Seeds for Spiritual Growth # 21 Post Lunar Eclipse Self Care Tips

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 21 Post Eclipse Self Care

Namaste All and welcome back! I've been off the posts for a few months , enjoying the summer and using daily sadhana practice to connect to what is most nourishing and important.

We just went through an amazing astronomical event on Sunday, the full blood moon plus a full lunar eclipse. It was clear and starry skies here in central MA . to view this celestial dance unfold. Many folks reported in the days leading up to the eclipse and now afterwards feeling energetically unsettled, restless, difficulty sleeping or old unuseful egoic patterns of thoughts arising.

This eclipse ushered in a higher vibrational transmission of what basically is an evolutionary invitation to grow beyond our small self imposed limitations of identity as defined by what we see with our eyes in the material world vs. what we feel and sense in our hearts . It's a call for a deeper integration of the primary pranic currents within us, our inner Divine Masculine energy (fire,male) and our Inner Divine Feminine energy(Water,earth, moon, intuition) . Whatever is imbalanced within us we tend to project outside of us and often onto other people. So seeing faults in others, blaming others for perceived shortcomings, judging others, getting triggered by others. This eclipse cycle is fundamentally inviting  us to turn that mirror around and take a deeper,more honest look inside at our own energetic integrity.

The yogis often said the longest journey we will ever take is from the head to the heart or from the ego to the soul. Physically, that measures in inches but energetically can be measured in lifetimes.

Here is what can support you so these seeds of growth that are germinating now can root, sprout and take hold in the coming weeks:

- Recommit to your daily yoga and meditation practice whether that's 5 min a day or 2 hours a day. The time is not important, the daily consistency is.

- Recommit to carving out time in silence and solitude daily. Silence is honey for your souls journey. It is within the sacred silence we will be guided to whatever needs to be done or not done.We will gain clarity about what we are inviting in and what we are willing to release that no longer serves us.

- Recommit to feeling ok with not needing to know how everything works out. Embrace that sacred mystery exists.Needing to know is an ego agenda and often driven by fear. Your soul is whole and Divinely sourced.If we can trust the sacred life force intelligence that rotates the planets, beats our hearts and lifts birds to fly, surely we can trust that whatever needs to unfold WILL and whatever needs to leave will, in its own divine timing..

-Recommit to honor your vulnerability, those shadow aspects of your psyche that just beg for the embrace of the light of day. The judgements, fears, angers, resentments that keep our sacred soul locked up. On the other side of any shadow (as in the eclipse) is brilliant light just waiting to be released.

- Fall is a powerful time to do a detox or whole food cleanse. Give your body temple what it craves. Organic fruits and veggies, clean proteins, healthy fats, lots of filtered water,soothing herbal teas.

Eliminate for a few weeks inflammatory things like sugar, caffeine, alcohol, dairy, animal proteins, wheat and any processed foods that come out of a box or can. Even a week of clean simple eating can do wonders for your pranic energy. Simple guideline: eat foods that are alive with prana!

-Recommit to honoring your sleep. Unplug from wifi devices at least one hour before bedtime and ayurvedically its advised to get in bed by 10 pm and up by 6am. When we encourage our bodies to return to nature's rhythms, all systems vastly improve.

-Recommit this fall to some inner work, take a yoga class, meditation, reading spiritual texts or inspiring poetry,art or music. This is food for your soul. Even better, let your creative spirit express itself in some art form.

-Recommit to daily detoxification habits: tongue scraping, oil pulling, lemon water, dry brushing, abhyanga self massage, detox baths , cold showers (yes it wakes up and gets all your pranic channels humming!) use of essential oils in your home to clear and harmonize , triphala to support healthy bowel function. If you need some guidance on this, check out our Fall Seasonal detox course beginning Oct. 13 or email me for more specific tips!

- Last but not least- Recommit to a daily dose of gratitude. Be grateful for each and every day .Its blessings, its challenges, its joys, its heartbreaks. Bless it all! The more we can practice (and yes it is a practice!) gratitude the more we open our intuitive heart channels and that's when the real magic begins to happen.

