Living Energy Blog

Leah Pearlman offers gentle and wise ideas for life and living.

Inspiration doesn’t get any better than this!

Video from KarmaTube

Happiness is a particular quality of energy. The state of our energy fields contributes to our ability to experience happiness. The state of the entire energy system contributes to our capacity for happiness but it is the Solar Plexus and the Heart Chakras that are most connected to our experience of happiness.

We can work with both our minds and our energy system to produce more happiness.  True happiness is a state of being that arises from within in response to how we are experiencing a present moment. This happiness is different from the externally triggered, excited kind of feeling that we generally associated with the word happiness.

Without specific practices our lower mind reigns over our habitual mental and emotional states. Our usual level of consciousness is not the province of the deeply satisfying states that put us in touch with our soul, the sacred and the wisdom of living. Our minds need to be trained to access these states. We can begin by learning how to choose happiness.

We can cultivate the energy of happiness :

1. Choose to find what is good today and focus on the good feeling

2. Make it a daily practice to engage in some activities that build and support feeling happy

3. Keep a happiness journal and record what made you happy today-it helps build the feeling/energy/chemistry

We can make happiness a habit! A happiness practice flows positive healing energy throughout your body-mind contributing to a strong foundation for health. It also provides a springboard for  further growth in consciousness helping us to become steeped in wisdom, love and a deep connection with life itself.

Peace, Love and Increase (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Which world will you live in today? The one that tempts you to enter and create through negative thoughts, fear and doubt or the  one that quietly beckons you toward peace, love, happiness and joy?

Commit just for today to gently watch your inner world and softly shift it each time a negative or fear filled thought or feeling arises. Breathe, let go, choose love, appreciation, gratitude—just for one moment and then the next and the next.

Commit to building a resonance of inner  peace and happiness through each moment, just for today. Decide to paint an inner landscape of hope, love, peace and ease—-breathe, let go into a world that YOU choose.

Related articles

• What Is Inner Peace? (blogcritics.org)

Release, by Rita Loyd

There is something deeply settling in living with awareness, to our life questions and being open to the information, release  and healing that comes from attending to them. It feels like an ever present opportunity to come home to our essential self in the midst of daily life….the inner space that nourishes and sustains u…s if we connect with it.

Recently I was searching for a file and came across an article I had written back in 2007. The topic was about these very things–looking at life through different eyes,  being aware of messages and their deeper meaning. The funny thing about the core issue I discovered and wrote about in the article is that I have recently been having thesame  message come back around….again! Not so strange really, just human and the way it is for those of us who learn more slowly! It gets easier with experience and there is gratitude for that!

To pay attention to life moments , with an attitude of ease and patient spaciousness is one of the ways that we turn the ordinary into extraordinary- paying attention, we open our hearts and minds and become receptive to something beyond the noise in our heads, the something that heals.

I do not think that we should live our lives under the burden of analyzing and inspecting every moment for deeper meaning. However, my experience has taught me that there is a great deal to be gained through being open to the broader perspectives that life is always inviting us toward.

To read Energy, Meaning and Messages:  http://bit.ly/A35PTH

Questions to Ponder

Do you think symbolically about the events of your life?

How does the universe speak to you?

How has your life been enriched by deeper listening and clearer seeing/vision?

I would love to hear your experiences and comments about this topic!

Image by lrargerich via Flickr

Happy Sunday! Love this video as it is not just fun to watch but is also a great trigger to feel lighter, brighter feelings that generate happy flowing energy. It reminds me that the ordinary can become extraordinary if seen through creative eyes. What are some things you have done to turn “ordinary moments” into extraordinary?

Share the fun–leave your ideas in the comment box so we can all learn more ways to bring lighter, brighter energy to each day!

Video from KarmaTube

Image via Wikipedia

The Sacral Chakra is located in the pelvis approximately three finger widths below the navel and it develops between 3 and 8 years of age. With proper support at this stage we learn about feelings and how to express and manage them. With adequate guidance, modeling and mirroring a healthy sense of entitlement (deserving) and self worth are developed. The second chakra is the seat of our emotions and regulates the flow and distribution of energy.

