Browsing Tag

alimi ballard

Inspiration, Q & A Series

Alimi Ballard: Divine Source of Inspiration. The Manifestation Q&A Series.

January 16, 2012

Welcome to The Manifestation Q&A Series. 

I am Jennifer Pastiloff and this series is designed to introduce the world to someone I find incredible. Someone who is manifesting their dreams on a daily basis.

Alimi Ballard

Dear Manifesters, I have been bugging this guy for ages and it has finally happened! He did a Q&A! I have known Alimi Ballard for about 15 years. I first met him when I was working at the Newsroom Cafe and his girlfriend Dahn (now wife) became my regulars over a period of 13 years. I watched them grow and marry and have kids. 

This is a special guest for many reasons. He has seen me on my journey in a way most have not. He has watched me transform into what I am now, and, he is one of my biggest champions. He is also my go-to source for inspiration.

Alimi is an actor by trade but I think of him as my spiritual guru. I stalk his Twitter and Facebook daily for positive messages and simply to feel good. ( I recommend you do the same.) I find people in my life who I want to model my life after and he is at the very top of my list. His positivity is infectious, Manifesters. 

You may recognize from the film Fast 5 or the tv show Numb3rs, where he was one of the leads. I want you to get to know him because he is a divine source of inspiration, wisdom, joy, and goodness for me. He is an amazing father, husband, actor, friend, and teacher. His answers below made me smile as I knew they would. It is my greatest honor to introduce you to one of my oldest regulars from my waitressing days who is now one of my dearest friends and teachers.

Jennifer Pastiloff: What are you most proud to have manifested in your life?

Alimi Ballard: Most proud of manifesting….well co-manifesting ( the wife and GOD had a part in it too 😉 the two DAZZLING, DYNAMIC, DIVINE souls that are my children.

– Secondly, it would be MANIFESTING my path.. my earth-walk.. my calling.. my way.. having discovered why I AM HERE. 🙂

Jennifer Pastiloff: What is the greatest lesson you learn from your kids?

Alimi Ballard: Humility. I believe, if you are paying attention, the presence of children reconnects you to GOD. To that vast other side. The very act of them EXISTING from a drunken night of naughtiness with my wife STILL bugs me out. I can always FEEEEEEL the aspect of life that is BIGGER than what I can put my two hands on, when I see them.

Jennifer Pastiloff:  You are such a source of positive inspiration for me and for so many people. Where does all this positivity stem from?

Alimi Ballard: About two year ago something happened to me. In the most mundane of events, I was watching a music video ( yup, it was Wale ‘Nike Boots’ ) and had an epiphany. Hahahahahahaaa….I kid you not. I’m watching, enjoying the song and BAM, a light comes on. I realized that I didn’t have to WAIT to make a difference. I could affect POSITIVE CHANGE from right where I was at AT the moment. What I have to give.. share.. offer.. is ready right now. “You can make a DIFFERENCE….no matter WHO you are. No matter WHERE you are.”

Jennifer Pastiloff: What can we expect Alimi to be manifesting for 2012?

Alimi Ballard: My first BILLBOARD!!!! Look for me on the side of the BUS when you’re in traffic. 🙂

Jennifer Pastiloff: If you could say thank you to one person right now, who would it be?

Alimi Ballard: Kwasi. He was a father figure to me from about 10 months to 4 years. 

Jennifer Pastiloff: Who/what inspires you the most?

Alimi Ballard: The ACT of sharing that INNER LIGHT that LIBERATES, HEALS & TRANSFORMS. Whether you’re on a street corner, Thanksgiving diner or in a Yoga Studio you can sometimes FEEL it. Sometimes you can FEEL when the air is charged with that special BUZZ that gives off goosebumps. OOOOHHHWEEEEE!!!!!

Jennifer Pastiloff: When was the bets part of working on Fast 5?

Alimi Ballard: Running the risk of playing favorites, it was Dwayne THE ROCK Johnson. I’ve been in the ent. industry for about 20yrs and know that how people SEEM, may not always match up when you meet them in person. I can honestly say that Dwayne exceeds all expectations of Graciousness, Warmth & Sincerity. Being roughly the sized of a Sherman tank, it would be so easy to have an intimidating persona. THE EXACT OPPOSITE. 🙂 The man is like the Mayor wherever he goes. Humility in ACTION is such sight to behold.

