Would you like practice in accessing and deepening  your own personal connection to God (Spirit, Divine, Oneness) as well as sharing and connecting with other like-hearted women? This monthly class provides this and more!   Each month we will have a new focus to explore.  This class is experiential, meaning that you will be learning through a variety of activities  — which may include writing, movement, Remembrance meditation, music, creativity and more. (Don’t worry, no previous experience is required!)

Join me on Tuesday June 21st from 7 to 8:30pm. Our focus for this month is Trust. What is your experience of trust?  Do you find that you trust yourself or do you question your decisions?  Do you trust life or do you worry about what life has in store for you?  Would you just like to experience more trust? I find that my trust in myself and life continues to build and grow.  I like to think of trust as confident expectation combined with fearlessness.  If that resonates with you, come experience what embodied trust feels like, and how you can live with more trust every day.  Sign up here

PS– Take this class risk-free! This class has a 100% money back guarantee! If you show up with an open mind, an open heart and a willingness to learn and participate, and aren’t delighted by the end of the class, I will cheerfully refund your money! (yes, really!)

To me, awareness is a state of conscious noticing, being fully in the moment. When we are fully aware, we ignite body, mind and spirit.

Last weekend, an unexpected hike in the Cascade mountains reminded me of what it’s like to be fully aware and present. My husband, Jim, and I joined our son, Kyle, and his girlfriend, Kim, for what was supposed to be an easy 2 mile hike to a waterfall.  It was a sunny, clear day in the mid-60′s, and we were expecting a dry or damp trail.

However, when we turned off of the highway and onto the access road to get to the trail-head, the road was closed due to large amounts of snow! We would now have an extra mile to hike in and we’d be walking on snow —- about 4 feet of snow!!  Did I mention we had all dressed in shorts and low-top trail shoes??  We decided to check it out, knowing we could always turn back.

We could see the footprints of those who had traveled the path in days past.  We began walking, or should I say slip-slide walking! It was like walking through slippery, loose sand.  We soon found that if we stepped even slightly outside of the very narrow path, we were knee deep in snow (very cold snow!). Talk about increasing your desire for awareness!

The forest and the river we hiked along were stunningly beautiful. Although, we had to take breaks to stop and actually take in the views, because when walking, we had to pay full attention to every step.

I felt myself really feeling my connection to the earth and noticing how all of my muscles were ready to compensate at a moment’s notice.

We crossed several foot-bridges where we were walking on 4 to 5 feet of snow (well above the hand rails).  Every step counted. If you weren’t paying full attention, you could easily fall from the narrow strip of snow. Fortunately, Kyle, the most experienced of us all, guided us through the difficult or tricky places.

As we climbed higher and higher along the edge of the river gorge, we realized how easy it could be to take a miss-step and tumble down the incline.  I don’t even recall the last time I was this focused, aware and intent.

We made it to the waterfall, and then headed back.  We realized that if we jogged lightly on the snow we could travel faster with less slippage, so on the way back, we alternated our slip-step-slide walking with jogging.  It took us 3 hours round trip, and the sun was starting to go down.  The temperature had dropped 15 degrees since we left.  In our shorts, we became ultra aware of the cold and the need to get back to the car.

The trip was exhausting, but amazing and beautiful.  The four of us were the only ones on the trail that day, and it felt sacred, protected, and mystical. I felt totally alive — body, mind and spirit!

When I got back home, I was realizing how much I relished this fully aware, fully alive experience. I started thinking about experiences in my daily life that present an opportunity to feel this way.  I decided to create a list — a list I can add to!

Here is a portion of my list:

1. Remembrance meditation
2. Cooking a wholesome meal for loved ones
3. Spending time with my family and my dearest friends
4. Dancing at a NIA class
5. Teaching one of my women’s spiritual classes
6. Planting flowers in my garden
7. Walking and hiking in nature
8. Reading a book with a child
9. African drumming with a friend or in a group

I encourage you to take a moment to think about the times or moments when you have felt fully aware, present and alive. What does your list look like? Is there something that you can do every day to have that experience of being fully aware and fully present?It doesn’t matter what the choice or activity is, it only matter that it gives you that feeling of having a rich, aware experience.

I would love for you to share your experiences  here!

I’m launching a new class which will be held every 3rd Tuesday of the month.  It’s called,  Recharge, Reconnect and Realize!  I designed this class to give you practice in accessing and deepening  your own personal connection to God (Spirit, Divine, Oneness) as well as sharing and connecting with other like-hearted women in the class.  Each week we will have a new focus to explore.  This class is experiential, meaning that you will be learning through a variety of activities  — which may include writing, movement, Remembrance meditation, music, creativity and more. (Don’t worry, no previous experience is required!)