Physically the sacral is associated with the health of the reproductive organs and hips. It also governs the body’s liquids, E. G. blood, lymph, mucus, saliva. Health issues that reflect an imbalance in this chakra occur in the areas mentioned.

Metaphors From Water
The sacral chakra’s element is water. As we think about the qualities of water we can get a felt sense of how second chakra energy functions in our lives. Nature clearly demonstrates both the power and attributes of water and reflects the possible states for the manifestation of our energy.

Water can be smooth and flowing as in a river stream, it can pack the power of ocean waves crashing on the shore; it can be stagnant as a pond that receives no fresh and cleansing input. Water can be as refreshing as a mountain lake, cold as the frozen tundra or volatile as steam exploding from a too tight container. Water can be refreshing, life giving and life enhancing. However, too much or too little water can be a problem as can stagnation, or the lack of containment. These, as we all know, can be harmful or destructive. And so it can be with the emotional power of the second chakra.

Construction or Destruction—Your Choice
The sacral chakra has been described as a dark interior cave where all manner of demons lie but it also holds some of the most profound raw material for the creation of our lives. The negative interpretation arises as the second chakra is where our most challenging shadow material is registered. It is up to us whether we choose to work with these energies so they become our allies or leave them unconscious where they become our inner enemies.

At best this energy center is the womb of creation. It is a place where new life gathers its power and is gestated until it is ripe and ready to be birthed into the world. It is a profound, complex and powerful center of our core nature.

My opinion is that a useful and productive way to approach this energy center is that of getting to know a multifaceted friend full of meaning who has wisdom and great gifts for us hidden beneath some pain. This friend needs kindness, compassion and acceptance. Once embraced in this way the full power of this mysterious interior spring can nurture our lives and be a source of resilience and emotional intelligence.

Emotional Symptoms of Imbalance
One clue that something is amiss in this energy center is feelings of shame or of having done something wrong. This feeling is different than the healthy guilt that comes from having actually broken a law, done harm or crossed a line that is against one’s own integrity. Shame is a sense of BEING wrong, flawed or bad in the deep inner fabric of your being. There may be confusion and lack of understanding of where this feeling came from. Often the origin of shame is the result of projected emotions from others early in a person’s life. These feelings are rooted deeply in the disowned feelings of others that got absorbed into the field of a growing child. Once something is inside us we feel it and that being so, we believe it is ours to own.

Other signs that there are issues or blocked energy in the second chakra are: difficulty appreciating life’s goodness; nothing seems good enough and depression can result. There can also be a sense of being stuck, of having no ability to adapt or change; there may be insensitivity to one’s own feelings and emotional needs and an inability to express emotion; there may be denial of pleasure with unyielding, strict and rigid self imposed boundaries—this can include healthy practices done in the extreme. An excess of energy in this center may show itself as a compulsion for pleasure and being extremely emotional.

At its best the sacral chakra is liquid and flowing providing an ability to be flexible and adaptable. However we can go too far in this direction as well and create imbalance. You know this is a problem if you feel in a constant state of flux with an inability to ground or set boundaries; there also may be a tendency to be overly emotional and dramatic.

Opening and balancing the sacral chakra fundamentally involves letting go of shame, unhealthy guilt and frustration and learning to go with the flow of life. Balancing the sacral chakra allows emotion to freely move through our systems. Just as flowing water is purifying, refreshing and revitalizing so it is with feelings set in motion without resistance that includes proper channeling. When the energy here is open, flowing and balanced we are responsive, intuitive, buoyant, and full of dreams and healthy desire.

For Sacral Chakra Meditations:

Energy Aerobics http://bit.ly/wWnQ2J

Chakra Guided Meditations http://bit.ly/w1D4sN

Related articles

• Chakra energy system (windowsofmeditation.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Developing your consciousness to be aware and tuned in to what thoughts and feeling states are running you sets the stage for being able to release them and the accompanying stress.

