This post was actually inspired by an acquaintance of mine who spoke about equilibrium and balance in relation to the equinoxes. Here in the southern hemisphere we just had our summer/autmn one whereas the northern hemisphere is looking forward to spring after a long and cold winter with lots of snow.

I found the following definition on wikipedia: “On a day of the equinox, the centre of the Sun spends a roughly equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on the Earth, night and day being of roughly the same length. The word equinox derives from the Latin words aequus (equal) and nox (night); in reality, the day is longer than the night at an equinox. ”

What I find fascinating about all of this is the fact that it happens on every location on earth. Equality for a day, balance for a day, harmony for a day? Maybe these two unique days should be made worldwide days for the promotion and celebration of equality…

Then I thought about how we might create equality and balance in our daily lives through some simple yoga techniques. Was there anything like the equinox? Straight away a particular breathing technique popped up in my mind’s eye.

Evening out the breath, making your inhalation the same length as the exhalation. It sounds easy – but for most of us the inhalation is shorther than the exhalation. Some writers talk about the in breath being the “take” or “receive” and the out breath being the “give”.

A lot of my clients always had trouble receiving (even simple compliments) but had a huge capacity to give. Bring some balance back into your life by paying attention to your inhalation and exhalation. 5 minutes in a quiet place will be quite sufficient. Do long, slow inhalations and mentally count their length. Follow up with equally long, slow exhalations and count their length too. What did you find?

Practising this technique regularly will leave you feeling calm and relaxed. The feeling that there is no hurry and that there is sufficient time for everything you need to do will become more frequent. Hold on to it as long as you can, this is one of the most precious things you can have in these hectic times!

Till next time

Connie

Your Yoga Partner

from

http://www.yogainahurry.com

Would you travel to a foreign country without any preparation or without doing any research? Most probably your answer will be “of course not”. Yet, most people embarking on a spiritual journey or quest of some sort are poorly prepared for what awaits them.

Today I spoke to Mena Baines who has travelled many different paths herself and found that one of the most important things is to “find our confidence”.

Mena Baines runs ‘Chakra Spinach’, a business devoted to Body/Mind/Spirit understandings and practices. Her website was developed as a haven for those seeking answers or direction to answers about finding our Confidence in order to understand and embrace our amazing Creativity and Metaphysical potential.

Mena operates from Brisbane, Australia and holds workshops and private consultations in Australia. Online workshops are being developed and might be available within the next few months.

Once we have found our confidence we can explore different concepts, join different groups or follow particular teachers or gurus in relative safety. Deep down we will know what is right or wrong for us, what suits us and what just doesn’t fit with our beliefs. Having confidence will enable us to question, research and work out what best suits us. It will give us the strength to leave when things don’t feel right any more.

Mena raised the following points:

• Body, Mind and Spirit often are not treated wholistically
• The body is relegated to the “bottom rung” – yet profound learning or spiritual information is received through the body
• Confidence is very important when embarking on spiritual development – things can occur that might be frightening, might seem absurd, or simply are unbelievable – it takes strength and confidence not to let fear take over
• it takes confidence to embark on any journey – some people never do simply because it is too stressful – they stay in familiar terrain

Mena runs a number of workshops to help people develop confidence to they can embark on their journeys in a safe manner.

The are three core workshops:

1. Chakra Spinach – Body and Soul
2. Chakra Spinach – Start Where You Are
3. Chakra Spinach – Living in a Conscious Universe

The first deals with the Body, and our Body’s place in the Body/Mind/Spirit wholistic approach. The aim of this workshop is to identify with our Bodies more and understand how what we eat can affect our Mind and our Spiritual journey. We include the Mind and Spirit and towards the end of this workshop.

You can’t do the “Living in a Conscious Universe” workshop unless you have done this workshop.

“Start Where You Are” is focused on our Mind. We learn about cognitive dissonance and why some things get in and others don’t; why we feel angry about some ideas and love others etc. By the end of this workshop we are able to live outside the confines of our Cognition, while always appreciating and working with it.

