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Starting of a deep exploration of LOVE

1/24/2023

That 4 letter word that can be very loosely used and even leave a vial taste in your memory bank, depending on your past and what you've gone through.

Taking baby steps and seeing for yourself, by personally exploring this 4 letter word, you will be starting the process of discovering your pure, authentic heart. For real!

Welcome to the start of this exploration!
So happy you are here!

Here are 4 - just over a minute videos to get you going on this exploration, with the 4th video being an Action Step so you can start making a big difference in your life right away! Pull up your courageous pants and begin :)

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Make your own Organic liquid Oats with no added oils or preservatives and let's experiment if it's an anti-oxidant too!!!

1/11/2023

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Do you buy liquid oats?
Being super lazy I must admit I used to, regularly, until I read all of the ingredients that are put into it.
One product even puts in pea powder which I'm allergic to and I'm sure others are as well, for it's in the same family as peanuts. If you have an allergy to peanuts you are probably allergic to peas too.

I now make my own Organic Liquid Oats and here's how:
(sorry for it being in 3 short "reel" videos, I hit stop instead of pause while filming the process) and that's what I ended up with...

Here are the links to the reels:

part 1 (42 seconds long)
part 2 (3 seconds long)
part 3 (41 seconds long)

The recipe in in the description of part 1

I love your no quitting attitude,
Lori

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2 winter foraging opportunities

12/16/2022

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Hi there!

Would you like to do some foraging this winter?

1. Foraging pine trees: Are you needing extra vitamin C in order to stay healthy or prepare your body for any surgery?

Not only are pine needles high in vitamin C and make great tea for colds, they are also full of anti-oxidants which are powerful in preventing early aging.
Pine nuts are delicious and commonly used in pesto.
Pine pollen can be used in replacing a quarter of the amount of flour in recipes.
Pine bark is an edible food source and has been for hundreds of years. If you harvest it deeply from a living tree it will not be able to heal itself and be damaged forever so it's best to harvest the inner and outer bark from a recently fallen tree, no longer than a month of it being fallen. So after a winter storm if there are any limbs or trees that's the best time to harvest the bark. It can be ground for flour (after drying it) and added into your baking or boiled into your soups, etc.
Pine resin/sap is also edible with medicinal properties, and has been used as a waterproof sealant and fire starter.

2. Foraging for answers:

such as; how to deal with the person that's annoying you.

How many times have you gone for a walk needing to let off some steam and hopefully, by some miracle, the answer to your biggest problem is going to pop in and be resolved?

Here's 3 ways to make that walk feel more productive, with some relief:

hug a tree
yell at the sky
call in your invisible 'angels' for help - How? think of one of your 'angels', feel their presence, and say "HELP" (it's true, you are never alone).

More on the foraging walk for answers coming soon...

Love,
Lori

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What does success mean?

12/11/2022

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Let's go a lil deeper....

What inspired you?
Leave a comment below...

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On meditation..

12/8/2022

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Click to set custom HTML

What is meditation?
In a broad, rational sense, meditation is about living in the present moment. But each person's experience of the present moment varies, and so naturally, the exact meaning of meditation is also unique. A wise man once said, "As many minds, so many paths." Just in the way that two people can watch the same movie and get two entirely different things out of it, meditation also yields subjective experiences.
Many of us aren't used to really looking within: at our thoughts, our intentions, our truer selves. And when things around us are going on full speed, it can be even more difficult to be aware of what's going on within us. So, one way to think of meditation is as an intentional simplification, a slowing down of sorts.
Why meditate?
Victor Frankl once said that, "When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves." In life we are often faced with unwanted circumstances -- a thwarted goal, an insult, an injury, or even the death of a loved one. Often times, nothing can be done to change things on the outside, and despite understanding that rationally, it proves difficult to truly accept things the way they are, and be at peace with them.
Meditation is about accepting that challenge to change ourselves, and transforming our habits of interpretation. By learning to understand and focus on what is real, we go beyond our conditioned view of reality and experience the subtler truths of our existence, in the process becoming more connected with what really is. Fortunately, that which is real is continuously manifesting itself in this present moment, and in every present moment. It's as simple as that: just by letting go of the past and the future, we remain with our awareness of reality and increase our ability to embrace that reality.
What to "do"?
Consider a shaken-up, muddy glass of water: it's hard to look through it, but if you let it sit still for a while, the mud goes to the bottom and the water remains clear on the top. Similarly, in meditation we still our minds to experience -- with increasing clarity -- that which is real for us right now.
As an object of attention, some people suggest simply watching the breath, the way it normally is, and if thoughts come up, objectively acknowledging them like a guard outside a castle, but not participating in them. As a Zen master once humorously put it, "In meditation, leave your front and back doors open. Let your thoughts come and go; just don't serve them tea." Our accumulated impressions, surfacing as thoughts and feelings, often dominate our experience of the present moment, but by simply observing them and "not serving them tea", we slowly change our tendency of conditioning experiences with the past and future.
Even more simply put, we begin to observe reality the way it is right now. - Awaken circles

What inspired you?
Leave a comment below...