Jennifer Pastiloff: I see you are directing now. How did that come about and can we expect more of that in the future?

Alimi Ballard: I haven’t gotten to directing just yet, but I have begun producing and writing. The 1st short film I’ve produced, along with my wife ( she also wrote it :), ‘INTERCEPTION’ it getting great Film Festival reception. YES!!! 

Currently developing an action based web series that I COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED ABOUT!!!! So yes, more behind the camera fun-ness in the future. 🙂 

Jennifer Pastiloff: I miss seeing you on my tv screen weekly. Any plans to return to episodic television?

Alimi Ballard: MANIFESTING as we speak. 🙂 Very Excited!!!

Jennifer Pastiloff: If there was one message you could share with people who want to manifest their dreams, what would it be?

Alimi Ballard: “Visualize this thing you WANT. See it, feel it, BELIEVE in it. Make your mental BLUEPRINT and begin.” – Robert Collier (Note from Jen: this is manifesting folks! This it it!)

Jennifer Pastiloff: I have a list of rules. See below. What would some of Alimi’s rules be…..

Alimi Ballard: Be KIND

– Be THANKFUL

– Do as much GOOD wherever and WHENEVER you can.

– Worrying is a habit….STOP THAT!!!

– Learn to love yourself FIRST, before trying to LOOOOOOOOOVE anybody else. ( It’s like being on a plane when the Oxygen masks fall. Put yours on FIRST, then get to the person next to you. 🙂

– Nobody is allowed in the bathroom when daddy is occupying the throne. PERIOD!

– This life is NOT a dress rehearsal. This is the BIG SHOW….and the clock is ticking. BRING THE RAUCOUS BABY!!!!

Jennifer Pastiloff: Where can we find more of you?

Alimi Ballard:www.InspirationWorks.Tumblr.com

– www.AlimiBallard.net

– www.Twitter.com/AlimiBallard

– www.Facebook.com/AlimiBallardFampage

Jen Pastiloff’s rules:

1. Be Kind.

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

3. Write poems, even if only in your head

4. Sing out loud, even if badly

5. Dance

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

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.

Delight, Guest Posts, Inspiration

Shedding. Guest Post by Actress & Writer Sabrina Lloyd.

November 15, 2011

I am so excited by this post. In the title, I wrote simply of Sabrina Lloyd that she is an actress and writer. Ha! This woman, Dear Manifesters, is truly one of the most interesting people I have come across in my life. I first met her in Italy last summer at my annual Italy Manifestation Yoga retreat. A dear friend, Alimi Ballard, who had co-starred on the tv show Numbers with her, sent her an article I had written. She liked what she read and signed up for my Italy yoga retreat on the spot. (I liked this about her.) The retreat was in Tuscany and she lived in Rome so it just a train ride away. Immediately I fell in love with her. Dear Manifesters, when I think of people I want to model my life after, I think of Sabrina Lloyd. She is present and passionate. She is fiercely devoted to her family. She is a yogi, through and through, returning to her mat again and again over a period of 20 years. She is talented in a way that transcends definition. Give her a camera or a pen or a stage and you will be in awe. So, low and behold, when she agreed to do a guest post, I was over the moon. I can’t be with her in Rome right now, but I can share a little piece of her with you. It is my greatest pleasure to introduce you to one of my favorite human beings: Sabrina Lloyd. Enjoy her.

Sabrina and I having our morning coffee on the roof at Ebbio during my yoga retreat

Shedding : A Manifestation in process

by Sabrina Llyod

Ten years ago, I lay down on my bed in my tiny NYC apartment and prayed for the world to open itself up to me.

My entire childhood I wanted to be an actress and have been very fortunate to find success in that field. But what I thought would bring me happiness, what I had been hoping would make me solid—define me—simply swirled around me like mist, holding me in, and I was still unknown to myself.

So I prayed daily for everything to expand.

My prayers were answered in the form of a beautiful boy who has taken me from all I’ve ever known and is giving me the entire world as my backyard as we roam this spinning sphere for his work with the United Nations. Each stop has been a shedding, a loosening of my ideas and concepts, formed from my culture, as to how I define myself, how to define myself, why I need to define myself.

I am currently studying literary theory with the University of London. At the beginning of the course you must choose five schools of criticism to go deep within. One path available is that of Feminist Critique. I made the assumption that I would not find that of interest and planned to focus more on language and deconstruction, Marx, Freud.

