Tag: eoin finn

Why I am NOW a Believer in Online Learning.

Posted on February 28, 2021 - in Yoga
Why I’m a believer in online learning
In a, “sometimes you’ve gotta be careful what you wish for way,” this era of online trainings wasn’t a complete pivot for me. In December 2019 I sent an email to everyone who worked with me. The email was called the “Blissology State of the Union.”
Long before I had ever heard of Coronovirus, I outlined a strategy to bring our Blissology Yoga School trainings online by April 2020. 
Why? My prime motivator was that I wanted to lower my eco footprint, but still make our trainings accessible. I had finally reached a point where, getting myself on a flight every second weekend to teach in yet another city had lost the joy and curiosity that it originally used to offer me. I knew I would miss seeing students in person, but I knew that I needed to come up with a way of sharing yoga teachings that was more sustainable both for my mental health, my quality of life and also to make the trainings more accessible financially by more.
I had no idea of course that things would SHIFT so quickly and how…

Can Yoga Trainings be Taught Effectively Online?

Back then I wondered if Yoga trainings could be taught online effectively? Have you ever wondered that?

At that point, I was looking down a dark tunnel. I couldn’t foresee the future. I have to admit, I had my doubts. However, now that we have 10 online courses behind us, I am a total believer in this new format of teaching yoga.

… The Answer is A Resounding YES!

As far as the quality of the trainings, I am continuously blown away by the power of online learning as a tool to effectively transfer knowledge.
For one, if I say something in person that a student doesn’t “get” in that moment, they cannot “rewind” me. In the digital world, however, they do.
I can also subtitle the videos and make important ideas POP. And this way, everyone, including you, yes you who like to hang out at the back of class, you too have a front row seat in class. 🙂
A few other technical strategies that I have now honed since the first training is that I can use the text in the manuals and in the video lecture notes to pinpoint exact time codes of important ideas to discuss.
Finally, something that didn’t occur to me until this year is that much of the knowledge I am sharing is progressive.  This means in any course I am teaching there are always people who have done the previous course and ones that haven’t. I can simply add the previous lectures to the current course so students can get caught up or get a refresher if they need to or they can also choose to skip that video if they feel confident.  This allows the courses to really align with where students are at.

Connection is Our Currency

And how about the connection? If there was one thing I had reservations about, it wasn’t the quality of the teachings, it was the glue that holds Blissology together called connection. What really makes Blissology Trainings powerful is our focus on breaking down barriers to authentic and deep human connection so we become incredible friends for life.

We often repeat this Mantra, connection is our currency.

However, I can tell you that some of my greatest joys from 2020 are for the incredible friendships that I made with students online who I have still never met in person to this day.
We share and respond to each other‘s comments on our teachable platform, on our private Facebook groups and on our zoom calls. Is it as powerful as real, in person connection? No. But it is way deeper than I ever thought possible.

This is why I can finally say without reservation that while we are busy planning for in person trainings as soon as we are able to, we are thrilled to bring our 100 and 200 hour trainings online. If you are looking for a flexible way to complete your 200 hr YTT; and want guidance and support within a community yet the ability to work at your own pace, drop us a line, we’d love to chat about your goals and discover if this training format is ideal for you.
Have a beautiful day + namaste + peace.
Eoin.

Are You in Love or at War with Your Body?

Posted on November 25, 2020 - in Uncategorized
Eoin finn in love or at war

I am practicing to a routine on Cody App. I always enjoy what the next generation of yogis are bringing to the practice. I love the “new school” moves and the creativity these Instagram stars bring to the table.

The warmups are vigorous right out of the start.  We do what seems like a trillion chaturangas, plank with the knee and forehead touching, chaturanga to dolphin.  I thought I was pretty fit by my arms are shaking.

“Wow, I must not be pushing myself a lot in my personal practice,” I think to myself “because this is damn hard.”

I love the challenge, I love getting strong and I love the heat it brings.  At one point we hit a pose that is about stretching and not strengthening and we are told that is the way it works for this teacher. We must work hard and then earn a rest.

The thing is, when the time comes for poses that are emphasize stretching as opposed to conditioning my body for fitness, I find myself not as open and flexible as I normally am for these poses.  It’s not that I haven’t been working.  My muscles are warm, I’ve physically exerted myself and my sweatshirt came off long ago.  I’m warm.

