#moving meditation

[brytning]

I saw a post the other day about how difficult mindfulness meditation can be, especially for people who are neurodivergent, and OP was frustrated that their therapist never recommended anything else. There are many opportunities to bring mindfulness, focus, and intention to activities you already like! Learning about flow state has been a real eye-opener for me.

[feyheart5]

A new, to me, activity

Almost all my life I have spurned physical activity, and added some nasty words and sneers if I was really frustrated about it. The fact that my first PE teacher in my first school ran circles around me while loudly proclaiming how she could run circles around us while towards the end of her pregnancy only exacerbated my disdain and disgust. Walking was fine, and I enjoyed walking with friends. I…

[hsmagazine254]

Unleash Your Inner Yogi: Exploring the Transformative Power of Vinyasa Yoga

Flowing with Grace: Embracing the Art of Vinyasa Yoga In the bustling world we live in, finding inner peace and balance can be a challenge. Enter Vinyasa Yoga, a dynamic and invigorating practice that combines movement, breath, and mindfulness. Vinyasa Yoga offers a transformative experience that strengthens the body, calms the mind, and nurtures the spirit. In this article, we will delve into…

[lizbethart-blog]

Solitude in Motion...

Solitude in Motion…

An early morning Vermont sky. New England was illuminated in a vibrant wash.  Sunrise, spectacular. Clouds bursting in brilliant shades of raspberry. Rectangular sections uniformly stretched across the sky. One pink cloud after the other thinned by the new day dawning. Light kissed the mountain ridge. Impossible to ignore nature’s invitation to leave my warm cozy house on the hill to head out for…

[tiredpacdad]

[breelynnxoxoxo]

MORNING BREAKS! 🌞🌞🌞

[siyuri]

@not-poignant 's The Raven Prince. Sometimes you read a story. Then move on with your life. But in a chaos of things you suddenly understand that some characters are now travelng with you. So this one made a crow's nest in my head. And couldn't be more grateful for it. Thank you, Pia! <3

[hexavexen]

uh oh

Hex stares at this display of power with guilt and awe.

(Dark Echo has revealed themselves as Legion.)

------------------------

MEDITATION EVENT

START ---- LAST ---- NEXT

[fadedinmysong]

YUTA in Paris for LVMENSWEAR24 Show

[barbielore]

While browsing for information on a particular Barbie, I was surprised to see Google recommend appending the word "controversy" to my search. The Barbie in question?

Breathe With Me Barbie. Breathe With Me Barbie is part of a range of self-care and wellness Barbies and depicts Barbie in a sukhasana pose, promising "5 guided meditations".

Unsure of where the controversy around this could be going, I clicked through. This seemed to be the root of it.

"Each pose is designed to invoke a Hindu deity in the spirit realm. I have seen children get possessed by demons. ... Satan is after the children. He wants to use them and indoctrinate them for his glory. Then, when he is done, he will destroy them. As your kids grow, they will get rebellious, depressed, and many will be suicidal. You won't understand what's happening as a parent. You must remove all toys and clean your children's room of all demonic attachments."

Various websites from Business Insider to The Christian Post to Newsweek cite Christian influencer (or, in the words of Business Insider, micro-influencer) Yasmeen Suri as being the origin of the claim that this doll is an agent of Satanism.

This would not be the first person to associate yoga with Satanism or possession - exorcist Gabriele Amorth also associated the practice of yoga with increased chance of demonic possession.

I can't find a screenshot of this, though, and all links back to the Facebook post are dead. What I did find though is a Patheos satire article dated shortly before the rest of these articles citing "Jasmine Blades" from Christians Against Eastern Religions as the source of the same quote.

Neither Christians Against Eastern Religions or Jasmine Blades are real, of course, hence their inclusion in a clearly marked satire piece. But I don't know where this leaves real Christian influencer Yasmeen Suri and her alleged (re)posting of the same quote picking up steam a week later. I don't know whether she saw the satire post and reposted the quote, to take it down later once she realised, or whether these articles quoting her as the source are misattributions. I'm leaning to the former, but I'm not actually sure.

There's a Truth or Fiction page debunking this, but what it is debunking is a) whether Breathe With Me Barbie depicts the practice of yoga (it depicts meditation, not yoga), b) whether this was a new doll in 2022 (it was not, it was released in 2020), c) whether yoga is synonymous with Hinduism and d) whether Catholicism or Christianity more generally prohibit or warn against the practice of yoga as a matter of doctrine.

For the record, by the way, there are Barbies that are explicitly depicted as practicing yoga, such as I Can Be... Yoga Teacher Barbie.

Or that appear to depict the practice of yoga on the box art, such as the Made to Move series.

Or dolls such as this Fitness Barbie who is depicted with various fitness equipment such as weights and a hula hoop, as well as a yoga mat.

