Week Six: TRIUMPH

Congratulations! 5 more days. I hope you feel fabulous. You gave yourself these 40 days, and hopefully you are realizing that you have in fact chosen to change your life! A regular practice of yoga, meditation, and conscious eating makes you younger, lighter, brighter, natural, whole. You are remembering who you are and where you belong. That is no small gift.

"Our personal victory here in these final five days is about becoming more childlike and letting go of any childish ways that stop us from entering the kingdom of heaven in our own hearts."

"Our willingness to be reinvented is precisely how we let go of our childish ways."

"Your completion of the forty days is not the end of anything. It is only the beginning of a flexible life, where you can find triumph in staying open to growing and transforming."

For these final 5 days, just observe the little successes, triumphs you are experiencing. This may mean going a little deeper in a pose, finding a relationship has gotten easier, realizing how easily you can change habitual thinking and action. Whatever it is, know that these changes, small and large, collect and bring you home. You created this, so you deserve a triumphant HURRAH!

1. Week Six Yoga: Keep up with your glorious practice!

2. Week Six Balancing Diet:

It is time to "gather up all the fruits of your efforts and reap the bounty of all you have learned, revealed and come to appreciate in terms of how you nourish your body."

Week Six Diet To-Do:
Take the time to look back over the past five weeks' worth of eating habits and ask yourself:
From which did I most benefit?
Which habits and practices yielded the greatest results for me?
Which do I want to incorporate into my lifelong eating habits?

Write down your answers to these questions. This will help you remember your responses, and how good you felt when your diet was in balance. It will be easier to get back on track if you notice negative habits creeping back in.

I hope that you have shifted your beliefs about food. You can enjoy any food, without guilt! You have learned how your body feels when you nourish it with all-natural, whole foods. When your overall diet is healthy you can nourish yourself with your old favorites...simply by listening to your intuition, you will know.

Week Six Triumph Meditation
30 minutes morning, 30 minutes evening.
"As you become more skillful in not getting involved with your thoughts, you realize that all of your thoughts have a natural cycled of rising, lingering, and then melting away. You may notice how the thoughts create strong feelings or bodily sensations: appetites, cravings, sexual excitement, physical pain. But as you sit this week, just watch and see how these seemingly powerful sensations rise, swell, and then dissolve and disappear." This, too, shall pass. Realizing this will help to loosen the hold of outside forces.
Watch the ebb and flow of your thoughts this week. Avoid the voice-over you add to them, the meaning you assign them. It is with a sense of triumph that you realize that your thoughts are not you!

dean hudson will be offering two workshops on meditation this weekend.
all 40 day folks are welcome and encouraged to go.
atm will offer 50% off - just mention it to the front desk.

Week 5 Centering

When we find ourselves full of "if only" complaints, "If only he or she did this or that, then I'd be happy", we are not centered. We are not living intuitively and present. We are loyal to the victim within. It's our excuse for failed relationships and self-pity. We've learned to externalize control of our lives. Are we the cause or effect? Most of us believe that our world created us, and external events continue to cause our suffering. Guess what? We ARE the cause of our lives, and all it's ups and downs. It is our beliefs about ourselves, about our essence, that lead us to see a happy world or a fearful one. Hopefully, these weeks of yoga and meditation have shown us extended moments of peace and presence. We are learning that it is our thoughts alone that cause us to suffer. So how do we change our thoughts?

"By saying, 'I will become centered', we become responsible people; we own our lives from the inside. We don't have to wait for others to set us free. As we practice staying centered we discover that we have the capacity to be aware of the little gremlin voices in our heads and that we don't have to get caught up in the illusions of our own story."

"This week is about learning to stay intuitively grounded...It is learning to relax and be present with everything in your life, both big and small...When you eat, really eat. Really chew, really taste, really smell, really feel the food dissolve into and nourish your being."

"Make everything you do a practice of meditative awareness. If you can do this, you will see that your meditation practice is not separate from your life. We think that life is a distraction from meditation, but really life is an occasion for meditation."

1. Week Five Yoga Practice: Continue with your practice!

2. Week Five Balancing Diet:

The fruit fast is over. We feel light, clean. Now we need to get grounded. Time for some healthy rebuilding. Baron suggests that we need to give our body minerals this week. He tells us that minerals are from the earth, and therefore grounding. They strengthen our bones--they are our structure and foundation.