The thing is, I am just not “embodied” – with the fast pace and the performance-oriented practice I haven’t had time to let my mind penetrate my body and untie the knots from the inside out.  Rather, the emphasis has been on the outer body movements of muscles and bones and perfecting the shapes of the asana.

I’ve been doing yoga but haven’t had time to feel the yoga. My mind is still trying to submit my body into a flexible and toned person, but it’s a one-way conversation.  It’s a boss, rather than an equal participant in the process; it’s running a dictatorship of mind controlling my body rather than a democracy where the mind and body work together in synergy.

This approach is endemic to our modern culture and frankly a lot of the early yoga I was exposed to. Mind over matter and not mind within matter.  It’s a feeling of control rather than harmony.

I’ve been writing about embodiment for our Blissology Teacher’s Training manual.  I am committing this year to creating incredible teachers who can impact their communities through yoga, mindfulness and love; Our Bliss Army.

I have been thinking the whole time during the practice, “wow, I should get our Blissology Teachers together so we should all do this class as a group so I can point out the difference between doing and feeling yoga.”

Then it comes: the instructor says a phrase that explains exactly what I feel behind this approach:

During a long, two-minute hold of warrior two the instructor says in his sermon:

“Don’t let your body control your mind, let your mind control your body.”

It’s as if there is a battle between team body and team mind.

Plank Pose Eoin Finn

In plank pose, can you somatically regulate your body and keep yourself calm or do you want to mentally conquer your body?

I used to think and teach like this before it became clear what embodiment and specifically what “embodied peace” was.

The “Power Yoga” process was like this.  Hold people in an impossibly long plank pose.  As their arms were shaking and they were about to break, the soliloquy was:

“Life is full of hardships, there are going to be so many challenges we face in life; relationships, arguments, traffic…. The only thing we can control is our reactions to things so develop a resilient mind now.”

It seemed like good enough advice but the problem was it was a mental game that involved cutting off feedback from circuitry to the body and over-riding it with strength of my mind.

I’ve learned that a better way for me to deal with those scenarios is to use bodily sensations and not numb myself to them.  For example, while holding plank pose, I would notice that my throat and jaw would tighten, my breath would constrict and become short and my butt would clench.

What I needed to do was to literally, relax the jaw, loosen the butt from clenching, and keep the breath L.S.D. (Long, Slow and Deep.) I could take the lid off of the pressure cooker and remain calm in a challenge not by cutting myself off of bodily feedback, but by using it to my advantage.

Suddenly even these hard poses became no sweat. Literally.  I stopped sweating buckets when before I used to be one of those sweaty yoga guys nobody wanted to put their mats beside they were dripping bodily fluids onto their neighbor’s mats.

My physical toolbox of mind-body integration to maintain calmness under pressure became indispensable to me.  The incredible thing is that this has huge implications for life: whether dropping into a scary wave on my surfboard, in a situation of confrontation, I can control my reactions physically and maintain my setting of calm and clarity.

I can use my body to find mental flow states. I can somatically self-regulate towards peace.

How about You?

The Yamas: A Blissology Perspective; Asteya

Posted on October 18, 2020 - in Spirituality, Yoga

Notes from Eoin’s personal interpretation of the YAMAS.  This is the second post in a series. If you find that this information offers you guidance, please leave a comment. We will soon share more.

NAMASTE + ALOHA.

Asteya is much more subtle than sticking items in your backpack without paying for them at the grocery store.

In this modern era, because it’s easy to copy the intellectual property of another, does it make it right?

When I moved to Santa Cruz in 2015, I started to meet people in the yoga community.

I wanted to find a good yoga class. While having lunch with a new teacher I met, I asked her, “Do you have any recommendations for a good yoga class I should go to here in town?”

Her answer was, “I mostly do a home practice but I try and get out to a class once a month to find fresh ideas to steal.”

It was said in a very joking way with a smile, but it affected me.

Oddly, the next day I met another yoga teacher in town. We had coffee and I asked the same question. I was shocked that I got exactly the same answer. Except this time the teacher I met said they like to go to other people’s classes once a month not to steal ideas but to “borrow” ideas.

Does yoga belong to everyone truly? Does music belong to everyone? How about science? Should we credit the discoveries of others or just say that science belongs to everyone?

What the yama of Asteya is saying to me is to dive deep inside and listen to my internal moral compass.

In my case, I look at some influential teachers I had in my life and I always try and credit them.

