a lot of people think about the fifth element and it has many names that it goes by: akasha, essence, soul, life energy, etc. I prefer to call the fifth element either akasha or essence. :) It's pretty easy to work with essence since it's what makes everything up. For me the point of grounding is to allow myself to work from my essence with my environment instead of getting carried away by the other elements or my environment, which happens a lot in cooking. >_< I'll go ahead and explain how I ground and cleanse as long as you remember that this is something that I came up with through trial and error for myself. Don't feel like you have to do it my way, figure out what's best for you!
To ground I stand in a quiet place with natural lighting in comfortable clothes. I place my feet shoulder width apart, move my arms a few inches away from my body and face my palms forward. The tricky part for me is to slow my breathing and to keep it slow, as well as breathing deeply but not deep enough for me to get all dizzy and pass out! Relax your shoulders and focus on your spine. Imagine it as the core of your trunk, and imagine your trunk being your abdomen and legs. Move your awareness down until you reach your roots, which I assume are at different places for everybody. My roots start somewhere around my knees and when I reach them I push the air in my chest out as I push my energy down through my roots. I imagine the cool earth around my roots, the soil, water and rocks that make it up becoming aware of me. Push your energy only as far as is comfortable for you, I say this because when I push my energy too far I become the opposite of grounded and have trouble keeping my balance. If you could imagine what a plant feels when it's uprooted then you could imagine exactly what it feels like to push your energy to far. Once you've reached your comfort level going down breath in bringing your awareness back up through your roots, trunk, and up through your shoulders into your branches. The energy following your awareness back up trough your body will feel different than the energy you send down which may seem a little sketchy but once you experience it you'll understand that it's not. Then I send the energy taken from my leaves down into the earth.
The energy I draw up from the earth helps me expand my awareness through my branches growing while staying firmly in place through my roots and remembering who I am opposed to the world around me through my trunk. I usually stop when I feel, well for a lack of better words grounded and purified. grounding like this everyday helps remove spiritual baggage.
Some people use meditation to remove emotional baggage, but what I do is write. Mostly I write poetry but I write a lot of journal entries too! Free writing is how I reflect and sometimes when I'm really mad at someone or about something I write a letter to it/them. Then I just sit that letter out where I can see it everyday and let my emotions slowly settle. When I've settled down I draw a red X at the top of the paper and write a new letter apologizing and explaining that I'm sending those emotions away from me to the light. I love free writing. ^^ It's awesome! Other forms of cleansing include bathing, and meditation.
To cleanse and to clean a room are two different things, but I can't have one without the other. Unclean places always feel frustrated and absent minded to me. :/ So, before I even start cleansing I spend time decluttering. When I cleanse I light my sandalwood-rose incense because that's just a scent that I can really relate to. For me, incense is both fire and air, but from a lot of what I've read incense is usually considered strictly air, but whatever, magick is about doing what feels right to you. :) After that I take my salt water and spray salt water everywhere! I think that's my most favorite part, haha. Oh, I also try to have only two opening's in the room. For instance if I was cleansing my room I'd have a door and a window or two windows open because then you can start at one end of the room, and kind of shuffle uneeded stuff through the window. Don't be rude about it though! Remember your manners when handling energy and stuff 'cause it remembers and can come back to bite you in the ass. :P I'll let you guys figure out how to be nice though.
I think that's about it, grounding, emotional, spiritual, and physical cleansing. Sounds about right. Now ya'll come back now you here? Haha, couldn't help myself, my country side needs to romp sometimes. Bye bye now! :)
To ground I stand in a quiet place with natural lighting in comfortable clothes. I place my feet shoulder width apart, move my arms a few inches away from my body and face my palms forward. The tricky part for me is to slow my breathing and to keep it slow, as well as breathing deeply but not deep enough for me to get all dizzy and pass out! Relax your shoulders and focus on your spine. Imagine it as the core of your trunk, and imagine your trunk being your abdomen and legs. Move your awareness down until you reach your roots, which I assume are at different places for everybody. My roots start somewhere around my knees and when I reach them I push the air in my chest out as I push my energy down through my roots. I imagine the cool earth around my roots, the soil, water and rocks that make it up becoming aware of me. Push your energy only as far as is comfortable for you, I say this because when I push my energy too far I become the opposite of grounded and have trouble keeping my balance. If you could imagine what a plant feels when it's uprooted then you could imagine exactly what it feels like to push your energy to far. Once you've reached your comfort level going down breath in bringing your awareness back up through your roots, trunk, and up through your shoulders into your branches. The energy following your awareness back up trough your body will feel different than the energy you send down which may seem a little sketchy but once you experience it you'll understand that it's not. Then I send the energy taken from my leaves down into the earth.
The energy I draw up from the earth helps me expand my awareness through my branches growing while staying firmly in place through my roots and remembering who I am opposed to the world around me through my trunk. I usually stop when I feel, well for a lack of better words grounded and purified. grounding like this everyday helps remove spiritual baggage.
Some people use meditation to remove emotional baggage, but what I do is write. Mostly I write poetry but I write a lot of journal entries too! Free writing is how I reflect and sometimes when I'm really mad at someone or about something I write a letter to it/them. Then I just sit that letter out where I can see it everyday and let my emotions slowly settle. When I've settled down I draw a red X at the top of the paper and write a new letter apologizing and explaining that I'm sending those emotions away from me to the light. I love free writing. ^^ It's awesome! Other forms of cleansing include bathing, and meditation.
To cleanse and to clean a room are two different things, but I can't have one without the other. Unclean places always feel frustrated and absent minded to me. :/ So, before I even start cleansing I spend time decluttering. When I cleanse I light my sandalwood-rose incense because that's just a scent that I can really relate to. For me, incense is both fire and air, but from a lot of what I've read incense is usually considered strictly air, but whatever, magick is about doing what feels right to you. :) After that I take my salt water and spray salt water everywhere! I think that's my most favorite part, haha. Oh, I also try to have only two opening's in the room. For instance if I was cleansing my room I'd have a door and a window or two windows open because then you can start at one end of the room, and kind of shuffle uneeded stuff through the window. Don't be rude about it though! Remember your manners when handling energy and stuff 'cause it remembers and can come back to bite you in the ass. :P I'll let you guys figure out how to be nice though.
I think that's about it, grounding, emotional, spiritual, and physical cleansing. Sounds about right. Now ya'll come back now you here? Haha, couldn't help myself, my country side needs to romp sometimes. Bye bye now! :)
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