“Living In a Conscious Universe” is a highly metaphysical workshop. We deal with Mediumship and Occult philosophies. NO DRUGS. NO HEIGHTENED DANCING. NO DEEP MEDITATIONS. Every participant is Confidently journeying  through some interesting terrain during this workshop.

To find out more and for enquiries and bookings visit Mena’s website today.

Mena is also a psychic medium and a gifted Venusian astrologer. As a special offer for our listeners she will do an astrology reading for the special price of $50 (normally they are $80).

She is also prepared to do a psychic reading online for our listeners for $50 (instead of $80).

Both of the above offers are only valid during April 2010 and you need to mention the Stretch Your Mind and Body Blog Talk Radio Show when contacting Mena. Visit her website today.

Listen to this fascinating interview by pressing the button on the player below:

Till next time,

Connie Your Yoga Partner

from

http://www.yogainahurry.com

After having a very interesting interview with Saskia Shakin about public speaking I started to think about Yoga Teachers and public speaking. At first I thought that all of us would be great public speakers simply because we speak, move and put ourselves into all sorts of unusual positions in front of any number of people all the time. Then again, we might be hiding behind our poses and explaining the technicalities of the postures. 

If we were put up on stage to give a theoretical talk about yoga it might be a different story and we need to consider a lot of different things. Fear of public speaking is a very powerful fear and it might affect us when we are taken out of our usual environment. We are better equipped than most to deal with the fear through breathing, relaxation and mind control but it is much better to have some expert advice and tuition on how to present ourselves in the best possible manner when we are called upon to give a talk.

There are lots of books and courses that teach how to present a “winning presentation” or deliver a “dynamic speech” and most of them focus on how to organise and deliver great content. Some might also teach you how to “dress for success”.

Saskia Shakin has been a coach for the past 30 years teaching people how to become an exciting keynote speaker. Her clients have worked in the White House; appeared before Congress; run global corporations; written Broadway plays;managed prestigious law firms; and held chairs at major universities.

She shared some great insights with us during our interview. Especially when you are an expert in your field and spend a lot of time within your area of expertise it is very easy to lose sight of the fact that others may not understand what you are talking about. Consider the following points when called upon to make a speech or give a presentation:

• start from square one (beware: what you consider square one might be square 5 for your audience)
• get crystal clear on what you want to get across to your audience – define your message and your mission
• separate any “fluff” from your “mission”
• treat your audience with respect and ensure that they feel smart
• when you try and show off your knowledge (or your most fantastic advanced postures) you may come across as arrogant
• make sure you have fun when delivering your talk – your audience will have fun too (don’t take yourself too serious).
• remember that your audience only retains about 7% of what you say but 93% of your non verbal messages
• your non verbal messages are extremely powerful and include things like body language, tone of your voice, attitude etc.
• you may not be aware or conscious of your non verbal messages
• your words and your body language have to “mesh”, in other words be congruent

All of the above points are crucial when you want to become a successful and sought after keynote speaker. You need to know your content really well so you can become relaxed with your audience. When you are relaxed you can relate to your audience and think about connecting and not lecturing. I think as yoga teachers we have some advantage there – the relationship with our students is of utmost importance so we will hopefully be able to translate this to a wider audience.

Saskia shared a lot more insights with us, click on the player below to listen to the full interview.

Saskia’s book “More Than Words Can Say: The Making of Inspired Speakers” is a collection of stories and wisdom taken from her vast experience as a coach to speakers in positions of leadership. It will not only help you to become a better speaker but also a better communicator in general.
You may want to look at her book today.

One final thought from Saskia: Remember that everything that comes from you – you can control. We create our world by the way we speak and think. Anyone can become a great speaker – if you can speak to one person you can speak to one hundred. It is all about how you view yourself and the expectations you hold.

Till next time

Connie

Your Yoga Partner

from

www.yogainahurry.com

Yoga and sound are very much intertwined. There is chanting, there are mantras and of course a very intricate sound system linked to the chakras. Sound is a great healer and plays an important role and calming and balancing mind and body. Traditional cultures sing while working. Some of the songs are designed to make the work easier – the rhythm may help the digging motion when working in fields. Songs are part of everyday life as well as special celebrations. Western culture has done away with song during everyday life to a large extent. I am convinced that this has lead to a number of problems with hearing, speaking, voice projection and the way we feel about ourselves.

