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Delight

Delight, Guest Posts

All You Need Is Help by Joanne Galey.

January 30, 2013

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I am such a huge fan of The Help, a company started by the lovely Joanne Galey. Please take a moment and check them out here.

 

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Expect Delight. Words To Live By. ~ Joanne Galey.

She showed up one Sunday morning as our replacement yoga instructor. She cursed and she pushed and asked questions of us that rattled my English sensibilities. And, she did all this accompanied by a most excellent play list turned to high volume (I later learned she was partially deaf).

I liked her – a lot!

I began referencing her classes as attending “yoga church”, with Pastor Pastiloff at the pulpit; encouraging her tribe to set intentions, do better, smile more, set rules to live by, face fear, let go, focus on the positive. I felt fortunate in those classes. I had been blessed with one of those annoying, positive, sunny dispositions and didn’t struggle when it came to viewing the world as a glass not only half-full, but on occasion, spilling over. When adversity had dealt it’s shitty hand in life, I maintained the belief that happiness would ultimately rise above of the crappiness, and, I recognized that I had the power to make that happen. I was driving my own bus, and that even when the bus took a detour and ended up in a bad part of town, I could always turn it around and head home.

The epiphany arrived however, in the realization that home was not where my heart was, nor was it where any of me was. Fear had moved in and taken residence. Too long I had settled. Too long I had given and not gotten. Too long I had waited. I missed me and I wanted her back. Wanted something better for her.

Needing more than “yoga church” on Sundays, I signed up for Jen’s manifestation retreat.

I remember asking my car-pool yogis en route to Ojai; “what exactly is a manifestation retreat anyway”? How wild that I had thrown down money I couldn’t afford and left town in a frenzied rush, fueled by an instinctive knowing that I had to put distance between fear and the ability to breath. All the while, not really understanding what to expect from the experience, only that I needed to go. How unlike me, or was it?

The first 24 hours felt awkward. I’m British, awfully private and at odds with the concept of opening up to strangers. When it came time for me to “share” about what had brought me to this workshop, I made something up about wanting to walk away from a toxic job and start my own business (not an entire departure from the truth as it turns out). But the murmurings of doubt and fear that had been my companions for the past several years became deafening as the weekend drew on. Jen guided us and encouraged us, laughed with us and cried with us, got drunk with us. In the safety of this magical environment I had chosen for myself, I was inspired to write, to exhale, to contemplate, to be courageous, to shift. As I drove back to LA, I knew I was on my way to choose love over fear, peace over sleepless nights, dancing in the kitchen over mortification, happiness over crappiness. When I got there, I lit the torch paper on my failed marriage.

My girlfriend took a photo of me writing in my journal in Ojai. I didn’t know she had taken it, just as she didn’t know the significance of what I was writing, but later when she gave it to me, I printed, framed and hung it by my bed – I called it “The Beginning”.

A week or so later, I was back in yoga church and something that Jen said in class resonated with me – “expect to be delighted”. I didn’t hear anything else. I grabbed those words and claimed them as my mantra. When I got home, I wrote the words “EXPECT DELIGHT” on a post-it note, stuck it inside my medicine cabinet and another on the dashboard of my car, scrawled it at the head of every page in my daily calendar. It typed it into my phone so “expect delight” would be the first thing I’d put in my head when I switched off my early morning alarm. It would take my sunny disposition to a whole other planet. I expected delight each and every day. And once I honed in on it, I wasn’t disappointed. Delight was bloody everywhere! It was in the joy of my child’s single dimple when he smiled, it was in my healthy body, it played in the ocean, blared out off the radio, it was in the daily phone call from my dearest friend, it was an ingredient called kindness left by the soup fairy. On and on and on it went until one day the mother lode of delight showed up unexpectedly in the form of love. He cursed, he prodded and asked questions that rattled my English sensibilities and as it turns out, has an amazing play list to boot.

I liked him a lot!

So! Fast-forward almost two years to current view. Love rules over fear, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen abound, happiness cup runneth over. Oh, and that toxic job I rambled on about inanely at the retreat, has been replaced by my own business; “The Help”. A professional home organization that gives me the opportunity to help people de-clutter their physical space so they can make room in their homes and lives to breath, create and thrive. “Expect Delight” has become my business mantra too. I want to share with others, the pay-off when you shift your mindset to seek out the positive, the good, the kindness, the joy. It’s inspired a poem, letters of gratitude, an incredible sculpture, and appeared on kitchen bulletin boards.

