Here’s my secret to how I can stay awake from 5:30 AM to 9:30 PM every day.

And it’s not coffee or anything related to caffeine.

It’s yoga nidra!

I know I’m not supposed to sleep during yoga nidra, but did I fall asleep and still reap the benefits?

Totally yes!

Unlike a normal nap, I wake up from yoga nidra with a clear head and a renewed sense of focus. A regular nap might leave me groggy and hard to wake up from, but yoga nidra feels completely different.

I first fell in love with yoga nidra when I was co-facilitating an online workshop with my friend Youmin Yap on resting and intention-setting. Yoga nidra, also known as yogic sleep, is a relaxation practice rooted in ancient yogic traditions. It helps release tension from both the body and mind, guiding us into a profound state of calm and inner peace.

In this workshop, Youmin—an expert rest coach and forest bathing therapy trainer—would lead a 10-minute yoga nidra session, and afterwards I would guide participants in crafting their intention statements.

As we settled in for yoga nidra, Youmin explained what it meant to her:

“Yoga Nidra is a very delicious rest medicine that is super accessible to people. You do not have to be of a physical fitness level. You do not have to be of a certain belief. Everybody knows how to lie down and close their eyes. Yoga Nidra then is like a river of rest where we just flow with the words and, in a very seamless, effortless way, we enter the restful state.”

I followed Youmin’s guidance, making myself as comfortable as possible on my yoga mat. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and paid attention to each body part as she guided me. Soon my awareness drifted in and out, hovering somewhere between relaxation and sleep.

The funny thing was, I did fall asleep—but I naturally woke up to her voice right when the practice was ending. No alarm needed.

I was amazed with the sense of clarity I had after I woke up. With just 10 minutes of yoga nidra, I felt like I had another 8 hours of sleep. I was awake, alert, focus, and most importantly – relaxed.

How was this possible?

It turns out yoga nidra has countless benefits. One of the most important is that it activates the parasympathetic nervous system—our body’s “rest and digest” mode—which explains why it’s so effective for reducing stress.

Yoga nidra also supports spiritual growth, helping us feel more connected to a greater presence and to our True Self.

Youmin shared that one of the benefits of yoga nidra is that it redistributes mental energy from the head back into the body for healing. That made so much sense for me. Every time I woke up from yoga nidra, I felt as though my inner batteries had been recharged to at least 90%.

As we progressed each day in the retreat, I also started to stay awake during the yoga nidra practice. On the first two days I fell asleep for almost the entire session. But on the third and forth day I started to stay awake longer. On the fifth and sixth day I didn’t fall asleep at all, I heard every word that Youmin said, and I also picked up on my soul’s whispers.

After each yoga nidra session, Youmin would ask us to write down our soul’s whispers and at the end of the retreat we would piece them together to weave into our soul-aligned intention for the year.

At the beginning of this year, I’ve fallen in love with practicing yoga nidra after lunch as a way to recharge my batteries and to counter the energy dip I would experience after eating. I love a good 20-minute to 30-minute yoga nidra practice. On the days that I knew I wouldn’t get an afternoon break, I would try to get in a 10 to 15-minute yoga nidra practice in the morning so my energy could last till the end of the day.

Of course, there were days when I couldn’t fit in a yoga nidra “nap,” especially while traveling, and I was still fine.

But as a mom of two kids, four dogs, and a few businesses to run, I love that even a short 10-minute yoga nidra practice leaves me refreshed and recharged, and it gives me energy to keep going in my day.

And it’s not that type of stimulating energy that caffeine would give – which often makes us feel like we still need willpower to push through the day and then we’d crash to exhaustion at the end of the day.

The energy I receive from yoga nidra is a restored sense of calmness and focus, knowing that I can still be my best self at the end of the day.

PS: I usually write best in the morning before lunch time but guess what, this blog is written right after I woke up from my yoga nidra “nap” after lunch and it still makes sense (hopefully).

Resources:

• Youmin Yap’s yoga nidra audio: https://xiunatureconnections.com/gifts/p/pause 
• Free yoga nidra practices videos by Ally Boothroyd: https://www.youtube.com/@SarovaraYoga
• “Yoga Nidra – Step-by-Step Guide to Yogic Sleep for Top Relaxation” by OneYoga Thailand: https://oneyogathailand.com/yoga-nidra-step-by-step-guide-to-yogic-sleep-for-top-relaxation/
• “What Happens if You Fall Asleep During Yoga Nidra?” by Christian Möllenhoff: https://www.forceful-tranquility.com/what-happens-if-you-fall-asleep-during-yoga-nidra/

If you are feeling heavy and exhausted for no apparent reason, or if you are feeling drained by people, situations or the environment, learning how to protect your energy is the key to help you feeling like your authentic self again.

How can energy protection help you?

Energy protection is like applying body lotion on your energy field.

Applying a good quality body lotion after shower can moisturize the skin and help to strengthen the skin barrier. Our skin barrier locks in the moisture and protects our skin from irritants and bacteria, so our skin doesn’t get damaged or dry throughout the day.

So when we protect our energy, it’s similar to what a body lotion does. We become less affected by the external environment – be it other people’s energies, the energy of the space we are in, or the collective energy of the world.

It’s important to remember that we are protecting our energy from a place of love and not from a place of fear. Fear lowers our vibration, whereas love lifts up our vibration.

The most potent protection comes from within and it is to raise our vibration. If we view the world as a dangerous place, and that we need to hide from everyone and everything that is potentially toxic, then this point of view can lock us to live in fear.

When our energy is protected, we can stay true to our authentic self and preserve our energy to do what is aligned with our soul’s purpose. We can focus on listening to our intuition, our soul, and the Universe’s guidance, instead of being distracted by all the outer noises and drained by the outer chaos and fear.

So how do we actually protect our energy? In today’s blog, I want to share with you 3 simple yet powerful energy protection tools to help you stay empowered every day.

This one may seem obvious, but many people don’t think about their nervous system on a regular basis.

We have two main modes in our nervous system. One is the sympathetic nervous system, also known as the fight-or-flight mode. The other is the parasympathetic nervous system, often called the rest-and-digest mode.

When we stay in fight-or-flight all the time, it takes a negative toll on our physical, emotional, and mental health — such as increasing blood pressure, lowering immunity, and impairing cognitive functions.

For example, in a 1995 study conducted at Ohio State University, psychologists Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and Ronald Glaser found that wounds in dementia caregivers under chronic stress took 24% longer to heal than in non-stressed adults. This shows how being stuck in the sympathetic state directly slows the body’s ability to repair itself.

