Today is day day of balance, integration and creation.

As we cosmically move out of the dark night of winter and into the light of summer, today marks the equal moment of dark and light.

As we are a part of nature, the same rhythms in the world around, exist inside us. 

We all have a light side and a dark side or shadow.  The shadow aspect is that part of ourselves we try to hide from others and the world.  This is usually the part of ourselves that is different from other people and since this is so, we very often have shame around it and push it into the depths of our shadow.  The light side is our hero’s heart, this is the aspect of ourselves that we feel good about.  The light side houses our dreams, ambitions and greatest hopes for our lives. 

I used to say… “I hate winter!, I need to move back to California!”  But over the years I have actually come to enjoy some of the things winter offers.  It was extremely cold this winter, but how beautiful was it?  It was a winter wonderland all year long and hot tea, cozy socks and fireplaces just aren’t the same on a hot day. 

Just as I used to hate winter, I also used to have a great deal of misery about my shadow side.  There were things about myself that I felt a great deal of shame about.  But through the years I have learned that it is this shadow side that is the fuel towards my ability to bring my greatest contributions into the world.  Even though I have had this realization, this doesn’t take the shadow away.  As long as I am human, I will have a shadow.

I have however learned how to integrate, to stop fighting it and become willing to learn from it. 

I used to also say… “I LOVE summer, and just LOVE being warm.”  I was the same way about my light side.  I loved dreaming big.  I was constantly coming up with ideas for business, adventure, and grandiose solutions to life.  I loved being in this energy, but it wasn’t sustainable. 

Once when I was telling a friend about my struggles with an eating disorder, I was quite surprised by her response.  She said, “That doesn’t surprise me at all.  Your light side is so bright, it makes sense that your dark side would be equal to that.”

I recently learned from my meditation retreat that we end interpersonal suffering by bringing balance to our mind.  When I hate winter, I suffer, and when I crave summer, I suffer when I don’t have it.  Just as I do when I shame myself for my shadow and celebrate myself for my light. 

Today is a powerful and auspicious day.  The cosmic rhythms of nature support us in bringing balance into our lives by integrating our shadow and with a balanced mind intentionally create our future without attachment. 

I have also learned when it comes to integrating my shadow, I almost always can never do it on my own.  We have a saying in recovery, “You are only as sick as your secrets.”, When I keep my shadow a secret and shame it, it has power, when I get support, something magical happens.  It doesn’t go away, but I’m not entrenched in my depths and have the ability to take action. 

I have discovered support is equally critical to bring about my dreams of the future.  Sometimes I just need advice, sometimes I need a lot more, but when I try to take on my big ideas on my own, it usually leads to feelings of being overwhelmed, exhausted, and eventually I’m “Over” the idea.  I give up! 

We are so much stronger when we are together, and the truth is, we are always together, we just have to say yes to the community and connections that are already around us.

Tonight I will be co-leading a Spring Solstice practice with Jessica Winderl to hold space for community to gather and support one another in our cosmic and personal shifts from dark to light integrating balance in the process.

Please join us in this celebration @

Yoga Central

2021 S. 840 E.

Salt Lake City, Ut 84106

7:30-9:00

Class is donation

Suggested donation $15.00

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

― Blaise Pascal

More than decade ago I had a conversation with my first yoga teacher about a silent meditation retreat she had done.  My reaction…. “Why in the world would you waste your time doing that???” Seriously?  I was in shock that anyone would actually pay money and spend their time in such a boring way. 

Fast forward to present day and what a difference time can make.  I just returned from my first silent meditation retreat. 

What happened in those 13 years to create such a shift in perspective?

I can sum up the answer in one word… MISERY

In my egocentric 20’s, all I wanted was to be free.  I had broken free from a devout religious upbringing and my belief was, “I’m finally free to do what I want and be me!”  I believed then that freedom meant doing what I wanted, wherever I wanted, with whomever  I wanted and as much as I wanted.  That definition of freedom landed me in a self-made prison cell trapped body and mind with addiction and self-devaluing thoughts.  I was doing whatever I wanted and I was MISERABLE!

The road to recovery was a long one and was all about self-love.  It’s not a pill you can swallow, a book you can read or a quick fix therapy group.  It’s a day to day dance of taking small sweet steps and sometimes big courageous leaps towards love. 

Through my journey I discovered something new about freedom.   I found that I felt more free and happy when I was disciplined, organized, and responsible. 