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You can grow new brain cells

12/8/2022

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Video from KarmaTube

What inspired you?
eave a comment below..

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Do you feel like you're being heard?

12/5/2022

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If you aren't, as with everything... you can only change yourself..

Here's some fantastic writing called :"Don't let the call drop", that may be of help for you:

"Learning How to Listen
To listen entails a fundamental letting go of self-centeredness. We have to be willing to put down our own thoughts, views, and feelings temporarily to truly listen. It's a wholehearted, embodied receptivity that lies at the core of both communication and contemplative practice… We learn this kind of deep listening in meditation, discovering the stillness of awareness. With practice we can access it in the midst of conversation. The more we learn how to listen, the more available we become for others and for our life in general…
Completing the Cycle
Checking informally through voice and body language helps us assess the general connection in a conversation, yet it relies on an unspoken assumption. If I ask, "Do you understand?" and say, "Yes," all I really know is that you think you understand. As the saying goes, the single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. To make sure the call hasn't dropped, we need a more reliable method, an authentic, lightweight way to confirm that we're actually hearing one another. When listening, we want to know that we've heard correctly, and when speaking, we want to know if we've been understood. In difficult situations, the need is even greater. "You're not listening! You don't understand!" How many times have you said (or heard) this in the midst of an argument? Just because we're speaking the same language doesn't mean we understand each other. We say one thing, they hear something else. They say one thing and mean something else. It's amazing how quickly we can get entangled! When someone says, "You're not listening," part of what they mean is "I don't feel heard right now." It's often a plea for empathy and a sign that we've lost connection. To get back on track we first need to reconnect. Let's look at two examples of how this might play out in a conversation.
PERSON A: "You're not listening!"
PERSON B: "Yes, I am! I heard everything you said."
PERSON A: "You're not listening!"
PERSON B: "It sounds like you're not feeling heard. I'm really trying to listen but let me try again."
OR,
PERSON B: "Okay-I'd really like to understand more. What could I do or say that would help you to feel heard?"
Which conversation is more likely to move toward resolution? In the first instance, each person may feel less understood, which usually spurs us to assert our position more forcefully. This leads to less connection, more assertions, and so on. Most of us know how awful it feels to be caught in this kind of a vortex, how quickly things devolve and how painfully they can end. Notice the difference in the second example, when we find some willingness to listen with empathy. Here, the speaker acknowledges the other person's experience and tries to reconnect. Doing this depends on our ability to lead with presence and come from curiosity and care rather than fall back into our default modes of defending or blaming. The main tool here is using a verbal reflection to "complete a cycle" of communication. We listen, then get confirmation at key moments that what one person hears matches what the other person meant, that message sent equals message received…
The Roots of Empathy
At the heart of verbal reflection is empathy: an intuitive reaching to understand another's experience on its own terms. Without empathy, the reflection will feel empty. Spend time with a giggling toddler or a puppy and something inside softens. Stand near someone who is angry or panicked and we feel it! This is the phenomenon known as emotional contagion. Babies begin to cry when they hear other babies crying. When we see that toddler or puppy hurting, something inside us quivers. We feel a compassionate impulse to reach out. Today we are learning more about the neurological and evolutionary bases of empathy. Infants need empathic connection for their brains to develop properly. One of the most groundbreaking findings for the neurobiology of empathy was the discovery of mirror neurons, which provide an immediate kind of somatic empathy. Mirror neurons fire when we see another being perform an action. Part of our brain is silently enacting the movements of those around us as if we were doing them ourselves. This includes facial expressions. Our brains inwardly mimic the emotional expressions of others; they're wired for empathy. Empathy is at the heart of listening. When I closed my eyes and took the time to really hear Jeremy, I was shifting gears to empathy. Empathy plays many functions: it can create healing and build resilience; it can stimulate healthy bonding; it can de-escalate strong emotions, facilitate understanding, and help resolve differences.
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from their point of view.
Empathy literally means to "feel into." While it can be expressed in many ways (silent listening, verbal reflection, touch, action), empathy is primarily a quality of presence in the heart. It's a receptive attunement to felt experience, our own and others'. We could say that empathy is a union of presence and the intention to understand. It's a genuine, caring interest that allows us to reach into another's world and understand their experience. Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, described empathy in this way: Empathy is a complex, demanding, strong, yet subtle and gentle way of being...it means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive moment to moment to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person. This resonant, receptive faculty of empathy is one of the primary qualities that makes us human. Given adequate safety, sustenance, and other basic needs, the natural tendency of the human being is toward empathy and compassion--to feel with another.