Many blessings to you all. It continues to be my highest privilege and humble honor to teach the amazing gifts of yoga to anyone interested in aligning with the deeper truth of their Beings. We are all Divine Lights here to Shine our unique gifts in this world. Get ready for a beautiful fall season here in New England and wherever you are!

Namaste~ Anne Christine

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 20 Keepin' It REAL A Blogpost from Anne Townend-Duffey

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 20 Keepin It REAL

I'm all about embracing the dark/shadows, the deep recesses of our psyches and unconscious mind as a path of liberation.  I always felt somewhat repulsed by the happy slogan ,positive thinking,bumper sticker, smiley face, new agey tendency to keep it ' in the light '. Keep in the light like some desperate mantra to avoid one's very truth of your present experience. If just slapping a smiley face on our pain was truly effective... why are opiate addiction rates skyrocketing? Why does the level of violence and abuse in our society continue? Why do we entertain ourselves with violent media?

We've all been conditioned with lessons on social niceties. Smile when you feel lousy. Say 'I'm Fine " ,when folks ask how you are doing and you're not feeling fine. Dismiss, distract or disown as strategies to survive. Most addictions are rooted in distancing one's consciousness from pain. Fear of pain is real. These practices of denial and distraction are non-sustainable and over time very corrosive to our inner sense of truth and well being. You may indeed get some temporary relief from distracting, denying or suppressing your authentic feelings with use of food, TV, sex, drugs, alcohol etc but the underlying pain or fear never goes away. It just gets more potent the longer you avoid it.

What we will do to avoid fear is never ending and one of the slickest tickets is wallpapering our hearts with spiritual sloganisms. (not sure thats a word) I will always admire those that are willing and scared shitless to feel the depths of their souls anyway. So yes, go there. Be real, feel it all, express it all, and miraculously when our former death grip of avoidance relaxes a bit, we realize by embracing that which terrifies us , we open. We open to the light of our divinity that is even more brilliant than any positive thinking slogan could even touch. Why settle for Light lite? Be brilliant and embrace your dark edges. A lot of raw beauty lives and pulses there.

Love to you all.
Namaste & Blessings for Keepin it Real!
Anne Christine

“The ability to hold Light is directly proportional to the courage to see darkness. Choosing to see just one creates distortions and illusions. It amazes me that something so simple and common sense can be so difficult to even discuss with ‘spiritual’ people who insist on remaining ‘positive’. Actually, this avoidance is based on unacknowledged fear that their inner light might be somewhat ‘dispersed’ by seeing darkness and therefore not giving the light much credit at all. I think there’s also fear that they might somehow become ‘tainted’ or the darkness might ‘manifest’ in some form in their lives. But the opposite is true; it is the fear, especially unacknowledged, that has much more chance to manifest than darkness exposed to daylight and investigation. Just like we must be fearless about our own inner shadow, we must also be fearless about seeing this huge shadow of humanity. Or we will have the power to transform precisely nothing, within or without.”

~ Anis Springate

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH- It's Summertime, Slow Down & Take Your Time

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH #19 
A Blog Post by Anne Townend-Duffey
Director of Opening Lotus Yoga

IT'S SUMMERTIME, SLOW DOWN & TAKE YOUR TIME

Blessings All. As we enter the Full Capricorn moon today the celestial skies are busy aligning in patterns to invite another layer of balance and integration within us. That ever present task of balancing our inner emotional, self care and our outer responsibilities in the world.

Often this can feel like a ping pong match in which neither focus is optimal. We are either burning out getting all our 'To Dos' done or we might be neglecting our outer responsibilities with procrastination as an excuse to find time to attend to our
innermost needs. How many times do we say " I don't have time to relax".

Here's the problem. Its not an either/ or proposition. Its a joint venture and one that requires us to be guided by our inner truth that speaks to us in our quieter moments of stillness. When we can slow down, tune in and tap into our intuitive energy which is the master of prioritizing what actually needs our attention, we enter the flow state of being in synchrony with the life force. Life then becomes more of a dance than a march.

