Hey connected community! Today is a wonderful day.  Thank you to my members who joined today’s group mindfulness session on Zoom! Enjoying that hour of shared peace + love is the highlight of my week. Our weekly mindfulness sessions are open to all Patrons, and feel free to keep your camera off or your microphone muted if it makes you more comfortable during the session (I mute everyone during the guided/meditative portions so people may breathe/move around freely without disturbing the group). I decide what our focus will be based on requests from Community and what’s inspired me within the last week. If there’s anything you’re interested in learning about regarding mindfulness, meditation, or other stress, anxiety, and energy management skills, just let me know in the comments below or in a direct message here or on Snapchat <3 I guide all the sessions to make them easy to follow and participate no matter what your experience level may be.

Here are some great concepts + skills we’ve practiced and discussed together so far:


Mindful Breathing
Mindful Walking (walking meditation)
Mindful Eating
Mindful Body Scan
Mindful Thought Observation 
Counting Mindful Reps with a Timer (strengthening focus)
Gratitude Meditation
Relaxing + Loving Mindful Body Scan
Awareness of Surroundings 
Deep Relaxation
Counting Meditation
Silent Meditation
Contemplation Meditation (balancing feminine + masculine energy)
Breathing Patterns for Increasing Energy
Breathing Patterns for Relaxing (slowing heartbeat)
Breathing Patterns for Stress Management
Breathing Patterns for Focus/Balance
Belly Breathing (abdominal breathing)
Breathing Techniques to Strengthen Lungs + Diaphragm (wave breathing)
Breathing Techniques for Immunity (breath of fire)
Relaxation Visualization (imagination training)
Tree Protection Visualization (cultivating security)
Safe Space Visualization (strengthen confidence)
Stopping + Looking Deeply Meditation
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And so much more! Each session we enjoy a wonderful group discussion about everyone’s mindfulness experience and it’s so awesome hearing everyone’s different perspectives. We conclude each session by sharing our individual intentions for the upcoming week, usually picking 2 things to work on by extending something (improving/increasing/doing more of something, ie: sharing more love, spending more time with family) and reducing something else (creating limits around or doing less of something detrimental, ie: using social media less, eating less sugar).

You’re always welcome, message me anytime for any questions about our group events on Zoom!

I love you!
L.

Helllllooooooo flourishing community! Today is a wonderful day. I’m excited to welcome this month with inspired feelings of strength and groundedness. This community has grown so much over the past year, and everyday my skills + practice develop more and more! I’ve been healing some very deep suffering for the last few years, and this community has been an irreplaceable element of my healing process. Writing these posts gives me an opportunity for consistent, daily practice, and I’m really enjoying feeling my patience, clarity, and wisdom bloom in vibrant color as a result. I wake up everyday with deep gratitude for the self-awareness and grace I have gained through my mindful practice. I feel abundant with creative energy. I feel overflowing with helpful servitude to others. I feel friendlier with the suffering I have been struggling with for so long. I am able to access and express more of myself. I accept and love more and more of myself each day, which exponentially increases my love and tolerance for other people. 

These small improvements have noticeably changed my daily demeanor, and certainly for the better! Our presence introduces us before we speak. Even when we’re alone, we can bring our own energy into the space we’re in. In stressful situations where it’s challenging to share positive feelings like confidence or friendliness, I’ve found it helpful to focus on just offering the situation stillness. 

During today’s group meditation session on zoom, we practiced a few forms of walking meditation. For one meditation, we practiced stepping very slowly, matching one step with one inhale and one step with our exhale. After each complete breath, we had taken two steps. For our second meditation, we kept our breathing rate the same but increased our steps to count 6 or 7 total steps with each complete breath. Breathing in while taking 1-2-3 steps, and breathing out, taking 1-2-3 steps. Some people feel more comfortable including an extra count on either the inhale or the exhale, I personally count 3 for my inhale and 4 for my exhale. I felt like the slower meditation cultivated more concentration and calmness, and the faster stepping one was energizing + invigorating! A special thank you to Paul + Bugs for your awesome feedback about your meditation experiences ^_^
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There are so many ways to make practicing mindfulness fun! We can organize a time to practice meditation alone or with friends, we can incorporate mindfulness into our daily activities to make our time more meaningful, or we can transform unpleasant or negative experiences into enjoyable learning opportunities anytime we focus our full awareness on the moment we’re currently in. This moment has the potential to be anything we make of it!

Hellloo helpful community! Today is a wonderful day. Thank you for being a part of this community and a dear friend to me. I’ve felt waves of all kinds of emotions around the global pandemic, especially when it comes to the horrific conditions our healthcare + service professionals are working in right now. The most effective contribution we can make in this crisis is with our wellness. Unless our service is critical to others, we can choose to stay home and protect other people from potential harm. We can optimize this choice to serve others and serve ourselves at the same time. We have an opportunity to really choose what we give our attention to, what we do with our time. We can choose to practice and improve our mindfulness skills. We can destress. We can learn to become more skillful with our emotions + reactions. Mental training is a lot like physical training. We can either do 100 push ups, or we can’t. If we practice, our strength will improve. If we train, we can transform + extend our abilities in incredible ways. Mindfulness is how we train our mind. 


