BE A DREAMER
Greetings Friends!
January 1, 2011 Yesterday I posted my last blog of 2010. I have included it at the bottom of this final newsletter of the year in hopes it inspires your own dreams. And really that is my invitation to you: "dream a dream with me." Time on the mat helps us stay connected to what inspires us. So here are some of my favorite quotes from a book given to me by my sweet friend Anne titled Dream by Susan Bosak. May they connect you to spirit so you can awaken your greatest dreams ever in 2011!
Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia
"Whoever would one day learn to fly must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying." - Nietzsche
"The Possible's slow fuse is lit by the Imagination." - Emily Dickinson
"A hundred million miracles are happening every day." - Oscar Hammerstein
"The difficulty in life is the choice." - George Moore
"Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." -Langston Hughes
"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity." - Marie Curie
New Years Day Schedule:
5am-7am Sadhana Kundalini (FREE)
10am Level 1 with Wendy
11:30am Level 1-2 with Wendy
1:30pm Restorative Yoga with Samantha
PS - Join me January 14-15 Living Your Yoga Workshops
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December 31, 2010 Blog by Silvia Mordini: Adventure, Remembrance, Victory!
As I reflect on this past year, which was one of intense personal change one of the things I am most proud of is making a pilgrimage to Moab, Utah twice. Both times to help nourish my spirit and connect to the quiet sense of adventure that exists for all that visit Moab. For a while I forgot what it was like to make adventure. This was the year I remembered again.
And that is really at the heart of yoga. This practice helps us remember to remember. We all sometimes experience spiritual amnesia. Getting on the mat is that reminder of celebrating life and enjoying this time in this body on this earth right now.
Edward Abbey writes in one of my favorite books about Moab titled Desert Solitaire "Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."
I will never again put my heart in a safe deposit box, I'd rather take chances in love, in life, in traveling and even in my poses so I can be a more active participant in driving my best life forward rather than sitting in the backseat waiting for it to happen. I will until my last breath run and cycle and yoga and explore and discover the small victories that exist in taking pleasure in life! And I hope if you have learned anything from your yoga that you will find this true for yourself as well. Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Happy New Year, Silvia
PS Join me on an adventure with Alchemy Tours www.alchemytours.com or visit my website to keep up with upcoming retreats www.silviamordini.com
HUGGING AND INTENTION
December 10, 2010. As you breath and enjoy this holiday season make time to set an expectation for your life this next year. Are you on the right path so far? And whatever you decide just know we are all evolving in the direction of happiness. It is our right. Freedom and the pursuit of happiness is your destiny! It is like what’s written in the Alchemist,“Making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.” And when you need time to reflect on where you’ve been and where you want to go get on the mat where you’ll always discover you have the power, the heart and the energy to achieve anything you want!
This is what we mean by hugging in. This practice of yoga helps us practice strengthening our connection to what we want and who we really are as authentic human beings. And just like a hug between two people takes trust, so does meeting yourself and making the healthy decisions that will propel your life forward. Love yourself, love the day, love your life! Silvia
Visit my website to learn more about my retreats classes and workshops www.silviamordini.com www.alchemytours.com
THERE IS NO FAKING IT
November 25, 2010.
Beautiful Namaste Friends,
I learned early on in my yoga practice that you have to decide whether you want to go about faking your life or whether you really want to live Your life FULL BLAST. A Yoga teacher friend said to me "REMEMBER TO HOLD THIS TRUTH: YOU CAN NOT FAKE PRANA, FAUX PRANA IS VANITY WHICH LEADS TO INSANITY."
Either you are breathing for real with total consciousness, or you are trying to fake it, doing your life (even your breath) based on what it looks like to other people. So look for all the ways you are faking your life: do you dress differently from how you want to; do you fake your talk; do you fake the music you tell people you like; do you fake your political opinions; do you fake your love, in yoga class do you fake savasana (final relaxation)? I can tell you from personal experience that it's not worth it. Pretending to live life will lead to insanity because it is not natural. Remember you can only ever be the 2nd best at trying to be someone else; you are always #1 being YOU.
Either you are kind, loving, real or you're not. You can't fake it. So today stop faking it with your friends, family, colleagues. And you'll find your truth. Folks ask me "how can you do that pose" like the one pictured above and I tell them the answer is I'm just being me full hearted, open and real and then all of the poses are yours to experience as you. The poses are like truth serum, the body never fakes it. The heart always knows!