Like any dance, there are steps forward and steps back.  I have never danced perfectly.  There have been times when it felt smoother and times when it felt like I was stepping all over everyone’s feet. 

With all my recent changes and challenges it has felt a little more like stepping on toes lately.  I have more hats I’m wearing than ever.  My  daily “to do” list is impossibly long and I try to check things off with a 2 yr old side kick who feels its much more important to be dressing up in Cinderella gowns and going to a ball.  At the end of the day, I would beat myself up for not being as present with her and worried that I would regret not getting more out of this short time of her childhood.

And equally frustrated with not getting articles written, manuals created, Facebook posts out. 

Some of my old patterns and habits started to resurface and were getting dangerously close of pulling me down again. 

I knew what I needed to do.  Vipassana.  The time was here and I could wait no longer.

I first heard about Vipassana Meditation several years ago in screening of a documentary called, “The Dahmma Brothers.” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA8XFEyeMi8

In this documentary they bring this meditation course to death row inmates.  I was struck by the transformation these men experienced, not by being taught anything or given anything, but simply by supporting them in sitting silently and going in. These death row inmates found Freedom.  And if these life long caged men could find freedom behind bars, I wondered if I too, might be able to set myself free?

I signed up, and knew no matter what, I would show up. 

I had periods in my life of a daily meditation practice, but I had never sat for more than 20 minutes at a time before.  I knew I was scheduled to sit more than 10 hours a day. This freaked me out a bit, but I just knew I had to show up.

I did show up, arriving after a 10 hour drive with a wildly racing mind.  There was a moment when I pulled into the parking lot and was greeted by an overly friendly gentleman that I thought about circling back home, but I had made it this far. 

After giving up my cell phone, books, pens, camera and journal I was assigned a room.  The hour before dinner I quickly realized, “holy sh@%, there is nothing to do here but meditate.”

We took our vow of silence the first night and the journey began. 

The first meditation that evening I could barely stay awake.  I kept falling asleep seated, my head would drop and I’d startle myself awake wondering how I would be able to take a full hour of this.  The chanting, the heat from all the bodies in the dim lit room.  I just knew I would eventually pass right out and would get kicked out of the course.

I somehow made it through sitting mostly upright for the entire hour. 

The next day started at 4:00 am, and my mind couldn’t help re-planning their schedule.  They must have missed the Dr. Oz episode about sleep being invaluable to your health. But no matter where my mind took me, I was committed to this process.  I wanted to give it a fair shot. 

The first day I was a little concerned that the technique was too simplistic.  How am I supposed to become free from cravings and aversions, deeply happy and peaceful, just by focusing on my breath? They must be holding the secret back.  But day after day, no big secret came. 

How was this going to solve all my issues if I wasn’t even supposed to think about my issues?  I had no journal to process and get answers. I had no book to read for insight and no one I could talk to for advice.

Then day 5 finally came.  I was walking on the walking path, and it hit me. JOY, pure joy.  I felt love for everyone and everything.  I felt free with an understanding that we are all love and I don’t have to keep trying so hard.  What I can do is just slow down and be Love.  I noticed my mind functioning a little different.  As thoughts would pass, I wasn’t so easily ensnarled by them.  I could feel the simple teachings being acted out in my mind.  I made a commitment to myself that day.  It has been an idea that has been stirring for the past month.  I wrote about it in my Valentine’s message.  It’s this idea of wholehearted living, to have your whole heart in to whatever it is your doing.  Even if it’s changing a poopy diaper. 

The Buddhist teachings offered in this course cultivate a balanced mind by not getting attached to cravings, attached to enjoyable sensations, or getting triggered by aversions, those unpleasant sensations that we would rather not be experiencing. 

The more I sat the more I saw how loaded my mind is with cravings and aversions.  I saw it on a visceral level in my body.  When my leg felt like it was going to cramp and fall off from sitting in one position for so long, I saw the way my mind reacted to this, and slowly I started to consider it was all in my mind.  I started to apply this same technique to thoughts of worry, doubt, judgment, as well as to hopes aspirations and fantasies my mind would come up with. 

Buddha taught that our misery is directly related to how attached we are to getting what we want or how attached we are to not experiencing what we are indeed experiencing.  The simple meditation technique was a process of retraining the thought patterns of the mind to not attach.  I have noticed it is the attachments that make me feel overwhelmed by my life.  It’s not the actual activities.

