Category: Self-Compassion

Beyond Body Image – with Sil & Eliza Reynol...

Concerns about body image and physical appearance weigh heavily in the consciousness of our culture and, left unexamined, have a way of generating a tremendous amount of suffering for young women (as well as humans of all ages and genders). Enjoy this short video from mother-daughter team Sil & Eliza Reynolds as they speak about the discoveries they’ve made and the healing they’ve experienced in this area.

Sil & Eliza are the authors of the inspirational book Mothering and Daughtering: Keeping Your Bond Strong Through the Teen Years.

 

A gift of pure rest

No matter how things are unfolding for you at this time, you can receive the secret transmission of the stars, the sun, and the moon: everything here is path, nothing is out of place, and no mistake has been made.

Though it may appear otherwise, you are not broken and are not in need of fixing. Your heart is being polished, your body is being washed clean, and waves of wholeness and integration are re-ordering your world.

Let go of the weary path of needing to change, to transform, to heal, to awaken, to be more spiritual, to be a better person, to accept everything, and to hold it all together. For just one moment, give yourself the gift of pure rest.

As you sink into the core of what you are, open to the breath as it moves in and out of your lungs. Allow your entire being to be infused with your commitment to self-kindness and to no longer abandon the wisdom-field of your immediate embodied experience, exactly as it is.

As things settle inside and around you, you may start to sense the movement of another substance within you, passing in and out of your heart. But, friend, this is no ordinary air. It is love. Come to end one world and to begin another. Please stay close.

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Living from the Inside Out: The Importance of the Thir...

In a special Insights at the Edge sponsored by Spirituality & Health magazine, Tami Simon interviews the founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington. They converse about Arianna’s recently published book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder, and what it means to truly incorporate the principles of the Third Metric into one’s life. They also speak about the increasing visibility of devotion to the inner life in modern culture, as well as how women can take charge of institutions to create a better future. Finally, Tami and Arianna discuss periods of suffering and how cultivating gratitude can help us move through them. (55 minutes)

Perfect in Our Imperfection, with Colin Tipping

In this video teaching from the free Self-Acceptance Project, Tami Simon speaks with Colin Tipping, founder of the Institute for Radical Forgiveness Therapy and Coaching and author of the international bestseller Radical Forgiveness: Making Room for the Miracle. Colin cofounded the Georgia Cancer Help Program and Together-We-Heal, Inc. with his wife, JoAnn.

His titles with Sounds True include the book Radical Self-Forgiveness: The Direct Path to True Self-Acceptance and the audio program The Power of Radical Forgiveness: An Experience of Deep Emotional and Spiritual Healing.

 

 

Holding Your Experience

Will you make a commitment to no longer abandon yourself and your present experience? That no matter what thought, feeling, emotion, or sensation arises, you will offer it a home within you, setting aside the conclusion that it is a mistake, a problem which must be fixed, or evidence that something is wrong with you?

Begin with a sacred pause, touching whatever is there, and state your intention to stay close. Offer a heartfelt “yes” to your experience and allow it to be exactly as it is, cutting into the momentum of billions of lifetimes of turning from the orphaned ones knocking on the door of your heart. Call off the war with yourself, and see that arguing with reality will only ever lead to suffering for yourself and others.

From this ground of seeing and allowing, you could then enter into the most radical act of all: to meet whatever arises in your experience with what Rumi calls a mighty kindness. While it seems so simple, it is in fact a revolution in practice. Open your heart to your rage, your shame, your despair, and your sadness, gently holding and cradling it as you would a sweet little baby, unconditionally receiving it as a raging expression of reality exactly as it is. See that it, too, is path—come only to awaken one of the qualities of love within you.

It is through this wild kindness that you may finally see just how much space there is around your experience, how whatever appears—while very vivid, colorful, energetic, and even disturbing—is luminously transparent, and not nearly as solid as it seems. It is in and through your intimacy with your embodied, present experience that it will self-liberate, without any effort on your part, into the pristine, primordial awareness and love that you are.

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Keeping the Faith Without a Religion

On this week’s Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon interviews author and poet Roger Housden, creator of the New York Times bestseller Ten Poems to Change Your Life. With Sounds True, Housden has recently published the book Keeping the Faith Without a Religion. Tami and Roger have a conversation regarding the extraordinary access contemporary peoples have to different faiths, as well as why increasing distrust of authority has driven many away from traditional religious practice. They also discuss how it’s possible to maintain one’s faith even in the midst of pain and suffering. Finally, Housden speaks on poetry and its inherent relationship to faith. (67 minutes)