Thriving Mindfully as the Real You!
Join me tonight as I discuss mindfulness with media solopreneur Kamaria T. Richmond on The Stroke Diva Fabulous Radio Show at 7 p.m. EST. Kamaria and I will chat about mindful living, creativity, and technology. Go here to listen online. Read more about Kamaria’s journey as a solopreneur.
UPDATE: Listen to a recording of the show (90 minutes).
I discovered mindfulness when my career as a young lawyer and investment banker did not produce the level of success I expected. Mindfulness is the practice of taking a deep breath, coming into the present moment, and paying attention without judgment. The present moment is where you can access awareness, balance, and calm with loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Mindfulness is the gateway to who we truly are. It helped me overcome panic attacks, release my career expectations, develop self-care practices, and pursue my calling as an artist, author, Reiki master practitioner, speaker, and yoga teacher.
Are you new to mindfulness?
Looking for information on how to practice mindfulness in your life?
Curious about how to use mindfulness to practice gratitude, identify your fears, and become aware of the stories you tell yourself?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, check out my Mindfulness 101 Podcast playlist with 15 episodes. The episodes feature small steps you can take each day to practice mindfulness with guided meditations, a body scan, a mini toolkit, and more.
Need more mindfulness tips and information? Check out my resources page with three free gifts created especially for you!
Click here to learn more about my mindful living offerings. Contact me at ananda@anandaleeke.com to learn how you can work with me as a speaker for your next event, trainer for your organization, or coach (one-on-one or group sessions). I look forward to hearing from you.
Looking for a great book to read? Check out my yoga-inspired novel, Love’s Troubadours and learn how the main character Karma uses mindful living practices including meditation, prayer, therapy, and yoga to heal her spirit, heart, mind, and relationships, and reinvent her career.
PS: Don’t keep me a secret. Use the links below and share me with your network!
The rapid growth of technology and social media over the past decade has changed the way we live and communicate. Most of us own or have access to at least one digital device. Many of us spend hours being connected to the them without knowing how our digital connection can have a negative impact on our physical and emotional well-being.
According to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) 2017 Stress in America: Coping with Change report, more than four out of five adults in the U.S. (86 percent) constantly or often check their email, texts, and social media accounts. The APA report concluded that Americans’ attachment to their digital devices and constant use of technology are associated with higher stress levels.
Are you overwhelmed by texts, email, and social media at work and home?
Do you spend way too many hours using your smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, or other digital device?
Are your eyes tired of looking at screens?
Does your neck, back, or hips hurt while you sit and work online?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, check out my Email, Social Media & Technology playlist. The playlist includes nine podcast episodes that offer meditations and mindful tips on how to create a digital wellness plan, practice self-care with a digital detox and unplugging, and have a healthy relationship with email, social media, and technology.
Need more mindfulness tips and information?
Check out my resources page with three free gifts created especially for you!
Click here to learn more about my mindful technology offerings.
Contact me at ananda@anandaleeke.com to learn how you can work with me as a speaker for your next event, trainer for your organization, or coach (one-on-one or group sessions). I look forward to hearing from you!
Looking for a great book to read? Check out my tech memoir, Digital Sisterhood: A Memoir of Fierce Living Online. It includes tips and exercises on how to unplug and use technology mindfully.
PS: Don’t keep me a secret. Use the links below and share me with your network!
Mindful creativity is what I share with military service members, veterans, their families and friends, and staff when I serve as an artist-in-residence for Smith Center for Healing and the Arts at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center each week. Read and listen to my latest interview with Smith Center.
Check out a short video I made during one of my breaks at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
January 2018 is almost over. How is it treating you? How are you treating it? When is the last time you slowed down and breathed deeply? How often are you present and aware of what’s truly happening? Need more mindful moments in your life?
I’d like to you invite you to explore how mindfulness can support you in your daily living, creativity, and career with the podcast resources below.
1) Mini Mindfulness Toolkit (43.40 minutes): Includes a reflection on the meaning of mindfulness, a tune-in (pre-meditation check-in with breathing exercises), a guided meditation, and journaling exercises
2) Be Present (16.31 minutes): Includes a body scan to help you relax and come into the present moment
3) Outsmart Stress with Meditation (16.56 minutes): Includes a basic guided mindfulness meditation
4) Open Your Heart with Compassion Meditation (20.07 minutes): Includes meditation that helps you have compassion for yourself when dealing with difficult people
5) Mindfulness on the Go (6.15 minutes): Includes breathing exercises and a guided mindful moment
In 2017, I attended the Women’s March with my Sigma Gamma Rho Soror Karla Ray Thompson and Unity sistafriend Kim Davis in Washington, DC. It reminded me of the experiences I had while attending the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, Million Woman’s March in Philadelphia in 1997, and the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC in 2004.
Did you participate in the 2017 and 2018 Women’s March events? Are you involved in social justice and human rights in your local community, city, state, or country?