So what kinds of stressors can flip us into fight-or-flight mode?

Examples include negative news, gossip, horror movies or violent media, alcohol and drugs, people who constantly complain and drain your energy, toxic work environment, drama that doesn’t belong to you, and places that give you the creeps.

Of course, we can’t always avoid these stressors completely, and each person reacts differently depending on their sensitivity.

When you notice yourself switching into sympathetic activation, you can shift back by practicing the seven types of rest and engaging in nourishing activities that intentionally slow and ground you — such as deep breathing, meditation, being in nature, gentle movement, and listening to soothing sounds.

Black is THE color for energy protection.

When you’re feeling low on energy—or if you are intuitively drawn to wearing black—try wearing it and notice how you feel and how your day unfolds.

Wearing black isn’t limited to clothing. You can also use black-colored crystals, such as black onyx, black obsidian, black tourmaline, or orgonite containing black stones, for energy protection.

Personally, I wear a black-colored orgonite necklace to protect myself from EMF (electromagnetic fields). I wear it whenever I’m working on my laptop or when I’m in crowded places. You can learn more about how I discovered orgonite, what it is, and how it has helped me in my previous blog here.

This is one of the simplest and most effective energy protection tools, and many spiritual teachers have shared variations of this visualization exercise.

All you need to do is to imagine yourself being inside an energy bubble, and you can choose the color based on your intuition.

If you don’t connect with the image of a bubble, you can also imagine being inside a membrane, a crystal, pure light, a glass pyramid, or covered by a colored cloak. Experiment with these images to see which one feels most protective for your energy. Some people prefer a bubble, some prefer a crystal. Some days you may feel being in a membrane is protective enough, and other days you may feel more protected in a crystal. I would suggest trying on different images to sense how protected you feel with each one.

This is a really good exercise to do in the morning before you leave the house and go on with your day. Normally once you’ve visualized energy protection around you, it stays with you for a good 24 hours.

But there may be situations when you want to reinforce your energy protection – perhaps when you are in the middle of a meeting or a conversation with someone that you cannot get out and you start to feel drained. In this case, you can run this visualization in your mind quickly to strengthen your energy shield.

Side note: Spiritual teacher Gabrielle Bernstein has a wonderful 11-minute video sharing five signs of an energy vampire. In this video, she also guides a similar energy protection exercise that you can follow along with here.

Conclusion

In today’s world, with increasing chaos and uncertainty around us, energy protection is not only relevant for highly sensitive people and empaths—everyone can benefit from it.

Energy protection helps us stay true to our authentic selves so we can listen to our soul’s voice—the inner voice that matters the most.

It can also help us becoming more compassionate towards others. Instead of carrying the pain and suffering of others, the heavy burden of the world, and the guilt of being alive, we can stay focus on leading by example, sharing our soul gifts and bringing inspiration and light to others. Energy protection allows us to understand the pain of others without being buried under fear.

If you want to learn more about energy protection tools, you can listen on Spotify or watch episode 11 of my podcast Embrace Your Sacred Nature, where I shared three additional energy protection tools that you can use to stay grounded and clear every day.

Today I want to share with you my personal story of how I lift myself up from a place of feeling angry and frustrated to a place of feeling good at the end of the day.

Perhaps some of the tools I’ve used can help you release anger and uplift your mood too.

My morning started like this. I was fuming with anger when my 3-year-old kept on testing and pushing my boundaries until I couldn’t stand it anymore. If you know the emoji of a head explosion 🤯, that was me.

And yes, I was yelling. I was shouting. I needed to walk away and restrain myself with my last ounce of mental strength to cool off before I said anything else that I would regret later.

I was able to get a few moments by myself. So I went to my journal. I needed to express my anger. There was also guilt. It was not just anger to my 3-year-old. It was anger towards myself. Why were there so many obstacles in my life? Why was I still feeling such a failure after all the work I’ve done on myself? Why was I such a bad mom?

I just wanted to shut myself off from the entire world and be by myself. That lasted for 10 minutes before my kids came crashing into my meditation space.

From that moment I made a choice. I could choose to push my kids away and asked them to leave mom alone and lock the door. Or knowing that they came to find me because they wanted to spend time with me, I could do something together.

I knew I desperately needed a fire release ceremony for myself, so I invited my kids to do it together. We’ve done it many times before already, so it was nothing new and my kids loved it.

We blew what we wanted to release onto our wooden sticks and burnt them in the fire. Then we all picked an oracle card.

The card I got was the horse spirit – freedom as yours. I sighed with relief when I got this card. This was exactly what I needed to hear. The freedom to choose how to proceed with the rest of the day was mine. I could choose to stay in this anger space and tell myself my entire day was ruined. Or I could choose to be open and make different decisions to help me feel better.

For the rest of the day, I did some things different.

First I cooked lunch for myself. It was a new recipe, and even though it didn’t turn out perfect, I didn’t beat myself up. I didn’t allow my inner critic to take over so my mind couldn’t reconfirm that I was having a bad day.

I felt satisfied with the taste and the fact that I did something for myself. The dish wasn’t cooked for the kids or my husband, so there was no need for any approval of taste from them.

After lunch we sent our elder son to a class while our younger son was napping in the car. I had my quiet time then. I treated myself to a cup of green tea latte, and I decided to continue editing my weekly card message videos. I finished three videos by the time my son finished his class and I felt a sense of accomplishment. I was starting to feel good.

We had the rest of the afternoon free, so I thought we could go visit this new kids’ playground and café that we’ve never been before.  Obviously my kids had so much fun there and we got to play some games there together too. For dinner my husband asked if I wanted to try this new place we’ve been thinking to go, and I said yes.

By the end of the night before we slept, my kids and I always shared what we were grateful for the day. I was really grateful for visiting these new places and also for how my day turned around from feeling angry to feeling awesome.

So here is the summary of what I’ve done throughout the day:

When we are feeling so full of emotions, whether it’s grief or anger, stress or resentment, instead of trying to stop yourself from feeling, acknowledge your emotions. You can say it out loud or just in your head.

In my case, when I was fuming I went to a separate room and I was saying my feelings out loud to myself. I felt I was disrespected. I felt frustrated that I wasn’t listened to. I felt annoyed because I didn’t know how to fix my son’s behavioral problem. I felt powerless and guilty.

Acknowledging my emotions allowed myself to accept where I was then. I wasn’t trying to fix, change or stop how I was feeling. I held space for my anger to express itself.