Since I have gotten back, some of the most tedious of life’s tasks that used to irritate me the most have now become some of my most valuable moments in the day…commuting in the car, doing the dishes, playing dress-up with Benni – doing anything with Benni — washing my car, and all the little transitions in the day that used to feel like such a waste of time.  I have found that in these moments I can cultivate stillness.  And when I’m still, I’m fully present, wholehearted in the moment.  And in that there is JOY!

I feel so incredibly grateful for the opportunity life presented me to have this experience.  The generosity of this organization blew my mind.  It is all done by donation and volunteer service.  All contributions must be a gift from the heart for the benefit of others. 

I wouldn’t say this course changed me, I would say that it reminded me.  It reminded me of who I am and what I’m here to do. 

I am Love, and I am here to Love and yes, I will dance that dance.

Love…A Wholehearted Approach to Life~ by Demi Langford

I was having a conversation with a dear friend yesterday about Valentines day.  When she told me she Loooved Valentines day, I had to do a double take.  I never hear any of my girlfriends say they love Valentines Day!  I usually hear the sad stories of lonely V-days, or the disappointing lack of love letters from distant boyfriends or the shameful injustice of Hallmark’s commercialization on love.  My mind immediately went to junior high when I was the only one in the class NOT getting candy graham valentines from secret admirers’. 

My friend started to giggle in reflection of her happy memories.  She told me she had so much fun as a kid making valentines and taking them around the neighborhood knocking on doors, running away, giving anonymous messages of love.

We chuckled about the different perspectives we had in our memories.  But there is a great lesson here for me.  Because today, I am making more memories, and do I want memories of victimhood or love?

This reminds me of a great story the Steven Covey shares about a man who came to him for some counseling on his marriage.  The man told him, “The love is dead in our relationship and I just don’t know what to do?”  Covey told the man to go home and LOVE his wife.  To this the man replied, “But I just told you, I don’t love her anymore, the love is dead.”  Again Covey counseled, Then Love her…

Love is not a noun, it is a verb.   It is not a consequence of circumstance but an action that requires intention.  He instructed this man to go home and create love through action. 

Yoga has taught me too, that love is a conscious and deliberate choice.  We deliberately take postures to relax our chests and open our hearts.  Much like my dear friend, she wasn’t sitting home waiting for candy grahams from secret admirers’, she was the secret admirer.  She was out giving and creating love and from that action has many sweet memories that light her up when she reflects upon them.

I believe one of the most profound relationships we are all in, is one with ourselves.  Do we complain that the love is dead, that our bodies suck, and that nothing’s going our way, or do we deliberately take action to cultivate love for ourselves, taking ourselves for walks, nourishing our bodies with good foods, nurturing our souls with that which lights us up?

I had a great opportunity to nurture myself this morning with some quiet tea time and good book.  I read this from “Yoga, The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness” by Erich Schiffmann

“Stillness therefore is a higher energy state than what we are used to.  This is because we are rarely wholehearted, or un-conflicted, about anything.  When you are not wholehearted, when you’d rather be someplace other than where you are, parts of you shut down and begin not to participate.  Your energy circulation becomes constricted, and the creative life force is unable to flow through you unimpeded.  Your energy flow…begins to diminish… This leads to ill health, low energy, lowered vitality, lack of enthusiasm, depression, frustration, unhappiness, and suffering.  None of which feels good. 

When you are wholehearted about something, however, when you are where you want to be and are participating fully in the moment you are in—you will experience a new sense of aliveness.”

The word that stuck out for me when I read this was WHOLEHEARTED!  I started to look through my history with this lens and what I saw was that anytime I wasn’t being wholehearted about anything, I was miserable, depressed and had a very heavy sense of inertia.  And those wholehearted moments in life were ecstasy. 

Not every moment is easy to be wholehearted into.  When your boss is telling you your work sucks, when your kids are screaming at each other or worse you, when your partner is preoccupied with something other than you. 

Most of my earlier years were less conscious.  I was very reactive and had never considered that I might be playing a role called victim.  But today, I’m a little more aware.  And what I am very curious about and extremely interested in, is living a WHOLEHEARTED LIFE. 

Is it possible to live wholehearted in all my moments of life?  This is a big question for me.  My answer is No and YES!  

It’s not very likely that if the bank comes to take away my house, I’m going to say, “Oh, boy, hell Yes, there is no where I’d rather be, this is exactly what I wanted to have happen!”  I’m human, when challenges arise, I’m going to get triggered, maybe disconnected.  

