Inspiration
Articles to inspire authentic living on the topics of resilience, spirituality, and self-growth with touches of storytelling, depth, and humor.
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They are always leaving, but they are never gone
It could have been the heat, the thirst or maybe the fact that I was exhausted. This morning I attended a very restorative yoga class where we were practicing mudras that represented gratitude. It was impossible not to feel the heart opening up.
But at the of the practice during the final relaxation an image came to me. As much as I tried to quiet it down it just insisted on staying. So I let it, I stop resisting and paid attention to what it wanted to show me.
I saw the most delicious creek…
Packing for a New Decade
I am not particularly superstitious but there is a tradition from my natal Venezuela that I continue to adapt every New Years’s Eve. It does not matter where I am, once the clock hits midnight and I hug family and friends - which inevitable always makes me cry happy tears - I gulp down twelve grapes, each representing a wish for the following year and sip some champagne. Right after comes the tradition I stick to with fierce determination, not because I strongly believe in its magic, but because I see it as a symbolism of telling the universe that I am ready for it. So, regardless of the weather, in the first minutes of the New Year I go out and do a small walk outside the door with a luggage to symbolize all the trips I want to take. I think I have only missed it one year, and coincidentally was my most “staycated” year ever. So just in case…
I was making plans for our New Year’s Eve celebration I started thinking about what I wanted for 2020. I do certainly want to travel, always. However, I found a symbolism on that tradition that made me think deeply on not only what I want but what I need to learn.
Flexibility vs Balance
About eighteen years ago I went to my first yoga class. At that time, the instructor was a very wise woman in her seventies. She would read very inspiring stories during savasana. One day she made a comment that has stuck with me for years. She said that we are either flexible or have good balance but it is difficult to have both.
I have since raised the question many times of what I am. Without a doubt I incline more towards flexibility. I am not Elastic Girl, but I do notice that I tend to be able to stretch more than I would expect was normal for someone with my lack of experience. However I am that student that in more difficult poses always falls. As I am trying to improve my practice I have been questioning what I could do to at least not fall as much, provoked by a low-key sense of embarrassment and annoyance (the ego, the ego, I know!)
Butterflies in the stomach
What a delicious feeling is to fall in love! Those first days when everything is a bliss, butterflies flutter in our stomach, we glow, the world seems brighter, we smile alone while remembering the object of our affection, time is eternal when we are apart from that person, time goes too fast when we are together.
That feeling is so wonderful, however....it is fleeting.
A few days ago I went to a very slow yoga class. And by slow I mean we only did like five poses. The rest of the class was just practicing awareness of every single move, of our breathing, of the space around us. That is when it hit me...mindfulness is the most similar thing to the state of infatuation.