Words are powerful, so are your thoughts, as are your actions. I seal my yoga practice with three Namastes – the first is for delightful thoughts, the second, for delightful words and the third, for delightful actions. I’m “Expecting Delight” every single day.

What’s your mantra?

Please check out The Help on Facebook and set up an appointment today with Joanne. She truly is a delight.

The Help Gets the Job Done!

 
From the website: Experts report that organized people save time and money, and reduce their stress and frustration levels.  Spending time doing what matters most leads to an increased sense of accomplishment, balance and happiness.  The Help can lighten your load and transform your surroundings so you’re free to unleash your own creativity and spend more time doing what matters most to you!   
 
Contact us today to find out how The Help gets the job done!
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Delight, Yoga Classes

Look For The Whee In Everything!

September 17, 2012

whee interjection ˈhwē, ˈwē

Definition of WHEE

—used to express delight or exuberance

I have a few quirks as a yoga teacher. I have some rules. One of them, which you all know by now is: If you fall you must laugh.

Rod Stweart’s wife Penny and I for a filming of Karaoke Yoga for the British show Lorraine. She liked my rule! We laughed a lot.

Another one: You are not allowed to take YOURSELF seriously.

And then there’s: when you are hopping up and attempting a handstand you must yell “wheeee!” 

There are a few reasons behind this. One is this: try and say Whee without smiling.

See. I told you. You can’t.

In a land where most of us (read:me) take ourselves too seriously, and especially our yoga, a little smiling can go a long way. A little light heartedness to go with the light footedness.

The whee brings the joy back, the silliness, and the idea that this is not as serious as I am probably making it out to be.

It also helps you lose any self-consciousness (much as my Karaoke Yoga® class does.)

So here is the question: Can you find the Whee in all you do?

Where is the whee?

Reminds me of that awful 80’s commercial: Where’s the beef?

Look for the whee in everything.

Even in what can be perceived as a stressful situation, there is a Whee lurking somewhere. Maybe it is just laughing at ourselves for a moment.

I love when I get messages from people who move away or can no longer take my class and they say things like: I miss the Whee!

Why shouldn’t there be more Whee?

I am not suggesting you don’t take your job seriously or your yoga practice. I am suggesting you (read: me again) stop taking yourself so seriously!

Most of us are desperate for more joy, more connection, more Wheeeeeeeee!

Post below your Whee of the day.

Must have at least on Whee a day says ancient Chinese proverb!

Wheee! Filming for CBS The Doctors at Equinox! We had a lot of Wheees!

Delight, Guest Posts

Blown Away.

September 14, 2012

 

As you all know, nothing thrills me more than the idea of connection.

