Tag: innerpeace

6 Ways to Cultivate a Summer Practice

Posted on by Silvia Eriksson

Summer is here, and there is so much to celebrate. Travel season is finally open, the weather is amazing and I feel light, energetic and hopeful. People around me are smiling, I live in the South of France and the combination of rivers, mountains, beach (and the aperitivo) is simply intoxicating. All of life’s regular challenges seem easy to tackle, even work, as I actually I get the busiest during summer.

BUT, there is also a nagging thought “why don’t I feel like this all the time”?  I have to admit I get a little anxious about how short the summer is and that it might be over soon. I tell myself, well, let’s just be in the moment, and put away whatever is coming next. Just enjoy it. 

Its not a seasonal thing! 

Here’s the thing: I spent 12 years of my life living in a year around summer climate, and trust me, ‘The Blues’ can come anywhere, any time, and they are not seasonal! Our inner sense of satisfaction, our ability to be mindful and grounded in the present is something we can cultivate to be lasting year around. Actually, THIS is our practice. 

Our inner sense of satisfaction, our ability to be mindful and grounded in the present is something we can cultivate to be lasting year around. Actually, THIS is our practice. 

This time of year  is so rich and filled with beauty, its easy to feel connected to the earth, to nature, family and community. Summer time is a  great opportunity to deepen our practice, and at the same time can be distracting and we can completely fall out of it because we are in ‘vacation mode’. 

Ideas on how to bring your mindfulness, meditation, and yoga practice to life during summer: 

  1. Plan your practice. As you plan your summer, make an intention about your practice too. Schedule it in, allow it to be a priority.  If you are going on vacation, bring your meditation cushion and your mat. Inform the people you spend time with about it, and that you would like to be free of distraction during that time.  
  1. Honour the sunrise. If you have the chance, try waking up early and practice with the sunrise. There is something auspicious and peaceful about this time, and it IS easier to wake up early in the summer, so why not make the most of it.
  1. Write about it. My grandmother once told me that if you want to remember beautiful moments and make them a part of you forever, write them down. Even with photos, the moment could slip by.  When we bring writing into our daily lives, we might also see the world differently, notice more details about the beauty and wonders of our experiences.
  1. Connect to your creativity. Bring out the old pencils, colours, knitting, half written poetry, dusty instruments. Take it with you on vacation and spend some ME time with your creative outlet. There’s nothing like being in the flow of creation in the present moment, and you might even end the summer with a beautiful finished project.
  1. Listen to your body. If it is rest that you need, then take the rest. Let yourself connect to your natural rhythm, your own pace this summer. It’s ok to opt out, be ‘unproductive’, and just lounge about. I love getting sweaty and doing all the activities when I have time off and that’s all good. But it can be exhausting. It’s all about balance and what YOU need.
  1. Take some silent time. There’s a lot of social stuff going on, and we love it. Give yourself some silent time, even just an hour here and there. It’s a gift. Maybe you have some time off work, you can put the phone away for a few hours a day, or longer! 

In time with regular practice, whatever it is that your chosen lineage, school or teacher is, it will become a part of you and trickle into your daily life, no matter where you are or what you are doing. That’s the beauty of it, it just takes a little attention and dedication for a while, and then it becomes naturally inviting. Summer is a great time to start!

About Silvia

Silvia is a Yoga teacher, physiology enthusiast, and spiritual seeker. She is passionate about making the yoga practice accessible and functional for everyone and helping others find their personal expression with joyful movement.  Read full bio

Want Peace? Embrace The Conflict.

Posted on by Kasia

Want Peace? Embrace The Conflict.

The paradox of the compassionate heart

A Tibetan monk, who had spent more than 18 years in a Chinese prison labour camp, told the Dalai Lama that on a few occasions he really faced some danger. So, he asked him, ‘What danger? What kind of danger?’, thinking he would tell him of Chinese torture and prison. The monk replied, ‘Many times I was in danger of losing compassion for the Chinese.’

The recent war in Ukraine reminds me of one thing. We are in danger, in danger of ourselves. When I look around, I notice that people are angry, afraid, and feel powerless. And rightly so, but with whom are we angry, who are we afraid of and why do we feel disempowered? 

At the heart of the problem lies our denial as a species that we are not just aware, loving, and caring beings but we have the potential to be killers as well. The spectrum of what the human being is capable of is vast; on one end we can love unconditionally and on the other end we can kill and destroy cold-heartedly for our own benefit. Now, this is the part of us that we don’t like being reminded of; our dark side or the shadow as Carl Jung called it. Our unloved Self is too shameful, painful, or traumatic to bring into the light and acknowledge. Acknowledge that this is part of who we are, what we have done, what we have created.

