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New beginnings and a weekly FaceBook Live Broadcast
Hello Soul Tribe!
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.
Life has been a crazy ride the past few years. I stepped away from doing the spiritual work full time, and re-dedicated myself to my fitness journey. I was able to dive into certifications, working at some amazing gyms here in Columbia South Carolina, but there was something missing.
The past several months I’ve felt the need to re-commit myself to my spiritual work, and to also re-open those doors in working with clients. We are living in a time where healing is necessary, and those of us that are able to be of service are being called to do that work.
Every Friday at 8:00pm, I’ll be doing live Facebook Soul Interaction Sessions. These soul inspired Dharma talks will be a chance for us to connect, to grow, and to deepen our commitment to the journey ahead.
I have more stuff in the works. Amazing opportunities for us to work together in small groups online, and here in the Columbia, SC area.
If you’d like to schedule a one-on-one session with me, feel free reach out via my website:
You can tune into the weekly Soul Sessions at: www.facebook.com/mbrazell
Transitions and New Beginnings
A lot of new things have been happening in my life since first starting this blog. I’ve had a chance to ride the waves of change, a lot. These waves have sometimes been more rocky than others, but I’ve learned so much along the way.
I moved back into teaching and practicing fitness. I’ve rededicated my life to this journey in profound ways. I love teaching group fitness. I love being able to inspire others through the path of fitness, and I in turn have been so deeply inspired by so many people.
Most of this site has been devoted to spiritual study. My spiritual journey has been a diverse one, and continues to be so. What I’m finding in my own life is to look at how all parts of my experience intersect, collide and fall apart. Im finding this new path is calling me to do deeper work towards integration.
Fitness and spirituality meet in very unique ways, and I’m planning on using this space to explore those intersections, share tools to help you experience this sense of integration, and to create a place for us to connect and create community.
I’m excited for the road ahead. I am also offering new services, so be sure to check out the services page for information and to schedule a session. I’ll also be updating my website: www.michaelbrazell.com with all the new details.
Thank you for sharing this journey with me!
Tabula Rasa: cleansing, centering and integrating
ta·bu·la ra·sa
ˈtäbyo͝olə ˈräsə,ˈräzə/
noun
-
an absence of preconceived ideas or predetermined goals; a clean slate.“the team did not have complete freedom and a tabula rasa from which to work”
-
the human mind, especially at birth, viewed as having no innate ideas.
-
Sometimes, in order to stand in our power, we have to wipe the slate clean. We have to start over, and have the courage to let go of what needs releasing.
There is a beautiful dual current that shows up during this time of year. One one side we have the celebration, the joy, the giving and receiving. On the other we have the dying, the darkness, and the emotional struggle that often also arises. This beautiful duality is a powerful teacher. It gives us contrast that creates growth, and it offers us possibility.
Wiping the slate clean takes work. It’s a process. Not everything gets wiped away with ease. The hardest part is starting, making the commitment to show up to whatever process of cleansing works best for you. This is a great time of the year to open, to engage, to begin. What’s holding you back from stepping into your power? What’s creating stagnation in your current experience? What do you need to do in this moment to begin healing?
Cleansing can take many forms. Sometimes we have to start with our physical spaces. De-cluttering our lives of unnecessary “things”, donating them to those in need, examining our attachments are all important. Sometimes it means taking the broom the the floors, putting hands in dishwater, organizing a workspace.
We may feel the call to cleanse the body. Taking a warm bath. Moving the body through dance, yoga, going for a walk–building body heat and sweat. It may mean changing out diets to be more nutritious.
We may feel the need to cleanse the inner temple. Meditating, engaging in energy healing, breathing deeply, and journaling are ways to bring balance and awareness to the inner space.
The missing piece of the puzzle is integration. Once we begin the process of cleansing mind, body, and spirit energy begins to move. How you integrate into life after the cleansing phase is just as important as the process of cleansing. Being at center, is being fully integrated.
In the next few weeks, we’ll be diving deeper into cleansing processes. We’ll also discuss how to integrate after the changes. The path of full integration is not an easy one, but it is necessary.
Take time to feel where you are in your body. Take a moment to bring awareness to your inner and outer spaces. Breathe deeply. Know that you are loved.
Giving Yourself a Reading
One way to connect to your intuition and to develop trust in the information that it is giving you, is to get in the daily habit of giving yourself readings. There are a wide variety of techniques and processes out there, but the idea is to keep it simple. I’m going to give you a simple process that I have shared with students and clients of mine over the years.
