Author: jillelkin

This workshop is at capacity. If you are interested in the next one, please email me for information.

Have you noticed how moving your body affects your emotional and mental well-being? Or how deepening and slowing the breath brings a little more quiet into the mind, perhaps gives you a peaceful feeling? In this series we will explore postures, breath practices, and meditations to invite joy…. and welcome our innate, true self. Joy. Gratitude. Freedom. Compassion. These are all part of who you are. Does that mean “Positive vibes only”? No. We still must acknowledge and leave room for what is present, in every moment. But as we acknowledge what is present, we find space for it…. within the greater presence of joy and well-being

I saw this Instagram photo that Judith Hanson Lasater posted about contentment. This really spoke to me- especially at this time of year. The stores are filled with people making purchases, hoping to buy happiness. We spend hours planning activities, meals, and ways to spend time with family and friends… all to chase joyful moments down, and photograph it, to prove that we are happy. But how many of those times bring true contentment? When we chase contentment down, hoping to grasp it and keep it, it usually slips away.

What if we were to feel into and recognize our own true contentment? It is not by chasing it, but by coming into a stillness and gently inviting it to bloom. Here is the secret: deep down, we are already content. Under all of the busy-ness, we are, at our essence, filled with contentment… Yet, ironically, we can’t recognize this truth to our own contentment, because we are frantically trying to find it by doing more, when it is just the opposite that is true. It is time to undo. It is time to steep in the deep stillness of being and allow the true recognition of real contentment to arise.

I had the most remarkable experience today. My first time in a float tank- 90 minutes (or possibly an eternity…) of incredible subtle body exploration and Yoga Nidra bliss. Each nuance of movement and each awareness of sensation became my whole world. Thoughts and feelings filled my mind and body as each one was explored in the infinite field of nothingness that was so bafflingly full and vast….. and then my finger gently brushed the wall of the tank, I briefly felt connected to the world as we know it, before drifting back to the universe of the other….. stillness, sensation, energy…. peaceful bliss and unified completeness.

I am not yet sure how or where I will integrate these discoveries into my life, but this feels like the kind of experience that will create change.

Gravity holds new meaning, time is somehow different, even the awareness of my own physical presence….. I feel indescribably….. alive.