Take some time for yourself. Meditation has been one of the most self empowering tools I've adopted. It was one of the first experiences
I had that helped me to realize how my outer world had become chaotic and was causing my health issues due to stress.
We have too much conditioning around us daily that sends the message that we're supposed to be out there making a difference in the world.
I learned the hard way that you can impact the world on a larger scale for your health if you work from the inside out.

Meditation has proven to be a powerful tool for women's health and can providing numerous benefits that extend far beyond relaxation.
Practicing meditation regularly offers a wide range of positive effects on your overall well-being. Most notably, meditation reduces stress levels which assists balancing hormonal fluctuations which further promotes emotional stability. This alone can have a profound impact on reversing the symptoms and signs of premature aging. Stress is a leading contributor to premature aging and dis ease.
Regular meditation has been shown to improve cognitive function and memory, protecting against degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
By incorporating meditation into their daily routine, you can enhance your physical and mental health, as well as ward off the signs of aging and degenerative diseases.

Meditation is a girl's best friend.

Meditation was my introduction to self care, and the beginning of the end to my chaotic life. I am so fortunate and grateful to have friends from many backgrounds. I had friends who had been meditators for some time and when they talked about it I admit, I just didn't get it.
When the chaos in my life started showing up as sleeplessness, anxiety, depression, weight gain and feeling lost, I started looking in new directions. I have a great doctor that I could always count on and she was great with offering up alternative options. When medications were discussed I knew it was time to start looking in new directions.
So I had tea with my friend Sherrill who I knew had been a meditator for some time.
I had no idea at the time, how life altering this was going to be.
Sherrill was friends with a high level meditation teacher from Australia that was coming to Canada to do a ten day silent retreat. I signed up without questioning and not knowing much about their process.
It sounded like a perfect solution, a peaceful, silent 10 day escape from my crazy life.
To get to that place of calm, quiet, inner peace, you have to shut off all the valves to the outside world.
Not an easy task, that was before everyone was carrying a cell phone too.
At the end of the ten days I went to my car to leave. I sat in the vehicle I hadn't driven in ten days and wondered what was wrong, it didn't feel like my car. I got out and looked around before getting back in and adjusting the seat.
My alignment had changed. It was a surreal drive home. It felt like I would never arrive. The traffick seemed to whiz by my cautious turtle pace, it was actually quite alarming. I pulled over twice to center and ground myself.
It seemed to take forever to finally get home.
With every passing day I could feel the peaceful centeredness leaving.
I realized how disconnected I had been from my body, from my identity.
I really had been in a race, the human race.
I no longer felt so lost and knew that this was a crossroads in my life. My next step was to do
what ever I could to cultivate this new found sensation in my body and my mind.

It Gets Easier...

I totally understand why people stay in struggle, It's where I was for over forty years.
There was a study done at the University of Waterloo showing that people will stay in the pattern of pain and struggle, even risking death, rather than change a habit or a pattern.


There are two reasons why people stay stuck:
1- Fear of the unknown
2- Comfort zone: this is how I've always done it

Fear of the unknown is more about control or the
fear of not having any. What if I don't like it or I
don't know what to expect. We discover more
personal freedom, less resistance to change when we let go of the controls and become more flexible in our thinking. If you want to become more open and receptive to life, one of the best ways is through introducing new movement to the body. Flexible body, flexible mind. This is what transpired as I sat in a new position and wrestled with my mind in the meditation retreat. The more I sat in the new position, the more the resistance started melting away and in fact I started to crave this new pattern.
It is human nature, depending on the conditioning you've experienced, to explain away why you can, or can't achieve, change or adapt.
Move the body and you will reshape your mind too.
Over time as I continued in this new direction, my life changed. The people in my life changed too as I searched out new and inspiring environments to grow my new found muscle..
All these years later I am still cultivating my identity, my health body, mind and spirit.
It's the most important job we have til our end days.