10 minutes of guided gratitude for ourselves and the planet we love.

Reflections on how Lake Effect Co approached EARTH DAY (LIFE), how a sense of urgency kills joy, and how it all comes back to gratitude. 

I didn't really complete my thoughts around urgency, but I would suggest asking / looking around in your life - where are you placing urgency on things that don't matter to you, frustrate you, or create a sense of dis-ease in your being? How can you interrupt those patterns?

Please visit our Earth Life Hub, including our new Be More Wave Than Particle design:

lakeeffectco.com/pages/earth-life-2020

In this Easter / Quarantine episode of the All Tides Podcast, I share a 10 minute water-inspired meditation to help you go to the water, dip your toes in the water during your own imagined sunny beach day to experience Blue Mind, something incredibly important always, but especially right now in the face of so many interesting and intense stressors.  I also briefly share my thoughts on how to use this time, without shame/guilt, to audit what is and isn't working for you in your life, routines, habits, thoughts, etc.

If you want to skip the chat and get right to the meditation, head to 8:55.

I wrote and recorded this today after seeing that the lakeshore path outside my apartment was now blocked off and all the tools I've been sharing with others about how to create "Blue Mind In-Place" were now my reality. With no access to my powerful cold water swims and sunrises by the water to ground me each day, I wanted to arm myself for the weeks ahead. 

Resources:

How to Create Blue Mind In Place post

Blue Mind Immunity post

I (Katherine) am also a Life & Success Coach, NLP Practitioner, Clinical Hypnotherapist, EFT &TIME Techniques Practitioner, so if you feel as though your inner game might need some work and you don't know where to start, I am INCREDIBLY happy to point you to some additional resources. I have such a diverse background and have been certified in or worked with dozens of modalities / tools that I would LOVE to help you create the right set to help you build a life and a version of you that feels true to your soul. Reach out to [email protected] <3

Coming to you live from day 7 of the shop being closed due to the coronavirus, and this has felt like the longest and shortest week of life - also, maybe the most challenging and yet peaceful. I wanted to share a reflection of the state of things and what I’m doing to stay healthy both physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

I touch on:

- how this feels like a shift from individual to collective focus

- how to navigate the pressure to do alllll the things right now: meditate, workout, read, start a business. I suggest turning to trusting your own gut to know what you need and when you need it.

- the beauty of both giving and receiving support and looking at life through the lens of “how can I serve others / the collective?” and knowing you can do this best when you first are taking care of yourself.

- Is this all about healing our heart chakra?

- affirming: “I am safe, I am supported. People want to see me succeed. I am part of something larger than myself. I am taken care of. I am enough. I have enough. All is well. I trust the process. I trust the universe. I trust God. I trust myself. I trust I always know what to do.”

MY constants that have moved me through this week:

- Each night checking in on the blue mind book club. Seeing the ocean is cathartic. Hearing about water feels beautiful. facebook.com/wallacejnichols

- Movement - walks, yoga, whatever i feel like vs. having a set routine. THOUGH following a routine if that’s what is right for you.

-D aily meditation & prayer

- Lots of writing - business and otherwise

- Sporadic breathwork

- Checking in with people - receiving and giving support when I can. Creating strong boundaries around this as well.

- Laughing & getting into the feelings of joy. AKA: dolphins in the venice canals. All the really heroic and kind gestures being shared. UPDATE: Apparently the dolphins aren't real. SAD.

- Cold water swims as the ice is now off the lake

- Telling myself that i’m safe and healthy, as often as i need to hear it.

- Daily hypnosis and sound healing frequencies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXQ7-6XopUk

And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja4tqY2LfZk

TIPS

I wrote a post on this, so take a look there fore more links. I also surround myself with beautiful things that keep me high vibe: crystals, flowers, cards, etc. I like to let God connect with me through them.

Praying / meditation.

Repeating the affirmations listed above.

Breathwork

Movement

Nature / water

Immune-wise:

-Limiting alcohol, sugar, and dairy to the best of my ability. Not doing great at this, but I know that’s just numbing.

-Start the day with Athletic Greens or celery juice

-Mushroom Superfoods: http://fbuy.me/oWRd7

-Wellness Formula

-Essential oil bomb: on guard, frankincense, citrus

-CBD

-Floral elixirs

-Zinc/copper

-Hawaiin Fern Hydrosols: Blood Purifier, Antibiotic / Bio monitor, and emotional alchemy

-Stay in and stay safe online. All orders ship FREE for now!  https://lakeeffectco.com/

Take some deep breaths, get comfy, and enjoy the magic of the water for a 10 minute guided meditation. 

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Aren’t ripples, waves, and disruptions to the surface of water simply part of being the water experience? Instead of seeing those changes at the surface as all you identify with, can you also recognize that you may actually be the entire body of water, including the depths, the stillness below, the movement, the calm. All the changes, conflicting parts that somehow fit together perfectly? These are all just gentle undulations in the scheme of lake things.

Life, meditation, most experiences can also be viewed in this way - the changes and ripples are expected but as we are the whole body of water, and not just the surface, we can be in touch with the stillness below the surface. We can acknowledge the constant change, with ebbs and flows. There is calm available in and below the surface of our minds.

The water reminds us of the power within ourselves. Allow the water to be with you, empowering you and guiding your actions as you flow through every day. You have a reserve of mindfulness within you that you can call upon. You can go to the water - literally and physically or just in your mind - to come back to this knowing.

