Something Powerful Happened Last Night: Reflections on Unity & Presence Book Club Reading of My Debut Novel, “Love’s Troubadours”
Tag: Yoga
Finding ways to honor & nurture yourself during Spring
Hey there!
How are you welcoming the Spring season into your life?
I am welcoming the Spring season into my life by celebrating the new Astrological new year, Spring Equinox, and the Aries season that began on March 19th at 11:09 PM ET.
My celebration includes setting an intention to continue my Thriving Mindfully with death, loss, and grief by taking a deep dive into self-nurturing (self-care) rooted in my Akan ancestral wisdom that lives in the Adinkra symbols. The wisdom is a part of my ancestral medicine.
FYI The Akan are the largest ethnic group of present-day Ghana, and the Ivory Coast located in West Africa. My paternal loving + wise + well ancestors are the Akan people in Ghana.
FYI Adinkra symbols are deep truths reflecting proverbs, concepts, and wisdom in a visual form that appear in cloth, clothing, artwork, architecture, furniture, and more.
I picked six Adinkra symbols to guide my self-nurturing through the Spring season. I used them to create affirmations that support my intention. See below.
What intentions do you want to set for the Spring season, new astrological new year, or second quarter of 2024?
What’s one action step you can take to jumpstart your intention setting?
I am also diving deep into some of the traditional Chinese Medicine, astrology, and other spiritual and self-care practices I have used in previous years.
I thought you might like to know more about them.
Read on…
In Chinese Medicine, the Spring season corresponds to the wood element and yang energy. Spring represents the beginning of new astrological year (Aries season) and a time of birth and new beginnings.
The wood element represents a transition from a yin season to yang season, death to growth, and cold to warmth. It is a time of expansion growth, development, and moving forward unapologetically.
Yang energy is masculine, hot, active, and connected to the activity of doing. The wood element is an invitation to cultivate vitality, creativity, and emotional resilience.
Wood is associated with the emotion of ANGER. ANGER can be a helpful and harmful emotion. As a harmful emotion, anger can cause you to become reactive or full of rage in challenging situations. You can learn to be skillful in how you work with anger. As a helpful emotion, anger can drive you to make necessary changes in your life. Wood is also connected to forgiveness.
Wood is associated with the color green. Nurture your wood connection by wearing different shades of green. Use them to decorate your home and office. Spending time near trees with green leaves, plants, and flowers. Eat green vegetables and fruits. Drink green juices, tea, or smoothies.
The wood element is associated with the Anahata (heart and fourth) chakra in the heart center of the body. It is located in your heart center. In Sanskrit, anahata means unstruck, unhurt, or unbeaten. It is associated with unconditional love, compassion, acceptance, and gratitude. It is connected to the colors pink and green. Use rose quartz, rhodonite, rhodochrosite, green aventurine malachite, and green jade gemstones. The seed mantra is YAM.
The wood element is associated with the Ajna (third-eye and sixth) chakra located in between the eyebrows. In Sanskrit, ajna means command center, perceive, and beyond wisdom. It is associated with intuition, wisdom, insight, and concentration. It is connected to the color indigo blue. Use lapis lazuli, soldalite, iolite, azurite, and kyanite gemstones. The seed mantra is OM.
The wood element in the body shows up in the liver and gallbladder.
The liver (yin) is in charge of the smooth flow of your life force energy (qi, chi, or prana), blood, and emotions in the body. The liver controls the tendons. It stores blood during periods of rest and releases it to the tendons in times of activity. You can maintain your tendons with stretching exercises. The liver is connected to proper eye function. Use eye yoga to support this area.
The gallbladder (yang) stores and excretes bile. It governs your planning, decision making, and the courage to take action and see your decisions. It is connected to your stability, boundaries of self, passion for life, inspiration, action, The gallbladder is connected to the connective tissue in the body. Use stretching exercises (yoga) to take care of your connective tissue.