So you can imagine how touched I was when someone whom I have never met in person sent me the following post they wrote about me. And, although we have never met in person, I can safely say she holds a very special place in my life. Here it is:

~~~~~~~~~~~~

What’s In A Name?

Dear Jen,

I noticed something about your last name. I feel it represents a lot about you. Read it slowly.

 

Pastiloff.

 

Did you get it? Here, I’ll break it up Past-Il-Off.

 

The message I get is: Passed Ill Off.

 

That’s one of the main things you talk about. About shaking off the past negativity. The “shoulda, coulda, woulda” as you say. Learning from it and being fine it happened because you are no longer there.

 

Everyone has flashbacks. Everyone looks back to where they were and spends some time looking around. The point is to not do it too often and to not stay there. Don’t live where you don’t belong.

 

You practice living in the moment. Moving forward. And only seem to go to the past to help others, and yourself if needed, with obtaining the greatest present and future! How brave is that? I can’t even look at my journal from the past year, heck the past month! Even if it’s all good news. You go back Years! You go into the jungle of past unpleasant experiences and cut the negativity of tangled vines with a machete.

 

Everyone has things in the past that they don’t like to remember. We don’t like that we wasted time with this, or didn’t do that. You on the other hand, and I’m not sure many can, take the past, put in a jar, study it, and then present it in the world as something worth seeing.

 

You stand as the Ringmaster on stage before the Circus. The Passed Ill Off Circus! We think it’s going to be a show of other wonders, (but it’s a reflection of the own show we need to put on for ourselves).

 

Your past is on display. We arrive unaware on how this will effect us and are amazed with glitter a unicorn and twinkling lights. We think it’s going to be something we haven’t seen before. A new wonder to take us away from where we have been. To stop thinking about it. Instead, your show of the history you lived somehow bleeds into our own.

 

We weren’t expecting this. The crowd is wide eyed and perhaps slack jawed. It’s a better surprise and wonder than we ever could have imagined! We didn’t realize how much we needed a ticket to this show.

 

For those surprised and perhaps fearful, and those of us touched and heart swollen, we can hear you calling from the spotlight during a brief intermission.

 

“Look at this hurt, this experience! Look at his hate and this love! This past me and perhaps a past you as well. Look at what you are manifesting now. This isn’t just for me, it’s for you too. Don’t shy away. Be touched, dazzled, brought to tears or silence. Here is my past. You’ve got one too!”

 

The show begins again. The audience sits still as you show us where you have been and where you’re going. We are allowed to come along. It’s interactive! No expectations, no certain ways things are supposed to be done. Only connection on the highest level and producing the most wonderful-filling manifestations.

 

Who knew there could be so much good in where we’ve been? Even the parts that leave a sour taste on the tip of our tongue.

 

At the end of the show, there’s and invitation to come again.

 

“There it is. It’s all there. Nothing to hide and everything to see. Heartbreaks and headaches. Loved ones and sticking to your guns. Holding yourself back and losing your track. New life creating and karaoke yoga gyrating. We are the combination of our past but we don’t have to stay there. Passed Ill Off Circus! Whose ready to join me?!”

 

All I know is, I’ll forget about my ticket. I’m running away to join the circus!

 

xoxo

~ Chelle aka Writer Yogi

~~~~

Right? Amazing?!!

Connect with Chelle by checking out her blog here. She also writes for MindBodyGreen, as I do.

#humbled.

Tweet me what the best thing to happen to you all week was by clicking here! Use hashtag #BestThings

Delight, Inspiration

Who Is Your Hemingway?

August 1, 2012
A MovEable Feast.

I want to hang out with Ernest Hemingway. I want to walk with him to the Musee du Luxembourg and then have good things to eat with him.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. ~ Ernest Hemingway to a friend, 1950.

Now, I was not lucky enough to have lived in Paris a young man, Hell, I am not, nor will I ever be, a young man. Or a man period, for that matter.  And I will never be lucky enough to sit down and drink a chilled Algerian wine with Hemingway, or Hem, as his friends called him. Surely we would have been friends. I will never walk with him to Sylvia Beach’s library and discuss words and pictures, whisky and James Joyce. And for that I am truly bereft.

I know he shot himself early one morning over 50 years ago and perhaps that is also another reason I feel the connection as I too have known the dark night of the soul, and the swing of the mood, the blurring of the facts. I know I am idealizing his life but that’s ok. That’s what we do with people we choose to carry with us. We take the magic parts of them and light them up so bright that anything else is unseeable.

But I did just read A Moveable Feast and felt as if I was there in Paris. I imagine it to be so and that is most definitely what he was aiming for and what he was so gifted at. I am sure that is why my friend gave me the book and insisted I read it before I went to Paris. I didn’t. I read it over a few days last week and fell into a reverie, and a slight romance with Hem, and all the usual suspects like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound. And a longing to go back to Paris where I just came from.

I found myself wondering how I ended up in the wrong era?

How anytime Hemingway and his friends spoke to one another they said each other’s names often. It makes everything glisten and sound important.

A moveable feast. I love that notion for what it suggests. I have always been prone to nostalgia, perhaps to a fault, carrying my friends with me on slips of paper and photographs, letting them fade a little but never so much that I couldn’t see where they were. Perhaps this explains my love of Facebook. Of connection.

Why should one’s feast be stagnant and confined to one place?

I say we make more moveable feasts. That maybe we become our own moveable feasts so that when we move, when we pack up the boxes that contain of our lives, we have that feast in us and can spread it out buffet style wherever we go. Ernest Hemingway understood this. Perhaps this is why he wrote. I will never lose you he might have said to his feast over some chicken with his first wife Hadley.