Love yourself, love your day, love your life, Silvia
**For active life coaching join me and Alchemy Tours on retreat. Make the change to be YOU in 2011, no more waiting, no more faking it. Visit www.alchemytours.com or my personal website www.silviamordini.com
FEARING NOTHING DURGA BABY!
NOVEMBER 20, 2009: I know this much, Life is a celebration and it is our responsibility to enjoy it to its fullest! But I also know to enjoy life you must renounce your fear and anxiety. I spent a good portion of time being terribly afraid (afraid of not being perfect, afraid of what others might think, afraid of failing, afraid someone I loved would leave me if I didn’t do my life right according to them, afraid perhaps of really being fully happy, afraid of being myself). I don’t want that for you. I really don’t. Life is happening right now so stop waiting, stop wasting time, stop being afraid of living it on your terms because life is already here.
Next month I am learning how to surf. I have been doing my homework, reading up, talking to everyone I know that has surfed, watching DVD’s. It both energizes me and sometimes I get a little nervous. However because I feel free in my choices I am not frightened. In February I went skiing for the first time in ages and here at the end of the year I am again in water…why not? These are my soft spots. (Stay tuned next I go rock climbing!)
Rinpoche talked about how we all have a soft spot and that fear and fear like responses such as worry or resentment occur because we are trying to cover up that soft spot. We tend to hurry past pain but this hurrying causes more tension instead of healing. If we spend more time with what we fear we can look into that pain and release some of the tension. We practice vinyasa flow and enjoy the repetition to feel relationship between poses, we feel power of flow, becoming more confident, growing more fearless. Use this to heal and release fear.
When folks ask me how did I get past a way of fearful living I tell them I practiced a ton of yoga. I came to the mat, going upside down, trying holding a pose into sensation like bending my knee deeper in Warriors or balancing on one leg and by facing me fear on the mat I then was able to recognize that fear off the mat and do something about it. The Buddha says, if a person is struck by an arrow and is in a lot of pain there is that but what if a 2nd arrow hit the person in the same spot the pain would be 100 times more intense because he/she was already wounded. If you recognize pain and fear or worry then you can help STOP another arrow of fear or worry hitting you in that same spot.
The time on the mat helps me to prevent the 2nd arrow. I have slowly grown more confident and now I “practice with elegance and openness so as to open the body in a resplendent expression of my hearts inner luminosity.” You see you guys when we cultivate fearlessness we experience our hearts as more open. I also repeat this mantra to myself
I AM FREE
I AM NOT FRIGHTENED
I AM NOT HUMILITATED BY GUILT OR WORRY
I AM IN LOVE WITH THE MY LIFE!
So may we use today to notice our lives right now, facing them as they are, learning how to stop avoiding ourselves but instead BEING OURSELVES. This may be the most courageous challenge we can possible accept. Free yourself, be your own knight in shining armor. You need not be afraid of anything. Love and light, Silvia
THE HARDEST YOGA: BEING YOURSELF
JANUARY 7TH, 2009: The hardest pose we do is being ourselves. So we started practice with partner shoulder openers but swapped out 3-4 times so we could get the feeling of as Jon Kabat Zinn says, “Wherever you go, there you are.” We had to be nothing but ourselves with each different partner. So right now as you read this, close your eyes and turn inside. Breath in a way that feels like you today. Begin to see how during this week you have been true to yourself, reflect on how many times you have chosen to act in a way that serves you fully.
In the Bhagavad Ghita, Chapter 3 it talks about being AUTHENTIC: “It is better to fail at yourself than it is to succeed at being someone else.” It is essential to our health and well-being not to live our lives according to the outline demanded by other people (even those that love us) but to make our OWN opinion the most important. I know this. I lived for a long time worried more about what other people thought, what looked good, how to appear successful than actually living my own life. Now I lost time but I don’t want you to. When you come to the mat, whatever you are feeling as Benjamin Disraeli says, “Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth. “
Own your truth, embrace your funkiness, fly your freak flag this year! We have been given the gift of life the only real tragedy would be not to life in a way that enhances our spirit or stays true to our dreams. Take to heart the words of William Shakespeare who wrote: “Learning to trust ourselves is a worthy practice, the practice of authenticity. This is the work of aligning the standards we have for ourselves with our deepest passions and dreams. It’s the work of making promises to ourselves and keeping them. It’s the work of knowing who we are without judgment.”
Ultimately, the more each of us practices being ourselves the more we give permission to everyone else to just be themselves too. So I make that promise to you, I will be me more than ever before and I hope that let’s each of you know that it’s more than ok for you to show up and just BE YOU! With hands up in the air, JAI! Love, Silvia