Meet Beth
Born to sing, join many voices together and explore the depths of consciousness, Beth Martens’ life thrives on it
Love alone is the healing force.
This week is about how to consciously heal, rather than just to wait for it to happen…by accident.
Healing happens because life’s natural course from wounding, set backs, disappointments, shockers is to restore and regain equilibrium, peace.
But because we live in atmospheres that are the majority not healing places, the least of all being the hospitals and the doctors will tell you that, we don’t have many opportunities awake, only asleep!! So we are mystified by the simple (but not easy or common) process it is, requiring simple ingredients like total relaxation, peace, quiet, safety, wamth – the same things you would give an infant – basic nutrition.
We have to take our health into our own hands, and learn how to assume responsibility for a change. The writing is on the wall about the medical system being overloaded, and we have not even approached the greatest crunch it is going to experience. Start storing your health nuts for the winter.
HOW?
By proactively understanding what is actual optimal for your health, nutrition and exercise, not to mention the most important of all, community connections and perma-cultural interdependencies.
And the fact is, no matter who you hand your health over to, no one can take care of it like you.
But guess what, we’re right we can’t do it alone.
We can’t easily be held accountable to our own health, and I’m not sure I know the answer to that, other than it is. If you’re a real self-starter, go-getter, really in love with something, then you can assume this for a time. But even the most aware people still use the guidance of others to walk them through what is too close and energetically enmeshed and embedded to distinguish.
If you’re one of the 44 people who decided to take on this commitment to yourself, I’m holding you accountable to your intention to do a 12 Week Challenge and show up for yourself 12 times in 12 weeks. And if you can’t make the classes write on my Facebook how you otherwise made it happen for you, I will try to give you credit, because I know some of you are facing major hurdles in caring for yourself. Please don’t email stories!!
And chances are that’s because you are a caregiver in some way or another!
So I’m rooting for you.
And also telling you about November 6 and the Louis Riel School Division that is hosting the YOGA FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN’T SLEEP
How to Relax and Sleep Well, So You Can Contribute Your Goodness to the World, and Feel Like it Was All WORTH IT
YOGA FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN’T SLEEP
For a limited time only, to those who are getting my newsletter, if you sign up for this course right now, in the next 48 hours, I will throw in a Next Step consult at only $47 (HALF OFF) so you can get a handle on what to do with all the amazing things you’re going to learn about yourself in the Yoga for Sleep course.
When you are wondering which direction to take with your work…
When You Are Wondering Which Direction to Take with Your Work:
Three Unexpected Approaches
When you get stuck with your work, especially if you are self-employed or otherwise responsible for moving forward with your business, or within your organization, it’s tempting to forge ahead with what we already know to be a to-do list as long as your arm…or worse!
If you hit the wall, feel yourself going in every direction at one time and need to get to the heart of what you need to do, here’s three strategies you might not think of that will totally take you to the next place.
1. Play
When you’re in the midst of trying to push ahead and slog it out and get on with it, especially if you feel like you’re traveling uphill all the time, you have to break away and be disciplined, for a change, about making time for creative play – as much discipline as you have for your work.
Apparently Albert Einstein regretted not playing enough, and he’s a pretty smart cookie from whom to take cues.
We came to earth for many things, but when we play we let go of all the ways we can logically think through to an outcome, play is open-ended, is just in a state of positive (but unformed) expectation.
And if you think it’s not productive, the most successful people almost always recommend time to play and be creative. I often thank God that one of my principal interests is in music, which makes me feel “productive” while innocently playing around with sound and being stunned by the frequencies and cosmic creatures with which I can tune.
When we play we are the Creator. We are that all the time, but during play, we know that, in our body, our cells and especially the vibration of the heart rises during play. We take risks knowing we might fall, bounce, be caught, and even possibly smoosh to the ground once in a while. But at the end of the day, the play makes the rest of it worthwhile, so if you need permission, go play!
2. Body Talk
All the intelligent things we think and can reason through and figure out and engineer, do not even begin to compare with the intelligence of each one’s body.
Flesh and blood are not smart all by themselves. However, by becoming disciplined, i.e., learning to love our bodies with our conscious awareness and take cues from what we sense, feel and know to be true of the flesh, we will have several good effects on our quality of life:
a. Be more grounded.
b. Be quicker to pick up on and find remedies when messages are a manageable “volume” of the bodies many voices.
c. Be tuned right in with the very source of the body’s intelligent language of communication.
Bodies all by them selves do not give messages.
When we attend the messages, we have attended the electricity of life itself.
The Entire Point of Doing Yoga:
…to be tuned in with,
learn to listen to
and correctly interpret
your body’s speak and sing,
but most importantly to learn to speak and sing to the body
with kindness and healing, in nourishing ways;
at the most essential level,
where you are alive.
If you did that,
you did your yoga.
and can rely on it to receive all the shit
and to transmit all the antidotes to the shit.
3. Expect the Positive
This seems so trite, and when people give me this advice I always feel like blowing it off because of it’s superficiality. I feel like telling them to shut up and get a real life. But when I heard it this time, I realized how much tension I was holding around which efforts were going to create results, that I never stopped to hope for the best.
