SWIHA Blog

How do you meditate when you have a busy mind? The average person has 60,000-80,000 thoughts per day; that’s 2.500-3.300 thoughts per hour. That’s a lot of thoughts to try to bring into stillness.

This was my challenge. I’d always wanted to meditate, but trying to stop my brain thoughts while on the mat were near impossible. That is, until I found Yoga Nidra. I’ll never forget my first time receiving a Yoga Nidra session, day one of Yoga Nidra level one training. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I signed up for this course.

"I am blessed that I have been able to successfully integrate so many aspects of my life’s personal journey and career into my business model," Brenda Bentley, Life Coach and SWIHA graduate.

As a former international banker, teacher, career consultant, hypnotherapist and facilitator, Brenda has, in her words, "wove various aspects into the tapestry of my coaching business."

"I believe that it's through our own life experiences and challenges that we are able to dig deeper, unearth those hidden treasures so we can step out, make a valuable contribution and be of service to the world during this precious time we have on earth," she affirms.

Yoga mythology is full of stories of love and war, enlightenment and disillusionment, victory and defeat. Like all mythos, the epic tales from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana provide important insights for understanding our cosmic place in the universe, exploring the depth of human experience through a spiritual lens, and what it means to be engaged and connected to the unexplainable.

Phew! It’s the last Mercury Retrograde of 2019, lasting from October 31 until November 19. Mercury rules communication, meaning that these times can bring technological breakdowns, difficulty in relationships, and a general feeling of being misunderstood or unimportant. However, it can also be an excellent time to take inventory of your priorities, aspirations and energy exchanges.

To Sue Shapiro, Life Coaching is “the roadmap to help you achieve your dreams, learn to be authentic, and live your full potential.”

Sue is a SWIHA Life Coaching graduate, and further deepened her practice by becoming a certified Habit Change Practitioner. Through her business, Finding Your Divine Spark, she offers heart centered ‘flow-with-soul’ Life Coaching to help people reclaim the Divine Spark of their life, and describes her style as “soft-spoken”.

Some people get messages very early in life that they are destined for greatness.  This is the case for Becca Briley.  When she was a little girl about eight years old she had a very powerful and beautiful vision. It was no ordinary dream!  “It felt so real,” recalls Becca tapping into a very vivid and visceral memory.  “Jesus himself appeared to me, at bedside, with the simplest of message: 'You Can Fly.'”

Becca continues: “Even then I knew humans do not fly, yet those three words have served as my life’s marching orders. In the vision, I stepped to my windows ledge and felt the most liberating sense of freedom. I jumped into the wind that carried me to elevations only winged creatures were capable of.”

Healers are highly sensitive, which is why they’re so drawn to dedicating their lives to helping others! 

However, if you’ve been spending a lot of energy focused on the healing of others, you may be pushing through warnings from your own system that something is off.

Signs that you may need to pause and do some S.O.U.L C.A.R.E include:

• Your personal to-do list is a mile long
• You haven’t been sleeping or eating well
• Your schedule is not a reflection of your priorities
• You’ve had limited alone time lately
• Your body is inexplicably ill or in pain
• Your physical space is cluttered and disorganized
• Your emotions have begun calling the shots
• You feel like you’re operating on auto-pilot

If you’ve ever been to our yoga studio and training facility, Spirit of Yoga, you’ve surely noticed our shelled friends sunbathing in the pond. Due to their wide-eyed, slow-and-steady nature, many consider turtles to be the wisest souls in the animal kingdom. When Katie Hembraugh first saw them, she took it as a sign to “come out of her shell” and pursue Yoga Teacher Training!

“I had developed a habit of not showing up and letting opportunities go by while hiding behind being not ready...[so] I landed at SWIHA because of the turtles!” laughs Katie, “Synchronicities are one way I see my life guided by my Great Attractor. I met Laura Mckinzie and saw the overflow of turtles living in the pond at Spirit of Yoga and the decision was made.”

According to Life Coach and meditation teacher Bill Gisclair-Sullivan, authenticity requires practice: “It is a conscious choice that we must make about how we want to live our lives every day. It is a collection of our choices and decisions, and it requires us to show up, be present in the moment, and to be honest with ourselves.”

The truth is that authenticity usually has to be re-learned because so much of our lives have been spent mastering the many masks we think we must wear to be approved of or to fit into what we imagine is expected of us. A quote from Coach Bill’s website captures his life coaching mission, which emphasizes how we can step into our truest self: "Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we truly are."

Bill is so passionate about this work because it mirrors his own life journey. “It took me many, many years to discover my authenticity,” Bill explains. “I spent most of my adult life working in management in the hospitality field. After making some dramatic mistakes and trying to climb the corporate ladder, I lost some important parts of myself along the way.”

At a young age, Sue Shapiro recognized that her words could either cause harm or help someone feel better, and she believes this knowing came from the near death experience she had at the age of four. This inner knowing was a frightening space for her to be in because most people could not accept that a little one could be so perceptive, so she eventually shut down and was so painfully quiet and shy, that her grandmother thought there was something wrong with her.