However, each student must at least have a general knowledge of every school so into the shallows of feminist theory I waded, and into the deep of it I now passionately swim.

One of the main ideas behind it is that of gendering. How we become, through our culture—how we become defined—by the norms, ideas of what it means to be ‘feminine’ (or ‘masculine’). How ‘female’ is our biological beginning, but how ‘woman’ is carved out, molded, forced upon us in literature, art, advertising, etc. In linking this idea with deconstruction you start to see how all our preconceptions of how we live, how we look at our world, our place in it are really just constructions in themselves.

Take love, for instance.

What did it look like before words gave it its ideal? Romance and passion, destiny, soul mates are all literary, cultural constructions. I am not saying love is not real, but the labels we put on what something should look like, how something is defined, perhaps should be looked through instead.

When I left NY to follow that boy (now a man and my husband), I didn’t know who I would be without the label of ‘actor’ attached to me. I’ve been trying on new labels: Ex-patriot, wife, mother, writer, but each still swirl without landing and the horizon remains hazy; I feel trapped and crouching under definitions.

So everyday I try and stand on my mat and let go of any need to label. To find an identity outside of words, concepts, that beautiful place of peace that yoga gives you when you just flow, and breathe, and are. When I leave the mat, instead of filling my head with constructed chatter that limits all I can be, I try and remain larger.

I can’t always do it.

History is a heavy burden to wear, but every now and then the boundaries that society and I have put upon me fall away and I expand, endlessly, in every direction, undefined and indefinable.

Sabrina and her daughter in Uganda

If you would like more of this lovely lady, please follow her blog Red Dirt Lattes. Also keep an eye out for her latest film, Hello Lonesone, which received rave reviews from the NY Times.

If you would like to join me in Italy in July for my Manifestation Yoga Retreat to Tuscany please click here and reach out. The retreat will be small and intimate and is filling up fast.
Keep Manifesting Your Life,
One Laugh at a Time,
ManifestYogaJen
Gratitude

Attitude

September 9, 2011

Cop a Tude!

Be in the Attitude of Gratitude Today.

Add to the list please with either pictures or words!

My client/friend: actress Laura Donnelly bows in Gratitude

                                 A few random things/people I am grateful today for: 

My husband's film starring Luke Goss

Bring your heart closer to heaven in an act of Gratitude

—Grateful & honored to be teaching yoga to children with special needs.

—Grateful for my amazing sister/best-friend/hero Rachel Pastiloff!

I'm grateful for a good glass of vino

Jump for Joy/Gratitude/The Heck of It!

My awesome husband. Grateful beyond words.

My home studio in Philly and Dhyana/John Vitarelli. And the fact that I'll be teaching at Do Yoga Philly 3.0!

Limoncello in Florence !

Double Rainbows in Tuscany!

Kisses! So grateful for love and lots and lots of kisses!

My amazing mom aka assistant and life manager

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbutA0mLONY]

That I can actually GIVE a spot away at my retreat. That I ask people to tweet/share what they are #Manifesting and start the ripples of it out there into the Universe. Grateful for Veggieboomboom aka Krista Allen as well for being smitten with me. As I am with her.

This lovely friend: The one and only Sabrina Lloyd. And especially her inspiring blog Red Dirt Lattes. https://reddirtlattes.com/

Grateful for my awe-inspiring friend who brought the above friend into my world. He radiates joy, humility, grace and TALENT. Watch out world. Alimi Ballard!

London!

This cherry tree in Siena

Generous friends who have helped me along the way. And talented ones who inspire! (Actor and friend Holt Mccallany in "Light's Out). Get it on DVD if you missed it on FX!

That I did indeed have blonde hair at least once in my life!

To be able to eat ciliegias (Cherries) on an Italian beach during my own Italy yoga retreat which was my dream realized!

My Manifestation Workshops! This one was at the Yoga Collective (formerly Yogaco on the 3rd St Promenade in Santa Monica

Laughter

Gratitude Flowin'

Lululemon. And the fact that they sent me to Vancouver and Whistler. And that their clothes are the bomb. The company inspires me endlessly.

Samosas. Yes, I love them.

Brilliant photos like this. Love my nephews.

List a few things below that you are grateful for! Cop a tude!