I have my own private feasts.

Wherever I go, there they are. My tribe. I don’t meet strangers anymore as I have said so often, I only meet old friends. My tribe has proven moveable and it never takes long to find them where ever I am. It only revealed itself as this way once I realized that I could take it with me, that it was inside of me. For a long time I believed that my feast was stuck in one place and that place was way beyond my scope of imagination.

What I am saying is this: I am a moveable feast.

He says in the book: When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

There are so many worlds within that one paragraph I could travel to. First of all, the idea that there is no problem except where to be happiest is simply delicious. That my   only concern could be: Where to go hang my heart, where to go sip my Muscadet in the sunshine or eat oysters? Where can I go keep being happy today? 

People: the population that most often causes us pain and suffering and delight. Yes, delight as well, admittedly. That the only thing that could spoil a day was people is quite funny. Nowadays, we are so dialed in. Okay, I am so dialed in. So over-connected.

How to get away from letting things in that don’t belong in my brain or on my calendar or my computer screen is a concern Hem didn’t have back then. He didn’t have to think about shutting down Facebook or texting someone back or tweeting or getting stuck in traffic with other people.

Except for the very few people that were as good as spring itself. I have my own little list, steadily growing in size as I grow in years. It’s more than a few, but hey, I am sure I know more people than Hemingway did by sheer virtue of social media. I am not sure that is a good thing.

I want to spend more time with my list, with my few people that are as good as Spring itself. I want to spend more time with Spring itself. I want to go back to Paris with my pen and my eyes and let them do the work and then take it back with me wherever I go, much as Hemingway attempted to.

Wherever I go I will be home because I will take with me my own moveable feast. I will be on my Awe Tour all the time, taking notes and adding them to my repertoire, which includes: Ernest Hemingway, and my favorite people and memories. Wines that I love and songs too, pictures I took and people I thought I have forgotten but haven’t, books I have read and sentences I remember from where I do not know. And miracles I have been privy to or part of all along the way. Things I am not proud of alongside my greatest accomplishments, the talisman I wear around my neck and a paper scrawled with all the things that would fit on it which bring me wonder. All of these things will be part of my movable feast and as I get older it will grow, and it will shrink, and it may grow again but it will always be movable unless I forget that it is.

And I will never forget.

I will carry Hemingway in my breast pocket or the equivalent of that, maybe on my iPad or Kindle, and I will reach for him if I start to feel like I am being swallowed by nothingness or everythingness or Facebook.

I will pour myself a glass of something red, get a nice pen, and maybe some nice stationery for Hemingway’s sake, and I will neatly write out all the things that are included in my moveable feast. For as long as it takes.

Who and what is in your box? In your own moveable feast?

