Welcome to our new website - reflections on change...

Welcome to our new website! Many of you have been using our website for years. Most of you listen to our podcast and may have been surprised by the change when you came to listen. We hope you were happily surprised. I imagine reactions will range from happy excitement to disgruntlement. I know I get irritated when things are not in their usual place in the grocery store. It's so easy to go in and head straight for what I want when everything is in its usual place. Please let us know if you can't find what you are looking for. Almost everything from our old website is here, but simplified. Hopefully the new website will be easier to navigate.

Creating something new fills me with a happy, fresh energy. There's a joy in the process of something new emerging. But bringing in the new also means letting go of the old. It reminds me of when get got our latest car. We really needed a newer car and it was so much nicer than our old one. But there were some sentimental pangs - the old car had taken us on so many memorable journeys and served us well. The old website was, well, old. It didn't represent us well anymore. But it was built with love. And the hardest thing was that in the transition we lost thousands of comments left by our visitors. Each comment was meaningful and special to us. Chances are you won't notice that your comment is missing, but if you do, know that we loved hearing from you and hearing your thoughts. Do feel free to comment again!

Last but not least, we built our old website ourselves. You might even miss that "homemade" look, but it was high time we had a logo and a more "professional" face for the world. So here's a shout out to Yesh & Tash for our beautiful logo and new website.

Deep Centering Guided Meditation

Are you feeling scattered or ungrounded? Is your mind going in many directions at once? Do you feel you've lost your center? This latest podcast episode - "Deep Centering Guided Meditation" - should help. As you listen, you will be guided to relax, and then to let your mind sense a center point in your body. Allow this to happen easily, just letting the awareness of the center come to you. It could be anywhere -- in your abdomen, heart, head. Let it be whatever naturally comes. If it shifts during the meditation, that's fine. It's can be just a vague sense of a center. This center will be the reference point you return to when you realize your mind has wandered. This meditation is a recording of the meditation I did with my meditation group. We all enjoyed it. Leave a comment and let me know how it went for you. As always, I am happy to answer your questions.

NOTE: Please go to our Podcast page to listen to the this and other podcast episodes.

Relax into Sleep Guided Meditation

How often do you go to bed tired, but with your mind busy and your body restless? Our gift to you from our iSleep Easy app, this Relax into Sleep Guided Meditation is designed to help you fall asleep more quickly and sleep more soundly. It can take some time to unwind from the stress of the day. Your mind can be quite active as this “unwinding” goes on.  This meditation helps you to unwind more quickly and easily. It gently guides you to relax, let go of the concerns of the day and allow yourself to drift into sleep.

You've undoubtedly noticed that the more you worry about falling asleep, the harder it is. It helps to let go of the concern about falling asleep and focus on simply resting instead. You can’t make yourself fall asleep, but sleep will come on its own once you are relaxed. Just listen easily to the words of this meditation and allow your mind to drift.

Do our meditations contain "mixed messages"? (How to listen to our meditations!)

I just responded to an email with a great question -- in fact, I'm surprised I've never gotten this question before. It's an opportunity to remind everyone how to listen to our guided meditations. Here's the Q&A -- Q: I like the app (Simply Being) but what the guide is saying there is somewhat confusing : on one hand it's "open awareness to whatever is happening right now" and on the other hand "easy, there is nothing to do". These are 180 degrees different states of mind, as far as I interpret it.

A: Great question! The words are meant to help you experience a relaxed, meditative state. It is impossible to do that through precise instructions, so the instructions can seem like mixed messages or a paradox if they are taken too literally. The phrases are really just gentle prompts to allow the mind to do what it can naturally do -- let go. "Open awareness to whatever is happening right now" is not so much an instruction as a description of a natural state. If there isn't openness -- if you notice resistance to what is happening or some attempt to change it, you can let that go. The phrase "easy, there is nothing to do" is to encourage that letting go. (Resistance to and manipulation of what is naturally happening involves effort, "doing".)

You can just listen easily to the meditation, not trying to make sense of all the words. That's why we say in the instructions, "just let the words wash over you".

For those of you who do not have our apps -- I am copying our How to Listen instructions below. These instructions apply to all of our meditations, whether they are on an app, a CD or in the podcast.

"Listen easily to the guided meditations, allowing the words to 'wash over you'. You don't need to understand, or even hear, all the words. The words and phrases aren't instructions that are meant to be followed precisely. They are just gentle prompts to the mind."

Summer Solstice Guided Meditation

Four times a year the solstices and equinoxes remind me of the cycles of change. As a lover of light, I always look forward to the long days of summer. And yet, when the solstice arrives, things are turning the corner. After this longest day, the days will get shorter as darkness increases.  This, plus the fact that we have listeners from all over the world, and half of the world is experiencing the shortest day, caused me to wax philosophical. What started as a meditation to celebrate the light of summer morphed into a meditation reflecting on change and how we can relax into it. Our latest podcast - Summer Solstice Guided Meditation - is an opportunity to relax into change and view our current life situation from a broader perspective.