Ready, Get Centered, Go! with Jess G

After a 2 year hiatus, I'm back at the mic! This time on a new podcast called Jess on the Mountain: A podcast about yoga, chakras, and becoming your own guru. Today's episode is an introduction into this exciting new project that I know you're going to love! 

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As timing would have it, I’m currently teaching Chakra 2 (water element) in my online course, Chakra Savvy.  The metaphor of water and our emotional self was everywhere last week!  And it helped me make one important decision.

Links from this episode:

Do you know what yoga therapy is or how it works? Over the next few episodes, I will be sharing with you some of my clients stories and their greatest successes. It’s a misnomer that Yoga has to take an hour of your life every day to feel better. Small bits and pieces throughout the day, or just a short 15 to 20 minute yoga practice, are all you need to feel better, be more balanced, reduce symptoms of chronic disease and chronic pain, and get more joy out of life. In this episode, learn about one woman’s struggle to find her voice and what we did to help her get there. 

On January 11 we kicked off Virtual Open House, 2021!  This has been a long time coming, and I’m thrilled we are underway.  We are starting right at the beginning, with embodiment.  In this podcast episode, I give you a sneak peek into our course as we get centered to begin our journey through the chakras.

The music you hear in the background is Liquid Mind.

I think we’ve all  acknowledged that 2020 hit us like a mack truck in every chakra.  So now we can make our new year's resolutions and get back on track at being better and setting goals! Right?!  Well...I’m gonna say, not so fast.

I believe there is a way to stay open to possibilities, yet lay the groundwork for a new year, or even a new chapter or new way of being.  Because this life is a co-creation, we need a “both/and” approach to creating the life we want to lead.  We need to ask the right questions, listen for wisdom’s answers, and then apply right effort to what is ours to do in this world.

This takes time. We need a way to do this mindfully, with compassion and grace.  We need a game plan.  

Do you ever get the sense that something is pushing and pulling, blocking and advancing you?  Do you notice that some times you are rocking and rolling and others you can’t think straight enough to do simple tasks easily and efficiently?  There could be many reasons on any given day, like your food intake, the amount of sleep you got the night before, hormone fluctuations, etc.  But sometimes it’s bigger than that. Sometimes you are a little more at the whim of energy that’s WAY bigger than your food and sleep.  It’s the weather beyond the sky--it’s the weather of the planets.

I have a real treat for us today, which is a great conversation I had recently with my friend, colleague, and go-to Vedic Astrologer, Tej Arvind.  She’s here to share with us a little bit about Vedic astrology in general, as well as the 

3 Ways Vedic Astrology can impact your life.  

1. It's validating.

2. It tells you your tendencies.

3. It can help you time important events.

I’ve been going to Tej for all things planets for several years now, and I think you’ll enjoy this conversation as she dispels myths and makes distant planets feel close to home. We hope you want to join us for our exciting journey through the chakras and planets happening live on zoom for the winter solstice, December 20.  The workshop is titled: 

Today we get right to the work of energizing and grounding each chakra with a quick-reset of movement and breath. 

Over my last 15+ years of teaching, the number one question I get  from students is, “When are you going to teach the chakra series again?”  Well my friends,  I certainly won’t let this year go by without once again guiding us through “the architecture of our soul."    If you’ve never been exposed to or worked closely with the chakra system, you are going to LOVE it.  Ever since I started looking at my life and my priorities through the lens of the chakras, I am more in tune with and accepting of my life, as well as more empowered to create positive change and achieve lasting results.    

I came across this one line from the book Big Change, Small Groups, by Heather Zempel, and it cut into my heart immediately:

"Everybody needs someone who knows their name and knows what's happening in their life."

I think for many of us, this is what we remember at Thanksgiving and other seasonal holidays that are quickly approaching.  These are often the times we are with these special people.  They are the ones who show up at weddings and funerals, at parties and quiet walks or weekly phone calls.

It's about having a WITNESS.

In today's episode, explore the facets of your mind that make up your inner experience, and learn who your constant witness really is. 

Transition is all around us: our presidency in the U.S., the season of Autumn, and we're closing in on the end of a very intense year.  I sat down to remember some of my favorite yoga teachings about maintaining balance in transition, and I've distilled them into three R's:

1. ROUTINE
2. REMEMBER
3. REALISTIC

This is the opening chat and ending meditation from class on Election Day.  Use as often as needed! 

You voted. Your work is done. The rest you cannot control. So breathe and have a little faith because this too shall pass.

Halloween is coming this week, and I’ve been thinking about things that haunt.  Not spirits, in this case, but haunts from the past.  Old experiences, relationships, and patterns that appear from time to time to hijack our present happiness.  Sometimes we know exactly what they are, but quite often we feel off, or sad, or anxious, and we just don’t know exactly why.  Today, I’m talking about ways to release these dark haunts and live into the bright truth of your abundant life.

I love good alignment cues.  I love finding tiny little adjustments to a posture that have big benefits and “aha moments.” I love it when one principle applies to a broad range of postures and their accessibility.  So today I’m going to share with you the three yoga asana cues that I believe are the most valuable in any pose or class.  You don’t have to be an experienced yogi to benefit from what I’m going to share with you today.  In fact, these three cues are helpful even if you never step on a yoga mat!

You can affect your whole life by being purposeful about where or on what you are placing your attention.  In this episode, I talk about and take you through a third type of meditation: object meditation.

Nancy Herlin is a practitioner and guide of Contemplative Prayer, which is a meditation practice from the Christian tradition.  In this episode, she shares with us her experiences with different kinds of practices, as well as takes us through a brief "sit" of Contemplative Prayer.  I encourage you to take a pause with us when it's time, and let Nancy guide you for a 30 second session.  

