Game On.

Long time, no post! Apologies if you’ve noticed; I’ve been abroad. I knew that when I was in Poland for 10 days that my meditation practice would pause. It did when I went to Scandinavia last year and I made the decision to change my expectations and not to beat myself up over it. The last time I meditated was the morning was on the flight from Frankfurt to Krakow and I was OK with that. I was a little anxious that I would have trouble sleeping without meditation. But aside from that one day when I drank three cappuccinos (damn you, caffeine), I had zero trouble sleeping thanks to walking 12 hours a day (and the mulled wine, and pierogi, etc).

I started meditating again yesterday morning and it feels totally easy to slip back into my two 20 minute meditations a day. Six to seven AM are my time to meditate, check my email, and pet my cat again.

I’ll get more posts and photos up about my travels, but if you need to see photos in the meantime, you can head over to my Instagram. 

(Photo is of a church in Gdansk, Poland.)

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MNDFL’s Meditation for Creativity with Emily Fletcher

Last Monday night, J and I went to the MNDFL Meditation in the EV for a meditation on creativity with Broadway veteran and founder of Ziva Meditation, Emily Fletcher (Chicago, A Chorus Line, The Producers, etc). I was intrigued because she was a former Broadway actress and who couldn’t benefit from being more creative? The cast of Small Mouth Sounds had been on the schedule as well (Fletcher is the meditation advisor for the show) but they were unable to make it. Eva Price, one of the producers of the play, attended, though, and talked about the experience of producing the play and trying to develop her own practice. 

We sat down and she first talked about her debilitating anxiety from being a swing in A Chorus Line (she wound up in the fetal position after she went on as Val for the first time) and asked her dressing roommate, who covered 6 roles (compared to her 4), how she stayed so cool and collected. Her dressing roommate introduced her to Vedic meditation (the training I completed in early August, though with a different teacher)  and her life was changed. She eventually spent 3 years training to be a teacher and opened her own studio (Ziva). 

She led us through her “Ziva Meditation,” which was like a body scan + light Vedic meditation + loving kindness meditation. She’s a really good teacher because she’s not too new agey. She knows her audience and qualified a lot of things that she said that she knew some people would be all skeptical about (ex. “as cheesy as it sounds, now visualize yourself sending love to everyone in this room”). 

I thanked her after and introduced myself, as did J, and she was super nice. Later on, I realized my Vedic teacher teaches at her studio sometimes so I might go check out one of his classes there, or one of hers.

As always, it was a really good time. I’m sure we’ll be back soon for another class, and sooner or later J will probably pick up his own practice. If you want to download Emily Fletcher’s free meditation, shoot over to Ziva Meditation and enter your email address and you’ll be able to download it for free!

Gabby B and the Universe

When I heard Gabby Bernstein was doing a free two-hour workshop if you pre-ordered her new book, The Universe Has Your Back, I immediately clicked my way over to Amazon and purchased said-book. It’s not being released until the end of September but last week we got a crash course in manifesting the life we want on a sweltering evening in the East Village.

She talked for about an hour and a half and threw in a few meditations, too – including her usual meditation for protection in the beginning and her kundalini meditation for manifesting at the end. She talked about a recent conflict that she had been in with a friend and how in her meditation on the fight, she started to think about how much she loved this friend and the feeling she cultivated in her meditation completely dissolved any anger she felt towards her. I’ll try that next time I’m feeling angry with someone.

There were lots of tears and hugs given out during the Q&A. Gabby dispersed lots of great advice. When a woman asked what to do when she said “wouldn’t it be nice, if..” (as Gabby has suggested to get out a rut) made her cry because she wanted her boyfriend to want what she wanted, she said this woman needed to focus on herself and not trying to control someone else. Mic drop.

The talk went a little over so I was ready to get home after, so I left as soon as it was over. But it was a great experience. I went in feeling really exhausted and not all that psyched to sit through a talk, despite how awesome Gabby is, but by the end of the first meditation, I was glad I came.

Her book release party is in late September. You should totally buy tickets. She may sound new age-y, but she’s also awesome.