Sound Therapy is a very powerful tool and healing modality for a huge variety of seemingly unrelated problems. The beauty of sound therapy is that it has been evolving and growing over the past 25 years or so. Therefore a large amount of testimonials and empirical evidence is available that show its effectiveness. A lot of the original work was done by Dr. Tomatis and you may have heard about the Tomatis Method.

Rafaele Joudry is one of the world’s experts on sound therapy. She has been winvolved with it and studied it over the past 20 years. You can find her at:

www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/soundtherapy

It all started many years ago in Paris when she met one of the doctors who studied under Dr. Tomatis.

Rafael’s mother had problems hearing in a crowded room and was extremely sensitive to noise. When sound therapy was established in Canada her mother was one of the first clients and had great results.

Most humans are what is called “right ear dominant” because the sound travels faster along that pathway than from the left ear (the heart is “in the way” so to speak) and the sound takes longer to reach the left ear.

Left ear dominance leads to all sorts of auditory processing problems. This difficulty in making sense of sounds and what is being said leads to things like stuttering, difficulty expressing thoughts or feelings, dyslexia and it also seems to play a role in Asperger’s syndrome and autism.

Interestingly enough we can only reproduce sounds (whether this is singing or speaking) that we can physically hear with our ears. We also have to be exposed to these sounds.

Due to some technical difficulties we only spent half an hour with Rafaele. She has a lot more to share and we will invite her back.

The first half of the call is a discussion amongst Charly, Lenore from www.outrageouslyhealthy.com , Liz from www.thewaytoblissnow.com and myself about mindset, how to stay in control even when things are not going so well.

The second half of the show is our interview with Rafaele Joudry. Click on the player below to listen.

 
You find Rafaele at:

www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/soundtherapy

Shampoos, soaps, lipsticks, bubble baths, perfumes – we all have our favourites. They make us feel good, give our self confidence a boost and we can indulge a little without feeling guilty about putting on weight.

Unfortunately a lot of our favourite products contain lots of “nasties” which affect our health in adverse ways. Some chemicals in cosmetics are highly toxic and have been linked to cancer and other illnesses.

Robin Adler has made it her mission to educate everybody about the dangers of  cosmetics and self care products. To get her free ebook entitled “Beautify Naturally – 10 Non Toxic Ways to a More Beautiful You” go to: www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/beautifynaturally

The history of using toxic chemicals in cosmetics goes way back. In ancient Egypt lead was used to make the colours look brighter. One of the benefits of the lead content of the make-up was the fact that it prevented ear, nose and eye infections which were very common and quite dangerous in those days.

Nowadays toxic chemicals are used because they are cheap and to a lesser degree also because we as consumers have come to expect a certain “behaviour” from our products. How would you feel about a shampoo that doesn’t foam or a soap or toothpaste that doesn’t produce any lather?

For the sake of our health we might have to make different choices. To find out more about the products you are using right now you can go to www.cosmeticsdatabase.com

One drawback of the site is that the assessment of the product can only be as good as the labelling. In a lot of countries cosmetic labelling requirements are not very strict so we really don’t know what exactly is in the products.

To listen to our interview with Robin Adler go here:

Don’t forget to get your free ebook here:

www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/beautifynaturally

Robin’s blog is here:

www.toxicbeauty.com

One word of wisdom from Robin Adler: “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t put it on your skin!” I would even go further and agree with the person who said: “If you can’t eat it don’t put it on your skin”.

There are some good hints in Robin’s ebook. I would like to add that beautiful skin has a lot to do with nutrition, hydration and the amount of sleep you get. Natural cosmetics and skin care products are important and beautiful to use but if the basics are not in place the best product will not help your skin.

Make an effort to change one product at a time (when it runs out) and slowly eliminate all those toxins. Once you get used to the subtle, very complex and beautiful aromas of natural peronal care products and perfumes you will not want to go back to chemical products.

Till next time

Connie

Your Yoga Partner

from

www.yogainahurry.com