Who is your Hemingway? Your light post when it gets a little too dark to remember where you have been?

~~~~

***For Laura Donnelly

Delight, Inspiration, Manifestation Retreats, Travels

Re-Entry into Awe and Wonder.

July 17, 2012

Confession: I am having the blahs.

I am back from my the retreat I led in Tuscany and my post-retreat vacation in Paris, with an empty feeling like I came back a shell, having left the meat of me somewhere in Monteriggioni, inside the walled city, perhaps eating gelatto or maybe in a field of sunflowers as the light splays down on them in such a way that my eyes burn, not so much with pain, but with an overwhelming sense of wonder.

One of the things I asked my retreat attendees (a fantastic group that I am still pinching myself over) was to carry their journals around them with during the day, whether they were in Siena eating a slice of pizza or in Florence with the ghosts of Ponte Vecchio, long dead but still floating around with their gold and jewels somewhere just above the ether. I asked them to carry their Awe and Wonder Journals and jot down every singe thing that cause them to feel awe or wonder. Whether it was a conversation with someone who didn’t speak a word of English or the way the Tuscan hills looked at 9:30 at night as the sun was going to bed or a piece of Pecorino cheese and the way it lingered in the mouth waiting for the perfect splash of chianti to join it before descending.

It didn’t matter how big or small the things were that they were jotting down. What mattered is that they were paying attention. To the things that made them feel alive, to the things that made them stop and say Wow.

I wonder how many things we miss because we feel we have seen it before or simply because we are looking at the wrong things to wake us up. I want more things to stop me in my tracks. I want more things to make me ask questions. I want more things to make me feel connected to something bigger than myself, longer standing than myself, and way beyond what I can ever understand. Those type of things.

Whether it is a a piece of pizza in Rome or a moody sky in Paris. Whether it is the high ceilings at the Ebbio and how they have been there for 800 years or the way the olive oil tasted and how time seems slower there as if it has nowhere to be.

So I asked them to be filled with awe and wonder and to bring their journals around so they wouldn’t forget.

It’s easy to forget. Or to not look in the first place.

One of my favorite Mary Oliver poems (you know my obsession with her) in The Mockingbirds.

It is my favorite story–
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give
 
but their willingness
to be attentive–
 

Their willingness to be attentive!

That’s it, right there. Are you willing to be attentive? To allow yourself more moments of awe and wonder and inspiration and grace?

I came back and feel empty because in some way I believe that is only possible when I am away. That when I am back here, in my normal life, in the real world, I must go back to feeling like the same old me.

Sure, my retreat was a cocoon of love and safety. I got terribly ill, sicker than I can remember being, and despite that, I felt safe and free and happy. I want that back, yes. Sure, the food tasted different and the sky lingered longer than it does here and I didn’t have to deal with emails and bills and traffic and making breakfast and Facebook.

But what I realized there in Tuscany and Paris, and now in hindsight, sitting here with my too strong coffee and feeling nostalgia, as I am prone to feel (is it any wonder I love Facebook?) is that: I can be Italy anywhere. I can be Paris anywhere.

What I mean is: I do not have to escape to feel alive. I do not have to get away to remember the beauty around me or inside of me, to pick up small tokens of beauty wherever I am, on the sidewalk or in a conversation. I simply have to allow it.

I simply have to take out and Awe and Wonder Journal and pay attention.

No I won’t have the same treasures here. I won’t be able to duck into a Parisian cafe in the rain and snap photos of the macarons or take the train and watch buildings speak their stories of defense and heartbreak and disintegration from centuries or eat Brie and actually enjoy it because it does taste different in France and the wine in Italy. The wine in Italy is it’s own treasure.

But, I brought 25 people with me to Italy. I got sicker than I have ever been and they stood by me and not for one moment let me feel as if I was letting them down, or they were disappointed or this was anything other than exactly what they dreamed of.

I did that. I attracted 25 people who got along perfectly as if they chose each other, who laughed together in Italian cities, who stayed up late and painted fingernails and drank Limoncello and wrote in their journals what they would do if they weren’t afraid, who swam in the Mediterranean and then had a picnic with tomatoes and cheese and hard boiled eggs and ate it happily with their hands. There were no cliques, there was no negativity, there was no complaining. I brought these people with me. From here.

So, if that is the case, it would make sense to say that I could bring them anywhere. I could have the same experience here in Santa Monica or in New York City or Mexico or my sofa. It wouldn’t matter.

All I have to do is keep being who I am and the right people will show up.

And then pay attention.

And then be awe.

Be wonder.

