Greetings!

I have received SO many emails from YOU along this journey. I am so grateful to be able to offer THIS experience to you. Please, continue to reach out. If you have anything to say at all, any experience that needs to be shared, or questions that linger unanswered, I love to engage with you more!

Now, for today’s practice:

Have you noticed yet, that it is all about cultivating the internal world to create the external world where you feel gratitude for all that is, as it is?

Here’s today’s thought: Stop depending on the external world to make you happy.

Say that again, to yourself: Stop depending on the external world to make you happy.

And notice how your body responds. 

This is imperative to practice being present to yourself. To celebrate each moment. And, to live with a sense of Gratitude. 

In the model of the Koshas, which I introduced in Week 1 Day 2, the  5th layer is called Anandamaya Kosha. 

Now say that to yourself: 

Ananda, or “Aaaahhhhnanda.”

Experience your body’s response.

Ananda means “bliss.” And this is bliss without reason or cause. The roller coaster of Life can be at points of Crisis or Celebration, or both, and yet, you know, feel, live, and understand, Bliss in each moment. 

This is the INNER work of Yoga.

Yogasana - Yoga Asana - or the Physical postures involved in the Yoga practice, these affect the outermost layer, or the Annamaya Kosha, the physical form, as the gateway to the deeper, more increasingly subtle layers of our experience: Pranamaya - energy (or breath); Manomaya - emotion (which is energy in motion); Vignanomaya - intellect or thought.

Through the INNER work, and through experiencing ourselves at each layer, we come ever closer to Ananda, that state of bliss, no matter what.

So now, say it again: Stop depending on the external world to make you happy.

Practice the meditation. https://vimeo.com/407005986/8c57d06d05

Notice sensations. Which of these sensations are “Gratitude?” Can you name them? Is there a “thing” - a reason or a cause - for those sensations? Or are they just THERE? Present? To Yourself?

Journal.

Our journey is coming to a close, but the inner work will continue. 

Be Well in All Ways,

Kristen

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