Engaging a method that allows for the release of resistance to difficult feelings and compulsive thgought loops and letting that energy flow…allows it to go! You then have a real choice to generate positive emotions and feeling in your body-mind.

1. Today I will remember that it is my choice which thoughts and feelings I allow to flow through my body-mind.

2. As I open to release the pain deep in my heart, there is more space for wisdom and love to flow through me.

3. Consciously choosing to feel love and compassion improves my health and well being.

Image via Wikipedia

Many people have commented to me that they find it hard to know where to begin to focus on gratitude or appreciation when there is so much stress in the world. So if you are in a dark or stressful time how can you begin?

Some simple questions can begin to help you turn the corner to feeling more gratitude and to get a positive flow of energy coursing through you being!

What or who can I be grateful for?

What or who in my life can I really appreciate?

Remember to think broadly. We live life moment by moment; the huge awards, recognition, and great ‘deals’ are not daily fare. While it is wonderful to celebrate those and enjoy them, there is something about feeling the emotions of gratitude and appreciation that connects you to the deeper rhythms of life and offers more juice, feeling and vitality—the real stuff of being human — a source of a different type of meaning, satisfaction and fulfillment. That it not to say that material success is wrong, or to be turned away from, only that too much attention in that direction can result in dissonance that leaves a person empty and longing rather than fulfilled.

So find something wonderful about the moment you are in …the warmth of the sun, the crispness of the air, the beauty of the sky. Where can you find beauty today? Where can you find the touch of peace? What do you see that warms your heart? Do you have a favorite memory that brings feelings of love, peace or happiness to your heart?

Before you go to sleep tonight identify five things that made you happy, feel complete or that you appreciated. Remember to count yourself … things you value about YOU!   Use your memory to call up images of times when you felt grateful…play those over and over instead of the wouldas, couldas, shouldas that tend to rumble around in our minds!

Lack anywhere in your life is a reflection of the state of your vital life force and how you are managing it. Energy flows where your attention goes.  So, focusing on feeling appreciation for what you do have, including the special people in your life and
expressing gratitude for your blessings regularly, builds healthy energy and paves the way for more good to come to you.  The same thing happens with stress, frustration, anxiety, worry, anger, etc.  Whatever you focus on is what shows up.  It’s similar to the glass half-full/half-empty concept.  We can choose to consciously focus on the beneficial things that are happening and create a way for more of them to come or we can dwell on all of the things that aren’t perfect and encourage a negative stream of events.

Related articles

• Findings: A Serving of Gratitude Brings Healthy Dividends (nytimes.com)

I (Peg) am fascinated with the energetic aspects of money and what is does to us, what it does to society. For some time I have been thinking about the value of work and goods and services. Why do people work at jobs they don’t like? What factors go into deciding that an hour of time from one person is worth more or less than an hour of time from another? How did we get to the point where so many people are not earning a living wage while others have more than they will ever need or use? There are many reasons for all of this, on multiple levels.

What is interesting about our current times is that these topics have reached the mainstream and we are beginning to have intelligent conversations about them in many spheres of influence. Last week I started reading Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber. Within a few days, a friend told me about Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein. Interestingly enough, they were published on the same day: July 12, 2011, just ahead of the Occupy Wall St. movement. As I was scanning my email today, a third link came in. The Daily Good posted a story called: “When Generosity Meets Venture Capital.” When I delve deep into a topic, things often come to me in groups of three.

A public conversation about money, debt and humanity is emerging. It’s a growing movement and it’s exciting. During Biblical times, Jubilee years were held periodically where all consumer debt was cancelled. Just imagine how things would shift if we did this today! The time is right to envision a world where we all live in peace, health and happiness … and we can all contribute in one way or another.

Related articles

• Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber (theglobeandmail.com)