Week Five Diet To-Do:

Begin to include some of these mineral-rich foods into your diet:

• Whey protein
• Seaweed (hijiki or nori)
• Leafy greens (organic greens have more minerals)
• Nuts
• Fish (especially halibut, mackeral, sardines)
• Root vegetables
• Tofu
• Broths (chicken or vegetable)
• Fresh vegetable or fruit juice

The following may rob our bones and bodies of minerals...try to cut out or reduce:

• Coffee
• Refined sugar
• Soda and other soft drinks
• Alcohol
• Smoking
• Too much salt
• Too much protein
• Anger
• Fear
• Reactivity

3. Week Five Centering Meditation

"As we meditate this week our focus is to connect to the symbolic anchors of our hands, body, and breath, thus experiencing the truth that our center is always there, steady and waiting, no matter what swirls up around us."

Week Five Meditation To-Do:

• 25 minutes morning and evening
• Close eyes and bring attention to hands
• Observe gently and anchor attention to them
• Notice sensations, ignore them
• Do not strain...right aim and right energy
• If thoughts arise, don't analyze them...let them go gently
• Each time you get lost, simply pull back into gap between you and your thoughts
• Re-anchor to your hands, body and breath.

4. Week Five Excavation Questions:

• How much do I believe in myself, and how much does this play out in my everyday life? Do I trust my intuition? If so or if not, what results does that produce?
• When, where, and with whom do I feel the most grounded? With my friends? When I am by myself? With my spouse?
• How mindful am I of even the the smallest details of my life? Am I present enough to notice all actions I take? Do I remember what I said to the salesperson at the store, what route I took to get to work, how and where I hung my coat, what I told my kids when they asked me a question? Am I truly there in all these moments?
  

The Invitation

Someone gave me this poem today, and again, it's everything we've been talking about. This is the same person who recommended What the Bleep do We Know, which was mentioned in A Crash Course in Miracles last night, so it's funny how everything seems to be coming together...


The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.



© Mountaindreaming, from the book The Invitation published by HarperSanFrancisco, 1999

A Complaint-Free World

I saw this story on The Today Show yesterday morning, and it corresponds really well to everything we've been doing and talking about, including the Crash Course in Miracles.
A minister from Kansas City, MO, Will Bowen, started this challenge: Can you go 21 days without complaining? As we know, it takes 21 days to make a habit. Bowen's congregation took on the challenge, and it has since become a movement around the world. His organization sends purple bracelets on request to help monitor your complaining--every time you complain, you change arms. The goal is to make it to 21 consecutive days without complaining!

The Today Show
A Complaint-Free World website

Fruit, Fruit, Fruit

Hi All,

What did I eat today? You guessed it Fruit!! :) 3rd, and last day. For those just starting. Not to bad. I had only two negatives, headaches Sun and Mon, and really tired Tue. Could be do to traveling also not sure, but these symptoms are in line with the Fasting article on the blog from a few days ago, BTW which was really helpful. Thanks Joan. I don't notice to many changes in my body, though I eat a lot of fruit anyway, and no junk food. When I started this kind of diet last year, I did notice right a way a change in my skin texture, tone, and hydrophobicity (water would bead up on it). Maybe to much info. but interesting, and could be helpful info. I can remember also expelling mucus, rather then feces in my BMs along the way also when I first changed (this was covered in the fasting article from the blog). This had never happened to me before, so I assume it was part of the cleansing process. I also can remember people telling me how good I looked. I lost 20lb, and I remember having a lot more CONSISTENT energy as well.Before the switch, I would have major ups and downs all day long, due to high processed sugar intake. All this I can attribute to change in diet from mainly processed food to whole foods, lots of veggie. and fruits. Surprising to me that exercise did not do it alone. I had been exercising, weight, cardio for a number of years without seeing such results. To think, all it took was a change in diet to provide such radical results. So I expect you will see changes like I did if you are radically changing your diet. BTW, the Mint, Ginger, Camomele tea has realy helped with upset stomach. Thanks :) Yoga has been strong and peacefully, even the long holds and 1/2 pigeon! Mediation a challenge. I usually get to about 10-15 min and then check my watch :)

Stay strong

SPE :)

Good fruits and vegetables for your dosha
from Bre
Hello 40 day students,- use it as a guideline (but not steadfast rule) as you go through your cleanse.Good luck to you all!
Vatas:sweet fruits, bananas, coconuts, apples, grapefruit, papayas, figs, grapes, mangoes, melons, oranges, papayas, peaches, pineapples, plums, berries and cherriescooked asparagus, beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, radishes and zucchini
Pittas:apples, avocadoes, coconuts, figs, melons, oranges, pears, plums, pomegranates and dried plumssweet and bitter vegetables, squash, pumpkin, asparagus, cabbage, cucumbers, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, peas, parsley, potatoes, zucchini, sprouts and watercress
Kaphas:apples, berries, cherries, dried figs, mangoes, peaches, pears, raisins and dried plumsbeets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, eggplant, garlic, lettuce, mushrooms, onions, parsley, peas, radishes, spinach and sprouts