by Alison Bristow #shaktishaman #lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave
Luscious Lightwave 💖
Any spiritual practice, yogic or otherwise, can bring us to the portal of the Great Mystery. At that juncture, only courageous hearts continue. Others become addicted to the practice or abandon it altogether.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave
Luscious Lightwave 💖
As women we must guard against the inherited tendency that would cause us to allow being insecure to feel more safe than being in our power.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga #lusciouslightwave
Luscious Lightwave 💖
Fyi...This is not about isolation but about rich, succulent, authentic, satisfying, respectful, and ethical relating from a place of wholeness.
The new sexual revolution
is not about gender.
It's about the marriage
of the male and female
right within our own being
thereby recognizing our innate,
self-contained wholeness
regardless of gender.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave #thenewsexualrevolution
Luscious Lightwave 💖
Send your heart out through your mouth so it can be heard by other hearts.
My hands are in Shakh (or Shankha) Mudra. Shankh is the Sanskrit word for "shell," specifically a conch shell. You know the ones you pick up on the beach and hold up to your ear to hear the sounds of the ocean. The conch shell is played ceremoniously every morning at the opening of Hindu temple doors. This mudra symbolizes opening your inner sanctuary to hear the wisdom of your own heart. Because the thumb (fire) is connecting to the middle finger (ether or space), it is also activating and clearing for the throat chakra - especially when practiced in conjunction with chanting OM. As I taught and practiced this mudra last week, I found its real significance for me was making a pathway for my heart to make its way out through my mouth. This mudra tends to clear away the coverings - anger, fear, blame, shame, guilt, self-justification - that often obscure pure heart-communication. Interesting too that the Sanskrit word for the throat chakra - Visshuddha means "purity." Imagine a world where everyone was speaking their heart and it was being heard and felt by the hearts of others. Wow. Now that's something to imagine. Shankh Mudra is practiced by holding the left thumb with the right hand and touching the tip of the right thumb and left middle finger.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave
#shankhmudra #heartwords #heartsounds #heartcommunication #visshudha
Luscious Lightwave 💖
My life is fueled by the same force that moves planets; therefore it is a magnificently, holy experience. Whether I'm cleaning the refrigerator or sitting in a church pew, my life is a living prayer.
I said something of this nature to a client yesterday and it helped me too. This is the essence of the Bhakti yoga tradition and rings of the zen proverb: "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." Saint Paul's instruction to "pray without ceasing" also describes this way of being. I call it visceral spirituality. It's real, tangible, nitty gritty, and alchemical. To me, any other way of being leaves us to move through the human experience trying to gratify the senses until our being ends or suffer through until we die off to eternal bliss in a place called heaven. Both, being turning into non-being, and death serving as an instant gateway into bliss, are impossible as far as I can see. To merge the human and divine here and now is heaven on earth. When the ego-mind is transcended there's nothing to desire and the grass is never greener over there.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave #bhakti #visceralspirituality #heavenonearth #zenproverb
Luscious Lightwave
The mind loves to label because then it no longer has to try to really see what's before it.
There's a Pratyahara practice given in one of BKS Iyengar's books that focuses on withdrawing from the labels the senses put on everything. The second something is labeled the journey of discovery is over. This is very comforting to the complacent mind but debilitating to the soul. It cuts us off from expanding and imprisons us in the same pattern of perception. Try not labeling for a day. Even simple things like flowers, road signs, bodily sensations. What would you realize about these things if you approached them with a spirit of inquiry? The more familiar, the more challenging it is to do this. Try it close, long-term relationships. What's there to perceive is never-ending. Things only seem limited when we cease to SEE them.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave #pratyahara #labelslimit #expansion #discernment #viveka #vidya #dontjustlooksee
Luscious Lightwave 💖
Once upon a time I crossed the bridge from a life of self-service to a life of service and I'm never going back.
I was watching an interview with master yoga teacher Richard Miller recently and a comment he made about happiness really grabbed me. He said, "The way to make yourself happy is to make others happy; the way to make yourself sad is to try to make yourself happy." This rang so true to me because I've experienced both sides of the spectrum and their effects. Never have I been as miserable and dissatisfied as when I was trying to gratify the ego needs of the little self...the conditioned personality. And never have I been as consistently and genuinely joyful and satisfied as when I'm using what I have to lift others up. This doesn't mean aestheticism or martyrdom but there is self-denial and a surrendering of a narrow-minded sense of selfhood involved. This can be a hard won battle these days in our culture of instant gratification, but the rewards of this way of being have sealed it into to my psyche as the only way of life for me.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave#dailylightwave #vajrapradamamudra #servicecenteredlife
Luscious Lightwave 💖
Where in my life am I choosing comfort over expansion?