Three Dimensions of Empathy …
True empathy is three-dimensional; it is at once cognitive, affective, and somatic. Cognitive empathy is about taking the other's perspective. It's the ability to put ourselves in another's shoes and understand intellectually how a person feels. Affective (emotional) empathy means being able to feel along with the other person. It goes beyond a cognitive grasp of another's internal world to an emotional experience of it. Just as a stringed instrument vibrates with harmonic resonance, so too our heart can tremble in resonance with the suffering or delight of another. The third kind of empathy is somatic empathy, which is the ability to sense another's experience in an embodied way. This is a visceral, gut-level understanding… Deepening empathy is not merely a cognitive or intellectual exercise, though it begins there. It is an endeavor to inhabit both an emotional and an embodied understanding of another's experience. Without these complementary dimensions, our empathy will be incomplete. When cognitive empathy is divorced from affective empathy, it can be used to manipulate or harm others, even to make torture more effective. True empathy is the integration of all three of these domains. It can bring healing, resilience, and transformation. Empathy challenges the view that we are separate and invites us to reach for our shared humanity with others. The first step is connecting more deeply with our own experience through mindfulness. Self-awareness is the basis for empathic connection. As we experience the inner landscape of our life with more detail and richness, so grows our ability to understand the inner lives of others…
PRACTICE: Empathy
Try practicing this in conversations that aren’t about you. It’s often easier to access empathy when you’re not under fire. Remember that empathy is not in the words; it’s a quality of presence in your heart. Aim to understand the other person’s experience and let the words flow naturally.
SILENT EMPATHIC PRESENCE:
Practice listening completely, with the heartfelt intention to understand and “feel into” what the other person is saying. How is this for them?
PARAPHRASE:
After listening, summarize the gist of what you’ve heard. What are the key features of what they’ve said? Sometimes simply repeating one or two key words can be enough.
EMPATHIC REFLECTION:
After listening, check that you understand by reflecting what you hear is most important to them. This may include how they feel and/or what they need. What matters most to this person, beneath the story? How can you help them feel heard? Remember to phrase your reflections as questions, checking to ensure you’ve got it right. There are many other ways to show empathy. We may express empathy through a kind word, with loving touch, or by sharing how we feel in response to what we hear. At times, we can n show empathy by expressing interest with open-ended invitations, "Tell me more...!' or "What else?" My student Susan teaches high school art and told me the following story. Avery, a freshman who is usually cheerful and bubbly, began showing up early to class. Susan struck up a conversation and realized how much Avery was struggling. They agreed to meet later that day to talk, when Susan had more time. "I don't want to go to this school anymore," Avery said. She was thinking about dropping out. Susan noticed the impulse to go into problem-solving mode, an old habit of hers. Having just finished our week's lesson on empathy, she paused and decided to try listening instead. "Tell me more. What's going on?" Avery began to open up. She was being bullied. She felt sad, alone, and depressed. Every time Susan noticed the urge to fix or solve, she attended to feeling the weight of her body and her feet on the floor, and resisted the temptation to offer solutions. Susan focused her attention on what Avery was feeling and reflected what she was hearing. Avery began to cry, oscillating between speaking, sobbing, and awkwardly making eye contact as if to check whether all of this was okay. There were a lot of tears, tissues, and long moments in which Susan simply held Avery's gaze. Avery spoke more about her feelings of sadness, loneliness, and not feeling valued. "I've felt like this since first grade," Avery mentioned. "Was that the first time you felt so sad and alone?" Susan inquired. No, it started when she was three, when her dad left. They looked at each other, realizing they'd hit the root of her pain. Eventually they explored what Avery might need at school. They came up with some strategies to address the bullying. Avery decided to stay in school and to make a public art piece for the classroom about depression. This is the power of empathy. We can receive each word expressed, each emotion revealed, with a listening heart. When we come from curiosity and care instead of our default, habitual communication strategies, healing and transformation are possible."

Source: Say What You Mean by Oren Sofer

Starting of a deep exploration of LOVE

Make your own Organic liquid Oats with no added oils or preservatives and let's experiment if it's an anti-oxidant too!!!

2 winter foraging opportunities

What does success mean?

On meditation..

You can grow new brain cells

Do you feel like you're being heard?

The Story of Plastic...

Your thriving's easy without bottled water, why?

Thyme to feel ultra confident and in control!

Lori

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