I could easily “borrow” their ideas and pass them off as my own, just as easily as I can download a movie or song and not pay the artist.

I can justify my actions and say, “oh music belongs to everyone, there is no original music, it’s all just the same notes but people just rearrange it differently so why should I pay them?”

But we need to step into the shoes of another person. I work often with my friend Taz who makes music and I could easily use his songs in my yoga videos.

But I know he is a new dad with many bills to pay and it doesn’t sit right with me to simply borrow his music. He offers it to me for free but I always try him pay him what I can. He jas told me how much he appreciates this.

In the same way, is all yoga truly the same as other progressions and innovations?

When I studied yoga with a teacher named Gioia Irwin a few decades ago, it was different than other approaches and her specific way in which she presented techniques worked.

Now when I am teaching, I have a choice: I can justify not crediting her for her work because “yoga belongs to everyone.” However, my internal compass tells me this is Steya, or stealing.

So I painstakingly mention her name to my students almost daily. This feels right to me.

Likewise, I have worked hard to re-vision how we do yoga and come up with different tools, techniques and innovations.

I used to pretend I was an “open-source” dude, meaning these ideas don’t belong to anyone so let them go.

But the fact is, when I would see my students sharing the same ideas i worked on for years of my life without crediting me, I realized that a part of me did feel hurt.

It was exactly the same feeling you have when someone steals a material possession. Exactly. I couldn’t lie to myself.

Fresh ideas in this industry are currency.

By contrast, my friend Bernie Clark emailed me when he was writing a book to check about a quote that I had said. He wanted to credit this quote to the right person. It felt right to me that he acknowledges where the quote came from.

In the same way, I have often quoted Bernie in my work for things that I am borrowing or sharing from his work with others. To me this is my interpretation of non-stealing, Asteya.

I want to credit any teaching I share to the people who came up with this knowledge.

If you read a scientific textbook, there is a painstaking effort to footnote where the information cited comes from.

Contrast this with my friends I met at the café in Santa Cruz who go to class once a month to steal fresh ideas for their classes.

Relating back to music, it’s easy to download movies and songs. But can you put yourself in the shoes of another? If you were trying to feed your family by making music and people downloaded it without paying, how would you feel?

Tune into your moral compass, see things from the perspective of the person you are “borrowing” from and live accordingly.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated.

Eoin Finn

Love Transcends All Distance {meditation}

Posted on August 6, 2020 - in Blissology 101

This “Love Transcends all Distance” meditation is my medicine in these anxious times. I am honored and excited to share. My hope is that is will help restore you to a space of calm and centeredness. Space where we can find the eye in the storm.

It is a somatic-based meditation where we bring deep and relaxing, “3 Dimensional” breath into the body to help regulate ourselves towards peace. You will feel your hormone and nervous system switch into the relaxation response. You will let go of fear and worry and reconnect to the light inside our hearts.

Ultimately, my hope is that you will feel that Love is an energy that is accessible to us even in the most challenging of times and it is the force that needs to guide us now more than ever.

You will feel that even though we may have a lot of physical distance between us these days, the Love Transcends All Distance.

We are offering this as a free service but we would graciously accept donations for our EcoKarma Project. If you’d like to donate you can do so here. All proceeds will help us create more blue oceans for the next generation.

Eoin

Never Doubt that the World Needs your Gifts

Posted on July 1, 2020 - in Blissology 101

Each one of us is our own gem; we have an offering to humanity that we were meant to bring out into the world, but we play small.

I’ve realized that there have been so many gifts in the past few months underneath all the fear and uncertainty.

If we want to create a new future, it starts by simply sitting down and breathing. Like you would reset your phone: let’s recharge our energy and connect back to the beautiful vibration of Love.

Love is the biggest gift we’ve been given in our life. When we share that love it comes back 1000 times stronger. Like a boomerang, it comes right back at us. So share what’s in your heart.

Let go of negative stories in your past and create the amazing future that we are all stepping into. The world needs your gifts. Let them shine today in the smallest of ways.

If you’re interested in these types of conversations you can sign up for our Commit to Bliss Online course happening this July!

Pigeon Pose: Blissology Style. 12 Minutes that will Radically Up-Level your Game.

Posted on June 2, 2020 - in Yoga

This is a short video from the Blissology Align Your Yoga, Align Your Life module.