In the last episode, we learned to "be with the breath as it goes out."  This episode describes and gives you a short practice in the next part of that meditation: "label your thoughts thinking."

For my Calm Your Mind, Lift Your Spirits Therapeutic Yoga Class, I’m using the book Start Where You Are, by Pema Chodron as a jumping off point for our group intentions and meditations.  Because it’s a yoga class, we infuse the teaching with our movement, and I just have to share with you what came of it.  

Book recommendations:

Now that so many yoga classes have moved online, it can be very hard to choose which to take.  Geography is no longer what decides where you practice or with whom.  The yoga world is your oyster! And that can be overwhelming.  Here are the 5 questions to ask yourself when deciding on your yoga classes this fall.

2020 has been nothing but interruptions! And your yoga practice, like mine, has likely suffered.  Let's reframe this experience through the lens of the Yoga Sutras and Nischala Joy Devi's interpretation of Abhyasa, or Devoted Practice.  

Right now I am ESPECIALLY glad to have the practice of yoga in my life.  There is now a large body of scientific evidence stacked in favor of yoga's claims of boosting the immune system, which is very empowering at a time like this.  

How much do you love waiting?  I don’t mean the fun, anticipatory waiting like for the start of a movie--I mean the finger-drumming, “when’s it going to be time??” waiting.  I’ll admit, I’m not a fan.  But I’m getting better at it.

In this week’s podcast, I tell a funny story about waiting as a fruit of maturity. I offer a releasing breath and calming mantra.

We do get better with waiting as we age, but maybe that’s just because we don’t really have to wait much--especially not these days (thank you, Amazon :).  Most of us have been around long enough to know that with enough time and right effort, “good things come to those who wait.”

But how about some of that deeper stuff?  How do you do with waiting for

• Your body to heal from injury, illness, or surgery?
  
• Anger to settle before engaging in an argument?
  
• Financial dips to rise back up?
  
• The right diagnosis?
  
• Clarity and wisdom in a difficult situation?
  
• Your estranged relationships to heal?
  

These are tougher.  This is where we have to exercise that patience muscle.

Or do we?  What if instead of requiring fierce determination and  great effort, patience was easy and beautiful?  What if it were there all along? What if patience were a natural outcome of your yoga practice?

In this week's podcast episode, I talk about how LESS can be more.   Less intake, less output, less effort, or less distraction might actually create space for MORE of what is life-giving and nourishing to you, body, mind, and spirit.  Things like scarcity-mindset, anxiety, worry and need to control, shame, and our family of origin can fool us into thinking that all is not well, when in fact quite often it is.

This episode is all about saying “YES.” “YES!” to the things you DO want, the direction you DO want to go, the people you DO want to surround yourself with.  Focusing positively on the choices you do want  allows a greater sense of freedom and abundance.  All those “yeses” come together to pour the foundation for the life you’re building.  With a structurally sound foundation, the sky is the limit!

"Checking in" with yourself every day is a facet of self-study that is invaluable to personal growth and healthy relationships.  It’s a process of tuning in to the conversation going on between your interior and exterior environments.  The chakras, or the seven centers of energy that align with your spine, have valuable information to share with you about how balanced you are--you just have to learn to speak their language. 

“There is an Energy in the world that is life-giving and all-pervasive.  This energy is within you. You ARE this energy."

Welcome to the first podcast of the new year--the new decade! This season I want to try something new--I’m going to start my podcast by talking to you directly. So now, in addition to the centering and guided breathing you usually hear, I want to give you some valuable nuggets that you might not get in just the class opening chat. I want to empower you to go deeper, ask yourself challenging questions, and open to the insights you have within you, but maybe don’t have a road-map of how to get there.

My road-map starts with INTENTION, which is my word for 2020.  It is my theme for the year.  I want everything I do, every relationship I maintain, and every event I create or attend to have the intention of living my life purpose, which is teaching you how to live well and in harmony with YOUR life purpose!

Here are the links to four of my INTENTIONAL events happening this month:

Here's a centering practice to unwind as the holidays tie you up!

We get to reset everywhere we want.  Friendships, career paths, attitudes, wellness goals, breaking habits, testing new waters...

Now (inhale), yoga begins (exhale).

In this episode, I read again from Pema Chodron's book, Comfortable with Uncertainty.  The first line of of the fourth teaching is,  

 "The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear, but how we relate to discomfort."  

Kaivalyam is a term used in the householder tradition of yoga that is defined as "freedom." This freedom comes from having space between stimulus and response.  We are not chained to our reactions! Here I explore this idea and guide an intention of sticking with uncertainty.  

"Forget self-improvement and [bask] in what's already great about yourself." --Willibald Ruch, from TIME article "Nine Ways to Feel More Joy." 

Are some of us born with a "happiness gene?"  My mom thinks so 😊👍

Whether or not we have a happiness gene, for ALL of us the practice of pausing to savor small things throughout the day has a big impact on our overall happiness.

Check out this week's podcast to hear how you can up your happiness factor in 15 second increments.

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Asteya is usually translated as non-stealing.

But I know that most of you aren't shoplifters or bank robbers, so we have to look deeper ;)

What if that book you keep on your shelf but will never read again steals the opportunity for someone else to read it?  Isn't accepting accolades or credit for something you didn't do the same as stealing? When greed seeps in and makes us want more for ourselves than we need, there is poverty of spirit and stealing of resources.

The thing about going to get more than is yours, or taking someone else's, is that it prevents your true wealth from flowing into you.

In this week's podcast, learn how to breathe with a non-stealing rhythm of life, flowing from reverence, to gratitude, generosity, to patience.