“How will you react on the most stressful day of your life?” I heard Sam Harris ask this question on his meditation podcast, and it really inspired me to use this lockdown time to develop my mind. When dealing with any change, especially in an emergency situation, all we really can depend on is the mind we’ve built and the skills we’ve acquired.

Heyyaa favorable community! Today is a wonderful day. Everyone has been doing fantastic with the daily challenges I’ve been sharing on Snapchat ^_^ The other day, I challenged our community to practice nonjudgmental thinking. For one day, we would try our best to refrain from judging ourselves, and we would release from caring about what other people think of us. This challenge inspired me to pull out some rollerblades that I had thrown aside after awkwardly trying them once before. The fear of falling and humiliating myself in public had held me back from wanting to improve on the skates for years. But with you in mind, I strapped on my protective gear and hit the streets. And I had a really great time! Such a great time, that the next day I went out and did double the amount of skating as I did the first day ^_^ Some members told me similar stories of positive results they had from practicing non-judgment, but some people reported a lot of difficulty standing up to their critical thoughts. When we can clearly pick our negative thoughts out of our consciousness, we can stand strong against our negative thoughts and stop blowing everything out of proportion. During our daily meditation, we can practice listening to our thoughts, and we can practice self acceptance. Then we can carry that energy with us through our daily activities. If we encounter any problems, we look for a solution without adding more frustration or resisting the situation at hand.

​As soon as a critical thought enters our awareness, we can place our hand on our belly, take a deep breath in through the nose, and say, “I accept myself.”

Hiioo flourishing community! Today is a wonderful day. We can ascend difficult moments by being fully aware of them. I felt very busy-minded for parts of today. During my meditations, intrusive thoughts would lead me away on thinking tangents. I found myself having to apply a mental effort to concentrate more deeply + actually return my focus to my meditation. What was most helpful in centering my attention was connecting to my breathing, my body, and my surrounding environment. Filling my body with rich oxygen clarifies my senses and allows me to tune into the stimulus around me. Even with my eyes closed, there are many wonderful elements to experience fully in each moment: the sound of the wind outside, the sensation of my legs against the couch, the drumbeat of my heart in my chest. Concentrating on these small details added both richness and stillness to my perspective. Eventually, my inner voice calmed and transforming into clear-headed confidence of being. For the rest of the day, my whole self felt more connected to the present moment. Every time we flex our concentration muscles, we strengthen our ability to reconnect with that skill. Every time we push ourselves to look a little closer, think a little harder, and feel a little deeper, we can access that much more of the here and now.

Hiii empowered community! Today is a wonderful day. I am so grateful for each and every one of you during this stressful time <3 Tonight I broke down and cried over the enormous loss that our world is experiencing right now. Imagining anything happening to my loved ones opens my heart with so much compassion for all the people around the world that have lost someone special to the global pandemic. We must be mindful of others during this time. We can educate ourselves and become conscientious of the consequences small actions can make. We can be actionable and free ourselves from fear by doing our very best in each moment. We can cultivate a sense of calm by connecting to our body and our breath.

Breathing in, I am breathing in
Breathing out, I am breathing out

Breathing in, I am
Breathing out, Here

Breathing in, I am
Breathing out, a Miracle

Breathing in, I am
Breathing out, Alive

Breathing in, I am
Breathing out, Grateful

Breathing in, I am breathing in
Breathing out, I am breathing out

Hellloooo health-conscious community! Today is a wonderful day.
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I’m sure everyone is feeling some awareness of the Coronavirus and I wanted to extend my support to anyone with anxiety, fear, or unease about any concerning news. Please don’t be shy to reach out in a message ^_^ Today I went to the store and there was a strong, nervous energy. Where I live, there’s a shortage of essentials, so people were upset on the phone and rushing around in a mild panic. I’m pretty sensitive to people around me and it was especially challenging to stay grounded + in my normal state of ease. I decided to use the tension as a reminder to balance the uneasy energy around me by offering my joy, kindness, and compassion. I cultivate these energies often so I feel strong when sharing them. I practiced making eye contact and smiling at people when I walked by them, and people looked relieved to have a source of goodness to focus on. It can feel unnerving to see empty shelves and people wearing masks, but everyone always deserves kindness. We can try our best to be mindful and considerate of others so that we can all have the best chance of staying well. 

Let us realize what precious blessings we have, so that we may act in reverence. We can expand our gratitude until we feel inspired to be good to others. Take care of yourself and your family, contemplate non-fear (I’ll be explaining this concept soon), and eat lots of fruits + veggies to boost your immunity. The best defense is from within. This is true for collective panic + fear too, so cultivate strength with meditation and good, thoughtful actions. 