Of course, it makes even more sense when you have seen the other 50 videos in the program and partaken in our Zoom calls in the course.

However, I want to share it since so many people in the course commented on how they didn’t have any clicks or pinches in their knees or hips doing the pose this way.

That’s one of my driving passions: to help people understand how the forces can be directed through the body so that we get the maximum stretch but our joints remain stable.

You will hear the key Blissology Yoga mantras: “Toes Before Pose,” “Stabilize Ankles and Knees, then Mobilize Hips.”

What you will need to let go of for this approach is striving to get the chest and hips on the floor. All too often this means we collapse in the pose instead of staying expanded and keeping our joints safe. We also “Go-Around” the stretch this way.

I hope this helps you with your yoga and to lead a life of health and positivity.

Namaste,
Eoin

Total Joy: 100-hour Training & Epic Online Modules

Posted on June 1, 2020 - in Blissology 101

Joy Joy Joy!

I’ve been in my Joy in an extra-large way lately.

Two things that light me immensely are learning and sharing ideas as well as connecting with a community of people who want to lift each other up and create an upward spiral together.

This has been happening in a huge way in the last two online immersions we ran in May and I am thrilled to launch three trainings that can be taken individually or you can do all three for the 100-hour Blissology Yoga certification:

  1. June 10: Align Your Yoga, Align Your Life
  2. July 10: Commit to Bliss
  3. September 10: Blissology Yoga Teaching Methodology

If you want to help your body heal, help others to heal and share the message of your deepest heart, these modules are for you.
I am thrilled to share this bliss with you!

How to choose the right yoga teacher training for YOU

Posted on February 27, 2020 - in Yoga

Having just emerged from our annual Bali Blissology Yoga Teacher Training, I was humbled by the trust our students put in us to lead them deep onto a journey than is not just personally transformative, but one that will profoundly shift the course of their life.

Today Yoga is a full-blown movement, with more than 300 million practitioners globally. And if, like me, you were lulled by a teacher’s mellifluous tones during savasana and experienced a little voice inside you crying out, “I want to teach, in fact I know I can,” know that you are not alone.

Yoga teacher training courses are some of the most popular offerings at yoga studios and retreat centers globally (the Yoga Alliance lists over 8000 yoga teacher training schools on its website as of 2020) and hundreds of yoga students line up each year to sign up.

However, before committing to a Yoga Teacher Training, here are our top 6 things to consider. We’ve created this list after 17 years of offering our Blissology Yoga teacher trainings, a training that continues to evolve and has graduated some incredible yoga teachers year after year.

  1. Be clear of your intention Yoga as a practice forces us to unmask our intentions. Be honest with yourself. Do you want to teach? Why do you want to teach? If teaching is simply a way for you to deepen your practice, a yoga teacher training course may not be the best option for you. Many studios as well as independent teachers offer programs for advanced / intermediate practitioners, e.g. Blissology offers an Align your Yoga Align your Life course that we think is ideal for practitioners who want to take their yoga deeper but may not want to teach.  These usually cost way less than a yoga training. If you  are clear however that you want to teach and are passionate about studying further, pursuing a YTT may be the right path for you.
  2. Find your Teacher: the one you want to spend 200 hours with. Whenever students ask me who they should do a training with, I tell them, what do you like to practice? And who do you like to practice with? Is there a teacher you connect with? Do you like how they teach? Do you like how they explain the poses, the alignment, do you connect with their teaching? If the answers are yes, ask them who they studied with? Or go to their training, if that is on offer.
  3. Teaching Yoga can be competitive – create a focus. NAMASTA, an independent health professional alliance in the US recently numbered yoga instructors in the US alone at 70,000 and counting. What differentiates you? Yes, you are and always will be a unique individual, but as yoga business coach Kelly McHugh says, “It is essential to have a focus, and to know who your students are and why they are coming to your classes.”Do you have a special interest in your life that you could bring yoga to? Many successful yoga teachers align their existing interests with yoga and in doing so, can bring yoga to various other populations. For example, professional mountain biker Ryan Leech is a student of Blissology Yoga founder Eoin Finn. After completing Finn’s 200-hour training, he began running yoga and mountain bike retreats and often teaches yoga at bike festivals around the world. If you don’t already have a focus for your teaching goals, or a ready audience, allow one to emerge. At the Blissology Yoga teacher trainings, Finn spends time with his students to help them to uncover what he calls their “life mission.””Your life mission is the deep desire you want to share in the world and it touches all aspects of your life. It will allow you to translate what you want to bring to your community. It will allow you to channel your energies and commit toward a path.”Perhaps you want to teach children, athletes, or practitioners with physical disabilities. Ask yourself what is important to you.

