I hope you enjoyed last week’s post on how to design a personal retreat. Please read that first if you haven’t already – I’ll be waiting right here!
As promised, here’s a one hour personal at-home retreat plan that you can try out at home. This is a plan that I have used and enjoyed many times. It’s adapted from The Woman’s Retreat Book by Jennifer Louden – it’s an excellent guide to creating retreats, so if this is an area that interests you, I highly recommend this book.
When I drew the cards for the {self}love-o-scope, I was thrilled that we were starting the month off with a personal retreat. Not only is it one of the most radical acts of self-love, it is also a powerful and transformative process. And it’s been too long since I made some time to go on a retreat myself, so I am really looking forward to it.
So, without any further ado, let’s get this party started!
Let’s kick the month off with a little self-love-o-scope Oracle reading. My intention with this reading was to offer you the self-care actions or tips you need the most at this time, and to see what energies would assist you in each of these areas.
I used a self care oracle card deck that I picked up years and years ago. I’ve lost the original box, so I can’t tell you who the creator of the deck is or even what it’s called! I’ve paired each of these cards with a Tarot card from Doreen Virtue’s Angel Tarot deck. I chose this deck for this reading because its messages are gentler {and sometimes slightly different from the Raider-Waite}, much like most of Doreen’s cards.
I decided to pull four cards – one for each week of this month. Here are the cards:Continue reading
February is the month of red – red roses, red balloons, red velvet cake, red hearts proclaiming undying love for one another.
It’s the month for candlelight dinners and the exchange of gifts, flowers, and cards.
It’s the month when sappy romantic songs come blaring across the airwaves, sugary sweet, treacle like, seducing us with their promise of love eternal.
And I’m not in the mood for any of it.Continue reading
If there is one question that is at the forefront of all our minds, I believe it is this: What can I do to feel vibrant, energetic and really awake and ready to embrace life?
It’s a question that has no one fixed answer. It doesn’t look the same for any of us. And yet, it is central to our well being.Continue reading
“I’m breaking up with resolution setting,” I fumed. “It’s only February and I’ve fallen behind on everything!”
This was me, some years ago, ranting and railing to the husband. And as I got ever more angry with my lack of stick-with-it-ness, he quietly said: “Are you sure you’re approaching this whole goal setting thing the right way?”
That made me stop in my tracks and think – my resolutions were a list of things I “should” do:
You get the drift, right?Continue reading
Work commitments. To-do lists. Hobby projects. Managing the house. Looking after a sick cat. Planning and preparing for exciting projects. And completely underestimating how long all of the different pieces might take.
And even when you set supposedly realistic goals for the day, you are unable to finish them. So what gives?Continue reading
I’m not talking about the Harry Potter kind of magic. I’m talking about the magic that shows up in our life – through synchronicity. Which is simply being in the right place at the right time, meeting the right people at the right time, hearing a message or a piece of music at the right time.
Moments, big and small, that I’m grateful for. People and events that I give thanks for. They range from the small things I used to take for granted – a clean car thanks to the car cleaner who comes in early in the morning; a clean desk at work courtesy the office boys who stay back late to clean up our office space – to the larger events, like a month of good health for the husband and me after almost two months of illness.
As part of my evening ritual I spend some time journaling, which includes – on most days – a gratitude list. Over time, this simple activity has led to a tangible difference in the quality of my days. I find myself in a much more positive state of mind, and I’m able to weather the storms that come my way a little bit better.Continue reading
As I gather together my photographs from the mindful break project to compile them into an ebook, I’m blown away by the many small moments that I took the time to consciously witness. I’m struck, also, by the pictures that I did not take.
I had planned and written out most of the content for the ebook last month, so I had a fair idea of the quotes I would be including and the mindful practices I would be sharing with my peeps. Somewhere, at the back of my mind, I had a little checklist of the kind of images I would need to illustrate these quotes and practices. Now, as I look through the photographs that I do have, I find – at best – two or three photographs that were on my mental checklist, which tells me that this project took on a life of its own. And that is just as it should be.