Join me on Tuesday May 17th from 7 to 8:30pm. Our focus for this month is Awareness.  Come discover the gifts that are available to us as we practice awareness. Deepening your awareness on the physical, mental and spiritual levels enriches your experience of life and helps you make choices that lead to more joy. Sign up here

PS — This class will  be meaningful, engaging and FUN!

The focus of this month’s Remembrance class on April 19th is Grace. What does Grace mean for you in your life?  Come learn and experience what Grace is for you and how it shows up in your life.  For me, Grace is the love, personal caring and magic that we receive through our connection with God (Divine, Spirit, Oneness).

Some people have likened Remembrance to meditation, but it is really a way of experiencing your personal connection to God (or “Spirit” or “the something greater that connects us all” depending on your individual beliefs).  To find out more and to register: http://inside-answers.com/offerings/classes-workshops/remembrance-basics/

Do you know that we all have an amazing super power, but few of us learn how to use it only for good?

This power is the power of our words. You may have heard the childhood rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me!”  And, if you’ve ever had hurtful words spoken to you, you know that they hurt just as much as physical pain and often take a much longer time to heal. So much pain in our families, our communities, and our world is caused by hurtful, condemning, judgmental words.

On the flip side, our words have the ability to heal, to love, to nurture, to lift up. We get to choose, moment-to-moment, day-by-day, how we want to use our words.  The power is ours.

So, how do we begin to use this power for good?

First, by changing the way we talk to ourselves and about ourselves.

Most of us on the planet find it easy to criticize or judge ourselves. We think or say things like “I’ll never be good enough.” “I’m so fat.” “I’m lazy and unmotivated.” And these thoughts and voices go on and on.  When we listen to them, we feel bad, sad, depressed, and stuck.

However, when we start to think and talk about ourselves in a loving, kind, supportive way, we find that we start to feel better, not just about ourselves, but about our lives and the people around us.

At first, you may feel like you’re pretending or making it up.  But, each of us was created with purpose and perfection. We are all doing the best that we know how in every moment.  Know that as you start to think and speak about yourself in a positive, supportive way, your life will reflect that.

Second, by changing the way we talk to those closest to us.

When we begin to use our words to support, love and encourage those closest to us, we literally deepen our relationship and connection with them.

I’m sure that you’ve had the experience of someone close to you saying something really hurtful.  How did it make you feel?

You may have felt hurt, sad, discouraged, frustrated or angry. These feelings make you feel separate and disconnected from that person.  They also may make you feel like striking back with some negative words of your own.  Can you feel the pain in this?  It’s like stepping into a mini war!

Speaking kind, supportive, loving words, no matter what the situation is, takes practice.  It’s not about speaking perfectly all the time.  It’s about developing the awareness and intention to create more love and connection through our words. Sometimes, the best choice is to say nothing at all until you can find something positive to say.

Third, by changing the way we talk about and to strangers.

Do you notice how easy it is to judge and talk about people we don’t know? Almost feels like a certain level of safety in that because they can’t hear us or know what we are saying about them.  Maybe we make a negative comment about a homeless person or the cashier at the store. Maybe we judge the way a person is dressed because it is so different than how we dress.

Instead of talking about strangers in a negative, judgmental way, we can choose to suspend our judgment and instead engage our curiosity. By being curious, we open ourselves to new information and new viewpoints.

Instead of judging the homeless person as dirty or scary, we may wonder how they became homeless. We may actually speak to them and ask them about their story.  With that personal connection, we may feel compelled to offer them food or at least a smile.

Instead of remarking about how tacky a person’s clothes are, we may wonder why they made that choice. Are they from a different area or a different culture?  We might speculate about what they like about the way they are dressed.  Do they like bright colors and patterns? Is comfort most important?

Instead of criticizing the cashier because the line is moving slowly, we may notice that she is really engaging and caring for her customers. Or, we may see that she’s having a bad day and really can’t focus.  Or, we may notice that she’s got a difficult customer that requires extra attention.  So as she rings up our purchase, we may feel compelled to smile and say, ” I can see you’re working really hard.”  Or “Are you having a tough day?”  Can you see that by becoming curious and open to new information and insight, we often find a different response?

You have the power of your words available to you in every moment. You get to choose to love, support, encourage and heal yourself and all those around you.  Through this you receive more love, more joy, and deeper relationships. You get to contribute to the love and healing in the world.   Isn’t that a power worth embracing?

Do you wish that you could just lose the weight and be done with it??  One of the keys to living at your healthiest, happiest weight is to transform the beliefs that are keeping you stuck where you are.

On February 8th at SoulFood Books in Redmond, I’ll be sharing 7 common beliefs that really keep us from where we want to be.  During this interactive two hour class, we’ll be talking about these beliefs, how they impact your life,  and  how to finally transform them so they don’t have power over you anymore.