- Write down your questions. I harp on journaling A LOT because it is one of the most powerful spiritual tools in our arsenal of self discovery. One of the reasons so many people have difficulty in doing readings for themselves is that they either aren’t sure of the questions they want to ask, or they aren’t sure they are ready to hear the answers to those questions. Carrying our journals with us gives us a place to write down the questions we may have for our soul.
- Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable with yourself. Being open to our questions is as important as being open to the answers, and both require us to be vulnerable enough to show up to our process of self inquiry.
- Open to your heart. One simple method of tuning in is to bring your awareness to your heart center. You can do this by simply bringing your hands to the heart. Allow yourself to connect to the simple rise and fall of the chest. Feel the beating heart beneath your hand. Let this act of body awareness be a doorway to deeper listening.
- Listen for the answers to your question with your entire body. We often get stuck in our head, and we often feel as if answers to our questions will come with some deep flash of insight, or thundering God force words through our ears. Sometimes the answer comes as a subtle fluttering in our bellies, a breath that goes a bit deeper than all the others, or you may see something in your external space that triggers deeper exploration (a photo, a color, a bird, a tree, etc).
- Write down anything you are feeling, seeing, sensing, or hearing (internally or externally). All of it is used in determining the answer to the questions you are asking. Don’t over think things, if something is standing out, write it down.
- Take a step back from the session. Let the answers and questions gestate a bit. You might come back with more questions based on the answers you receive – GREAT! This means you are now moving into a soul dialog rather than just a question and answer session.
- Sometimes the answer isn’t what you want to hear, but it is always what you need to hear. Be receptive to whatever comes through. One of the most dangerous things we can do it is toss aside an answer just because we don’t like it. I see this often in cases of relationship questions. It’s hard to hear the truth. Sometimes the answer is that it is time to move on, but tossing aside that truth filled answer because it’s not what we want to hear only leads us to more suffering. If we are having trouble with a particular response we have received from our intuition, we can always ask our soul to amply the answer we have received, be open to digging deeper if you feel called to do so:
- What do I need to know about my relationship at this time?
- Beloved, it is time to move forward into your own light as this relationship has come to the end of its course.
- What can I do to make the transition one filled with grace?
- What areas of this relationship have caused us to arrive at this point of finality?
- What is my true teaching from this relationship with (xyz)?
- What do I need to know about my relationship at this time?
- Have fun with giving yourself a reading. Too often we only use this beautiful connection we have to the soul our soul (the intuition) to ask about the stuff that requires heavy lifting. Ask simple things, ask about manifesting, ask about creating abundance, ask about winning the lottery, ask about expanding your connection to your spiritual path, ask for affirmations of love, ask for any number of things you might desire insight on, but ask!
- Take action on what your soul is giving you in the reading. If we are asking to improve our lives, and then we don’t follow through, it is only going to prolong the suffering and delay arriving at that place of liberation.
This is just a quick primer, something to have a bit of fun with, and my soul is nudging me to do more with the blog, so here it is. I hope that you find the information useful, and if you have questions you can alway contact me at: michael@michaelbrazell.com
Bhagavad Gita – Yoga Practice – Dietary Yoga- Journaling- Yoga Challenge
Bhagavad Gita – Yoga Practice – Dietary Yoga- Journaling- Yoga Challenge.
Be sure to follow my yoga journey on www.inkedyogi.com this is my personal yoga journal… lots of raw, authentic yoga living happening over there.
Soul Musing: Opening to the Light
Each day we are giving opportunities to shine, to be of service, to step into the light. We get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of life that we forget that life is supposed to be lived. We forget to have fun. We forget to soften around the edges. Life is tough, we suffer, and the world suffers. Suffering is an opportunity for us to open to the light. Pain is a doorway if we slow down enough to look at what is happening beneath the surface. Presence affords us a power that we seldom tap into because of the many distractions that are constantly in our faces. When is the last tie that you’ve looked up at the sky? When was the last time you witnessed the multicolored magic of a sunset? I know I spend more time online than I like. I’m working on creating balance. I often wonder what it would be like if we didn’t have these electronic tethers. How would we connect to one another?
