Women's Life Link Be Well, Be Happy, Be YOU!
So, every week, I bare it all (well, maybe not all!) and let you in on my personal and professional aha of the week. That one thing that seems to be really up, not only for me, but also for my world and all the wonderful people in it.
Happy weekend! It was a beautiful day here on the West Coast, sunny and pretty darn warm. One of those days you can’t help but get outside. And so I did. Took in the Waldorf Christmas Fair, had some lovely conversations and connections, picked up my veggies for the week and then came back to the farm for a few hours of meditation, manure meditation!
When I was growing up, I couldn’t keep away from horses. I was, for lack of a better word, obsessed.
And there were some fairly large obstacles in the way – I’ve lived in the middle of a large city, life was very busy and no one else in my family had the horse bug. But I was very persistent and eventually I started regular riding lessons and got my first job, which, of course, was at the barn, working with horses.
And during that time, I became well-versed with the meditation that is mucking out. I cleaned hundreds and hundreds of stalls and I began to love the feeling of it. The quiet, rhythmic action of it. It became a place of peace and of relaxation, and activity that dropped me into an immediate state of connection and awareness.
When my horse Diva came into my life, manure meditation became part of our daily routine, a place to connect and be together. And I noticed that the feeling that I’d cultivated there found its way into my other activities. I’d find that same peace and relaxation when I drove, hiked, danced, sang, gardened and even here, sitting at my computer writing to you. I realized that meditation is not just found sitting still but in any activity. It is a state of mind – a deep and permeating awareness and presence, a connection to the breath and to the body. I found it in mucking out – an activity that requires patience, a little skill and a whole lot of mindfulness. After my back injury two years ago, I became, out of necessity, even more mindful of my posture, breath and way of moving, creating an even more powerful experience. And I recognized how essential it is for our general sanity and empowered state of mind to include at least a few minutes of silent self-awareness and relaxation practice into our day whatever that looks like for each of us.
So, today, I would love to invite some curiosity about your favorite practice of movement meditation. Maybe it’s eating mindfully, walking with deep awareness through the city streets or a path in the woods, yoga or gardening. Whatever it is for you, explore the depths of this practice in connection and relaxation – even after thousands of wheelbarrows, I still receive incredible insight every time I pick up that manure fork!
Because it has been such an important part of my relationship with horses and myself, I’ve included manure meditation as the topic of one of the ten videos of my Modern Day Cowgirl 21-day Bootcamp, my brand new e-course that I told you a bit about last week. And I wanted to share this video from the course with you! It’s fun, short and insightful – and you get to have a little tour of the farm here and a lesson on picking manure. In case you ever wondered! Watch here. Enjoy!
This new online course is all about horses, and a whole new way of seeing and understanding them. Diva was, not surprisingly, a huge part of it’s creation and a star in the ten video series (she is a Diva after all!). What I realized when this course was creating itself (because that’s how it felt) was that horses and animals want to be seen for the powerhouses they are – teachers, guides and inspirations.
To your utter fabulousness,
Alexa
PS. My next Bonfire Session is coming up! I’ll be doing a group BodyTalk session on December 11th at 6:30pm PDT on Spreecast, free to my community and anyone who’d like to join in! This one is all about clearing any “old stuff” around the holidays, so you can have an even happier holiday season! Sign up here.