And by that very suppression of our dark side over years, decades and centuries, individually and collectively, we have created a massive polarised energetic charge that continues to infuse conflict in ourselves and thereby the world around us. Just like any pressure, that charge seeks expression. And this is what we see in and around us all the time; an excess charge that is trying to find a way out.

As long as we keep coming into action from that old unresolved business, we will have more of that pain and suffering again. This is no rocket science. Well actually it is…quantum physics shows us over and over again that we create our reality on a moment-by-moment basis based on the thoughts, beliefs, and preferences we’ve subscribed to in the past. So, if we hold a tense and contracted state of reality in ourselves, we will see that same reality manifest around us. We are co-creative beings of our reality, not victims to it. 

As much as we would like it to all just go away, we have to deal with the mess we created. But it won’t if we keep coming from the same principles we applied to live in the past. Einstein reminded us of this when he said that we can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

And apart from the same thinking, it might not even be thinking at all that is going to get us out of the woods. It could very well be that the thinking mind is never going to get us to the place where sensible solutions to problems can present themselves: the present moment. And it can’t because the job description of the thinking mind is to seek, to go out on a quest to find something other than ‘this’. ‘This’ is the very moment in which life manifests as it does. And that manifestation is all-inclusive, not just peace and harmony but also conflict, pain, fear, and all other aspects of life.

Now we may want to ask ourselves if this is a problem. I have come to see that we don’t suffer from being afraid but from our inability and resistance to consciously experience that fear. Our judgment, fear, and denial of that which life presents and our immediate need to fix it creates the very charge we hold on to as stress and which we keep feeding back into the system, thereby perpetuating conflict.

In my belief and experience, the solution to this can come from our compassionate hearts. Contrary to the thinking mind our compassionate heart has the ability to experience all aspects of life freely in all its intensity without knowing or understanding. At the same time, the compassionate heart has the ability to let that experience be without personalizing or needing to fix it.

In this sense, compassion exposes the illusion that what happens in this very moment is personal and needs fixing. It is simply how life unfolds. True compassion ends the personal drama and sees life as it really is; a free fall of endless possibilities. 

The union of compassion and being aware of how life is now having an immediate and noticeable energetic effect. It will release the old charges and prevent them from building up again. The effect of us holding less charge from the past is that we no longer project it into the reality of tomorrow. 

If we apply this principle to war, for example, we have to make an entirely irrational step in how we have dealt with this before. We now need to consciously move towards something that we previously tried so hard to run away from. And rather than fix it we now let it be. We can see it for what it really is; an aspect of life that has come into manifestation. Letting war be, does not mean approving of war or condoning it. That is what your mind will tell you in facing the compassionate embrace, which instantly ends the story it wants to keep going so badly.

What happens is simply astonishing. We will lose charge around our perception of war. And by no longer holding that charge in us we don’t feed it into the reality we manifest in and around us. When more and more people practice this and thereby end their contribution to the conflict, we literally disempower the war. Not by fighting it, opposing it, or trying to fix it but by embracing war as part of life as it could potentially manifest.

This is a much more aware and realistic approach to living. We need to get real, wake up. Life is not just a fluffy cloud of pink marshmallows; it is a living system of endless diversity and potential. What part of that potential comes to life is up to us. The first step is to take responsibility and deal with our creations from the past in a conscious way by no longer giving them energy. Denying it or running away from it didn’t get us anywhere. Neither did peace demonstrations. Taking sides only leads to more polarisation, energising the very things we wanted to put an end to. Noticing the present moment in an aware state and embracing that which presents ends the unconscious re-creation of the past and gives way to a much more harmonic principle that is no longer based on our personal limitations that come from fear, greed, and ignorance.

When we move out of a contracted state of being we come into the flow. A natural state of energy, which moves into directions that benefits all of nature. The actions and decisions we then make come out of clarity and awareness and have quite a different outcome than the ones we used to make from our contracted states of being.

We can no longer exclude the parts of life we don’t like or want and thereby polarise and charge them. We need to learn to embrace the diversity of life and experience it without reservations, including the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Does this mean we will never be angry again, that there won’t be any fights? It is a romantic idea but completely unrealistic. Trying to achieve that would be missing the point here. Look at life, it is everything. Making ourselves consciously available to all of it allows us to experience its endless diversity and intensity, without being a victim to it any longer. I believe it is the only way to freedom and peace. 

A Tibetan monk, who had spent more than 18 years in a Chinese prison labour camp, told the Dalai Lama that on a few occasions he really faced some danger. So, he asked him, ‘What danger? What kind of danger?’, thinking he would tell him of Chinese torture and prison. The monk replied, ‘Many times I was in danger of losing compassion for the Chinese.’