Your social justice and human rights’ work is important. The time you invest to support equality, fairness, and justice is appreciated. I have one question for you: how are you taking care of yourself as you do the work?
If you need tips and tools on how to practice self-care with mindfulness in your social justice and human rights work, listen to the #ThrivingMindfully Podcast. It includes three mindfulness exercises: a tune in (check-in), a meditation, and journaling. May they support you in your self-care practice!
Have you ever used a vision board? A vision board is a mindful creativity tool you can use to help clarify, concentrate, and maintain focus on the highest and best vision of your life.
I started using vision boards in the early 1990s after reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way. I have used them for my artwork, business, career reinvention, fitness, home decor, personal style, relationships, travel adventures, yoga practice, and overcoming writer’s block with my creativity memoir, That Which Awakens Me: A Creative Woman’s Poetical Memoir of Self-Discovery and tech memoir, Digital Sisterhood: A Memoir of Fierce Living Online.
A couple of years ago, I learned about National Vision Board Day, an annual celebration held on the second Saturday in January. National Vision Board Day is my opportunity to practice loving kindness as I give myself the gift of time to reflect on, journal about, and create a written statement and visual expression of my highest and best life. Last year I started my vision board process on January 14 and finished it several days later with three different vision boards (see a photo of one of my boards above).
This year I am spending National Vision Board Day as a creativity coach. I will be facilitating a vision board-making session with a client. Listen to the latest episode of the #ThrivingMindfully Podcast to learn how I use mindful creativity to help my clients create their vision statement and board. The episode includes a guided meditation, breathing and journaling exercises, and tips. Feel free to use it to prepare for your National Vision Board Day celebration.
Interested in learning more about how I help people just like you become aware of and express creativity in your own unique way while outsmarting stress and overcoming blocks and challenges? Check out my mindful creativity services.
Happy 2018!
Start your new year by making a self-care investment in being more present in your body, heart, mind, and spirit. Listen to the latest episode of the #ThrivingMindfully Podcast and learn how to be present with a guided body scan. A body scan can help you relax and connect with what’s happening in your body from head to toe (or toe to head), how you’re feeling, and what you’re thinking. It also trains your attention and can help you release pent-up emotions.
Happy Kwanzaa! In 1966, Dr. Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa as a reflective holiday that invites African Americans to celebrate their African heritage and support and strengthen their community. Kwanzaa reminds us how important it is to call on our ancestors and honor their legacy each day.
Umoja or unity is the first Kwanzaa principle. It reminds us to mindfully practice and express unity in our spirit, heart, mind, body, actions, family, and community. My yoga, meditation, and reiki practices support my practice of umoja. What supports your practice of umoja?
Kwanzaa allows me to be still and reconnect with my ancestors. They are always with me. They help me mindfully practice Kujichagulia, the principle of self-determination. When I tap into their presence, I strengthen myself from the inside out. Because of their love, wisdom, and sacrifice, I can BE my full self, live FREE, and speak my TRUTH with grace and ease. Deep bow of gratitude for their self-determination. It created me. Ase!
What does kujichagulia mean to you?
What are your favorite Kwanzaa principles?
How do you practice Kwanzaa?
Happy Holy-Days! Welcome to Week 4 of the #ThrivingMindfully Self-Care Challenge, a four-week experience that invites you to practice and reflect on loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity! Equanimity is the theme for this week.
I launched the Challenge on December 1. It’s hard to believe that we have reached the last week. If you missed the previous weeks, click on the links below.
Week 1, December 4-10: Loving Kindness
Week 2, December 11-17: Compassion
Week 3, December 18-24: Joy
Week 4 of #ThrivingMindfully Self-Care Challenge: December 25-31
Equanimity or upekkha is a state of being that allows you to stand in the middle of whatever thought, feeling, or experience you may have with calm awareness and nonjudgment. Going within and being with all of your stuff (thoughts, feelings, and experiences) on a daily basis helps you plant seeds of equanimity in your garden of self-acceptance. When you give yourself equanimity, you are able to handle the ups and downs of life with more peace. You also access more loving kindness, compassion, and joy. In addition, your capacity to support others with loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity grows.
Theme/Video: Equanimity
Invitation: Slow down and take three deep breaths. Touch your heart with one or both of your hands as you enter into a moment of stillness.
Take three more deep breaths. Right where you are repeat the first prayer out loud or silently three times: May I embody and express equanimity for myself.
Take three more deep breaths and repeat the second prayer. May I share equanimity with others. Inhale deeply and as you exhale thank yourself for showing up in the stillness.
Reflection Questions and Journaling Exercise: Take some time this week to reflect on and journal about one or more of the questions below.
1) What does equanimity mean?
2) What does equanimity look like in your life?
3) What prevents you from embodying and expressing equanimity for yourself? and for others?
4) What do you want equanimity to look like in 2018?
5) How can you add more equanimity into your daily, weekly, and monthly routines?
Ananda Leeke 