The Healing Continues: Staying Balanced in a Busy Life

I haven't posted in a long time. I have been focusing very intensely on my career. I've found, as much as I want to stay healthy, maintain energy, attend dance, yoga, and swim, I need to find a different sort of balance. The kind that allows me to get back on track when I've strayed away slightly.

It's easy to say, just go to class, or just eat healthy, or just get out and go running.

I have a new job. For the past four months I've worked very hard at learning my job and managing staff and volunteers. I am self-guided and work on multiple projects each day. I am very productive but sometimes find myself working very intensely. Yes, there is a lot to do, all the time. How can I remain balanced, or more appropriately, how can I get back into balance if I have gone beyond break time?

Each day I do my best to:

• take my breaks
• drink a lot of good clean water
• get up and walk around often
• get water or tea often
• talk with others in the library, staff and patrons
• go outside
• take deep breaths

If your job is like mine and you have a long commute, how can you manage the stress of driving?
One librarian friend of mine says she takes deep breaths in and slow breaths out. Breath in Joy, breath out Thank You.

What about books on tape? I tried this. I got one book on tape I thought I wanted to listen to and found that some days I didn't feel like listening to it. Instead I turned on NPR or just sat in silence (which I like). The same librarian friend said I should get two or three books on tape and play the one I'm in the mood for. Great idea!

Balance your work with things you love:

These are the things that rejuvenate me:

• yoga
• eating healthy food
• drinking good clean water
• dance
• gardening
• walking/jogging
• meeting friends
• seeing my family
• meditating 

The trick is to commit to doing these things. I am making the commitment.

How do you stay balanced and healthy in a busy life?

                                                                                     Image from Google Images: moosin.net

Finding my place

In my last post I discussed the need for more exercise. Yes, I am doing more and feel great. Have not done much meditation recently but my long walks serve as a moving meditation.

I am spending most of my time, apart from working my two jobs, looking for professional library work and related library and information science (LIS) work. Many of the jobs I am applying for are outside of California. I feel the need to expand my horizons and seek opportunities outside of my community.

With each of these new thoughts and the job applications that accompany them, I am closer to finding my place. Add meditation and voila!


Wishing us all luck and godspeed in finding our place.

Integrating the Academic and the Spiritual

 As a new graduate with my Masters in Library and Information Science I find myself in need of much more physical exercise--dance, yoga, running, and much more meditation. Less computer time or at least less intense computer sessions--for now.

How do we balance our online life with our in-person, in-body grounded-ness? And keep in touch with our Spiritual needs? How do we "do it all" and still remain sane and even evolving?

Good questions, right?

Now that I have my graduate studies behind me, I want to keep current with the Library and Information Science field. I'm already signing up for technology courses at my local JC and catching up on those projects that had to be put on hold for so long.

Now that school is over, I can see just how focused I was and how much of my life was on the computer and not "present" with my spiritual needs.

New Priorities

• meditate daily
• write in my journal
• draw
• connect with friends in person 
• do hands on projects (not on computer)

How do you balance your online and offline life?

In Peace,

Sarah

finding the balance between head and heart

As I wrap up my MLIS studies that have taken much of my energy for the past three years I think about meditating and spending more of my time heart centered rather than head or thought centered. Just yesterday friends sent me a link to a video of a young woman, Kiesha, a Shaman, who has been selected to be a messenger. Her profound message is to live from the heart:

http://vimeo.com/16812713

I hear her message and it resonates with me. How can we live more fully from the heart, get out of our heads, and act with Love?

Recently I've noticed that I am picking up on other people's energy. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it can be invasive. I remembered that I know how to protect myself and part of this remembering or noticing is about grounding, centering, and getting out of my head. By starting the day with a meditation or Theta session I can center myself, ground myself, set myself up for living fully in my "I AM." This is how I will begin to live in my heart more fully.

What do you plan to do?

With Love and Gratitude,

Sarah

Are you following your Bliss?

I find that many of us do what we think we are supposed to do. Or think that we are stuck in the current situation--often not even realizing the feeling of "stuck."

Last week one of my adult literacy students was looking for work. He kept trying to submit his application to a large company that had The most ridiculous online application. I asked my student why he felt determined to apply to this particular company--seeing how difficult this application process was. He told me that someone at a job placement office told him that the company is hiring. That's it? Yes, apparently.

I then asked if he wanted to work there, I mean, really wanted to work there. He was indifferent. Next I asked him what he really wanted to do. He said he wanted to work with food. OK, now we're talking, I thought.

I said, "let's work on your resume to reflect your love of food and cooking and focus on that instead of this other job." So we did.

This was a huge lesson for me and a reminder, wake up call, or whatever you want to call it. I know that in an "economic situation" like the one we currently find ourselves in, people are thinking they had better hold onto their hats and do what they can, not necessarily what they want to do.

How can we take more risks to follow our bliss? How can we take a step outside of this "stuck" place to tell the Universe we are ready to live our best lives, not the ones that someone else tells us to live?

In Peace,
Sare

Getting away from Urban Noise

Healing in the most profound sense.....quiet!

We live in an urban area near BART (bay area rapid transit), Amtrak, freeways, and city streets. At night I hear all of this. I wear ear plugs to bed on a regular basis.

At work I hear sirens, city noises, people talking, often many people talking at once--yes even in the library!

Sometimes it's difficult to tell just how much this affects me, but I know it does (thus the ear plugs).

This past weekend we got out of the urban environment and went camping in Sequoia National Forest and also at Kings Canyon.

How blissful the quiet was. How healing for my nerves.

I was not aware of how much I needed this until I got home and slept soundly. When I went to work, nothing bothered me, when normally I'm bothered by a million things.

Prescription: Get out in nature. Not just on a walk up the street but really out in it.

Peace to all,

Sare

self healing

How many times do we call on someone else to help in our healing process? For me, it's a usual thing.

I often read about how we all have the power to heal ourselves. Yes, I believe this. What is the part about others stepping in though? Maybe it's a confirmation; someone else is let in on our process and this makes it more real. Once it is "real" then we have a witness of our healing.

But I know I can heal myself.

I'm meditating and doing Theta. I'm giving myself positive affirmations.

It's working!

Tell me your healing stories....