A 9-minute meditation. You've got time for this one! The seasons are shifting, at least they seem to be here in Oregon. We've swung from hot hot days to some welcomed coolness. But, wait, is summer over? I’m not quite ready for that to be true!

This week’s meditation is an effort in trust; resting in the goodness of life itself. I invite us to rest in our body and allow abundance to enter our heart and mind. I lead us in a visualization of an abundant garden filled with fruit ripe on the vine and ready for our picking. We end with gratitude for all those parts of our lives that are blossoming. Enjoy!

I take inspiration for this visualization from Alana Fairchild. If you haven’t ever seen Alana’s work, she connects prayers and meditations with beautiful artwork.

I'm entitling this post "Momma Meditation" because in the background you will hear a bit of my rowdy kids and the dog next door barking. Instead of trying to escape and push away the messiness of our lives, let's embrace the chaos and breath through all of it.

Countless traditions throughout time and space have seen the human body as a point of intersection between heaven and earth. In this meditation, I guide you to fill your human body up with Earth and Sky Energy. I end with some of my favorite lines from Alana Fairchild. She writes “May my energy field grow to meet the needs of my Soul light. May I be strong and merciful, powerful and wise in equal measure, may I be loving and potent with temperance and peaceful intention.”

In this meditation, we gently come into the present moment and ground off negativity, mental formations, old programming and anything else that our energetic body may be holding onto. From there we chosoe our focus: our anchor for meditation. I invite you to focus on the sounds entering your ears, without actively trying to identify or label them, simply allowing the vibrations to reach your ears. Our intent with meditation is to return again and again to the present moment, for it is in the remembering that we come home.

My intuitive teacher, Rev. Liliana Barzola, taught me to call my energy back into “present time” and “reset at my love and affinity for myself.” What a lovely practice and one which allows you to have your energy with you now. Often, we leave our energy scattered around—with people, places—anywhere our thoughts go, so flows our energy. In this meditation, I will guide you to ground, reset in present time, and love your sweet self. Enjoy.

A long time ago a meditation teacher explained the purpose of meditation to me in this way: The world is full of sharp, pokey thorns and bumps that hurt when you step on them. Instead trying to wrap a blanket over all of those bumps or side-stepping every thorn, we meditate. Meditation is like donning a pair of rubber boots; we buffer ourselves from life’s inevitable rocky terrain. I like to think of these boots as part of my superhero outfit.

This week’s meditation is an exploration of our energetic system, both our chakras and our aura. We flow through each chakra (energetic center), acknowledging what harmony and balance would feel like at each. From there we gently move to our aura, the energetic skin which surrounds our body, building each layer for full energetic immunity and protection.

If you prefer a more standard mindfulness meditation, I recommend a great beginner meditation I offered a few weeks ago.

In our meditation this week, I invite you to anchor into the body, ground off negativity, and experience the field of loving kindness or loving awareness. May you be well.

This week I was challenged by anxiety. For me, the things on my plate were finishing up school, preparing for a road trip, picking all the cherries off my parents’ tree, and finding time for a budding relationship. It was a lot to cram into a week, and I found myself getting off balance. When the anxiety crept in, I noticed it and named it. Each time it arose, I sat on my cushion and tried to be present with it. It was uncomfortable. What I found to remedy my worried heart was to cultivate gratitude; shifting my mind from grasping to already having.

In this meditation, I guide us to focus on an anchor (or home base) for our meditation. From there, we ground and experience the body. We invite gratitude into our heart and those elements of our lives that are working, that bring us joy, that allow us to trust into the goodness of life itself. Enjoy!

This week, I guide us in allowing the world to flow around us, while we remain steady and solid, like a statue who remains even through the harshest weather. We allow ourselves to be rooted and grounded, knowing our truth and our integrity can’t be taken from us.

I refer to a beautiful exercise by Thich Nhat Hanh called the “four pebbles meditation”. In this meditation, he encourages us to embody attributes of four things in nature: the freshness of a flower, feeling solid like a mountain, the calmness of still water, and feeling the freedom of space. The image below includes the meditation sentences if you’d like to practice with his words on your own.

This week's meditation is a guided inquiry focusing on judgement. Do you ever find yourself in the trap of judging someone in the same way over and over again? I think this happens for many of us in long-term relationships. We continue to see the irritating things about our friends and family to the detriment of true perception. For whatever reason, at the end of the meditation, I decided to break into song--a beautiful Buddhist song, so go figure. I wasn't expecting that, either!

This weekend at the Trout Lake Abbey, we celebrated the birth, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha. It was wonderful to be able to honor the Buddha--someone who has guided so many people along a path of freedom. What was even more magical for me personally was having my two little boys with me there. They, of course, caused a bit of chaos (falling into the irrigation ditch!), but they also blessed the space with their goodness.

Enjoy this 15-minute meditation. I gently guide you through an abbreviated body scan, simple grounding technique, and a meditation practice focused your home-base or anchor. Come into your body and the enjoy the simple pleasure of being present. This is a great meditation for beginners.

Do you ever wish you could push your energetic reset button? I read a fascinating book a few years ago called: “Body of Health, The New Science of Intuition Medicine” by Francesca McCarty. Reading and studying this book changed my life. In the book, Dr. McCartney describes the energetic body in great detail and encourages each of us to learn our own energetic system. Believe it or not, we’re able to sense into and determine how open/closed and balanced/unbalanced our energetic centers (chakras) are. Once we’re aware of what’s going on, we can reset to health.

I invite you to explore your energetic body with this meditation. If the information resonates, consider working with a meditation like this regularly to attune yourself to your energetic health. It’s powerful magic.

I don’t think I’ve shared this with many of you, but I am in a mindfulness teacher certification program. This month’s teachings were about mindfulness of the body and breath, so I offer this meditation to you in that spirit. I hope you feel deep relaxation and ease. Be well, my friends.

P.S. I did not take this photo, but I got to spend a few glorious hours deep in the forest this week, and I was in heaven. I hope this photo inspires you to get outside.

This meditation takes you through a sequence of grounding off negativity, bringing in Earth energy, bringing down Sky energy, and resting in your heart. Enjoy!