That state of hope-fullness is a happy opening to energy, availability on your part to remain engaged in the upward spiral of curiosity, rather than the downward one of cynicism, resignation and all the natural gravity would take us.
Expect the Best Without Being Attached to How it Looks So You Can
a. step way out of your comfort zone to find the space to grow.
Do this when you are:
b. Stuck not knowing what to do next.
c. Unsure if your efforts are going to realize results…or not.
Don’t White Wash
Being positive isn’t a white wash, but at a moment where we can catch a ray of pure life coming through us – our very own loving attention, is where in innocence we can hold the space for our self
…to have some ease, some comfort, some success, some pleasure and some self-esteem.
All the best to you with that!!
Please sign up for the newsletter at www.bethmartens.com for a limited time offer for private and group yoga coaching and personal training.
Coming up on the horizon:
Kirtan Concert – Family Friendly Potluck – October 2nd, 5 PM
Yoga For People Who Can’t Sleep – November 6 – All Day
Yoga Cream Pie Squared – November 19 – All Afternoon
yoga@bethmartens.com
How to Use Yoga To Quiet Your Mind and Get to Sleep
How to Use Yoga
To Quiet Your Mind and Get to Sleep
An Excerpt from “Yoga For Peeps Who Can’t Sleep” Workshop, Video Series and E-course by Beth Martens © 2011
On a Personal Note
A blog always begs something personal I feel. Otherwise why would someone care to read the things I write? Information is cheap and everywhere. But what is really of value to our community are the things that are closest to us, dearest to our hearts and totally in our face.
These past few years as a yoga teacher has challenged me to focus my teaching practice, and put a stop to the energy spent trying to communicate poorly to everyone, and to focus my approaches to yoga practice on niche audiences – for who I am, what I do, based on what I’ve done and where I’ve experienced.
And regularly, over the course of most of my life I have experienced bouts of insomnia. For example on my last of eight trips to India nearly a decade ago, I was awake for seven days in a row, on a plane, in airports, in taxis on treacherous roads that regularly are blocked by avalanches, on a bus overlooking steep cliffs, hermetically sealed in some hyper-starched sheets in a hotel in New Delhi and stranded in the mountains waiting for cloud to break and fly out of a valley where I studied eight times.
And so it’s been a life-long study of how to use my yoga practice not just to raise energy, but also to wind it down, sooth the nervous system and soul, to meditate when sleep is impossible and get the incredible benefits yoga has to offer those who can’t sleep.
Sleep Mysteries Abound
You should know first and foremost that:
Meditation will save you and help you cope through insomnia periods, not to mention prepare you for being cured of what prevents you from this basic birthright.
Near Life Experiences
Facing death earlier in life, about a decade ago with cancer, brought me to this conclusion over and over again: There is work to be done, and better to do it while it is a choice and while you have the health and mental stability to do it in peace and at a reasonable pace. Ultimately, becoming at peace with our own vulnerabilities and inevitable death is the best sleep cure ever.
Relax Don’t Do It
A major component of this work begins with relaxation as a basic life skill, an arena that yoga has hands down made science.
Relaxation and good sleep require practice like any other skill, so take a moment …even right now, to simply breath and stretch.
Get to the Heart of It
While it is very important to determine what specifically is keeping you awake, you can practice yoga right from the start, with a few basic guidelines:
Don’t Do Power Yoga at Night
Mantra is for the Busy Mind
The mind is a tool, like a hammer. If you had your hammer out at every turn, banging away mindlessly, there would be a lot of damage and debris along the way and maybe a few nails would get banged in too.
That’s why combined with yoga practice, mantra is a way of doing yoga that is appropriate for inducing sleep with sound. In 2007 I released The Yoga Lullabies, a collection that is for adults, but works good on children too.
Mobile Sleep Allied Force
Sanskrit mantras, from the ancient yogic traditions, having been repeated for thousands of years, and with consistent practice like everything, would be your mobile sleep allied force – your “little” army of cooling energy. Mantras also build fire, so some guidance with kirtan mantras should be considered when using for the purpose of getting some shut eye.
Alive and vibrant through their countless repetitions over the centuries, mantras contain the codes for states of mind that span all of the cosmic and archetypal realms, not to mention all the positive intentions of those who have repeated them.
“Yoga, which deals with the energy of the mind and body, can help alleviate sleep disorders…The most notable of these [health benefits of yoga] are increased circulation, better flexibility of muscles and joints, relaxation, and improved sleep,” saysVirgil D. Wooten, M.D., the medical director of the TriHealth Sleep Centers at Good Samaritan and Bethesda North hospitals in Cincinnati.
And finally for this short blog:
You should consider, right at the get-go when tackling sleep issues, that sometimes being awake is very important, that the keys they mystery holds for you could be the makings for evolution beyond imagination.
So…then.
“Transform your sleep into meditation,”
From the works of living enlightened master Paramahamsa Nithyananda, India (from YouTube video in links section).
Go to www.yogacourses.ca for more information, and email me yoga@bethmartens.com.
Send me a TEXT at (204) 227-9157 if you’d like to do Spontaneous Outdoor Yoga this summer!
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