Emotions are energy in motion. In the space with so much pent-up emotions, practices such as journaling and fire ceremony can help with releasing emotions. Journaling helped with releasing my thoughts, and the fire release ceremony helped with releasing my emotions.

Looking how the fire was burning the wooden stick reminded me that anger needed time and space to release. Eventually the fire would stop burning the wooden stick by itself when the stick would turn into ashes. All I needed to do was to have a container for the wooden stick to burn safely. Just like our emotions, when we can create a safe space for them to be expressed, eventually the emotions would transform into a different energy.

Reading the oracle card’s message reminded me what I should focus on. Sometimes when we are feeling overwhelmed with emotions, our thoughts can spiral down the rabbit hole, believing our inner critic’s words to be true.

When I read the oracle card message, I remember what I needed to focus on and that became the center of my attention. The freedom of choice was with me. Knowing how important self-talk was to our mental health, I knew I needed to change my narrative. It was up to me to decide how I wanted to feel from now on.

Ideally when we are doing release work we already have a quiet space to do so. I had a short time but nevertheless I still had that moment. Sometimes we do need to walk away from the trigger just for a bit if possible, and with my kids, I asked someone else to step in to help.

Even though my ideal self-care at that moment would be a massage but it was not possible given the circumstances. Instead of sulking about it, I created other moments of self-care. I treated myself with a green tea latte. I worked on things I enjoyed and gained a sense of accomplishment.

When you are feeling low with energy or down with your emotions, it’s always a sign from your body that you need to give yourself some tender loving care. Self-care doesn’t need to take hours. Create pockets of self-care moments for yourself that can bring you contentment.

Body movement can be a great way to lift up your spirit. What’s more fun than dancing silly and singing out loud and not give a crap about anything else in the world. Scientific research has shown that singing is a natural anti-depressant, and dancing releases endorphins which help to boost our mood and reduce stress.

In my case we were listening to my kids’ favorite songs while we were driving in car that day, and we totally got to rock out a few tunes together.

The most helpful thing I’ve done that day to help myself feel better was to do and explore something new. I cooked a new dish. I explored somewhere new with my family.

This gave me a sense of adventure and travel and shifted my mood tremendously. According to an article from Harvard Business Review “The Mental Benefits of Vacationing Somewhere New” by Todd B. Kashdan, one benefit is increased emotional agility, which is to observe our emotions instead of reacting right away, and to intentionally decide how to manage them.

If traveling to somewhere new locally or even getting out of the house is not possible, try to do something different at home and see how your mood shifts.

At the end of the night I could reflect my day with gratitude.

However, I wouldn’t recommend forcing yourself to practice gratitude if you were still feeling overwhelmed with a lot of emotions.

It is important to hold space for our emotions and to allow our emotions to be heard and acknowledged first. If you are telling yourself that you should be grateful, then that may not be true gratitude from your heart. That may be your mind trying to intellectualize your emotional experience and to protect you from feeling pain (also no judgment or criticism here, just be kind to yourself if you observe this happening).

When you feel that you are slowly shifting out from a place of negativity to a more neutral state (it doesn’t have to be a positive state yet), then you can start practicing gratitude. See how that resonates and if you can feel gratitude arising naturally from your heart.

Scientific research has shown that the practice of gratitude can increase feelings of happiness, life satisfaction, and resilience so I highly recommend keeping this practice consistent no matter what.

Conclusion

By the end of the day I was feeling real good and proud of how my day went. I filled up my inner well with nourishment on the physical, emotional and mental level. I didn’t expect or need myself to feel better. I just stayed open to this possibility and consciously made choices to stay on this course.

It is natural for our emotions to go up and down. This is the human life experience. It is unrealistic to expect that we can always stay in a positive state of love and bliss, unless you are already enlightened.

It is more important to embrace this cyclic nature that we live in, and to know that we can stand back up when we fall on our face and feet.

Here’s a recap of the 7 tools and practices I’ve used to lift myself up from feeling angry to awesome:

1. Start with acknowledgment and acceptance
2. Release emotions with journaling and fire ceremony
3. Make a choice for new possibilities
4. Create solo time for self-care
5. Dance and sing
6. Explore somewhere new
7. Reflect with gratitude

If I can do it, so can you.

If you use other tools and practices to help lift yourself up, feel free to share them with me, I’d love to know. Connect with me here.

It is the time of the year again! The last month of the year is always busy with holidays, celebrations and traveling. It can also be stressful and overwhelming at times for a lot of people. Perhaps it’s the pressure to finish up whatever tasks or to-do lists on hand. Perhaps it’s the planning of the holidays. Perhaps it’s dealing with heightened emotions and expectations from certain family members. We may feel like we’re getting swept up by everything happening outside of us.

However, the end of the year is also a great time for us to reflect over the past year, and to mindfully set our intention to welcome the new year.

In today’s blog, I want to share with you four steps to mindfully welcome the new year. This is such a great gift for yourself during this busy time of the year. I highly recommend taking some solo reflective time for yourself to do this. These steps don’t have to be done all in one session. You can take your time at your own pace, and you don’t have to feel pressured to complete them before new year’s eve. These steps can also be done in the first month of the new year, or whenever you are going through a transition in your life.

Take some time to reflect over the past year. Journaling is a great tool to help us process our thoughts honestly, without the need to correct, analyze or judge what we write down.

Some journaling prompts that you can use are:

• What were some significant events that happened the past year?
• What were your highs and lows the past year?
• What were your achievements the past year?
• What were your key learnings and takeaways from the above questions? Even if you did make a “mistake”, what can you learn from it?
• Compare to one year ago, how have you grown and evolved?
• What emotions, beliefs, habits, relationships, attachments do you feel that are no longer aligned with your current self? Make a note for yourself to prepare for the release exercise in the next step.

If you already have some ideas of what you want to manifest for the new year, you can also write them down.

If you have a long to-do list in your head that you feel like you need to complete before the end of the year, I invite you to write them all down. Every single thing that you need or want to do. This will give you more mental space to reflect instead of constantly worrying about what you need to do.

Once you have a list of what you want to release and let go, prepare for a simple fire ceremony.

Write down all the things you want to release on pieces of paper, preferably one topic for one paper. Find a heat resistant bowl and make sure you are in a safe environment to burn the paper. Always have water by your side in case you need to extinguish the fire that has gone out of control.