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
I can still remember a life before the internet. It was beautiful. I can remember having full present conversations with friends, family and those around me. You can see a blankness in some people’s eyes. Their brains are already leaping into whatever comes next. We’ve gotten away from showing up, and are more involved in running towards the next event, thought, the next place to be.
Life moves quickly, but it doesn’t mean that we have to. Slow down, breath into this moment. Rest. Arrive.
You are loved.
Yoga Under a Rainbow – Shiva- Fasting
Just launched a new blog. It’s exciting, and is going to be a place for me to explore my yoga practice and how it integrates into my life.
Head over, read, share, and follow along 🙂
I love that the weather is finally changing. I love taking my practice outside. There is something powerful about having the open sky above me. The limitless space is powerful. I started out by laying back and staring into the sky, and I was surprised to see a rainbow. The colors were pretty brilliant against the white clouds. I joked in my head that yoga was the pot of gold I’ve been searching for all this time. Since stepping a bit more deeply into my yoga journey, life is picking up. I feel that things are coming together, and that’s a good thing. I am still healing old wounds, but that is what yoga allows me to do. Yoga gives me the space to step into my heart, to listen with depth.
“Read a little. Meditate more. Think of God all the time.” -Yogananda
I’ve been reciting the Hanuman Chalisa…
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Yoga as Prayer
Today as I was taking my place on my yoga mat at the gym, I asked myself the question, “Why do you do yoga?” The question struck me, and I’ll admit at first I didn’t have an answer. I decided to take this question into my practice today. As I was moving around the mat, breathing, taking in the sounds of the gym, I had a realization was over my heart. Yoga is how I pray. For me, yoga is devotion. When I am on my mat, I am stepping onto sacred ground. I feel my soul come alive. My breath joins my body more deeply, and for a moment all that exists is the flow.
Stepping onto the mat is stepping into trust. We spend much of our day trying to get away from the body, we rush into our expectations, or are bound to the anchors of our past. We hold judgement against ourselves. We eat foods that lack nourishment. We engage in distractions (television, social media, etc). We numb ourselves. When we take a step onto the yoga mat, we are saying to the soul, to God, to the universe I am here, and I am ready. The very act of showing up sets the intention, and brings us into presence.
As I move through the asana, I pause and deepen my breath. Too often in classes we try to rush through the sequences. Each pose is a meditation, the breath the mantra, and when we move slowly we are honoring the sacredness of that union. Sequences do not need to be complex, you don’t need to be fancy with how you breath, just let the body move. Yoga is an act of surrender. I try not to plan too far ahead as to what I want to do on my mat. I ask my body what it feels like doing today. I let each asana guide me to the next. I invite in my emotions, the ambient sounds and colors of whatever space I am in. Yoga is not about escaping, its arriving into to presence.
Yoga is a prayer that is said by the body, on the altar of our soul. Each movement is an intention in action. Each breath is a sacred mantra that whispers through us, taking us deeper into each heartbeat.
Take a moment to honor your path by dropping into the breath. Hold your awareness at the rise and fall of the chest, take your hand and place it over your beating heart. Feel life moving through you. Let this be enough.
Namaste
The power of sacred silence
“silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.” – Rumi
Inhale deeply.
Now release it.
Be present in this moment.
Silence is powerful. What do you hear in the silence? Take a moment to breathe this in. Don’t reach for it, let it come to you.
When is the last time you unplugged from everything. Turn the phone off. Turn off the computer. Take a breath, and have a seat.
What does silence sound like?
“Silence is an empty space, space is the home of the awakened mind.” – Buddha
There is power in silence. We are able to take in more of the landscape. Life slows down a bit. We are able to bring awareness to the present moment. We are able to arrive.
Silence allows us to be okay with the chaos of life. It is the space between each in breath, and out breath.
Words are not always necessary to convey the message of our soul. The next time you are with a friend, a lover, a family member, or every a companion animal–sit with them in deep silence. Take them in. Look deep into their eyes. Let the heart and soul speak through the language of silence. You’ll be surprised at how much more of that individual you see.
Now do this in the mirror. The silence allows us to see, and to be seen.
If you are finding that you are more in distraction throughout your day, than in connection… take a silence break. Go outside, touch the earth, feel the sky above you, breath it all in. No reactions, just observe. Stay with the breath, return to the breath if you need to. Be present.
You. Are. Loved.
Michael Brazell
www.blogtalkradio.com/michaelbrazell
www.youtube.com/soulinteraction