Aries is a Fire sign (March 19-April 19) that offers energetic support for passion, willpower, initiative, and taking brave and new action. It is governed by Mars, the planet of energy, action, and desire. Aries season offers you energetic support in your role as a leader and abilities to initiate, tap into your willpower, and be aggressive and spontaenous.
Aries governs the head.
The head is connected to the sahasrara (crown, violet and gold) chakra. Tap into the crown chakra for being the highest version of yourself. Chant SOHAM to connect to the crown chakra’s seed mantra. Nurture your crown chakra with amethyst, moonstone, clear quartz, and selenite crystals.
Aries’ fire energy is conected to your manipura (solar plexus; yellow) chakra which governs your willpower, persistence, and self-confidence. Chant the the seed mantra RAM to connect with the solar plexus chakra. Nurture your solar plexus chakra with citrine, pyrite, yellow or bumble bee jasper, mookite, or tiger’s eye crystals.
Journaling & Meditative Music
I invite you take a moment to explore the journaling prompts below. Listen to the meditative music in the solar plexus chakra video. May they help begin to nurture yourself in the ways you need.
-How can you nurture yourself during the Spring season?
-What type of support do you need to nurture yourself during the Spring season?
-What 1-3 steps you can take this month to get started on your Spring season nurturing?
Death, Loss, and Grief Resources
Are you struggling with death, loss, and grief right now?
Click on the video below to listen to the latest episode of the Thriving Mindfully Podcast that discusses how I am learning to understand, deal with, and nurture myself while experiencing grief in my body.
Grief + You 2-Day Retreat Series
Do you need more support with your death, loss, and grief journey?
Join me for the 2024 Grief + You 2-Day Retreat Series on April 13-14, May 4-5, June 29-30, July 27-28, August 24-25, September 28-29, October 26-27, November 16-17, and December 14-15 at 2-3:30 PM ET via Zoom.
Click the sign up button below to register.
11 Ways to Use Mindfulness for Unplugging & Sleeping Well
One of the lessons I learned during National Day of Unplugging last weekend was about sleeping. I discovered a better way to enjoy sleeping by turning my smartphone off and allowing myself to wake up without the alarm on Saturday and Sunday. Read my opinion piece on unplugging that was published in the Afro-American Newspaper to learn more.
On Sunday evening, I decided to use Sleep Awareness Week (March 11-17) to add several mindful sleep practices to my daily routine. Check out the practices I used below. Since today is the last day of Sleep Awareness Week, consider trying one or more of them.
- Place your smartphone and digital devices in your living room, kitchen, or home office. Mute the sound on your phone ringer and notifications. If you can, turn the phone off. Use an alarm clock. Muting the sound on my phone and placing it in my living room really helped.
- Give yourself a few hours off from using social media, email or texting in the evenings. Set a curfew. Try 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. I tried a curfew of 11:15 p.m. to 8 a.m. on several days.
- Express gratitude for people and experiences. This practice opens my heart.
- Say a forgiveness prayer for yourself and others before you go to sleep at night. My forgiveness prayers help me release anger, disappointment, grudges, judgments, thoughts, and stories I have made up about myself and others. They help me clear my mind and cleanse my spirit and heart.
- Drink your favorite decaf tea before bed. I love to sprinkle turmeric in hot water or use Trader Joe’s turmeric and ginger tea.
- Use your favorite sheets and blankets on your bed. I love my purple sheets and cream blanket.
- If you are NOT allergic to scents, smudge yourself and your bedroom or home with a smudge stick to remove any negative energy. I use my smudge stick in the morning and evening.
- If you are NOT allergic to scents, burn your favorite incense or candle in your bedroom or home an hour or two before you sleep. You can also use a room freshener with essential oils to spray your bedroom or home. I like to use Mrs. Meyer’s lavender room freshener.
- Take an evening shower or bath to relax yourself. Showers are my favorites.