**Click here to see some amazing shots on my site of my amazing retreat.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9vgIA5HVK9g]

 

Delight, Guest Posts, Inspiration

Discovering Who You Are. Guest Post by Suzanne Campbell.

June 11, 2012

Today’s guest post is an amazing journey and one that should not be missed. Suzanne Campbell is a gifted artist, photographer, meditation teacher, and all around amazing human being. She’s also written a beautiful book about her friend’s dog who had been abused and ending up finding love and hope. All proceeds from the book go to helping abused animals. Please check out “Brandy’s First Swim” on Amazon and tell me you don’t shed a tear or two.

Suzanne Campbell.

 

On Discovering Who You Are.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, the rational mind a faithful servant; we have created a society that honors the servant and forgotten the gift.  ~ Albert Einstein

When Jen, my awe inspiring yoga teacher, asked me to contribute a guest post on her blog, my heart (intuitive mind) said yes! and my rational mind said no. You can see from my words that I politely ignored the latter.

I have spent the last few years working the muscles of my intuitive mind despite the cries and screams of my rational mind who has run the show most of my life.

Only in retrospection, selection, we say, that was the day.~ T.S. Elliot

Looking back at the unraveling of my parent’s forty-year marriage, I see my shift clearly, when my ego and my rational mind could no longer steer me anywhere helpful.

I could not think my way through this.  I had to experience it and to do this I needed to find my precious, inner voice.

And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to bloom. – Anais Nin

My journey to consciously seek a greater connection with my intuitive mind began by reading countless “self-help” books, books on dreams, quantum physics, and anything that talked about the function of the brain.  (And, yes, I will tell you my favorites if your rational brain needs some suggestions) Looking back this was my way of preparing my rational mind to let go a little by keeping it busy and giving it new information and tasks.  My next step was signing up for a meditation retreat. I thought if I could sit quietly and learn to meditate, I could hear what my heart was saying and then learn to speak my truth.  Silly, rational-minded me thought three days would provide the answers.  I drove away from the retreat renewed and energized but soon that feeling faded and I was wandering aimlessly again through a stress-filled world. Rather than leaving to meditate on a retreat again, I decided to take a weekly class in mindfulness and meditation to help me continue a practice in my everyday life.  I loved that this type of class was available and the range of people seeking it was wonderful.  There were doctors and nurses, surfers and actors, college students and grandmothers.  What we all had in common was our desire to handle life’s stresses differently, better somehow, by adding a new tool to our toolbox.

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” Bernice Johnson Reagan

Then something happened that I was not expecting.  I got inspired!  The kind of inspired that takes hold and I just had to go with it.  After months of feeling emotionally drained and depressed, I was excited.  I was taking a Horticulture class and stumbled upon a photograph of a wall hanging of succulents.  My first thought was, with a small shift in placement of the plants, they could have collaged a landscape so it would be like a living painting.  (Bare with me if you have no idea what I am talking about) And so a new journey began.  With my intuitive mind at the helm, and my rational mind dutifully figuring out how many 2” succulents I could buy with my next paycheck, I cheerfully drew sketches and drove around California buying plants.

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” –Niels Bohr

Fear was no longer running the show.

It was an innocent bystander who occasionally yelled from the sidelines really unhelpful commentary.  My intuition was growing to the point that it was even louder than the cautionary comments and confused looks of people around me.  What a gift to trust in oneself, knowing that mistakes can be made and from them knowledge gained.  I am proud to say I am well on my way to being an expert in the field of Pointillist Plant Art with all the mistakes I have made.

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”-Andre Gide

While it is impossible to know what twists and turns would have been different in my life had my parents stayed married.  I believe they followed their hearts and in doing so inspired me to seek and to follow my own intuitive mind.  As you read these words, know that I am sending you my courage, love, and hope for whatever life brings your way.

To connect with Suzanne about her artwork with plants or to set up a photo shoot, please email: suzannebcampbell@gmail.com. Or, if you simply want to let her know that she touched you in some way, as she has done for me, time and time again.

Delight, How To, Inspiration

A 14 Year Old’s Adaptation of “Jens Rules To Live By”

June 5, 2012

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-blackBy Jen Pastiloff

My friend is a teacher and they read my blog in his class. That, in itself, is enough to make me weep with joy and disbelief, but, what is more impressive is the picture below. A 14 year old (who shall remain nameless as promised) created her own Rules after she read mine. 

I will post mine first then hers.