I am however, as are we all spiritual beings who have the capacity to see beyond the small moments into something greater.  

Its like a yoga class.  When I first started practicing yoga I HATED chair pose with a passion!  The minute the teacher put me in that pose, I wanted to leave the room.  I wanted to be anywhere but there.

Today, I’ve suffered through enough chair poses to realize the possibility it offers.  So today, I don’t mind it.  I see it as one of the best opportunities in class to heat up and ground in.  And chair pose continues to be one of my greatest teachers in life.  It has taught me how to shift from the suffering of victimhood to Grace, the ability to be grateful for what I’m experiencing in the moment.  

When I think about the possibility of living a Wholehearted life, I get really excited.  Who wouldn’t want a life filled with memories of sweetness and ecstasy?

The insight I feel inspired by today is that this possibility is a choice, a choice that requires action, and with that action, the possibility is real.  

So for today I choose to GIVE LOVE.

Sending lots of Wholehearted Love your way to create the Valentines Day of Your Choice!

xoxo~Demi

And if you would like to come receive some love from me, please join me in a practice to embrace love…

Valentines Candlelight Yoga

8:00 pm @ Yoga Central (2021 S. 840 E)

Allow me to recap my 2012…

Long-term relationship ended making me a single mom

Invested life savings in a start up business that is taking much longer than expected to break even.

House went into foreclosure

Moved out of house and in with family

Relapsed in recovery

One may look at my last years line up and say what a mess, what a failure and down right shitty year you have had.

But I look at it and I see huge SUCCESS!  What I see is this…

I had the courage and the compassion to speak my truth and move out of a relationship that was not good for me.

I embrace the rewarding path of motherhood and even though I am a single mom I am not at all alone in raising my daughter.  I have a vast community of friends and family who are so actively involved in my daughter’s life that at times she’s even a little confused on how many mommy’s she has.

I took a big risk for a big dream, and even though it has caused some financial strain, I don’t have any regrets.  I cashed out my savings, closed out other businesses and fully invested in a yoga studio.  We hoped the money would get us through the studio remodel and into profitability.  But, as with all big dreams, we met physical reality where things take 10 times more money, time and effort to create than just dreaming up the plan.  We now have a beautiful studio, with a growing community and profitability just around the corner.  We have successfully brought about a place for community to gather, practice and enjoy the benefits of yoga.

With the majority of my time, money and energy being focused on the new studio, my home fell into foreclosure.  I couldn’t sustain my current lifestyle and maintain the studio.  I had to make a choice.  In order to keep my house I decided to rent it out and move in with family.  I found the perfect family who needs the house for a year, and I am enjoying the opportunity to spend quality time with my sister and her family.  Benni loves having so many cousins to play with and another “mommy.”

My house is out of foreclosure and caught up on payments.  Huge Success!

My sister said to me this morning, “I wish you could live with us forever and keep making this healthy food for us.”  Getting to share my gifts with the ones I love.  Huge Success!

I questioned my sobriety, I believed it was circumstances and lifestyle in my past the led to my drinking problem.  Now that those circumstances and lifestyle weren’t present, surely it was time to enjoy a drink again.  What I got from this experiment was clarity.  What I got to see is that for me, no shit, sobriety is the BEST life!  And today, sobriety is not a curse, but a choice, a choice that brings me closer to myself, to God and to the privilege of serving others.  Commitment to my path and truth… Huge Success!

If I were alone on my journey, I would look at my activities of 2012 and I would probably feel like a failure because being human, I too have a monkey mind which tries to tell me that I’m not good enough, it often tries to convince me that I’m stupid and I don’t know what I’m doing, and that I might as well not try, because, well look at all that evidence of failure!

But the beauty of life and the Grace of mine, is that I’m not alone.  In everything that I went through last year, I had a team of friends, family, therapist, and coach around me, supporting me, encouraging me and reminding me who I really am.

They helped me shift my focus from victim to accountable, from struggle to opportunity from failure to success, from stupid to hero.

They remind me that life is sweet, and plentiful with opportunities to grow, that life is the best coach if I am willing to be coached.

The old paradigm of success being measured by what we acquire and what we achieve is no longer sustainable and we have learned, does not bring about the joy we seek.

To me Success is being clear about who I am and what’s important to me, having the courage to dream big and set realistic goals, the vulnerability to get support, and the willingness get uncomfortable when the reality of life brings about those unexpected challenges and through it all come to Grace, having gratitude for ALL OF IT!