It can feel like a radical act to actually slow down when in the midsts of many external things that need our decisions or actions, but I have found over and over again, that taking that step inward to connect to your inner wisdom actually results in a sense of expanding time. Its well documented that having a daily meditation practice actually expands your capacity to be more effective and productive with what's at hand as you are not wasting energy by distracting or indecision. Clarity creates efficiency.

You tap into your inner flow and find clarity on what is the most inspired step to take next if any. Sometimes in a very paradoxical way, the most inspired step is to do nothing. Its the 'doing of non-doing', to allow a sacred resting period for all the energies competing for one's attention to settle . Our culture looks askance of the 'doing of non-doing' . It falsely celebrates overextending oneself and exhausting oneself as signs of living a positive or successful life. Being busy, wired and tired is not the same as being fulfilled and often a sign of inner disconnect. Inner Peace matters.

Slowing down is often the powerful gateway to clarity and we can't access it by pushing and demanding. We access this clarity by settling, breathing deeply, feeling and Being present to what is right in front of us without judgement.

Summertime is a perfect season to slow down. Take time. Be still and absorb the energies of your inner and outer domains.Listen to the birds sing in the early morning. Feel the summer sun on your skin or the evening breeze across your face. Bask in the sea water that rushes to meet your feet. Walk in the beauty of the trees, flowers and fields abundant with life. Play with some creative expression, journaling, painting, dance or music. Ask yourself on a regular basis, what needs my attention in this moment and then listen deeply for a sensation through your body that will guide you to exactly what is needed in any given moment.

When I feel aligned with my intuition, I always feel an expanded sense of openness in my heart center, the center of my chest. When I don't feel that, I know my mind is commanding more of my awareness and its a sign for me to slow down, tune in, breathe deeply, inhabit my body more which naturally eases the minds contractions. A tightly wound mind creates a tightly bound heart.

May you find space today and everyday to slow down, breathe deeply, feel the energies within you and around you with an open heart and invite a deeper level of beingness to express itself through you.

Namaste & Blessings for a beautiful full moon !
Anne Christine

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 18 The Pranic Power of Summer Solstice

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 18 A Blog Post from Anne Townend-Duffey Director of Opening Lotus Yoga The Pranic Power of Summer Solstice!  Summer Solstices are powerful times of potent prana flow as the sun hits its peak. For this week and next, it's a good time to lighten up a bit, drink lemon water to cleanse, move and awaken your body and most powerfully choose to meditate on the exact Solstice day, either early in the morning before 6am or the time of the exact Solstice which will be Sunday June 21 at 12:39 pm EST. Your intentions and alignments will be strongly magnified with this Solstice and that energy will carry on for the next 6 months so take some time over the next few days to clear distractions, be it mental,emotional , physical or material. Make space for what is true and in your highest integrity and let the peak power of the sun radiate that into an illuminated beam of well beingness. This Solstice sun will mirror our inner sun. Our life force. Our energy, vitality and brightness of being! "The Yogis know that the Solstice time is a time of powerful energy. When the cycle of sunlight reaches its peak, there is a tremendous amount of Prana available. It's an important time for study of spiritual teachings, for yoga practice and for meditation. The cycle of the sun, and many other subtle rhythms, have a profound effect on our lives. When we pay attention to them, we are able to harness our inner energy and accelerate ourselves forward in the direction of the Dharmic mission that we have incarnated to fulfill. " Jai Dev Singh Happy Summer Solstice All! Namaste Anne Christine * To access the full archive of SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH , Go to www.openinglotusyoga.blogspot.com-Lotus Love Click here to Reply or Forward 1.2 GB (8%) of 15 GB used Manage Terms - Privacy Last account activity: 11 minutes ago Details

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 17 Soul Listening A Blog Post by Anne Townend-Duffey

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 17 Soul Listening

Hello all on this beautiful late Spring morning. The birds woke me up early at dawn as they begin their morning songs. How beautiful if we humans began each day in song! Lying quietly and really tuning into what I was hearing, I could discern layer upon layer of sounds. The birds of course, the whirring of the wheels of the cars driving by, a dog barking, my dog breathing in deep dreams, my heart beating, my breath breathing.