Hers are better.

#Humbled!

Jen’s “Rules” To Live By:

1. Be Kind.

2. Have a sense of humor especially when it comes to YOU.

3. Write poems, even if only in your head.

4. Sing out loud, even if badly.

5. Dance, even with no rhythm.

6. If you don’t have anything nice to say… you know the deal.

7. Find things to be in awe of.

8. Be grateful for what you have right now.

9. Watch Modern Family, read Wayne Dyer, and end every complaint with “But I’m so blessed!”

10. Duh, do yoga.

11. Don’t worry. Everyone on Facebook seems like they have happier and funner lives. They don’t.

12. Tell someone you love that you love them. Right now.

13.Take more pictures.

14. Forgive yourself for not being perfect. No such thing.

15. Thank the Universe in advance.

Awesome 14 Year Old’s Adaptation:

Delight, Guest Posts, Inspiration

Share of the Day: Wow. Wow. Wow.

May 14, 2012

Remote Inspiration.

Below is an email I received over the weekend. I have never met or talked to the woman who wrote it. (Of course now, we are divinely connected. In fact, we always were I just hadn’t known it yet.)

Pretty much blew me away so take a moment to stop and read. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Jennifer,

I live in Liberty, Missouri, have been practicing and teaching meditation and reiki for over 14 years. I began teaching yoga in 2006 and in 2008 I opened a Health & Wellness Center and Yoga Studio. I am the creator of Visualize You, lifestyle coaching sessions designed to crack open even the toughest, most stressed out nuts around! I have an amazing husband, a daughter 29 and our son whom we adopted from Guatemala who is 9.

Enough about me. I have been following you for about a year now, I’m not even sure how it is that I first found your site. When I need a little inspiration, I log on to fb or twitter and always have something you have written or pictures you’ve posted which inspire me. I also have been a huge Wayne Dyer fan, his books have changed my perception more than once, opening me up to new opportunities.

Last week I read a poem you wrote on your Facebook page. I read it, and it spoke to me, I read it again and again and found myself meditating on the questions and began to feel that flood of gratitude and energy from the thoughts of how amazing my life is. The pictures in my mind began to flow through my life’s challenges and the growth and grace I have gratefully received with each challenge. My thoughts then began to visualize my dreams and what I am manifesting today. It was an awesomely cool moment.

Soooo, I had to share it! I read your poem in class as part of the meditation and the response from the students was awesome!! Many of them expressed to me a very similar experience to what I had experienced that day at home.

At the request of my students I began recording my Monday Morning Meditation classes and posting them on Youtube so they can access the meditations anytime they need a little extra lift. I thought you might enjoy hearing your poem, with the knowledge that in the middle of the Midwest you touched our yoga community! Thank you Jennifer, I visualize us hangin’ together some day!

Namaste’

Patti Stark

www.serenityonthesquare.com

 

You must listen. My poem starts around 5:32. Her voice is gorgeous.

 

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9hC6mKSQcI&list=UUiTcr1xuYVGApLm6j-RZQzQ&index=1&feature=plcp]

Here is the poem I wrote which was originally my Facebook status update. You see, Facebook can be used to inspire! I love when social media is used in this way…

What humbles you, bringing you to your knees?
 
What do stand gaping, open-mouthed and in awe of?
Who do you love impossibly and with every inch of possibility?
What rock have lifted to find Grace buried under it, waiting for you to pick it up?
 
When you bring your hands together,
there, like that~
Whose name is on your lips, as you bow your head closer to your heart?
 
Who have you lost along the way~
Only to discover Losing is only a temporary room
where voices, smells and gestures nestle before they return
to the bed you’ve carefully made in your heart?
 
Which words crack your heart open?
Which silences?
 
What makes you get very quiet and listen as if your life depended on it?
 
What if it did?
 
What if it all boiled down to that moment,
 
there on your knees,
listening with grace?
 
 
~jp
Delight, Hearing Loss, Inspiration, manifesting

Life By Me.

April 24, 2012

I got interviewed for an amazing website called Life By Me and the post went up today.

They asked me which word was most meaningful to me at the moment and I said, yea, you guessed it: manifest.

Sophie Chice is brilliant for coming up with the concept of the site.

And just an FYI, I didn’t write the piece but rather it’s excerpts from my words.

Surf around too because there are some incredible folks on it and some heavy hitters.

Click picture to read post on LIfeByMe.

jennifer pastiloff: inspiration seeker. laughing yogini. true listener.Jennifer Pastiloff is a lover of life, laughter, poetry, yoga, and a really good glass of wine. She created Manifestation Yoga, which is all about causing serious breakthroughs in life without being too serious.

Click here to read. 

Daily Manifestation Challenge, Delight

Your Favorite Memory. The DMC.

February 19, 2012

Dear Manifesters, today’s DMC is a sweet one that came to me after I updated my Facebook last night and asked people “What is your favorite memory?”