Today I am willing to be successful!  Are you?

I woke early this morning to do something that I have been wanting to do for a while. Journal.
I used to be an avid journaler, and used to joke that the notebook and pen was my best therapist and my magic wand.
Life has thrown some challenges my way and since I have a meeting this afternoon to work out some details, I thought it would be a good idea to figure out what I wanted and what I should do with pen and paper.
As coincidence would have it, I pulled a notebook off the dusty shelf of old journals, looking for one with the empty pages. The one I pulled had several entries from 1999. I thought it might be interesting to read a few. I was captivated and so I read more.
I saw myself overcoming the challenges of my past. I also saw that the challenges of my past were no longer my challenges of today. Thirteen years ago the challenges I struggled with were mostly internal. They showed up in my life as an eating disorder, but that was just the physical symptom of being disconnected from myself. Back then, I did not know how to be OK being me. I didn’t even know who “I” was or worse, who I wanted to be.
This was my entry this morning…
“Today I LOVE being me. There is no one on this planet I would rather trade shoes with. I think for a moment, maybe bank accounts, but quickly see that is not true either. For money can only solve a problem once you have learned how to master and manage the energy of it. And the privilege to learn this is mine.
What a miraculous coincidence pulling this notebook off the shelf this morning. It helped me see and remember the challenges of my past and my journey through the rocky terrain of my internal landscape. I did what I needed to do to settle that. I planted seeds back then that grew and today created a peaceful garden inside. The winds of life may blow bare the flowers and leaves from stems, but peace is always there.
Today my challenges lie more in the external landscape. Today I am a single mom, struggling to keep up with the demands my roles and responsibilities ask of me.
But because I have settled the storm inside, I look out at these challenges, nevertheless daunting they seem, I can’t help be a little bit excited. I see life bringing me an opportunity to grow in ways I couldn’t have imagined for myself.
I was planning on journaling to figure out what I wanted and what I needed to do about my current situation, but after re-reading those old entries and seeing what a hearts intention can create. I know I am already doing what needs to be done. I am being.

New Years is upon us once again.  A time for celebration and good cheer yes, but also a time for reflection, contemplation, focus and intention.

Throughout the many cultures, traditions and time periods there are many ways this holiday has been and is now being celebrated.

Its even interesting to consider the way time has changed the ideas and intentions behind the same activities.  For example, making a lot of noise at the stroke of midnight in modern culture is strictly for hoopla.  The louder the noise, the happier we are, and the greater the celebration.  But hundreds of years ago, this same noise making activity at the stroke of midnight was done with the intention of keeping evil spirits away during a fragile portal of time in which spirits could get in.

When I was a child, the focus for New Years was always on staying up until midnight to see the ball drop in Time Square.  As I got older, the focus then became, what was the hottest party to attend, and what should I where?  I was always a little let down and hung over and found that ceremony did nothing to start my New Years off!

Five years ago, I had the New Years that made all the difference in my life.  One of my favorite yoga teachers, Hala Khouri, was hosting a New Years yoga retreat in Ojai, CA.  Something in me knew I had to be there.  I got my best friend to join me and we headed up not knowing what to expect.  Somehow, when I got there, I knew I had arrived!

Instead of adorning my self with sparkles and hills that year, I was make-up free all weekend, and felt more and more beautiful each day.  I didn’t sip one “stimulating” beverage and yet I made more soulful connections to the others in the group than any cocktail party ever offered.  Instead of that hang over on New Years day, I celebrated, danced, and nourished my body with healing foods.  I didn’t just set New Years Resolutions that year, I began to embody them in that sacred space.

Everything changed for me in that upcoming year, my job, my health, my relationship, and ultimately my relationship with myself.   I often tell people considering coming to my retreats, if they are not OK with powerful changes happening in their life, they may not want to sign up.  But for me, these were all changes my heart was yearning for.  Changes that led me back to who I always was.

I believe we can party and celebrate outwardly so much more enjoyably when we have also taken time to connect deeply inward.  So that when we celebrate we are not seeking to fill any void, but rather fill the void with our light and love.