  4. Yoga Teaching is not chai and kombucha drinking all day.  While teaching yoga may seem like it involves drinking many cups of tea, green juice, meditating and enjoying a leisurely yoga practice each day, the reality is quite different. As a yoga teacher starting out, making an impact takes time, passion, persistence and hard work. A genuine love of people and a desire to help others are key. After all, if you are teaching yoga, you are building relationships with people, with a community and with all the enmeshed, inter-twinings of their lives.
  5. Yoga Teaching is a Lifelong Study. The global standard for a qualified yoga teacher is 200 hours, as defined by  Yoga Alliance, an independent accreditation body in the US, whose goal is to continue to make yoga more professional. Yoga Alliance does this by creating strict guidelines by which they attempt to regulate the teaching programs on offer. However, as many a yoga teacher will tell you, a 200-hour course is simply the beginning. As practiced in the original guru/shishya model (that’s teacher/student for the Sanskrit newbies), where the student apprenticed for many years with an experienced teacher, the study of yoga is a life-long journey.Yet, if a student has a good understanding of yoga and has been practicing already for some time (ideally two years), then a 200-hour training can be sufficient to begin to teach. Of course you can only teach what you know, so this is where you start, just teaching what you know. Everyone has to start somewhere.Yoga teachers are impassioned about their art and craft and good teacher training programs offer courses and workshops that continue to fuel your evolving interest as well as the needs of your evolving student body and with many schools you can work your way up to 500 hours of training.
  6. Choose your Yoga Teacher Trainings wisely – they’re an investment
    While most yogis with aspirations to teach are in it for their own personal growth and a desire to share something that makes themhappy, the reality is that yoga teacher have to make a living.Yoga teacher training courses can set you back anywhere from USD$3,000 to USD$10,000 depending on the teacher, school, duration of the program and certification; YTT programs, especially the good ones; are not cheap. Consider your yoga training to be an investment: emotionally, spiritually and in the physical/material world and research your potential investment before diving in.When you’re choosing a training, clarify your accreditation possibilities after the course; as you want a certificate that will be easily recognized. Currently Yoga Alliance, is the most well-known system globally, but countries such as Australia also have their own systems.  Check about the current rates of employment of past graduates, speak to someone who has studied at the school — most yoga schools will refer you to previous students if asked — and also ask about assisting and mentorship possibilities.Another tip: be sure to ask how much emphasis your teacher training places on practicing the craft of teaching so that you emerge after the 200 hours ready to teach and share your learnings with confidence and ease.

Joseph Campbell, the late philosopher best known for his ‘follow your bliss’ mantra, predicted that yoga would be one of the callings of the new millennium.

With its remarkable growth come cautionary stories, such as the NYT Bestseller “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body.” Yet, even in this age of Crossfit, multi-hyphenated fitness trends, barre and The Class, yoga continues to be one of the fastest-growing forms of wellness and fitness in the world today, an antidote to our modern troubles of too much technology, constant stress and an ever increasing pace of life.

If you’re on a journey pursuing this powerful, transformative and beautiful path, inhale deeply and Om on. The world is waiting for you.

Ps. The next Blissology 100 hr immersion and 200 hour Yoga Alliance Certified Teacher Training runs in May 2020 in beautiful Tofino, BC on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada.

pss. Photo Credits: From Top: Meredith Rose Photography, Monique Pantel and Kate Ediger. Maha Gratitude.

Blog by, Insiya Rasiwala-Finn

What is advanced Yoga?

Posted on June 7, 2018 - in Yoga

In my past two decades of teaching yoga, I’ve seen a lot of evolution in the yoga world. I’ve loved watching new poses come into the mix, some borrowed from creative minds and some from other disciplines such as circus school. I never thought I would be interested in a one arm hand stand for example. I thought, “this is just flashy,” but then I realized the challenge kept me fresh and gave me something to progress towards. I am no longer a naysayer and practice this and other “new school” yoga moves almost every day.