Light your candle first. Then read out what you wrote on one piece of paper. Allow the feelings associated with what you wrote come up, and blow that feeling with your exhale onto the piece of paper. Imagine all those feelings are now transferred to this piece of paper, and then burn the paper in your heat resistant bowl. Witness how the fire burns your paper. Then move on to the next piece of paper, read it out loud, blow onto it, and burn it and so on until you finish burning all your paper. Thank the fire for transmuting all that you have released to the Universe. Wait for the ashes to cool down, and you can release the ashes to the earth if possible, or to water (or the toilet bowl is also fine depending on where you live).

If fire is not available or safe to use in where you live, consider using the other elements in nature such as water, earth and air.

For water you can consider writing down what you want to release in water-soluble paper, or use leaves, flowers, or stones and release them in any bodies of water that you have permission to do so. Toilet water also counts.

For earth, if you have a garden of your own, you can consider burying what you want to release with symbolic objects from nature.

For air, you can consider blowing bubbles into the air and imagine what you intend to release are carried away with bubbles. This is also a fun release exercise that you can do with children.

By performing a simple release ceremony with the elements of nature, you have created new space within your energy field for something new to come.

Ask yourself what word you will choose for yourself for the new year, and that word will be your theme for the year. Your word of the year will help shape what you’d like to focus on for the upcoming year. You can do so through journaling, or just sit with the question throughout your day and allow the answer to come to you.

Once you have chosen your word of the year, you can write it down or draw it out on a piece of paper, and stick it somewhere that you can see daily as a reminder.

For some extra fun, you can also choose a song as your theme song of the year, so every time when you listen to the song, it reminds you of what you want to focus on.

Tune into your current state and ask yourself what it is that you want to feel right now. This intention doesn’t need to relate to your word of the year necessarily. Rather this intention is meant to bring focus on what you want to feel now, whether it’s the end of the year or beginning of the new year.

An intention is an anchor for us to return to our heart and what is important to us now. By focusing on what we want to feel now instead of how we will get there, we release the “how” to the Universe and trust that we will be guided by our intuition and the Universe to get there.

An intention can also serve as a filter for us to live a more aligned life with our mind,nheart and soul. For example, if my intention is that I feel energized, when I’m facing a decision, my intention can serve as a reminder whether or not this certain choice energizes me or drains me.

Write down your intention on a piece of paper and place it somewhere you can see as a daily reminder. You can also read it out loud for yourself on a daily basis to reinforce your intention.

For more details on how to set an intention and guidelines on how to write your intention, check out my blog here: How to Set Intention as Part of Your Spiritual Practice

Conclusion

Though the end of the year can be stressful at times, it is also a magical time to take a pause to honor our journey.

During this process, make sure to hold space for yourself without judgment or criticism. It is important to hold an attitude of curiosity with a hint of playfulness. Make sure you are in a quiet space so you won’t be disturbed for at least 10 minutes to do your own reflections over the past year. You may find that your priorities may have shifted, and that is okay because you are now a different person than you were one year ago.

Give yourself time and space to properly say goodbye to the old you. Sometimes emotions may come up which is perfectly normal. Allow yourself to feel these emotions to complete the release process. As we release what no longer serves us, we will find more clarity on what we want to create and have more energy to bring forth our ideas to manifest in the physical world.

Once you have done the above, be really proud of yourself of how far you have come in your journey. I encourage you to say the following statement out loud, “I’m proud of myself for…” because you are truly amazing and I am so proud of you for doing this work for yourself.

Special New Year Classes: Recalibrate Yourself from Transformation to Truth

From cacao ceremony to sound healing, labyrinth walk to meditation in the dark, we have a variety of special year end classes to recalibrate your vibration to the new year. Come celebrate the arrival of the new year mindfully with our special classes at Museflower.

Intention is the “why” behind our actions and our thoughts.

Intention is what drives us. It is our “raison-d’etre”.

If we are unaware of our true intentions, we may be letting intention to steer us away from where we want to be and what we want to create in our lives. It’s like letting someone drive for us and we don’t tell the driver where we are going.

That’s why it’s important to know whether our intention comes truly from a place of love or a place of fear. Once we are clear with our intention, we can make sure it is aligned with what we want to manifest in our lives.

Here’s an example of doing the same thing but with different intentions. Let’s say there are two people who decide to do yoga daily.

Person A is doing yoga daily because she is scared of getting cancer, scared of getting fat and old, or scared of feeling left out from her other friends.

Person B decides to do yoga daily because she enjoys it a lot. Her body feels good after yoga and she loves that she has more energy.

Person A’s intention is coming from a place of fear, and Person B’s intention is coming from a place of love.

Well why does it matter? With different intentions, even though these two people may be doing the same action, they may see different results in the long run.

Obviously sometimes it’s not so clear cut where our intention comes from, and sometimes it may be mixed with both love and fear.

In today’s blog I want to share with you my personal story of discovering my own intention and how it helps to reset my mindset.

It was my 39^th birthday coming up. Being close to 40, I definitely had some reflections. I have lived almost half of my life now. I was reflecting what I’ve done in the past and what I wanted to do in the future, hoping to make good use of my time for the rest of my life.

To be honest, mostly I was feeling regrets from the past. I saw photos of my younger self. How pretty I was then. I wish I could be more confident with my body then. My youthful years have passed and my body is not the same as when I was in my 20s. How I wish I could have appreciated myself more.

I was also not feeling satisfied with where I was today. I wish I could be stronger and fitter. I wish I could be smarter with money. I wish I could be more successful with my businesses. I wish I could be a better mom.

I know I should be grateful. Logically that was what my mind said. But I was not feeling it at all.

I felt like every area of my life was not good enough. I felt like I was lagging behind. I felt like by 40 I should be more successful, like many other momtrepreneurs I saw on social media but I wasn’t.

The night before my birthday, I sat down in meditation. I wanted some peace and quiet but my mind was churning with thoughts. I asked myself what I wanted to prioritize and focus on for the next year. What else did I want to manifest?

One thought after another, here’s what was going through my mind all the while I was in meditation:

What do I want to focus on? What is my priority?

My priority is still…spending time with my kids.

Why?

Because I’m afraid that they would grow up so quickly and later when they get older, they won’t want to spend so much time with their mom.

Afraid? Hmmm…does that mean I’m doing this because I’m afraid? Is my intention coming from a place of fear?

Yes. It’s coming from a place of fear.

So how can I shift my intention to a place of love?

A phrase suddenly popped into my mind: “I’m proud of.” 

Okay…what can I be proud of?

And I started listing all the things that I was proud of in my head.

I want to spend time with my kids because…I’m proud of my kids.

I’m proud of my health and body that I can still do many things with my kids. 