- Meditate for a 1, 5, 15, 20 or 30 minutes before going to sleep. Meditation with breathing exercises is a great mindfulness practice that can help you slow down and become aware of your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. It can also help you go within and connect to your higher self. I like to practice a short meditation while laying in child’s pose, one of my favorite yoga poses, before going to sleep. Listen to my #ThrivingMindfully Podcast Series for a guided mindfulness meditation. Here’s a guided compassion meditation to open your heart. Check out my Mindful Living podcast playlist for more resources.
- Try gentle yoga. Like I mentioned above, child’s pose helps me relax before sleep. Go to YouTube and try my teacher Faith Hunter’s gentle yoga session. Also, do a search for gentle yoga or restorative yoga for beginners on YouTube. Check out Yoga In Bed: 20 Asanas to Do in Pajamas by Edward Vilga, one of my favorite yoga books. Learn more about my journey as a gentle yoga teacher (includes my yoga, reiki, and meditation services) and my yoga-inspired novel, Love’s Troubadours (available on Amazon). My novel tells the story of Karma Francois, a 30-something yoga teacher who is on a self-discovery journey that allows her to heal, forgive, and reinvent her life with art, meditation, mindfulness, spirituality, therapy, yoga, travel, and the support of family and friends.
If you are unable to try these tips today, I encourage you to use Sleep Awareness Week as inspiration for getting more rest in your life in 2018. Try one or more of the tips and let me know what happens in the comment section.
Happy Unplugging and Sleeping!
Photo Credit: National Sleep Foundation
#BlackHistoryMonth Treat: How Playwright Lorraine Hansberry Inspired My Novel, Love’s Troubadours
My debut novel, Love’s Troubadours was inspired by a speech given by activist and playwright Lorraine Hansberry in February 1964. She spoke to a Harlem-based group of aspiring young, gifted, and African American writers about the power to love in America. In her remarks, Hansberry stated,
“O, the things that we have learned in this unkind house that we have to tell the world about! Despair? Did someone say despair was a question in the world? Well then, listen to the sons of those who have known little else. If you wish to know the resiliency of this thing you would so quickly resign to mythhood, this thing called the human spirit … Life? Ask those who have tasted of it in pieces rationed out by enemies. Love? Ah, ask the troubadours who have come from those who have loved when all reason pointed to the uselessness and foolhardiness of love. Perhaps we shall be the teachers when it is done. Out of the depths of pain we have thought to be our sole heritage in this world-O, we know about love!”
She referred to African Americans as troubadours, the descendents of people who used the power of love to live through and overcome despair and insurmountable odds. She went on to urge the audience to seek wisdom from African Americans because of their capacity to love.
I first read about Hansberry’s speech in Salvation by bell hooks in 2001. Salvation discusses how African Americans have used the power of love to transform their lives and communities. hooks’ writings caused me to question how I could use my gifts as an artist and writer to promote love as a healing tool in the lives of individuals and communities in America. I answered that question by writing Love’s Troubadours, a novel that tells the story of Karma Francois, a 30-something museum curator and yoga teacher who loses her job, discovers family secrets after a loved one dies, and begins a healing journey as she relocates from New York City to Washington, DC. Learn more about her in the video below.
Karma learns many life lessons as she comes face-to-face with the choices she has made in her life and relationships. Watch the video below and learn about some of them.
Throughout her journey, she uses journaling, meditation, mindfulness, poetry, spirituality, therapy, and yoga to heal and love herself. Hansberry’s wisdom on mindful living inspired the way I wrote about Karma’s healing journey:
“I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and–I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.”
Watch the video below and learn how Karma’s healing journey transformed her idea of love in her life.
After reading Hansberry’s book, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, I made a conscious decision to use my novel’s characters to celebrate the beauty and diversity of people of African descent. Watch the video below and learn about the diverse characters.
Listen to a chapter excerpt from Love’s Troubadours that illustrates the diversity of African Americans when Karma walks into Mocha Hut, a coffee and tea café in her U Street neighborhood, and eavesdrops on a conversation.
Yoga & My Creative Heart
Happy #YogaMonday!