That said, having just taught one month of intensive Blissology Yoga Teacher Training course focusing on the ins an outs of yoga alignment, I am recommitted to making people realize my stance on yoga progression. I strongly believe that advanced yoga needs to be viewed not just as flashy, challenging poses, preferably done on the edges of cliffs or waterfalls; nay, advanced yoga lies also in being able to do so called “basic” poses with precision, breath and presence. This needs to remain the foundation of yoga.

One afternoon during the YTT, I wanted to run our Yoga Foundations course so the students could see how to explain so called “simple poses” like upward dog or chaturanga to beginners.  It become clear that this work was not just for beginners. Even people who had been practicing yoga for decades loved going back to basics and learning how to do them well.   It was a joy to spend whole afternoons looking at what muscles need to turn on to make these poses feel light yet stable to explore what the feet, pelvis and hands do in the pose with a fine brush instead of in broad brush strokes.  There is a whole world of detail that isn’t boring but outright exciting in this work.  There needs to be a resurgence of this type of study in modern yoga.

Over the years, as thousands of more yoga teachers pour into the incredibly competitive global yoga market, there is more and more emphasis to find something fresh and exciting in the practice. This means that teachers will step up their sequencing game, make killer playlists, and throw lots of challenging poses into the mix.

To really do yoga with precision, you need to make people aware of what they are doing by plugging into their bodily feedback loops and slowing the tempo down. In way too many yoga classes I’ve observed, the tempo seems to be speeding up as this is what creates sweat which is an easy sell in our body conscious culture.

Imagine trying to play jazz before mastering the scales. This is an analogy for what I see in the modern yoga culture.

I believe that we need to spend more time ingraining a solid alignment foundation in yogis; and as experienced yoga teachers it is our responsibility to the next generation (of yogis) that we do so.

I always remind our graduating teachers that every yoga instructor is trying to strike a balance between detail and flow—and it’s a tricky balance. If you concentrate on the details of the poses, often the classes loses flow and become a clinic or workshop.

Yet, there is a third option. When we slow the pace down just a little and create an experience of harmony between mind, body and breath, concentrating on precise yoga can lead to the state of mind we all love called “flow.”

This means we need to let people know why they are doing the poses, what the benefits are, how they should feel in the pose and let their internal experience guide the poses.

It’s the opposite to being guided from the “outside in” and feeling like every pose needs to fit a perfect photo. This is where we progress to in our month long YTT.

There is a lot of room still for inspiring playlists, creative sequencing, philosophical themes and even options for advanced poses for those who want to go there in the class. Let’s walk before we run though. Alignment is and should be the foundation for all yoga, beginner or advanced. After all, cultivating a strong practice of alignment will help our bodies to continue to practice our yoga as we age, with more freedom and no injuries.

Presence, Meditation + Love: Three Rivers, One Ocean

Posted on February 14, 2018 - in Blissology 101

I always teach why we need to be in the present before explaining how. I feel this is something that is elusive to people. Simply put, presence opens the door to more intimate engagement in life; life has more meaning and joy in the present.

A simple example is food.

When we are present to the food we eat, we eat slowly, we savor each bite. The conversation in our head is about how the food tastes, we experience slowly the sensations of each morsel in our palette. It is not about what we are going to do next week or typing a message on social media. We taste what is in front of us with intimate engagement. The flavors speak to us and we listen with our body and mind.

Photo: Made Sintya

 

By contrast, when we are not present to our food, we tend to just shovel it in as we watch our television or walk down the street. We are still living in our heads and our food is entering our body without any real awareness. There is no intimacy and no connection to who made our food, where it came from, how it tastes or what it is doing to our body.

The first step is to slow down and hit pause; to shift from doing to feeling. We want to open the door to more reverence to all life.

There is a sense of peace in the body that we seek in yoga + meditation. The lower back is relaxed, the breath is full and deep, the shoulders are relaxed. We need to use this as a barometer for when we are present or not. Often, when we are not present our bodies are tense and our breath is not very deep and only in the upper front chest.

The key to me is to see Presence more as a state of body, than a state of mind.  When our bodies are light, but grounded and relaxed, the door to presence opens easily.

Especially the week of Valentine’s when Love becomes something we focus on more, let’s commit to slowing down and truly being present for the ones who mean something to us. Let’s feel the miracle of each person and the honor to be in this time and this space with another.

Let’s make time for Kindness. Let’s make more time for Love After all, as we say in Blissology: “Love is the Ultimate Renewable Resource.”