I’m proud of my team at Museflower who knows what they are doing and can carry on running the retreat center without my constant presence. So I can work from home and spend time with my kids.

I’m proud of all the support I receive. I’m proud of taking time for myself to nourish me and to rest properly, so then I have more energy to be with my kids.

As I was doing my list mentally with my eyes closed, holding a mudra, I started to feel a shift within. I felt lighter like a heavy veil around me was lifted. I began to feel more excited about the future.

I knew I just received the best birthday present for myself. I opened my eyes and went straight to my journal to write down my thoughts.

In the next few days I kept on repeating the “I’m proud of” statements to myself. To me, the word “proud” was similar to “grateful” but at this moment in time, the word “proud” resonated with me much more deeply.

Being “proud” of me wasn’t something that I heard from others as I was growing up. I felt that I was not good enough in every area of my life.

And this phrase “I’m proud of myself” was the mindset shift that I needed. Instead of focusing on the faults to reinforce my limiting belief of “I was not good enough”, I reminded myself what I could be proud of to celebrate how far I have come.

I’m looking forward to the future again. And I accept my past.

I don’t know how many more years I have ahead of me to live. But at least I know that now I am proud of myself and all that I have achieved, accomplished and co-created with the Universe.

Conclusion

By sharing my personal story, I hope you can see the power of intention in our lives.

When I recognized that my intention was based on fear, it was like something got unlocked. I was not locked in fear anymore. By changing up the word I used in my intention, my mindset completely shifted.

One week has past since my birthday now and I still hold on dearly to the phrase “I’m proud of.” Whenever I repeat this statement to myself, I take a deep breath and a smile comes to me. I know that now I can truly appreciate life as it is from the bottom of my heart.

Being aware of our intention without judging or criticizing can help us live more consciously. It holds great power to setting the tone for the rest of the day, month or even year.

When we align our mind and heart with a love-based intention, we will see that everything will fall into its right place and we are truly living in the flow.

Join Youmin and Tania’s FREE 60-minute “Setting Intention Through Rest” online workshop on Sep 21, 2024 (Sat) from 8.30 – 9.30am Thailand time to experience yoga nidra and allow your heart’s intention arise from a rested place and to learn how to craft an affirmation statement.

The name “Museflower” was inspired by my own healing journey with flower essences.

In fact, it was because of flower essences, I was led to Chiang Rai to experience my first ever retreat back in 2011.

In today’s blog I want to share with you my story of how flower essences led me to Museflower.

To learn more about what flower essences are and how they work, check out my last blog here:  https://musefloweretreat.com/how-flower-essences-can-balance-your-emotions/

I first heard about flower essences from my boss Linda when I was working at a resort spa in Phuket. She was studying Australian Bush flower essences in her free time and she showed me her books. That’s when the seed was planted in me.

A couple years later, I was curious if anybody offered flower essences in Thailand. I googled and found a teacher who offered flower essence retreats in Chiang Rai. I was immediately drawn to her courses and retreats, but I didn’t know when I could go. I also never traveled solo before and I didn’t have the guts to go somewhere unfamiliar by myself. I’d just keep it on my bucket list, I told myself.

Then my dad passed away suddenly in March 2011. I was already working as a successful spa manager by then and my life was tossed upside down. I resigned from my job six months later, and found that I had some holiday to clear so I contacted the teacher and decided to go to her center in Chiang Rai in November 2011. I was going for a private flower essence retreat as there were no other group retreats going on at that time.

In that retreat I learned to make flower essences, but most importantly, it was a time of self-discovery and healing for my grief. After that retreat I was inspired to sign up for a Bach Flower Essence practitioner course in Hong Kong to learn how to share this beautiful gift of nature with others.

Since then I returned to Chiang Rai a few more times for retreats, as I really loved the natural environment here and I also connected very much to my teacher. Long story short, I had the opportunity to build a new retreat center with my teacher in 2012. But then our partnership fell apart and we split the business in 2014, I again turned to flowers for help.

It was one of the darkest times of my life. I was stuck in a business project that I couldn’t leave. I became the villain in my teacher’s life. I lost complete faith and trust in myself, and I didn’t know what to do. I felt powerless and helpless. I had some support but I was far away from my family and friends back in Hong Kong. Luckily I met my husband who was helping me a lot to rebrand the retreat center.

I had to revisit my own intention of setting up a retreat center and spa. Why did I want to do it? Initially I was doing it to support my teacher. What was it for me?

I remember my dad’s depression, and how powerless and helpless I felt when I couldn’t do anything to help him. And how powerless and helpless he must have felt too, in a time when talking about emotional and mental health was still a stigma in the society.

My dad resisted a lot of the idea of taking anti-depressants, and it just made him feel more like a failure when he did take anti-depressants. All the physical and emotional suffering led him on the road to suicide.

When I was walking in the gardens of Museflower pondering my next step and my intention, a flower caught my eye. It was magenta in color with small star-like yellow flowers surrounding the center. That was it. The flower was called Zinnia.

Inspired by this flower, I started sketching the new logo. I drew a stick figure in the center of the flower reaching up to the stars. The stick figure was also in a shape of the Chinese character 火 which meant fire. There were exactly 13 tiny star-like yellow flowers in the Zinnia flower I saw, and I kept that in the drawing. The number 13 was a magical number to me.

I gained clarity with my intention of why I wanted to do this. I wanted to recreate the flower essence retreat experience that helped me tremendously, and also to add in my own twist.

Emotional health is a very important topic to me, and everything is connected to our energy. In our society, we don’t really get to learn about energy healing, intuition, and how to honor our emotions.

So I really wanted to create a safe and peaceful sanctuary for people to reconnect with themselves, and to learn holistic healing tools to help themselves.

Nature is such a powerful healer. That’s why this center is called Museflower – every flower, plant, tree, stone and everything else in nature can serve as a muse for all of us. To live with inspiration, with purpose, and with love.

It is my wish that we remember as humans, we are all part of nature, and there is so much to learn from nature about living consciously. And to remember that we are all here for a reason. We are all here to grow and evolve, and to use our unique gifts and talents and sensitivities to serve the world with love.

And it all begins within, starting with ourselves.

Book an intuitive healing session with Tania during your stay at Museflower where she always begins the session with a flower essence consultation. The intuitive healing session can also be booked as the private wellness session included in the Yoga Retreat Chiang Rai and Spa Getaway Thailand retreat package.

In our upcoming Cacao + Bhakti Yoga Retreat from Oct 3 – 6, 2024, Tania will also guide each retreat participant to pick a flower essence to help support their emotional healing journey during the retreat.