My last retreat to Mexico is popping into my mind as the greatest one for me. It is tied with Good Morning America filming my birthday karaoke class and my nephew Blaise being in my arms as my friend Annabel gave a speech at my wedding. Also tied with New Year’s Day at my friends’ house in London as we sang and donned hats for a hat party and didn’t move from the kitchen all day.

My wedding at Yogaco ( cancelled class, Red cross sponsored and we gave all money to Haiti earthquake relief.)

Can you tell how happy I was? Holding onto my friend Cameron Mathison (GMA correspondent) as GMA filmed my karaoke class on my birthday!

Today’s DMC is really just meant to be a collage. A collage of your favorite memories. Below, write down what your favorite memories are. The top 3 even. I cannot wait to see them all. Together. Floating on the same page.

Having lost my dad at such a young age, I have been fairly obsessed with the idea of memory for a long time. In fact, here are a few lines from a poem I wrote 8 years ago:

We never know where we will find our history,

where we will discover what has formed us,

What we will find while farming tomatoes.

Exhuming beauty from the soil, excavating remains.

The unearthing of things long forgotten.

The source of the blue-green jade used by the Olmec remains a mystery,

As most things of beauty often will. 

You carve from clay-

The pounding of it, the pulverizing,

This creation and inevitable destruction of matter.

 

You are a sculptor.

This process as inevitable as any ritual-

Like watching women pound acorns with oblong rocks.

Holes the size of nickels created by the repetition,

The repeated impact of stone against stone.

I think of you sculpting red clay into things of mythic beauty-

Then letting it dry and crushing it into the earth, to be reshaped.

The repetition of this, the rebuilding.

This natural desire towards achievement.

What turns into memory? 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I find it interesting which memories stick in our minds. Which memories morph so they no longer represent what actually happened but what we need to remember it as so. Which things do not even make it to memory status. Why should some memory be so lucky and others fall into a dark corner of the mind, into an abyss of thought and sound and things that happened to us when we were babies?

The way some memories stay strong is by sharing them. By retelling them. The fact is, you can never ever go back into the past, but you can tap into that magic again by sharing and letting yourself feel what it felt like the first time. Maybe the memory makes you feel even better, in fact?

I can’t wait to read your favorite memories below.

I am fascinated by how one moment we are living in it and the next it is living in our minds. Forever.

I think one of the great ways of keeping memories alive is by sharing them. Also, by pictures (hence my obsession also with photographs.)

(Click here to watch me on Good Morning America. Truly one of the my favorite moments of all time. My face hurt from laughing after this day. A lot.)

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/year-fitness-trends-15233963

Lastly, I will leave you with an excerpt from Brandi Mayo, an amazing girl who attended my beloved Mexico retreat. She wrote a letter to the attendees in an effort to not have our magic fade. To keep the memory alive, as they say.

You will see why, in fact, it is my favorite memory:

1) I am incredibly blessed. Specifically, I am incredibly blessed that I get to take Jen’s classes and am reminded that the magic of what conspired in Xinalani was real. Over the past two weeks I have found myself on this incredible emotional roller coaster of highs and lows replaying the week over and over again wondering if the “magic” was real – wondering how I integrate that “magic” into “real life” where most people walk around with a solid metal jacket of fear and judgment. Every time I take Jen’s class, I am taken back to that safe place, where I allowed myself to be silly – to not take myself so seriously – something for which I am very adept. Having that safe place in my own backyard, every time I take Jen’s class I leave with that same feeling of lightness I felt in Xinalani, and a huge smile on my face. As I walk back to my apartment or grab a starbuck I find myself smiling at everyone, and I have come to notice that smile is so incredibly powerful. I see it transform stranger’s faces as I look them in the eye and give them a huge smile for no apparent reason. I see that solid metal jacket of fear and judgment start to melt away. That is how the magic is integrated.

2) The magic was and is real! When I have told my friends and family, I have started the story by explaining that a group of 13 “nearly-complete strangers” came together and left fear and judgment at the door. I’m coming to believe this is the “magic” ingredient of what conspired at Xinalani. We all met each other at the Corner of Fearlessness and Love, and just as Jen explained in a recent blog post, the only way we could have “fallen in love” with each other, could only have happened by falling in love with ourselves first. I truly believe that happened because we each faced our own personal fears in the face.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please feel free to go into detail and be poetic and grand and silly and personal. It’s what makes us human. This sharing of our stories. This showing the world the things that makes us come alive.

The things and people that make us smile.

GO! Share your favorite memory/memories below.