Whether you love, tolerate or dislike the holidays, it is important to keep your energy replenished. Most people can acknowledge that, regardless of their feelings about the holidays, this time of year can be draining, especially if you are the type of person who is a caretaker and puts the needs of others first. What can you do to “pivot to positive”?
So what do you typically experience during the holiday season?
Free Teleclass: Bring Back the Joy: 3 Quick Tips to De-stress your Holidays
To meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer to the universe. I call it stillness, but it is a jewel with many facets: that stillness is also joy, and it is love. —Eckhart Tolle
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, autumn is a time associated with the metal element, which includes the theme of letting go, grief, and coming back to core in the way of trees losing their leaves. At the same time, for many of us in Western cultures, it is a time when we are ramping up, getting back to work after summer.
Do you find you get overwhelmed with “So much stuff to do!” at the same time, you want to resist, maybe curl up and rest as the days grow shorter, nights longer?
That’s been the main repeating mutter in my brain this last week. While I absolutely love (and choose) everything I’m working on, I’ve had abundant opportunities to work on the stress of overwhelm.
So today, I decided to “practice what I teach” and take some time to remember the first of the Way of Joy Laws, Within Motion, Stillness, Within Stillness, Motion. “To experience stillness in your life does not require shutting down your senses or building a barrier to the chaos of an energetic, alive and unpredictable world. Through the power of your breath and attention, you can sustain an awareness of that inner space of quiet constancy, the peaceful Observer, while the world around you spins and twirls.” (excerpt from The Way of Joy).
This is one of my favorite methods to embed this intention in your body, to live it from the inside out.
What do you experience when you’re in that place of inner calm?
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Author and Founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness Program, Vicki Dello Joio is a transformational speaker, life-changing workshop leader and show-stopping theater performer whose brand of brilliance is motivating people to claim their birthright of Joy.is a transformative speaker, life changing workshop leader and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to increase awareness, transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
The season of Winter calls on the wisdom of the Water element, in its myriad of forms from raging rivers to delicate crystalline snowflakes. In the same way, you can cultivate your ability to adapt and flow as you move into the hush of the season.
Associated in Traditional Chinese Medicine with the kidneys, winter is the season to nourish and support this important organ, which regulates and balances water and fluids in your body.
The seat of the adrenal glands, which produce the fight / flight response, the kidneys are associated with the emotion of fear. Whether that fear has to do with growing fully into your own power or wrestling with your “inner critics” or external challenges, this is a perfect time of year to turn and face those voices, while keeping the inner flame of your consciousness alight to sustain your vision of where you want to go.
For me, while I’ve been thrilled to see registrations literally pouring in for my upcoming New Year’s event, it’s been vital to not get bogged down by old fears. So many participants from last year’s Nourish the Flame: From Resolutions to Results have contacted me recently to re-register and report the amazing things they manifested this past year as a result of their experience in that one short afternoon. Powerful stuff! Ironically, as I take in the impact of what they report, I find myself facing my same old fears. So time to nourish my kidneys, get over it and get On with it.
SAVE THE DATE! DEC 29 Nourish the Flame: A FREE Winter Workshop to Transform Ideas into Reality and Resolutions into Results. Bring in the Joy for 2014!
“Renegade-Woo” Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness Program, brings together East Coast Attitude and West Coast energy consciousness as a master teacher, transformative speaker and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
Metaphors for Autumn: Pruning, releasing, letting go, balancing, contraction, discernment, self-regulation, making space, inner listening, remembering your core. — Way of Joy
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, Autumn is a time to come back to your core essence and summon the courage to move ahead as the Natural World becomes more stark. For me, this is actually being a great time to tap my creativity and fine-tune my vision.
For example, I have been waking up super early these days with some fun ideas for my upcoming (Free!) teleclass, Meditate This! Transformation in a New York Minute, for folks, including myself, who want to pivot quickly out of overwhem and stress into a Supercharge of SURGE.
Here is a quick autumnal qigong practice to keep you on track.
Vicki Dello Joio, founder ofThe Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness Program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to increase awareness, transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life. On-line videos you can use to supercharge your energy in less than 4 minutes a day: From Muck to Mastery.
Isn’t it amazing how our dreams can point to places in our lives where our unconscious may be calling us to focus? For me, after taking some “down time” these last few of days, I woke up this morning with a clear sense that it is time to shift back into gear as I prepare for my final Fringe Festival performance series in San Francisco and gather together what is needed to launch my next Masterminding with Qi series, Wise Wild Women over 50.
What are you kicking into gear this week? If you leave a comment, I’d LOVE it!
Vicki Dello Joio, founder ofThe Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness Program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to increase awareness, transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life. On-line videos you can use to supercharge your energy in less than 4 minutes a day: From Muck to Mastery.
Explosion of positive energy. Photo by Łukasz Strachanowski
Did you know that Boundaries Dissolve Barriers? That is the theme of my upcoming workshop, Conscious Connections: From Drained to Dynamic! as well as a core concept in The Way of Joy system. I am so excited to be presenting this workshop for the first time (in just two weeks!) that I literally couldn’t think of what else to blog about today. And I gotta say that for me to be excited about looking at boundaries and what they mean actually signifies a Huge personal shift.
You see for me, boundaries have always been my “weakest link”. I used to think that setting a boundary meant I had to create a barrier that would isolate me from other people, which was not something I ever wanted. As an empath, I value connection, compassion and love. But how I acted that out was by merging with others and losing myself in the process. Then I would end up feeling depleted and drained.
When you don’t have boundaries, you end up either having so much empathy for another that you lose touch with your own wisdom, as I did. Alternately you might erect barriers to “protect your space,” or ”take care of yourself” and end up being isolated or disconnected. This is the burden of the “lone wolf” or the “I am a rock, I am an island” mentality — also draining and maybe a little depressing.
Over my years of practice with energetic and martial arts, I discovered that in very concrete and literal ways, healthy boundaries are actually a key to true intimacy and connection —whether in personal close relationships or in work or business contexts. When those boundaries are clear, clean and energetic, you can truly connect with others in authentic ways. Then true synergy kicks in with an enormous amount of vitality — the kind of empowerment that gets you up and out to do the things you know you are meant to do in your life.
When you have set good boundaries, do you tend to merge or become stand-offish?
Vicki Dello Joio, founder ofThe Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness Program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to increase awareness, transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
Whether you love, tolerate or dislike the holidays, it is important to keep your energy replenished. Most people can acknowledge that, regardless of their feelings about the holidays, this time of year can be draining, especially if you are the type of person who is a caretaker and puts the needs of others first. What can you do to “pivot to positive”?
