☝️My non-fancy meditation space: fuzzy blanket; lots and lots of water (clear out those toxins!), current meditation material: May Cause Miracles, I am not loving it as much as I thought, but I am only on Week 1 (review to follow) and my no makeup just woke up face, I still don’t know how to photoshop myself so just don’t be rude about it to my face (behind my back is totally fine).

So if you haven’t read Pt. 1, you might start there, but do what you want, this is your life to live! If you want to live it in Pt. 2, DO IT.

Oh, meditation. I love to hate you. But really in my deep heart, I love what you have done for my life.

Self-talk and mind focus literally change neuroplasticity in your brain. When you are in addiction, drinking on a regular basis, or even operating in stress mode (umm, all of us) your prefrontal cortex shrinks. Like visibly shrinks. This is your decision making part of your brain and after even one drink your brain switches from your decision making brain to your amygdala, which is your fight or flight brain. This is why it is so easy to have drink two or three or four and make all those super smart decisions because you have shut down your decision making brain. Meditation reverses these effects. AND also creates new neuropathways. Listen, guys, I am not a scientist or a doctor and you all know how to google so I am not going to get into the details.

I am the person that leaves before Shavasana in yoga because those last 10 minutes of doing nothing at the end just feel like a real waste of time. Meditation does not come easy for me. I don’t pop out of bed singing and sit for an hour every morning. Really, the only reason I started meditating was because Hip Sobriety School told me too and I was dying. I’m listening to Annie Grace (author of The Naked Mind) and I loved her description of meditation. She basically said that it doesn’t necessarily change you at that exact moment but the cumulative effect of all of the mantras and meditation add up and reshape your entire mind. And yes to that! After about 30 days, I started having my mantras randomly pop in my head on their own or I would hit a hard moment in the day and remember my morning meditation focus. And really, without getting too mushy, I have changed the way I see myself and my role in this world. There is not feeling bad about yourself and then there is I was born to SHINE. I am feeling shiny and I don’t even feel guilty about it.

Okay, so, I am going to share what I do but know, there is no secret special sauce, YDY (you do you- trademark Mike Lyon). First, start small. I despise getting up early so I had to ease myself into this whole thing. I started doing 1 minute of breathing and then 1 minute of silently repeating my daily mantra. That was it. Then I moved to 1 minute of breathing and 2 minutes of mantra repetition etc etc etc, you get it. Now, I do about 15 mins total in the morning (honestly, I doubt I will ever get above 15 minutes on the reg because: sleep and time and I don’t really want to). I start with about 3 minutes of breathing to wake up and get focused. I love/hate breath of fire, and typically do this in the morning (it is energizing so I would not suggest for night meditation). I also alternate between these kundalini techniques. Then I meditate for about 10  minutes.

Basically, just start. I know you don’t have time, I know you are busy, I know you are tired and all the other stuff… me too. It is worth the 5 minutes to get started. YOU GET TO REWIRE YOUR BRAIN! You get to change your entire thought pattern. I am scream typing right now because I can’t get over it! You have this power. Only YOU get to choose the life you are going to live.

You are strong. You are powerful. You get to live the life you want. Don’t live it unconsciously and stuck. Live it fresh and free. You are too special for anything less.

P.S. Resources: Sometimes I still do mantra repetition for 10 mins, I love the guided meditations on Yogaglo because you can choose your duration and choose from tons of different topics and teachers (try it free for 2 weeks then it is only $18 a month plus they have TONS of other great stuff on there), Gabby Bernstein has guided meditations on her site and on Spotify, Chopra has guided meditations for purchase on his site or some free ones (not by him) also available, and I am sure there are also tons on youtube but I haven’t explored those.

P.P.S. Hip Sobriety School has opened registration for Spring 2018! I have talked about HSS in my blog BUT I just can not even find the words to express how much it changed my life or really gave me back my life. If you are thinking about sobriety, if you have a heart tug to have freedom from alcohol, please please please just check it out. It is so much more then “not drinking”. You get an entire 8 week course: weekly lectures and workbook, multiple small group coaching calls weekly, a Q/A call with Holly weekly (she literally anwsers all the questions, even if she has to record multiple videos to do it), a secret FB support group, and access to all of it forever.

P.P.P.S. ALSO I am doing the Spring 18 course just to solidify myself and continue the support and education. Maybe we will be in a FB group together?! But also, you can pretend like we don’t know each other if you want. No hurt feelings ;).

Please message me if you have any questions! It is $697 and worth 5 times that price. (if you do decide to do the course more than once like me, you get a discount).