[wanyinchen-narts]

summertime bonding training with dad-sensei and his beloved dango children🌤️🤸🍡

(click on the pictures since Tumblr likes to snack on pixels)

[weepingwitchkingdom]

(Major TNC spoilers)

Cyril is extremely powerful, and he is potentially more powerful than Runa or maybe Audrian. Because even though they are both very powerful, especially in areas where their type of lore is abundant. (For example, Runa has more power over her environment in the Tundra compared to the Desert.)

There are also examples in the books where he does things that Runa and Audrian can't.

For example, Runa can't use her lore without moving.

And Audrian has moved almost every time he uses his lore, so we can assume that he needs to move to use his lore. (This is only one example out of many.)

However, Cyril doesn't need to move when he uses his lore

And he mastered Lore Surging before Audrian and Runa.

He also has done some other things that would need a lot of power to do.

So he might be more powerful than them, but with Runa bonding with Navrashtya at the end of TNC and Audrian being bonded with a third beast, it's kinda difficult to judge.

[kfedup]

Five for Friday

Let's get a little thematic this morning; things I am learning about.

Ancestral trauma - I'm halfway through the reading and exercises in the book It Didn't Start With You, How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are, and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn. In tandem, I'm building out my family tree on ancestry.com and have traced my father's father's side back to Little Compton, RI in the 1600s. These birth, death, and census records are insufficient storytellers, but it's at least a foundation. I'm so angry and sad that I have no ties to anyone on that side of my family. Nobody talks about our ancestry. Nobody talks about anything. No relating to my relations. No big revelations in the book yet, either, but it's helping me talk to myself in a far more compassionate way and to see those who have already passed away with similar compassion.

Movement - through weekly one-on-one pilates coaching, a daily morning practice of pilates, yoga, stretching, and several walks a day, I'm bringing more awareness to the space my body takes up in the world. I'm noticing the ways gravity anchors me when I'm still and when I'm in motion. I'm slowly working through the workbook Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide by Andrea Olsen, which is full of science, art, exercises, beautiful creative writing, and a call to bring our presence to our existence in a body on this Earth.

Attachment - I'm enjoying a tender, raw, vulnerable, and hopeful energy exchange with a man I've known (and had a ridiculously huge secret crush on) for nearly a decade. He lives in the PNW and is in a more complicated situation than me, which has activated my anxious attachment. The day before he expressed his desire to be close to me while visiting Kent for an event a few weeks ago, I'd said to my therapist that I felt ready to work on the anxious attachment patterns that have contributed to the cratering of my relationships. The universe is working quickly these days. So I am rising to it and sitting with these difficult feelings of abandonment, of not good enough, of not enough, of hopelessness that accompanies this sweet ongoing exchange. I'm determined to not carry this forward with me as an unexamined pattern of reaction and behavior. Awareness is everything.

Meditation - I think it's been six months that I've sat meditation at least 5 mornings a week after I exercise. Sometimes unguided, just following my in-breath and out-breath and bringing myself back to that without judgment when my thoughts arise, as they will, perpetually. I often use guided meditations from the Ten Percent Happier app, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Hate the name, but the courses are wonderful and the guided meditations are like having a mini retreat wherever I am in the moment. I'll do quick 5-10 min meditations in between work calls or before I start cooking dinner. The guides are highly experienced meditation teachers whose voices feel like home to me. Best app purchase I've ever made. And I notice that I am more naturally bringing mindful attention to so many moments that I'm not sitting meditation. I'm doing dishes, sitting at my desk writing, walking the dog, tidying up the living room, and I'm aware of the feeling of my body, of my breath, of the sensation of having sensation. I think I'm beginning to understand in small slivers what it really means to be here now and honestly, this is kind of all I want to do anymore. I'm thinking about going away to a silent retreat soon.

Humility - at least I think that's the focus here. I'm practicing holding space and listening without waiting for my chance to speak, without trying to solve people's problems, and without interjecting my own narrative into their story. I notice I'm doing this nearly daily with my sister who is in the midst of very challenging mental health issues with my niece. All I want to do is go there and help in concrete, tangible ways, but she said no and I have to repeatedly trust that she knows what's best for her and her family and my only job is to hold space filled with love. Period. Ended.

Bonus - my Mom has said repeatedly in recent years that she's not interested in learning anything new. I think she's afraid of failure, afraid that she doesn't have the mental faculties to retain anything, and she's frozen by anxiety and depression that she refuses to do anything about. I'm trying to have compassion for her, but at the same time, I notice that her negativity has been a huge driver of my deep dive into self-awareness and growth. I wish I didn't have to grind my cog of the capitalism wheel so I could spend all of my time exploring what it means to be a soul having an embodied human experience. I refuse to give up like that.

[ksjanes]

Meditation

is not a sitting practice alone

but a continuous river stream

of awareness that flows

quietly and effortlessly

through every moment

of movement and rest.

~ Meeta Ahluwalia

[araaashiii]

Being cruel to the version of you that didn't know any better changes nothing about the things they did. It hurts the person who turned around and reflected, the person who learned from their mistakes and held themselves accountable, the person who deserves to heal, and the person who deserves to move forward. Forgive yourself.

[theonegod420]