Just as the intention behind noise making has culturally changed over the great expanse of time, I see the similarity of change happening as time passes throughout our personal lives.  I have definitely experienced it in my life, and am noticing,  (yes, that could be because of the industry I am in), but regardless, I am seeing more and more people seeking to connect.  Connect to their bodies, in their relationships, to their communities,  to nature, to their purpose, dreams and visions.  I am seeing a very courageous group of souls who are willing to dance in their ring of fire and feel the sensation of life and say YES to it all!  I am so inspired by all those around me that I can help but feel very optimistic about the changes the future brings.

New Years is a time to collectively mark an ending and a new beginning.

This year cosmically has great energy of completions as we come to the end of a very long cycle marked by the Mayan calendar.  There has been a lot of hype about this marking the end of the world, but I don’t see it as that.  I agree with what author Gregg Braden says about the end of this cycle.

He says, in his book, Fractal Time, that yes indeed this is the end of a 26 million year cycle and within this end lies a potential for great destruction, but also offers the possibility of moving towards greater peace and wholeness.

He says there has Never been a time in history when there is a greater potential for more peace than NOW!

But ultimately it is up to US, we choose.  And I believe it is absolutely about the US.  The more we are able to connect and unite across borders, colors, belief systems, and income brackets, the more we create the reality of peace that is our birth right.

So wherever you are this New Years, however you choose to celebrate, I send you harmony, love, and joy, and include you in intentions of global peace.

May this New Years be the sweetest one yet for you!

Namaste~Demi

If you are still looking for the perfect way to bring in this new year, we still have room for you to join us @

Exhale 2012 New Years Retreat in Brian Head, UT

December 29th-January 1st

To Register, go to demilangford.com

My favorite superfood company, Essential Living Foods is hosting a 2012 New Years cleanse.  It’s a 7-10 green juice regimen and I have signed up to join their team in starting this New Years off in the cleanest, most efficient and energized body I can.

If you would like to join us, there is no charge to do so, I will post the cleanse instructions here.  You can get additional support throughout the week on the Essential Living Foods Facebook page.

The cleanse starts January 4th and goes for 7-10 days, depending on what your goals are.

These are 2 films that we recommend you check out to help get your mindset in place to start the cleanse.  They are very inspiring.

Fat Sick and Nearly Dead:

http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/

The Gerson Miracle:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/180363/the-gerson-miracle

Basically a 7-10 day green juice Feast with some protein supplementation

All you need is a juicer and a lot of organic produce and some protein powder like ELF’s Vegan Protein Blend http://www.essentiallivingfoods.com/products/vegan-super-protein-powder-blend-bulk

So here is our program:

Wake up: Drink 32 oz’s of warm water with (1) whole lemon juiced into it

4oz of Coconut Water Kefir with 1 teaspoon of either Camu-Camu Powder, Mangosteen Powder, Acai Powder or Maqui berry powder (you can also add these to your juices at any time).

• Make your own Coconut Kefir using Body Ecology’s Kefir Starter (can be purchased at the Santa Monica CO-Op or online here: http://bodyecology.com/kefir–starter.html
• Purchase already made Coconut Kefir at any Whole Foods by: http://www.mytonix.com/Coconut_Water_Kefir.html

Morning Green Power Drink: 16oz of fresh pressed green juice with I tablespoon of either Chlorella Powder, Spirulina Powder, Barley Grass Powder.

Juice (1) gallon of fresh green juice (this is your daily ration). Our standard blend is:

• Cucumber
• Celery
• Parsley
• Lemon
• Ginger
• Small amount of green apple or carrot (the idea is to keep the sugar very low and not to add these ingredients every time)
• Also we stay away from the spinach, kale, cabbage, since it seems like there is evidence that they can disrupt thyroid function if eaten raw
• Drink the green drink at room temperature. Cold drinks are hard on the body in the winter
• Mix in your protein powder to 16oz morning drink (optional for us)
• Drink juice throughout the day

We are going to go for it for 7-10 days

If you end up doing something like this please Facebook us your experiences and progress.

Happy Healthy 2012 to all of you.

Namaste~

“Money is congealed energy, and releasing it releases life’s possibilities.”            

~Joseph Campbell

I was first introduced to the idea of  “attracting” money about 10 years.  I was told that all I had to do was to get in touch with what it “feels” like to be rich now.

This was great news!  This is the job I was born for and at this point in my life I was all about doing as little as possible for as much reward as I could get.

I was $10,000.00 in debt, getting by getting a little more in debt each month.  At 27 years old, I had never even attempted building a savings account, yet always had just enough money to pay my bills and do mostly whatever I wanted to do.