Listening is the other half of the equation of communicating and deep listening tunes us into the songs of our Souls who whisper to us in waves of intuitive insights through our feelings and sensory body. Within the Yoga subtle body teachings, communication rules the throat chakra, the 5th chakra whose element is ether which is space and subtlety. When we speak too much or are silent too much our throat chakra can be skewed and not balanced. We may find it confusing to really sense what we want to say or when we want to be silent. Clarity of communication begins with stillness.

I have taken a vow for the next 40 days to begin each day in deep listening. I already meditate daily but felt called to bring more attention to this aspect of Soul listening. Really dedicating time in my practice to deeply be still and listen. To send an invitation to my Soul that I am inviting myself into her presence which is already here but I am desiring to engage with her in a deeper more intimate way. To know no separation from my soul is to live in alignment with our Truth of our Beingness. Everything that gets in the way of that is clutter be it mental , emotional, physical, or material.

The Soul love simplicity. The ego loves complexity. If you are consumed with your mental thinking, your Soul doesn't have a space edgewise to be heard. Listening is the simplest of acts yet can be so challenging to truly be present and listen deeply from your heart space. It seems to be that we need to invite this presence into our daily experience and practice it like any other skill we want to strengthen. If we are to be good listeners with others it begins with us and one of the most basic human desires is to be heard and understood. That takes presence. That takes a capacity to listen from the vantage point of your heart.

So that is my intent. To deeply engage in Soul listening . I am looking forward to what she has to say and will share any insights in the next few weeks.

" Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard". -Anne Sexton

Namaste & Blessings for a Deep Listening Day!

Love & Light
Anne Christine.

** Feel free  SHARE if there is someone in your life that would benefit.

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 16 A Blog Post by Anne Townend- Duffey Director Opening Lotus Yoga Life is Not Just Suffering

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 16 A Blog post by Anne Townend-Duffey Director Opening Lotus Yoga

We Are Not Here To Just Suffer

The Buddhas first teaching on the first Noble Truth was 'Life is Suffering', but that is not to mean we are just here to stagnate in our own psychic messes. It means that the original suffering is when we separated from Source, the Divine. By virtue of taking birth as a human being we separated from our Divine Source.

Suffering means separation from our true identity and that leads to the human dilemma of developing an ego like an operating system of who we think we are in order to navigate this complex human experience we call life. But all along we all have this spark of the Divine within us, a deep memory of who we really are, beckoning us in some way to listen, to go in, to reconnect to our Divine Self and that journey of expanding our consciousness is where all the karma comes in.

Wondering why the Divine just doesn't do her thing and take over.... wake us up from our illusion and whats the purpose of free will anyway if it just sends us on countless detours or dead ends back into our egos? There are these pesky things called karmas we come in with (again from a yogi's perspective) or our programming so to speak and all that karma is camoflaging the Dharma, the truth of why we incarnated anyway. Our Dharmic task while we are here on earth is to release what blocks us from realizing the deeper truth of our Being and awakening to what our sacred purpose unique to us, is. We are all here on purpose with a Divine Dharmic mission that only we can deliver to this earth.

When we connect to a glimmer of Truth, that has the power to burn up some old thought patterns, emotional patterns and all the other stuff that gets in the way.Many of these neural patterns are deeply rooted and have accumulated a lot of momentum over the course of your life (or lives). As we evolve, we literally upgrade our operating system. Its like a PC reboot and the old or former way of operating is just not going to fly anymore .Once you tap into a deeper awareness of who you really are it would feel extremely limiting to try and resume your previous limited ways of perceiving. Who would go back to Windows 7? For Nostalgia reasons? If the system isn't working, it's time for an upgrade.

 When we are hooked into our egos as the sum total of who we believe ourselves to be, it's no more than an outdated PC operating system. This is where free will enters the scene. Only we can make that choice to shift, to invite ourselves to evolve, to grow by releasing what no longer serves us. Only we can make that vital choice. That is the simplest purpose of our free will. We get to choose. Awaken or Not, Evolve or Not, Suffer or Not.

