This blog post was first published on Mar 14, 2020. 

Are you looking for ways to maintain emotional and spiritual stability amidst the overwhelming anxiety surrounding you?

It's not easy, but maintaining inner balance is what counts most right now.

The Importance of Choosing Your Path in the Present Moment

All the emotional healing and spiritual work you've done in the past has led you to this moment, where you can decide which path to follow. This choice is an ongoing one, made moment by moment. Will you choose to stay within yourself, dealing with the whirlwind of emotions, or will you let yourself be swept away by the collective anxiety, distancing yourself from your inner wisdom and security?

These uncertain times call for a focus on the present moment more than ever because here and now is where you'll find stability.

Five Questions to Help You Connect With the Present Moment

Here are five questions to help you assess your energy, gain clarity about the present moment, and...

Take twelve minutes and explore this guided audio meditation; a journey that encourages you to imagine encountering a version of your future self, ten years from now.

Close your eyes and bring your attention to your breath. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Slow your breath down and expand your breath. Breathe deeply, allowing every part of your body to relax, to surrender with each exhalation, allowing your jaw to drop, and every part of your throat chakra to soften, to relax.

At your next deep breath, imagine that the core of your being, from the base of your spine all the way to the top of your head, opens up like a hollow cylinder. And this beautiful white light that comes from the top of your head from the universe pours down and fills your entire core and comes out at your root chakra. You can feel the movement of this light going down your body.

And imagine that, in a counter-movement, this beautiful light also comes back up from the earth, moves...

This month on my podcast, Embodied, my friend Naomi Irons shares the story of the near-death experience she experienced on Christmas morning in 2021.

Her story is incredible and full of unexpected twists and turns. The insights and wisdom that spring from this conversation are the true gifts.

Naomi lives in the jungle on the Island of Hawaii. The unstable connection sometimes distorts her voice, but her message is clear: to truly live, we must let go of what has run its course.

Highlights of our hour and twenty-four-minute conversation include:

• The emotional roller coaster of letting go of physicality
• How Naomi’s experience changed her relationship to being in the present moment/showing up
• How the experience impacted Naomi and her family members and became a moment of deep, shared connection

You can listen to the podcast episode wherever you get your podcasts; you can also access the podcast player above, or visit the episode page: The Underwater Garden: A Conversation with...

In the creative cycle, the Inner Winter is the initiation and incubation phase. It is the time to retreat, tune in, and allow yourself to receive the inspiration without taking action—yet.

Giving ourselves space and silence to allow this process to happen enables us to receive the inspiration for the next phase and incubate it in our being so that, much like a baby, it can build in energy before we birth it into the world.

As a creative, I’m aware that there is a time when I should hold the seeds of a new idea or creation close to my heart and nurture them carefully, keeping them safe from the hard frost of other people’s opinions and criticism.

The energy of the Inner Winter is not linear or logical. When we are in this inner season, we may find ourselves moving in spirals, circling around something, and returning to the same spot repeatedly as we do when we walk a labyrinth.

For this reason, it’s important to allow yourself to be fully in the mystery of...

I have been thinking a lot lately about how when I am fully present to myself, I naturally am an embodied leader, whether I am meditating, or spending time with my family, or teaching in front of a group.

Being an embodied leader means, first and foremost, that we lead ourselves through the process of self-exploration, self-healing, soul-love, and soul-realization. You inspire others much more when you have done your own personal work ; )

Comparing a disembodied leader and an embodied leader

Disembodied leaders lead from a place of fear and fragmented self, hungry for validation, and projecting the divisions they carry inside. Disembodied leaders find short-term success by creating resonance with the fears of their followers.

However, because this goes against the natural impulse of life, it will eventually retreat in the face of the human impetus toward expansion and growth. Because we all come to a place of self-reliance and self-love, whether it happens during our lifetime or at...

Preparing for the meditation:

• Practice it in a quiet place where you will not be distracted or disturbed.
• If possible, draw the curtains or cover your eyes with something soft (be sure it is lightweight) so that you will experience as little sensory stimulation as possible.
• Wear loose, comfortable clothing. You may want to cover yourself with a light blanket. Be sure that you will be warm throughout the practice.
• Lie on a comfortable (not too hard, not too soft) surface.
• Consider using a folded blanket under your knees to support your lower back or a cervical/neck pillow to support your head and neck.
• Do not move once you begin to practice, so be as comfortable as possible when you begin.
• In order to derive the maximum benefit from the practice of Relax into Greatness, have the intention to remain awake throughout the process.
• If you do fall asleep while practicing it, don’t worry. This is a natural occurrence, especially when you first start practicing, and particularly if...

Stop. Right here. Right now.
Take a deep breath in through your nose, and let it out your mouth.
Continue. For a moment.
Stop going so fast. Just stop.
Right here. Right now.
Your heart knows. You are here.
Breathe.
Remember who you are. In your heart.
Stop. Pause. Breathe.
Come home. Be in you.
You are here. Now. How beautiful you are.
You are here in your heart.
Breathe.
Feel. This moment. Your being. You.
You. Are. Here. Now. Breathe.
And remember.
This. Now. Is more important than anything you were doing.
Come back now. Be home.
In the centre of your chest.
Everything is there. Nothing is missing.
Breathe. Be here.
Your heart.

And if you want to relax even deeper, try this 20-minute Guided Meditation to Relax Into Greatness. 

In this practice, we will be connecting ideas and thoughts with bodily sensations. I’ll walk you through all of it. Follow along and do what works for you.

What I would love for you to do is to sit with your feet on the floor. So, if you can have your feet on the ground, that will help with the intention of this meditation, which is to really connect with the earth. 

For this meditation, we're going to breathe in through the nose, and we're going to breathe out through the nose, which we normally don't do. But this is the intention is to increase the energy and to build this sense of inner world. When we breathe out through the mouth, the intention is to let go and surrender it all and allow liberation. But when we breathe out through the nose, we're saying, we're going to build here, so it's different.

I'm going to guide you, we're going to do each of the chakras, but we're going to talk about a quality in the chakras—there's one specific quality I want us to...

We were born very sensitive—At first, we didn't worry about the pain such openness would create. 

That is why being in the presence of a small child feels incredible. They don't hold back from showing their true sensitive self.

In that way, children are powerful. 

They can shift the energy in a room in a moment, simply with their presence. 

For adults with unexamined wounds, children are an easy prey. 

First, the adult feels uncomfortable in the presence of so much love and light that they shut down even more. The child feels the separation and the distance. There is no more connection and connection is love. 

The child experiences this as a disruption of emotional safety. 

Then, in order to feel better or regain power, the adult will say or do something to hurt the child, often under the pretense of safety or discipline, e.g. "It's not how we behave.”

Eventually, the child develops a protection mechanism in order to mitigate the pain of the...

This month, I was invited to be a guest on the podcast SecondWind with Joyce Buford.

The title of the episode is Why Highly Sensitive People are Prone to Experiencing Burnout.

In our conversation, Joyce asked me how I was using the word “burnout” in the title of my new book, “The Burnout Antidote: A Spiritual Guide to Empowerment for Empaths, Over-givers, and Highly Sensitive People.”

I told Joyce that I see burnout as a crisis in meaning. What I’ve noticed in the past 10-15 years is this: even if you’ve found your path and purpose and it brings you a lot of joy, you can still burn out. 

In the podcast episode, I talk about my own burnout journey, coming to understand how something that was aligned with my passion and purpose—one-on-one coaching, in particular—was causing my burnout. 

Highlights of our 35-minute conversation include: 

• Investigating the root causes of burnout
• Why do we hold on to trauma
• The power of...