This question came up for me this week as I delved into the kleshas in my practice and teaching. Specifically attachment (raga) and aversion (dvesa). I think it's a perpetual question that never gets old since the human psyche is prone to seek and settle with status quo. Of course the unbridled human ego may take this to the extreme and think it always means some big change like switching careers, leaving a marriage, having an affair, moving to a third world country, etc. And sometimes it might, but more often expansion is subtle but no less powerful. It may look like taking an art class, finally making a deep need known to a friend or beloved, asking your employer for a raise or promotion. The bigness of it is less important than the authenticity and it always involves the simultaneous workings of letting go and courage. We, like the universe, are ever-expanding and it's important to let this awareness govern the human self so it doesn't hold us hostage to habits of comfort and ease at the expense of our growth.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave #garudasanavariation #dvesa #raga #kleshas #expansion
Luscious Lightwave 💖
The transition from using spirituality to control circumstances to using every circumstance to purify and advance spiritually is necessary on the path towards awakening.
Some of the most challenging moments of my life thus far have been experienced in a courtroom going thru divorce and other related legal proceedings. These times showed me loud and clear where I was susceptible to what might be considered lower vibrational mental and emotional states - especially fear. This past week, though, I had a breakthrough. As I was driving to the court house, I found myself mentally asking that this situation be used to purify me from fear. And I really felt a burning desire for that. I released any attachment to a particular outcome. This wave of freedom came over me. It was incredible! Throughout the proceedings, I practiced yielding and sacrificing any fearful tendencies that came up. Doing this allowed me to be predominantly in a state of confidence, courage, and humility. I will always see this purification process as the real and forever win that day.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave
Luscious Lightwave 💖
We learn as much (if not more) about real Love from the bitter experiences as from the sweet.
(Photo by Roy Dunn)
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave
#anahata #unstruck #heartgreen
A Luscious Lightwave 💖
You're here to love yourself not judge yourself.
Yesterday was a great reminder of this message for me. I found myself in a black box theatre doing solo show work again! Seriously thought that part of my life was over but in the last 6 weeks it's reemerged. Apparently Life has some stories left to tell through me and from a whole new perspective. It's been so long I'd forgotten how the naysayer-critic becomes loudest when we exercise our creativity. Thankfully the voice of self love is louder now and comes to my rescue. It was so powerful to feel that yesterday. There are plenty of critics out there who are more than willing to judge our work, especially when it's different and original. The last thing we need is to add to that. Self love is educated out of us pretty early and has to be re-learned and when it is it becomes or greatest ally.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga #lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave #selflove #honoryourcreativity #ahimsa
Luscious Lightwave 💖
The certainty within a woman's psyche lies in the intuitive not the logical.
Today's message inspired by "Women Who Run with thw Wolves." As a woman, chances are your intuition has been very inconvenient to the people (especially the men) in your life. This innate divine connection we have as women is trained out of us very early. Note I'm talking about intuition not paranoia...it's our task as women to develop until we recognize the difference. Men have access to intuition too of course. But for the masculine essence, logic is more dominant so the intuitive side has to be brought out. For women (the feminine essence) intuition is natural but because we live in a patriarchal society where things are viewed through a masculine lens, we can easily come to doubt that mysterious force into oblivion. It's up to us to recover, repair, and reinstate our intuition to the throne of our psyche. This we do not predominantly for ourselves but to pass on to our young for the evolution of humankind.
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#dailylightwave #lusciouslightwave #womenwhorunwiththewolves
The Luscious Lightwave 💖
A teacher is one who is skilled at helping others rediscover what they already know.
I realized this yesterday as I was teaching and it still overwhelms me with inexplicable awe.
And this incredible photo is by the ever talented one and onlyRoy Dunnn taken atInner Power Yogaa
Alison Bristow
Lightwave Healing & Yoga
#lusciouslightwave #dailylightwave #garudasana #eaglepose