How do you connect to a glimmer of truth that can clean out the trash bin that is our subconscious mind? Meditate daily. Slow down, find time to be still and silent. Move back into your sacred body and inhabit it ! Reclaim your feelings and feel them.  Feed yourself organic whole foods. Reduce stimulants, sugar, and depressants, alcohol. Drink plenty of clean water.  Rest yourself .  Get creative. Dance, paint, sing , write. The Divine has an infinite array of ways of expressing itself through our creativity. Doing any contemplative holistic energy practice like Yoga, Tai Chi or contemplative walks in Nature are powerful tools to shift from suffering to a glimmer of your Divine Light as You, through you. And perhaps one of the most powerful and simplest tools is to affirm I AM THAT! I AM  the Light of my Being.. I AM LOVE, I AM SOURCE. I AM. 

Over time with practice the glimmer becomes an ever present glow, a radiance of your Being through you as you. The ego gets a job transfer from CEO to soul assistant. Life begins to flow. Illnesses and energetic imbalances begin to heal. We open more and more to the creative mystery of each breath, each moment , each day we live . We begin to know on a cellular level that our very Being is LOVE, that SOURCE is LOVE and not the limited human emotional version of love, the grand dame of LOVE, the energy of all that is! Even in the midst of challenges or deep heartache and pain, this deeper truth is right within us, always. Its just waiting for us to invite ourselves in for tea!

Namaste and Blessings for a Beautiful Day.
Anne Christine

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 15 TIME FOR A MERCURY RETROGRADE MIND SCRUB

SEEDS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH # 15 A Blog Post by Anne Townend-Duffey Director of Opening Lotus Yoga

TIME FOR A MERCURY RETROGRADE MIND SCRUB

Blessings All. Well what a ride with the Spring weather here in central MA. From allergy bombs the last two weeks, to hot, then humid and last night an amazing lightening show in the sky that ushered in very cool temps in 50's. There is a saying here in New England, If you don't like the weather , just wait 10 minutes! So True.
That brings me to today's post. The mind is a lot like the weather. Always shifting , changing, moving but unlike the weather patterns that we cannot hold onto, we do ,as human beings hold on to mind patterns like a steel cage with locks on it.

We are in a 3 week period astrologically called Mercury retrograde that began yesterday in conjunction with this New Moon in Taurus and will continue until June 11. The theme with these energies is it's a time to revisit , reexamine and reflect on issues related to our physical health , our relationship with our physical home including the larger context of this planet earth and most powerfully we are being invited to give our mental habits a scrubbing. A time to uproot old thought and emotional patterns that no longer reflect the person we have evolved to be today but really reflect the conditioned past we have been subjected to.

One of the best ways to give your mind a super scrub is to meditate daily. This process of simply getting still for 10-20 minutes a day, observing your breath and allowing the mind stuff to arise and fall like waves on the ocean , without grasping or avoiding, just being present, this in fact serves to release repetitive patterns from our mind that largely operate from the subconscious realm.

These patterns can have quite a potent momentum built into them depending on how often we engage with them. This includes judgements, all fear based thoughts and emotions, angry reactive thoughts and emotions, worry and anxiety. Any thought pattern that results in you feeling small, contracted and separated from your Higher Self is up for a scrub in the next 3 weeks.

Simple questions: Does this thought pattern serve me? Does it reflect the essence of who and what I truly am? Does it nourish me or drain me? If they answer to any of these inquiries is NO, then practice letting go of this habit. Acknowledge it when it arises, take a breath, pause (this is the practice part to stall the momentum built into our thought habits) and exhale.

Practice being still instead of knee jerk into a reactive thought or emotion. Practice actually sitting with the energetic experience those thoughts and emotions evoke rather than firing them out in forms of words and behaviors. Let the energy of your emotions be the messengers they are meant to be, to reflect , feel and allow what may be blocking you from your own clarity. In this digital age of instant messaging, instagram, messages sent around the world in seconds, we would all benefit from pulling back in our own habits of communicating to take a breath and ask, Is this in alignment with my truth?

This is an amazing New Moon time to really grow into our next level of conscious awareness and alignment with what is truly what we are. LOVE. LIGHT, HONESTY, AUTHENTICITY, TRUTH.
It all begins with a potent pause.....
NAMASTE & BLESSINGS FOR An awakening day!
Anne Christine