Come discover the first steps toward getting to the heart of your relationship with your body and food in a non-judgmental, loving way. Learn how to draw on the resources and answers inside of you to create real, lasting change.

To learn more or to register, click here: Why Weight?(a first taste)

I first became aware of my weight at age 13.  I started comparing myself to my skinny, blond friend who, in my mind, looked just like a model! Looking back at old pictures, I can see that I wasn’t fat, I just had a different shape.  However, at the time, I was convinced that I needed to be thinner and weight less  to be beautiful, popular, accepted. I started obsessing about what I ate and how much (really how little). I became very critical about my size and shape and dreamed of fitting into a size 4 or 6.  I was already 5’11″ and weighed about 145 pounds.  At the time I was a size 8.

Coupled with this, I came from a family that used food to show love, reward and comfort. (I don’t blame them for this; they were raised the same way, as are many of us) So, when I started to feel bad about myself, it was natural to comfort myself with food.  This was the start of a vicious cycle of weight gain and weight loss. I struggled with my weight in high school and my self confidence suffered as a result.  Even though I was an honor student and a talented musician, I just never felt confident in my body.

Throughout college I went from being super thin to gaining 25 pounds. I still believed the keys were diet, exercise, and self-control.  I just knew if I had enough self-control and chose the right diet and exercise, I would be okay! Throughout the next 20 years, I continued to try different diets: the low carb diet, a vegetarian diet, the non-fat diet, the Beverly Hills diet, the Zone, and Weight Watchers.  Although I learned the most from the Zone and Weight Watchers, I still found myself going up and down in my weight. I also tried all kinds of exercise from jogging to jazzercise to jumping rope.

I was thin at my wedding then gained 50 pounds with each of my two pregnancies. My husband affectionately named me “Buddha Belly” during this time!  I never really lost all of the weight from these pregnancies.

About 6 years ago, I  lost 30 pounds with Weight Watchers and had maintained my weight for about 6 months. Then, once again, it started creeping up on me.  I realized that I was somehow missing a piece of the puzzle.  Since I was already working as a spiritual counselor and teacher, it was natural for me to look at the spiritual piece of the puzzle. What I began to realize was that I hadn’t got to the root or the heart of the problem.

I began to go inside, to my connection with God (Spirit, Oneness), to get the answers. I discovered that I had self-sabotaging voices and beliefs about myself, my body and my weight. I found  that I often ate unconsciously when I felt bad, stressed, worried, or less than. I also discovered that eating would mask or cover-up my feelings so that I would temporarily feel better or not feel at all, and that later, I would feel worse than ever! I found that what I was really longing for was balance and feeling vibrant, present and truly alive in my body.  I wanted to feel healthy and energized!

For me spirituality is a daily practice, a moment to moment experience. I began  to create a spiritual practice for myself around food.  I used spiritual tools and practices in a new way to get to the heart of my weight battle and to transform it.  I began to feel more vibrant, alive and healthy.  I could feel real support from the inside, from God (spirit, oneness).

I knew that I wouldn’t be perfect 100% of the time. That wasn’t the point. I would, however, embrace this spiritual side of weight loss for it meant that I would continue to grow and to learn more about myself and my connection with God (Spirit, Oneness).  This has made all the difference in my relationship with my body and food, and I feel motivated to help others in the same way.

If you’d like to learn more about the Why Weight? program I created, please go to: http://inside-answers.com/offerings/classes-workshops/why-weight/

Often when we begin a new year, we are focused on what went wrong last year and what we’d like to change about ourselves and our lives.  Then we start the overwhelming and difficult task of figuring out how we are going to fix or solve all of these problems.  Our focus on fixing keeps us stuck.

Instead, when we begin from a place of gratitude and appreciation for the past year, we open the door to welcome more experiences that bring us those positive feelings.  Gratitude and appreciation not only feel good, but they give us a new entry point to the new year. Looking forward from this new entry point, fills us up and opens the door to possibilities and opportunities that we may not have been aware of before. It’s natural, then, for us to create and step into our vision for the new year.

I hope you will join me on Tuesday January 18th from 7 to 8:30 for this special Remembrance  session   “Gratitude and New Beginnings”.  Some people have likened Remembrance to meditation, but it is really a way of experiencing your personal connection to God (or “Spirit” or “the something greater that connects us all” depending on your individual beliefs).  To find out more and to register: http://inside-answers.com/offerings/classes-workshops/remembrance-basics/

This week Inside Answers is moving to a new home, just a few blocks away from the old location. I’ll be in a beautiful brick building on the corner of 164th Ave NE and NE 83rd St.

As you know, moving brings up all kinds of feelings: excitement, nervousness, stress and more. But it also comes along with a huge dose of hope.