Imagine having a remedy that can work directly to balance your emotions. Nope, I’m not talking about anti-depressants or any supplements.

This amazing remedy works on our vibrational level and it comes from flowers!

Have you heard of flower essences before?

Personally I love working with flower essences!

In fact, it was because of flower essences, I was led to Chiang Rai to experience my first ever retreat back in 2011. And the name “Museflower” was inspired by my own healing journey with flower essences.

In today’s blog I want to share with you what flower essences are, and how flower essences work.

In my next blog I share with how my personal healing journey with flower essences here: https://musefloweretreat.com/how-flower-essences-led-me-to-museflower/

What are flower essences?

Flower essences are a vibrational remedy that works on our subtle energy levels to help us rebalance our emotions.

It is first discovered by Dr. Edward Bach, the founder of Bach Flower Essences, in UK by the 1930s.  He was a medical doctor, a bacteriologist, and a pathologist. As he was conducting his research with vaccines, he became frustrated on the limitations of western medicine for treating a person as a whole. He was then inspired by homeopathy and Dr. Hahnemann’s work, and realized the important connection between emotions and physical health. He then discovered the use of flower essences over years of trial and error, and came up with a total of 38 flower essences to help address various emotional states.

The way how flower essences work is similar to a plumber’s work (sorry it’s not the most elegant analogy). Flower essences can “unclog” our emotional pipes, so-to-speak, and can help to gently release any suppressed negative emotions.

Why are emotions important to our health?

In our daily lives when we constantly keep ourselves busy, it’s easy to sweep away emotions such as grief, anger, jealousy, guilt, shame, and resentment under the covers. Especially if we view these emotions as negative, we may hide our true feelings, avoid facing them, or even numb ourselves from feeling them at all.

When we suppress or repress these emotions, we also stop the flow of other more positive emotions, such as joy, love and bliss into our lives. We cannot let go of the past or we feel too overwhelmed about the future, and then we get stuck in the present and cannot move forward in our lives.

Emotions also play an important role in our physical health. According to PsychCentral, chronic stress contributes to the six leading causes of death in America and is considered a silent killer.

Suppressed emotions become energetic blockages in our energy field, and can manifest into physical dis-eases as a way for our bodies to heal and to address these imbalances.

So when our emotions come to a more balanced state, it can help improve our physical, mental and energetic health too.

When we recognize that emotions are just energy in motion, we can live a more colorful and authentic life where we are open to feel all types of emotions.

How are flower essences made?

When flower essences are made, typically the flowers are collected and placed in a bowl of clean water under the sun. After the sun has charged the water for a few hours, the energetic information of the flowers is imprinted in the water (you can refer to Dr. Masaru Emoto’s research on “The Message of Water” for how this works). This liquid is then preserved by alcohol, usually brandy. This is then stored in a dark dropper bottle and is labeled as the stock concentrate. It will need to be diluted again to be used.

Flower essences are different than essential oils, as flower essences work on an energetic level and they don’t have any aroma or fragrance.

How to choose and use flower essences

In my intuitive healing session that I offer to our guests at Museflower, I always begin with a flower essence consultation.

We begin with a short grounding meditation and I will guide my guest to do a body scan. A body scan is when you close your eyes, imagine that you have an inner eye in the center of your forehead, and scan your body from top to bottom for any areas that are holding tension, discomfort, heaviness or even pain.

The purpose of the body scan is to be aware of our body in the present moment. There’s no need to judge, analyze or change anything. In the body scan you just observe what’s arising in your body in this moment and make a mental note.

After the body scan, I then invite the guest to choose one body area that feels the most tension or heaviest, and to place his/her dominant hand on that body part. With the eyes now open, I invite my guest to use his/her non-dominant hand to choose 2 to 3 bottles from the flower essence set.

I will then place one drop from each of the flower essence bottle picked into a separate spray bottle filled with clean drinking water. When I was learning about flower essences, even though the traditional way to use it is to take a few drops orally under the tongue, my then teacher explained that we can also store it in a spray bottle and spray it in our energy field. With the spray bottle, personally I find it easier to use flower essences on a daily basis.

I will then guide my guest to use the flower essences by spraying the liquid above his/her head and take a few deep breaths in, allowing the energetic information to sink into the energy field. We will then do a second body scan to pay attention for any subtle shifts and changes.

After some time for journaling, I then explain the meaning of each flower essence picked.

Each flower essence represents an emotional state, and also a topic or theme that we are currently facing in our lives. Every flower has a light and shadow side, and contains both balanced and unbalanced qualities.

When we are drawn to picking certain flower essences, it means that we are currently experiencing the unbalanced qualities of that flower. These qualities are like a coin that has two sides. We already have these qualities within us, but the flower essences can give us a boost to bring us back to the balanced side.

Taking flower essences for your emotional health

Flower essences are completely safe to work with and there are no contraindications for taking them.

There are only two guidelines to follow when you are taking flower essences.

1. Give it 10 minutes before or after eating, drinking and brushing your teeth

This is more for the traditional method of taking flower essences but I still apply with the spray bottle method. If you have used the flower essence spray, wait for 10 minutes before you go brush your teeth, eat or drink.

2. Keep it away from electronic devices

EMF (electromagnetic field) emitted from electronic devices such as phones, laptops and wifi routers, may affect the vibration of the flower essence so it’s better to store them separately.

As flower essences work gently and subtly, I always recommend my guests to journal during the time that they are using the spray so they can be more aware of their own emotional states. It is possible that sometimes suppressed emotions may arise. Take it as an opportunity to allow the emotions to flow through instead of holding them back. It is like a frozen ice cube (aka the suppressed emotion) is finally melted, and the melted water still needs to go somewhere.

It’s not necessary do a body scan every time when we use the flower essence. But a body scan is a great way to help us connect with our physical body in the present moment and to pay attention to what wants to arise.

When we are using flower essences, we can learn to hold space for ourselves without judgment and criticism as we observe our emotions flowing through us. Reflect and record everything down in a journal. And pay attention to the subtle shifts and changes unfolding. This is how we can experience the healing power of flower essences.

References

• Michelle Pugle, “Can Stress Cause Death?”, PsychCentral, June 30 2022, accessed August 20 2024, https://psychcentral.com/stress/is-stress-the-number-one-killer 
• Healing Herbs Flower Essences: https://www.healingherbs.co.uk/
• Bach Centre: https://www.bachcentre.com/en/ 

Book an intuitive healing session with Tania during your stay at Museflower where she always begins the session with a flower essence consultation. The intuitive healing session can also be booked as the private wellness session included in the Yoga Retreat Chiang Rai and Spa Getaway Thailand retreat package.