My debt came about from starting a faux painting business in Southern California.  I would have months of big jobs and great abundance.  Clients would write me big checks and I would think, “I am rich!”  I would focus on what I needed to do to get that job complete, get my final check and then take the next big vacation.  After all I “deserved” to celebrate the completion of that job in another country with my best friend and  business partner.

I would arrive home to a pile of bills and no next job.  The stress would start to mount and we would hit the pavement passing out flyers and doing whatever we could to get the next job going.  And it always seemed to happen, just when I was out of money and had to pay bills on my credit card.  The next job would come, and woohoo, “I’m rich again…, were should we go next?”

By the time I had racked my credit card up to $10,000.00, I started to recognize a very unsustainable pattern.  So I was thrilled to find out that all I had to do was get more in touch with the idea of being rich.

I was introduced to Abraham and the Law of Attraction.  It made perfect sense to me and it was such a relief to finally have the answer to all my problems!

I began working my manifesting magic!  I worked in huge million dollar homes, and my clients would write out huge checks to me from their checkbooks.  I began to “vibe” into that reality.  If I found money on the street, whether it was a penny or a $20.00, I would celebrate it and say to myself, “Oh yes, this feels really great, I’ll take more of this please.”  I remember having a yard sale and collecting about $300.00 in small bills.  The money from the yard sale was laying on my bed.  I smiled at it, I jumped in bed with and said…… “OH, YES!  This feels really great.  Thank you, Universe.  I will take more of the same, thank you.”  This was a phrase I kept repeating over and over again as the money was rolling in.

I wrote journal entry after entry about what I wanted, I visualized abundance and wealth, I felt myself wealthy now.  In my mind I was rich and money flowed to me easily.

And what happened next was nothing other than phenomenal.  The money began to flow, the flood gates opened.  Within one year I went from $10,000.00 in debt to bringing in almost a half a million dollars.  And the money came from many different directions.

My business partner and I dissolved the business and each started working on our own.  Business flooded my way and I was no longer splitting profits 2 ways.

I got a call from a friend who said, “I have the easiest and most fun way for you to make over $100K per year.”  I said, “I’ll take it, that’s just what I was asking the Universe for.”  I took this job and it turned out to be just that, a very easy and fun way to make money.  Shortly after starting this new job, I caught on fire in a restaurant, which flooded a huge amount of money my way in a settlement.

The energy of money flooded into my life so fast that year, but I hadn’t changed.  I was still the same girl who had always lived deposit to deposit.  The habits I had of leaking money were still there and because I had so much more money, the leaks were just that much bigger.  I went on extravagant vacations sometimes spending $1,000.00 a night on lodgings.  I lent $35,000.00 to a hard money lender being promised my money would double within a year.  He went belly up and I’ve never seen a cent of that money again.  I quit my job because it was just too easy, and I wanted to discover what my passion and purpose was.

The money seemed to leak out as fast as it had flooded in.  As that was happening, I kept telling myself not to worry, I would just manifest more.  But no matter how hard I tried, and how much I did exactly what I did before I couldn’t seem to get the flood gates to open again the way they had.  I had no structure, no plan, no discipline, very little respect, and absolutely no containers set up for the money.

By the time I was back to broke, money finally had my attention and the student was ready.  I began to be a sponge seeking to understand what the energy of money was all about.

Then I read this…

“It is a heroic task to keep moving forward in the face of all the thoughts, feelings, self-judgments, and assessments that we attach to money.  It requires courage and creativity and the genuine longing to express who we truly are in the world. …

During our life’s progress, on our hero’s quest, we have to suffer certain losses, leave the predictable comforts of our home, and set out into unfamiliar terrain to realize our dreams and goals.  Along the way, the hero inevitably meets with dragons that block the way.  Usually his or her quest takes the hero into dark places to do tremendous battle with unseen forces for hidden treasure.  Out of theses struggles the hero emerges with a grail or jewels or wisdom that he shares with others. …

When we are engaged in that mission, when we know that we are making a larger contribution, when we know that our personal goals are also helping our business succeed, or when we know that being financially successful will also put our children through college, we are using the energy of money heroically.

This {book} will give you the map of the hero’s journey on which you will embark to learn exactly how to master the energy of money.  You’ll learn what heroes do, what their challenges are, where they learn their lessons, and how they wield energy to bring forth their goals and dreams.