When we simply sit, and be, we affirm our ability to relax in awareness and in acceptance, in this moment at hand, all our the unique qualities of mind and body, just as the water are held, truly cradled and contained by our grounding earth, reflecting our beautiful sun, moon, stars, trees, rocks, clouds, sky, birds, light, moved by air or wind, bringing out and highlighting its sparkle, its vitality, its potential, moment by moment…

Hey friends, how are you doing right now? There’s a lot of weird energy around the coronavirus situation, and instead of allowing ourselves to get wrapped up in this overwhelmed state, I am urging you to take a breath and check-in with yourself to see how you’re feeling. I’m not downplaying the seriousness of the virus, we have a responsibility to be on top of the situation and be smart when out and about, but I am suggesting that we bring focus on keeping ourselves healthy - physically and energetically.

In this week’s episode of The All Tides Podcast, I am sharing how I went down a social media induced fear spiral about all the news, how it quickly affected my energy and physiology, and the headspace that helped me shift out of it. I share what I feel like was the message my soul wanted me to hear about surrender and faith. Ultimately, it inspired me to come up with an approach on how to navigate my life and stay true to my purpose during these times, even when my financial livelihood feels compromised and it’s tempting to join the mass panic.

This week’s question is:

How can you support yourself to stay clear, calm, and ok during this time?

After my post-breathwork “energetic breakthrough” that I shared about last week, I found myself feeling pulled back into a lower state of mind a few times over the weekend, where I felt energetically heavy and unaligned. This felt like extreme contrast to the high of my newfound “truths” and what I was choosing to believe in, and it felt disappointing to have fallen back into this state. My initial response to this lower state of being and just flat out funky energy was to switch to judgmental thoughts of shame -- that is until I went to the lake.

It was after time by the water that I realized that it is natural for one moment to feel divine while the next can feel like energetic chaos. It’s not a sign of personal failure or defeat, but rather a huge beam of clarity that can only come by feeling the contrast of something that isn’t in alignment with yourself.

In this episode I walk through two instances of shifting out of that state, what it required and what I learned, and ultimately how I feel like one such visit to the water changed my state of mind allowing a really interesting series of events including, a surprise visit from Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, the author of The Blue Mind, who came out of his way to visit the shop while he was on the way to a conference. While chatting,he provided me with tremendous insight on my work and the importance of differentiation mindset vs. mind state which felt tremendously serendipitous after the shift of my own mental state by the lake that morning.

Listen into this episode to hear more about the difference between mindset and mindstate and the importance it plays in shifting your energy.

In this episode, I chat about about:

In this episode, I mentioned the following quotes and resources:

This week’s question is:

Which set beliefs do you need to change to allow for an improved mind state?

Welcome back to The All Tides Podcast! I started this year, yet again, putting big pressure on myself and getting lost in the frantic trying-to-do-all-the-things energy, which was not how I was planning on starting this year. So, I decided to sloooooow right down and come back to myself by focusing on my breath and spending time with water. The cold kind.

After completing about a month of focused breathwork along with one particularly intense and spectacular workshop, I feel like I am no longer swimming upstream (you know I love a good water pun!). I’ve been downloading so much wisdom (is it mine? Is it God? What’s happening? ;) ) and have written pages upon pages in my journal. So, I am sharing some insights with you in this episode.

I invite you to listen in to learn what taking up space, water, breath, and business have to do with one another.

In this episode, I chat about about:

In this episode, I mentioned the following quotes and resources:

This week’s question is:

What are you doing when you’re deeply connected with life itself?

Lake Effect Co. is officially partnered with 1% for the Planet! Our work with FLOW, business practices, and community connections more than qualified us to be a 1% for the Planet company, and we are so proud to be a part of this worthwhile organization.

To celebrate this new partnership and the first sunny weather after weeks of cloudy weather in Milwaukee, I went out for a lovely walk to view a truly epic sunrise that ended up throwing my morning a bit sideways, which meant that I had to choose a less sustainable lunch option than I usually would. This lack of planning on my part sent me into a downward shame spiral on my own consumption habits, which led me to feel a bit of hopelessness around the state of the environment.

It can easily feel like we’re making no environmental improvements no matter what positive sustainable changes we make in our lifestyles, which in turn leads to feelings of shame and hopelessness. This helps no one, and I want to help put a stop to it right now!

Listen in to this episode as I talk about green-shaming (both humans and businesses) and about how gracefully striving towards more sustainable options is always the best way forward.

In this episode, I chat about about:

In this episode, I mentioned the following quotes and resources:

This week’s question is:

How can you gracefully strive for a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle?

In the last episode, I talked about how following a few pings allowed me to do something for the business that I’d been wanting to do for a few reats, which was managing a booth at the Milwaukee Boat Show. So, I did the thing, and I am not sure if it made the impact I was hoping for...

The weather made traffic at the show lower than expected and there were a lot of mixed energy of vendors and attendees at the show that felt unaligned and negative to me. Instead of getting caught up in the frustration of the event not meeting my expectations, I let myself surrender control so that I could focus on being present and allowing my energy to flow where it wanted to so I could instead dwell in possibility. It was definitely a good lesson in that even though the value in presence doesn’t immediately show, doesn’t mean that it will never show.

In past times when the disappointment of unmet expectations came I allowed myself to be sucked down by the influx of frustration and negative energy. This time I decided to approach it differently. I instead devoted my energy to gratitude. I was forced to loosen up and be present and let go of control of everything except for the control of my own alignment. Sometimes it comes down to setting and resetting the right expectations and trusting the divine timing of life to let us know what we need to be present for.

So, please listen in as I go on about all things energy of presence and how that contributes to our legacy.

In this episode, I chat about about:

In this episode, I mentioned the following quotes and resources:

This week’s question is:

What would your legacy look like? Are you living presently, and if not, what is it costing you? Where can you slow down to allow yourself to be in the present moments?