In our upcoming Cacao + Bhakti Yoga Retreat from Oct 3 – 6, 2024, Tania will also guide each retreat participant to pick a flower essence to help support their emotional healing journey during the retreat.

I’ve learned this journaling exercise as I was taking Regan Hillyer’s “The Art of Manifesting” course from the Mindvalley platform (which is well worth the investment by the way).

Our beliefs are what stir up our emotions and drive our actions. Our beliefs shape our reality.

But we all hold limiting beliefs in our subconscious mind. These limiting beliefs hold us back from living a truly aligned life that we dream of, because a part of us think that having these beliefs can keep us safe.

One of the most common limiting beliefs we all hold is “I’m not good enough”. We can also substitute the word “good” with other adjectives such as “smart”, “thin”, “beautiful”, “worthy”, and more.

The limiting belief is like an open app that is running in the background of our phone and we are not aware of, but it’s preventing our phone from running at optimal performance.

For example, in our conscious mind, we may think that we are good enough, that we are worthy of abundance, love and health. But 93% of communication happens on the subconscious level. So if subconsciously we actually believe that we are not good enough, we will sabotage ourselves from receiving abundance, love and health, and we will create this reality to reconfirm our limiting belief.

So to rewrite limiting beliefs, here is a simple journaling exercise that can help you begin the process:

1. First, write down your limiting belief.

For example, “I’m not good enough.”

2. Then write down 3 new beliefs that reverse the limiting belief into a positive statement starting with “I choose to believe”.

For example, “I choose to believe I am good enough. I choose to believe that I am worthy. I choose to believe that I am enough in all areas of my life.”

3. Continue this exercise with writing 3 new beliefs with every limiting belief.

You can focus on one area of your life for one time. It may be your beliefs around money, your body, relationship, career, or spirituality.

4. When you finish, read all the new beliefs out loud to yourself.

You may resonate with certain new beliefs strongly. Choose the ones that ring true and feel like an absolute YES to your whole being. Write them out on a separate piece of paper as affirmations. Place your affirmation somewhere you can see easily and read them out loud to yourself at least once every day.

5. Pay attention to what unfolds for you as you practice reading out loud these new beliefs to yourself every day

As we rewrite our limiting beliefs consciously and repeat these new belief statements to ourselves, we can start to rewire the neural pathways in our brains, and align our thoughts and actions with what we desire to create and manifest in our lives.

This is a simple and powerful journaling exercise to try out.

I’d love to hear how it works for you.

Feel free to drop me any questions and sharing here.

The past week I was facilitating the online 1-week mantra meditation challenge for creativity and intuition, and there were four of us in the group including me.

Just like giving birth to a child, the initial process of setting this up, promoting it, sharing about it, and preparing for it took a lot of time and effort.

But after finishing the one-week challenge, I felt like all the effort and time and energy that was put into it was completely worth it. And here’s why: there were so many mini-miracles and synchronicities happening in the past week and I knew that they were all reconfirmation that I was on the right path, and that the Universe truly was there around me, holding me and supporting me.

Here’s what happened during the 1-week mantra meditation challenge:

Day 1

The first day after recording the first online workshop, as I was uploading the videos at night, I saw a firefly landed on my window just right by my desk. I had never seen a firefly that closeup before. It was blinking its tail with its green light, and after I said thank you (and tried to capture the moment on video), it flew away. I knew right away that it was a sign from the Universe, encouraging me to keep going. The same day I also had a podcast interview with The Inquisitive Wren hosted by Sha that went very well. I knew it was the energy of Saraswati’s mantra that helped me with communication and the flow of words.

Day 3

On day 3, it quickly got very real when I had an episode with my son that turned out to be a learning opportunity for me. It gave me a lot of insights, and inspired me to write my soulful reflections blog called “The many gifts of meditation and escaping life is not one of them”. I realize that it is because I have my regular meditation practice to lean on that I can feel safe to express my emotions. I shared my personal story to the group as an invitation to notice the power of our words.

Day 4

On day 4, I was feeling proud of myself for getting some work done that involved creativity this week. I finished creating a couple flyers, which one of them I wanted to do since December but hadn’t got the time and motivation to do it. For the first time in almost three years, I used stock videos in one of my videos. In the past I felt that it was too time-consuming so I usually just avoided it, but this time I followed my intuition and my creative vision without compromising. It also inspired me to share this to the group as an invitation next day to close open loops, as a way to give a more focused direction when we talked about going with the flow.

Day 5

On day 5, I realized there were emotions arising in my dreams the past few nights. Even though the emotions were related to the stories in my dreams, but I could also see why I would have these emotions in my daily life but maybe I just didn’t acknowledge them properly. So I was grateful that my dreams helped me process the emotions that wanted to be released. It also relates to Saraswati’s energy as her mantra is connected with the sacral chakra and throat chakra, and the sacral chakra (the energy center by our lower abdominal and pelvic area) is where we store emotions.

My dreams inspired me to share this as a daily invitation to the group to notice their dreams. The same day I received an email from another guest who stayed at Museflower a few weeks ago about having a nightmare about her old workplace and how she felt that a lot of emotions were released from her dream. What a synchronicity! To me, it’s another sign from the Universe reconfirming to me that I was right to follow my intuition to talk about dreams.

The same day I also followed my intuition and resent an email with our gmail account to an outside guest who inquired about the Thailand Bhakti Yoga Study Group soul retreat program in case my first email reply went to her junk mailbox. She immediately replied to my second email and was eager to start her 3-day Bhakti Yoga Study Group program with me tomorrow!

Day 6

On day 6 it was such a special day for me to have the opportunity to share the practice of Bhakti Yoga in two places (online and physically at Museflower). During our first day of workshop here at Museflower, I met Daria, and I was very inspired and touched by her intention which was to embrace and to love her own voice more. It planted a seed in my mind too – how can we all love our voice more? Again, it’s very much related to the qualities of Saraswati’s mantra this week, as Saraswati is the goddess of language, sound, wisdom, and insight.

Today’s soul work was also to do one thing different. In the afternoon when my son came home from school, he took a guitar out and wanted to play “band” and to film it. The seed that was planted in my mind that morning sprouted. It gave me an idea for tomorrow’s final challenge for the group.

Day 7

On day 7 my son fell sick and he had to stay home. Luckily with the support of my family, I could still continue teaching. In the second day of our workshop here at Museflower, my conversation with Daria got me thinking a lot about seeing our voice as a performance versus as an offering.

