Namaste Consulting Inc.

A Weekend of Mindfulness

Spring Renewal Meditation Retreat

Thursday Evening, April 26 through Sunday Noon, April 29

Led by Lisa Ernst

The thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,

 A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,

This is the best season of your life.

-Wu-men

Please join us at a beautiful retreat site near Kingston Springs Tennessee for a three day silent mindfulness meditation retreat.

Lately I’ve found a nice alternative to walking meditation when space or time doesn’t allow. Simply standing on one foot requires a great deal of uninterupted concentration while also keeping you alert, improving your balance and strengthening your ankles. With relatively little practice I’m now able to stay balanced as long as my muscles can endure it. When that gets old, I’ll move on to doing it with eyes closed.

There it is. My simplified morning routine.

Here's where it came from:

1. Drink: I've been reading, and believe, that drinking water (preferrably with lemon) first thing in the morning can help with early energy. Dehydration is one of the leading causes of low energy. I want a simple morning routine that "primes" me for an energetic day. I start drinking by using fresh lemon water to swallow my supplements (a habit I'm proud to say I've really engrained in myself the last few months) and then finishing a full bottle of water by 10 or 11 a.m.

Love without kindness is not true love; true kindness is never without love.

Tonight my 4 year old daughter was having trouble getting to sleep. The fourth time she called one of us back into her room, I remembered a thought I had earlier in the day. I'd listened to a wonderful dhamma talk on metta by Pascal Auclair on my way to work this morning. At the time I thought, wouldn't it be nice to share this with my daughter.

When would you call sorrow a mental illness? By now nearly everyone has heard of the proposed change to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder 5 (DSM-5) which would allow medical and mental health care providers to treat grief after the death of a loved one the same as major depression, in some cases with antidepressant. I posted about this last summer, pointing out that there is hardly a need for a change in the DSM, in my opinion, because the current diagnostic criteria for Major Depressive Disorder allows for a clinician's judgment in discerning whether the vegetative and psychological signs and symptoms point to or away from normal bereavement.

Neuroplasticity is visited in this video. I often post about neuroplasticity and how that concept allows us to understand that we can heal and change our health and wellbeing by changing our brains.

Neuroscientist Sara Lazar's amazing brain scans show meditation can actually change the size of key regions of our brain, improving our memory and making us more empathetic, compassionate, and resilient under stress.

The distance from your pain, your grief, your unattended wounds, is the distance from your partner. And the distance from your partner is your distance from the living truth, your own great nature. Whatever maintains that distance, that separation from ourselves and our beloveds, must be investigated with mercy and awareness. This distance is not overcome by one "giving up their space" to another, but by both partners entering together the unknown between them.

Absolutely beautiful - the colors, the light, the bokeh. Mmmm.

Sharon Johnstone is a Birmingham, England based fine art nature photographer. She completed her Fine Arts degree at the University of Creative Arts in 1993, specializing in printmaking. Of her dew drop photographs, she writes:

‘With macro photography I escape to another little world. I love exploring the tiny details in nature that often get overlooked.

Hey Zenful Dancers! Here's a short exercise you can do when you have a few minutes:

The next time you feel like discounting yourself (and your thoughts and feelings) try these three things in this order:

1. Stop and focus on your breath. Follow it in and out for about one minute.

2. Close your eyes and smile from the inside out for about a minute.