inner space | Vicki Dello Joio

One Strategy for Running a Successful Home Business: Take Time for Not Doing

by Vicki Dello Joio | Sep 19, 2011 | Mind Body Vitality

As I’ve devoted energy into my own business over this last week, I’ve noticed that I’ve been living under the specter of “one more thing-itis.” It feels like I’ve been running and running yet somehow still staying in the same place. One part of me is pleased by the illusion of perpetual productivity, while another voice inside insists that it’s important to balance doing the work I love with some time for reflection and replenishment, a “space in-between,” where I might balance the expansion of my outward energy (or yang state of activity) with times of internal focus (or yin state of receptivity).

Yet I resist. Too often in that space of non-doing, I end up feeling guilty or, god forbid, non-productive. Then, because my brain has hit a wall and I just have to do something, I find myself sitting in front of the tube watching instant play reruns of old tv shows. While this choice may succeed in silencing the “do-do” (doodoo?) mutter in my brain, it still doesn’t feel very good nor do I end up getting recharged.

In a chapter of my book The Way of Joy, I write about a principle I call Balance Brings Harmony and how often I’ve been struck by how many students and friends have said they feel ashamed to admit they have taken time during the day to read a novel, do a crossword puzzle, or take a nap. For most people, even vacation time is barely long enough to stop the internal buzz before picking up their “real life” once again.

By contrast, Wayne Dyer, author and inspirational speaker, has said, “It is the silence between the notes that makes the music. It is out of the silence, the gap, or that space between our thoughts that everything is created, including our own bliss.” Opening internal space, then, actually gives birth to our inspiration.

I remember hearing a story by the brilliant, heart-filled Jungian storyteller, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, about Picasso in his garden…

Want to have some fun telling stories? Interested in getting up on stage and performing? Join Vicki in her Playback Theater Improvisation class beginning Jan. 28 (with final class performance May 20)

Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Book: The Way of Joy: An Evolutionary Process to Awaken Inspiration, Focus Intention and Manifest Fulfillment, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.

A Natural Remedy for Stress

by Vicki Dello Joio | Sep 5, 2011 | Mindful Living

Maybe taking a deep breath isn't such a bad idea...

Do you get annoyed when someone reminds you to breathe? Does it sometimes feel like your stress is the only thing that is keeping you together? Sometimes, I think that our lives are so hectic that we end up panting even when we are not running.

Much has been written about the health benefits of meditation, particularly in the area of stress reduction. I believe that, on an energetic level, any practices that create an internal opening—whether they be sitting meditation or automatic writing, moving Chi Kung, yoga, or prayer—create a sense of space, both in the psychological sense of “taking space” and physically inside of the very cells of our bodies, because as we breathe deeply, we oxygenate our blood. We can then open up the energy bound up in stress and transform it into something that can serve us instead of drain us.

Do you ever find that with a single mindful breath, you find life begins to flow again, regardless of how fast things seem to be going?

Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The 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: An Evolutionary Process to Awaken Inspiration, Focus Intention and Manifest Fulfillment, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.