Mindfulness: The 5 Senses

There is a saying, ‘You can’t give what you don’t have.’ Taking care of yourself and addressing your needs is a vital part of improving wellbeing, maintaining balance, and preventing burnout. It all starts from a place of grounding and awareness. This practice is a classic grounding exercise to help you get out of your […]

Mindfulness: Working with Difficult Emotions

Soften, Sooth, Allow As sentient beings we will encounter difficult emotions. It is part of the full spectrum of being alive! Strong feelings like anger, confusion, fear, loneliness, even joy amid chaos and disaster can feel awkward or difficult. The best strategy I’ve found to attend to these emotions is the process developed by Kristin […]

Mindfulness: When it Rains

I’m a lover of petrichor; the smell of rain on dry earth.  There’s nothing better, and it’s a good thing living here in the great Pacific Northwest. There are also times that are not so inspiring to our senses. Difficult emotions, limiting beliefs or situations can feel overwhelming. The rain comes down too hard.  It’s […]

Mindfulness: Mental well-being

We have far more impact on our own mental wellness than we may have been told. Every day, we can make choices to create who we want to become. Psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera, offers these ways to begin to create mental well-being: Place boundaries, honor your limits, say “no” to things that cause resentment Keep […]

Mindfulness: Completing the Stress Cycle

We all know that stress is an internal state and can manifest differently in each person. In varying degrees, it can affect our physical, spiritual, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive experiences of life. Avoiding burnout, or persistent auto-pilot, and increasing our overall resilience requires that we get proficient at Completing the Stress Cycle. What we know […]

Mindfulness: Tactical Breathing

Today we keep it simple. Here is an easy ‘go-to’ breathing technique you can use to help reset yourself. Whether you are recovering from exposure to a stressful situation or heading into one, this is one of the best reset breathing patterns you can access for yourself. It’s referred to as Tactical Breathing, Combat Breathing, […]

Mindfulness: Autopilot

February is a good ‘reset’ month, so just as a reminder, today I’ll delve into one of the reasons we practice mindfulness: AUTOPILOT We can tend to run on autopilot much of the time, automatically making decisions and moving about our day rather mindlessly. But being in autopilot is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s […]

Mindfulness: Mindful Speech

On February 1, 1884: The first portion, or fascicle, of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), considered the most comprehensive and accurate dictionary of the English language, was published. Plans for the dictionary began in 1857 when members of London’s Philological Society felt an error free dictionary covering all vocabulary from the Anglo-Saxon period (1150 A.D.) […]

Keeping Your Cool

Gentle Orientation: We’ve gotten through the holidays hopefully unscathed, tending our emotional wounds or over-indulgences. Tempers may have flared even amidst the joyful noise and revelry of bringing in the new year. In other news: A surgeon told my hiking buddy that she ‘wrecked everything’ in her knee when she slipped on her slick deck […]

Cultivating the practice of NON-JUDGMENT

Non-judgment is one of the pillars of mindfulness. It is included in the 7 Foundational Attitudes ,which if cultivated leads to many others. When it comes to living more mindfully, I find that practicing an attitude of non-judgment towards myself and the world around me is the most difficult. However, it also provides the biggest […]