As we share our voice through our writing, speech, or any other forms, we may get too focused on how other people react to what we say, and how others will judge us just like it’s a performance. Especially in the social media world today, even me I admit that sometimes I get too focused on followers count, engagement and reach, that I can get discouraged if I feel that no one is “liking” the content that I’m putting out.

But what if we can see our voice as an offering instead? It takes the focus back to our intention and the why in why-I’m-doing-this-at-the-first-place. One of Saraswati’s qualities is forgiveness, especially when it comes to the arts. She wants us to play, experiment and explore, because it is through mistakes that we can learn and grow.

So I presented the final challenge to the group and Daria – it was to create a 30-second “silly song” video of them singing and to post it in our private Facebook group. They could sing any song they like, invite anyone to join them in the video, and play any musical instrument they want while they’re singing.

I know this challenge would require our group to step outside of their comfort zone. A lot of times when we watch our own video talking or singing, we cringe and our inner critic will just start picking out all the flaws. In our minds, it will be an absolute horror to let other people see such videos.

But look at children and see how much they enjoy watching their own videos of talking, singing and doing silly things. They just laugh and think it’s funny.

If we remember the power of our self-talk, and to truly see our voice as an offering, can we then embrace and love our voice better? Just like when we look at ourselves in the mirror and decide to tell ourselves that we look beautiful instead of picking out the flaws, can we listen to our own voice without judgment and criticism, hold space for our voice to express the way it wants, and just play, enjoy and have fun with our voice?

Day 8 & Beyond

Day 8 was the final day for both the online 1-week mantra meditation challenge and the last day of Bhakti Yoga Study Group here at Museflower, and it was full moon! My son and I wrote down a couple things to let go and to release in the fire. I was so grateful to have the opportunity to share the practice of mantra and mudra meditation with others.

But the healing journey didn’t just stop there. On day 9 I was inspired to learn and practice a new mantra (learning is also one of Saraswati’s qualities), and on day 10 I had a lot of tears and sadness that got released.

On day 11 I felt better again, new ideas were coming to me, and I decided to sit down and to write this blog to document my miracles the past week.

And that I will have the mindfulness, the awareness, the consciousness to catch myself when I’m falling back into my pattern, and to choose to respond differently.

To choose to respond with love instead of fear.

And that is one of the many gifts from meditation. It is divine grace.

This realization came through to me when an episode happened with my son during our online 1-week mantra meditation challenge for creativity this week.

The story began like this…

It started with something small. I asked my 5-year-old to make his bed, which he normally does anyway. But this morning he decided that he wanted to make my bed and not his. I’ve already made mine, so he undid what I did and made it again but refused to do his own bed.

One word led to another, I became very frustrated. I was feeling so fed up that no one was listening to me. It was definitely something inside me that got triggered by this small incident.

I admit that I was a bit harsh with my words at the beginning. I wanted him to do as I told but he didn’t, and I wanted him to show respect.

He started to get upset. I started to get upset. So I left the room, knowing full well that if I didn’t, I would say more hurtful words to further add damage to the situation.

As I was brushing my teeth and washing my face, I was still angry, but I started to contemplate how to move forward. I still needed to get him to take his breakfast and go to school. If I just left the situation as it was, we would just stay stuck.

So I was thinking to myself how I should proceed. What should I say or do to let him understand that respect is important to me?

For one moment, I thought, it would just be easier to use my dominance and power to tell him to do what I say. Afterall, that was very much the environment I grew up in. In Chinese culture, you never talk back to your parents or any elderlies. That would consider to be very disrespectful and a huge no-no in our culture. So as a kid, if an adult was shouting, whether it was at me or around me, I learned to shut my mouth and keep silent to stay out of trouble.

So I could yell at my son and told him to get on with going to school. But I knew that would only instill fear in him, and the effects would only be temporary (meaning he would only do what I said then but not later). It would be the opposite of what I intended. Trust me, it happened to me before so I learned my lesson.

How could I take this moment and turn it into a teaching opportunity as a parent?

Football was what came to mind. I’ve always told my son that we were a team, not opposites. And because my son played football at school, I thought perhaps this analogy would make sense to him.

So I went back to his room, he was still crying and I sat down and talked about football. How in a football team when the coach asked him or other students to do something, they would need to do it for the sake of the team. Sometimes there would be something that he wouldn’t like to do, maybe the warm up exercises or cleaning up afterwards, but it was for the benefit of the team. Of course when the leader asked him to do something, he could always disagree, but there must be a reason too.

After my explanation, he calmed down, finished up with his sniffles, we hugged, we made up and both of us moved on with the day.

Of course perhaps it’s not so much in the words that I was saying but the energy that I was exuding that calmed him down. I wasn’t all worked up anymore, so he could relax and listen.

This all happened before I needed to show up to lead our daily japa practice, and naturally it became my very real story of the day to share about the power of our words.

The insight came through to me after I sent my son off to school and when I was sitting in my own short meditation practice before the group class began.

I used to be someone who avoided conflict like a plague. And so for many years I looked calm on the outside (and I got a great poker face by the way), and people would tell me how calm I was. I thought I was too. As I embarked on my own spiritual journey, whenever I felt triggered, I learned to just breath and let it go. Or so I thought.

What I didn’t realize at that time was that I was just bypassing, ignoring and suppressing anger and whole heaps of other emotions inside me. By breathing and letting it go without truly facing the real root cause of why I was triggered at the first place, I was just hiding my true feelings without expressing them.

Now I have many tools, such as journaling, chanting, and fire ceremony, to help me express and release all the emotions within me. I don’t need to bottle up my emotions anymore.

I realize a huge benefit that I’m reaping from my own meditation practice is mindfulness. When I’m feeling angry and starting to react with hurtful words and actions, I’ve learned to catch myself in the heat of the moment, and to make a conscious choice to respond with more awareness. To know that I have a choice – I can do the same thing that I’ve always done and react that way, or to try something different from a place of love.

I know that I have my meditation practice and my intuition to lean on, and now I feel safe to express my own emotions thanks to my practice.

To me, that is the moment of divine grace – I know that I cannot do all this just by myself and by my own willpower. When I choose to respond differently, I allow words and acts of love to flow through me, transforming the energy around the situation with a presence of love.

Of course it’s not perfect every time. I’m still a mess. But as Elizabeth Gilbert said, “embrace the glorious mess that you are”.

It is my wish that you can also experience this gift of meditation in your daily life.