You will begin immediately to see that you already have all the qualities and abilities you need to use the energy of money to make your dreams come true. …

We are all born with the ability to bring our dreams into reality.  In fact, this ability may be our best evolutionary tool.  We humans don’t have the fur, fangs, fleetness or fighting capacity that helped many animal species survive and thrive-but we do have the ability to focus our consciousness on an idea, then translate that idea into an actual form or behavior that enables us to protect ourselves, remove ourselves from danger, or make our lives easier.  We can make ideas into physical reality. ..

Successful people are conscious conduits of energy.  They behave according to twelve principles that free up energy in their own lives and in the world.  This book will tell you what these principles are and how you, too, can use them.  It will help you become conscious of the energy of money in your won life, which increases your money power and your own personal power.”   (from The Energy of Money, by Maria Nemeth, Ph.D.)

This book became one of my greatest assets on my journey toward financial freedom.  Maria  became my personal coach, mentor and teacher.

She taught me that it is one thing to manifest money.  It is a whole other thing to know how to respect, manage and yield that energy.  The first is grace, underserved blessings, and we welcome those gladly, but the second gives us the opportunity to develop mastery with one of the forms of energy we need to use to bring about our dreams.  And mastering the energy of money is the gateway to financial freedom.

If you are ready to fill up your tool box with tools that will help you claim the financial freedom you deserve, I strongly recommend this book.

And for more support, I am thrilled to be sharing these great teaching in an upcoming Energy of Money  tele-class starting in January.

For more details on the class Click Here

“Active laziness… consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues… Our lives seem to live us, possess their own bizarre momentum to carry us away.  In the end we feel we have no control or choice over them.”             ~Sogyal Rinpoche

In Sogyal Rinpoche’s book “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” he talks about this idea of active laziness.   He says that the people in India practice passive laziness.  They sit around by the river all day, watch tv, and just lie about.  But in the West, we practice active laziness, cramming our lives with so much activity that there is no time to look at what needs to be looked at most.

When I first read this, it hit me so uncomfortably that I knew it was true for me.  I used to think I just had a bad case of “shiny, pretty object syndrome”, but I can see how I kept adding to my life, to my “to do” lists.  I used to laugh at myself and say that I would take on so many projects so I could have a good excuse to say no to the mundane tasks I didn’t really want to do, like cleaning my toilets, paying the bills, getting regular check-ups and definitely no time to sit and meditate for 10 minutes.

In yoga we always talk about savasana being the most challenging pose of the class, because we have to be in silence and stillness with just ourselves.

Many clients come to me for coaching when their lives have become a little too active and they have lost sight of what is most important to them, why they are doing it, and how to regain clarity, focus, ease and grace in their lives.

Very often I will ask them to pick just one thing a day to do each day with Clarity, Focus, Ease, and Grace.  And very often, they say, “just one?”, almost with sheer terror.  I always grin because this is how I felt when the exercise was first introduced to me.

After a little reassurance that they wont be sitting on their hands for the rest of the day, that we are simply practicing cultivating consciousness into every task we do, they agree to the practice.

It never ceases to amaze me the miracle they all experience from this very simple practice.  I have heard from many that it was life changing.  I believe it, because it was that way for me.  The reason is that we are holistic beings.  And when we add consciousness to just one simple aspect of our lives, it impacts every other aspect of our lives.

When I am practicing active laziness, I am under the illusion that I am very important and it’s up to me to get all this stuff done, show up at all these activities, say yes, to every persons request for my time, because after all, “I’m a very big deal”.  This illusory way of thinking leaves me drained, exhausted, resentful, dizzy, angry, and very very distracted.

My coach gave me a jewel in one of my last sessions, she said, “The sooner you can discover that your not so “important”, you can get about doing very important things.”

I realized that a big part of my active laziness was fear.  I was terrified that I wasn’t important, that maybe people wouldn’t like me if they really knew who I was.  I thought that if I was “important” people would like me.

Just seeing this has freed up so much energy.  Recognizing and letting go of my need for external validation has made me much clearer on what is most important to me.  I am then able to focus my energy in that direction, and when I do that I find I have all the time, money, physical energy and enthusiasm I need to achieve my goals.

If you feel a need to do a little releasing and cultivate mindfulness for the upcoming year, please consider joining Pati and I for our 2012 New Years Retreat.  You will have the time to pace down with mindfulness and make some powerful intentions for the year to come.

For details….

2012 Yoga and Food New Years Retreat in Brian Head, UT