Hello enriched community! Today is a wonderful day!
I spent over 8 hours studying art today! I’ve recently doubled down on my techniques + comprehension, and all the time I’ve spent learning more about the fundamentals of art really reflects in my actual practice. I’m proud of my progress with my studies today, but the process wasn’t all carefree and positive. There were moments where my hand was physically tired, times when the exercise seemed threatening with its difficulty, or times when I mentally was bored, but I just kept breathing and pushing through, as best as I could. This steady, focused resilience parallels in mindfulness. In the times when we struggle with uncomfortable feelings, we can remain focused and simply push through. 

I find drawing + painting to be an excellent way to strengthen my mindfulness muscles. When I’m sketching a challenging subject, I have to stay focused and concentrate on the information I’m painting. If my mind wanders, my art will reflect my distracted attention. If I’m painting something very tedious and I zone out, my work will likely not be my best. If I use the tedious moment as inspiration to create a mindful breathing pattern to elevate the experience, I can connect to my breath and mindfully enrich the moment with oxygen and energy. 

Next time you find yourself challenged, frustrated, bored, or otherwise dissatisfied, bring your awareness to your breath. Observe your inhale (How is your breath? Long? Short? Deep? Shallow?), set intention on your exhale (ex: I am free. I am happy. I am non-reactive.)

Helloooo zen community! Today was a wonderful day! I finished a week-long project of planting a garden in my new backyard! At my previous house, my mama and I had built an incredibly abundant garden full of beautiful flowers and foods! I grew strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, chinese eggplant, baby bell peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, and some herbs for cooking. So when I moved into my current house a few months ago, I was super excited to utilize the space in my backyard to create a vibrant garden + meditation area. 

This backyard is much larger than my last, so I had a lot of fun planning + landscaping it into a lush, inspiring area. The residents before us left trash, pots, and all sorts of random items everywhere, so the first step was clearing all the non-organic matter. We had to hire professional landscapers to help us trim + remove some of the overgrown areas, and they helped open up the area for all our new plants! The whole project has been a ton of work, but everyone worked so hard and had such a great attitude, it was a great opportunity to practice mindfulness skills. 

We don’t have a sprinkler system set up yet, and my garden hose was too short to reach any of the plants, but after I finished planting all the new additions today, I knew I had to water them to help them not get shocked after transplant. I had to fill my watering can up, walk over to each plant, and water each individually, some plants more than once (my watering can only holds enough water for one medium plant). I easily could have gotten frustrated or annoyed ay the tedious labor, but instead, I set my intention to find satisfaction in the moment I was in. I focused on appreciating the fresh air. I found fulfillment in each breath. I walked with gratitude, feeling appreciation for my healthy body. I found fulfillment in each step. With each trip back to the hose to fill my watering can, I found fulfillment from living deeply in the present moment. 

No matter what action we’re doing, if we connect to what’s around us and bring our awareness to the present moment, happiness will arise naturally. We don’t need to achieve all our goals or seek a certain level of success to be happy. We can live a very fulfilled life, simply by touching the many wonders of life around us in the present moment. 

Over the last few days, I’ve been focused on an assortment of paintings + artistic projects. As I learn + improve my artistic technique, I can’t help but compare my practice of painting with the practice of mindfulness. When I’m painting, I can be lazy and abstract, leaving behind texture + traces of haste on the canvas. This can still be a beautiful painting, but not useful if we’re trying to have a smooth + skillful effect. This is similar to when we speak unmindfully vs when we are careful in our speech; if we speak unconsciously, we can leave behind emotional scarring that disrupts how smoothly our relationships run.

When I paint, I can also be more meticulous, taking time + using my awareness to focus on the end of my paintbrush to navigate the difficult angles of my subject. I will devote my free time to working on paintings I want to be extra impressive; and our mindfulness skills are developed with the same careful attentiveness + commitment. We can consciously invite happiness in and touch joy in any moment of our life. Doing this is an art. When we practice mindfulness, we can be focused + conscious of our actions, allowing us to access our true, most authentic self. Being our most authentic selves is an art. Even with the same paint colors, everyone will paint a different picture; and the same goes with happiness, so enjoy the process of discovering your style of feeling positive. What makes you smile? What gets you excited + energized? Share that joy with other people, express your talents, and amplify your version of happiness out for yourself, and for others. 

We offer our happiness to others, and this is an art. We can offer kindness to a friend, through a smile, a reassuring message, or through our supportive presence; however we choose to do this, is an art. How we extend love to our pets, to our loved ones, and to ourselves is an art we can practice improving more and more every day. Our life is our canvas, and our actions + perspectives +  behaviors create a unique masterpiece in each and every moment. 
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