Mondays are all about yoga in my social media world (confession: every day is a yoga day in my real life world). Today, I am savoring the juicy feelings of gratitude I experienced while leading my workshop on Fierce Living from a Woman’s Creative Heart on August 22 at Embrace Yoga in Washington, DC.
The workshop gave me an opportunity to serve and share from my heart. It also blessed me with two creative yoga workshop participants, Krystal Tingle and Rhiannon Landesberg. Together, we practiced breathing exercises and our favorite yoga poses as we journaled and shared our reflections.
During the workshop, I wore my “Karma: Aham Prema” VIDA scarf I received the night before. It was a special moment because the scarf was created through my partnership with VIDA in May. We used my painting that appears on the cover of my yoga-inspired novel, “Love’s Troubadours – Karma: Book One” (Amazon) to make the design. It is a part of my VIDA Voices scarf collection which include three additional scarves that use artwork from my books, “That Which Awakens Me: A Creative Woman’s Poetical Memoir of Self-Discovery” and “Digital Sisterhood: A Memoir of Fierce Living Online” (Amazon). Click here to learn more about my scarf collection.
Many thanks to Embrace Yoga and my yoga teacher Faith Hunter for blessing me with an opportunity to serve and share from my heart. Thank you Krystal and Rhiannon for attending the workshop.
#YogaMonday: #Yogaat50 Lesson 8 Alive
Happy #YogaMonday!
ALIVE is #Yogaat50 Lesson 8. When I practice yoga, I slow down and reconnect with every part of my body, mind, spirit, and heart. Through my yoga practice, I enter the present moment and become fully ALIVE. What does yoga do for you?
#YogaMonday: #Yogaat50 Lesson 7 FOCUS
Happy #YogaMonday!
FOCUS is #Yogaat50 Lesson 7. For 20 years, yoga has offered me an opportunity to focus my breath, gaze, spirit, and energy so that they move as one when I practice poses, meditation, and Reiki. When I leave my yoga mat and move into the world, it has given me breathing and stretching tools to navigate emotions, experiences and interactions with others. What has yoga helped you focused on?
Poetry Month Day #14: “OM” Poem
Happy Day #14 of National Poetry Month!
Today’s poem is inspired by my yoga practice. It is entitled “Om” which is the sound of creation.
Om
Nature invites me to bring my practice outside
My yoga mat and I travel up the street and into Malcolm X Park.
Waterfalls greet us as the Sunday morning sun kisses my skin.
I breathe in and bow to Creator, Mother Nature, and myself.
As I exhale, I set an intention for my time on the mat.
My hands rest in prayer against my chest as I take several cleansing breaths.
After each breath, I allow the space in between the next breath to expand.
It makes room for a series of Oms.
Their echo disappears, but their vibration remains.
They merge into the vinyasa flow of my sun salutations.
I lose track of the number I have completed.
Sitting in the silence, I allow Om to stay.
Copyright 2015 by Madelyn C. Leeke. All rights reserved.
Photo Credit: Barbara Boyles
#YogaMonday: #Yogaat50 Lesson 6 OPPORTUNITY
Happy #YogaMonday!
OPPORTUNITY is #Yogaat50 Lesson 6. When I was studying to become a yoga teacher at Flow Yoga Center in 2005, I had a homework assignment that required a definition of yoga. Here’s the definition I created and continue to use in my yoga practice, classes, and workshops: YOGA is Your Opportunity to Graciously Accept yourself and life in the present moment. What is your definition of yoga? What opportunity has yoga offered you?
#YogaMonday: #Yogaat50 Lesson 5 ONENESS
Happy #YogaMonday!
ONENESS is #Yogaat50 Lesson 5. Through practicing yoga, I have learned firsthand that I am connected to everyone and everything in the universe. Having this awareness of oneness reminds me to honor everyone and everything as I would myself. On days when I choose to ignore this awareness, I’m grateful my yoga practice brings me back to the truth of my being. That usually happens when I sit in child’s pose and give myself Reiki.
What has yoga taught you about yourself?
Ananda Leeke 