Have you noticed that you don’t make any movement in your life without the hope of something better? Whether you move to a new home, move out of an old relationship, move into a new job, move into learning new parenting skills, move toward loving yourself more, you always begin with the hope that it will make your life better, happier, more wonderful.

Hope is the desire and the belief deep within us that something more is possible. When we connect with and follow that belief deep within us, we access the power to move or change.

So why do we feel such conflict when making a decision to move toward something new? We all have fears about leaving what we know to move toward something we don’t know. What we know often feels safe and comfortable simply because we are familiar with it.

You are probably familiar with the self sabotaging voices that show up just when you start to think about creating a change in your life. These voices say things like, “What are you thinking?” “You can’t really make this move or change.” “It’s safer to stay where you are.” “You are just going to fail again.” “You’re not strong enough or skilled enough to move forward.”

Take a moment and choose 2 of these voices (or choose 2 of your own). Say them out-loud and notice how they make you feel. Can you feel how they make you feel bad, sad, frustrated, afraid or discouraged? Can you feel how they also bring a feeling of hopelessness? Yes — hopelessness.

So we start out with all this hope that propels us forward toward a move or change to make our lives better, and then, those nasty voices jump in and convince us that we should just give up hope.

Don’t worry! Remember above I talked about the POWER OF HOPE that comes from the the desire and belief deep within us? Well, the power of hope is stronger than any of the self sabotaging voices you might experience. The key is to be aware of these voices and to know that if they make you feel bad they simply are not true.

I’d like to share a way to amp up your power of hope. I invite you to choose to think about something you want to move toward: a new job, a healthy body, a new home, a better relationship. Now, imagine you are already there — you are in the new job, you have a healthy fit body, you are in your dream home, you have a healthy relationship. Close your eyes for a moment and make it as real as possible. Notice every detail and how it feels. Feels really good, doesn’t it? You can increase the power by writing about your experience, drawing a picture, or telling someone who is supportive.

The power of hope always conquers those self-sabotaging voices. Just remember, to use the above exercise to ramp up your own power of hope when you are getting ready to move or change.

I would love to hear your comments and experiences! Please comment below.

I had the painful privilege of attending a memorial service for a truly remarkable man this week.  I will call him, K.  I was blessed to meet and get to know his wife through a local networking group.  She always spoke lovingly about him and you could tell that they were soul mates. I knew from the one time I saw them together at a picnic, that their love was real, authentic, genuine.  They had an ease with one another.

Ten days ago, his life was tragically cut short due to an accident.

I am writing about him today, not to focus on his death but instead to recognize and celebrate the way that K touched people’s lives.

As his son spoke at the memorial, he described K as quite a tall man, with a long graying pony tail and many tattoos. K rode a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Although he may have seemed a bit scary or intimidating when first meeting him,  in reality, he had the biggest, kindest, most generous heart.

So many people attended K’s memorial service — his family, friends, people he worked with, people he helped, friends of his wife and family.

As people stood up to share stories about him, what came through clearly was that he deeply cared for other people and always went out of his way to help them.

K was an expert in metallurgy and repairing cars and motorcycles. One of the guys that had a parts business, told how he always came to K to test out new products.  He talked about how brilliant K’s mind was.  He also talked about how he asked K to fix his wife’s bumper after hours one night.  K fixed the bumper in 45 minutes.  As the parts guy pulled out cash to pay K,  he refused, saying that he was happy to help.  K’s generosity of spirit really made an impression on this man.

His younger sister talked about what an amazing, caring big brother he was.  She shared all of the lessons he taught her and how she was a better person because K had been her big brother.  She said he always stood up for her. She talked about how he always made time for her and made her feel valued.

His daughter told of how much K loved his children and grandchildren.  When his grandson was 6, a baby squirrel fell out of a nest.  His grandson called him asking what he should do.  He left work to help his grandson with the squirrel — taking the squirrel to the nearest animal shelter for care.

The man he was riding with the day of the accident stood up to speak.  He talked about how K had spent 6 hours working on his bike the day before the ride, making sure that everything was safe.  Again, he wouldn’t take any money for his time. On the day of the ride, K made sure that this man rode in the rocking chair position — the safest position — because he knew this man was new to long distance rides. Because of K’s selflessness and care, this man survived the accident with few injuries.

As I listened to each of these stories, I could feel the pain of losing someone so beloved and treasured.  But I was also inspired by the way K had positively touched so many lives.  From the outside, K could have been judged as a tall, scary, tattooed man who rode a Harley.  But fortunately, after being with K for only a few moments, one felt his heart, his caring and his compassion.  One saw beneath the cover to the real story of the man — the story of a Harley rider with heart who made the world a better, more caring place with every breath he took.  He will be missed greatly, and he will live on in the hearts of everyone who had the privilege of knowing him.