with love , Esta

Meditation 101 | Who Has Time to Meditate Anyway?

What if you don’t live in the mountains and tend a garden for a living – how do you fit meditating into your real life?

If you can believe it, my daily meditation practice started on my city bus commute to my office job. I put my headphones in, held my bag in my lap and listened to a guided meditation every single morning.

The meditations were usually about ten to fifteen minutes long, and it was part of the practice for me – to accept and flow with the noise of a morning bus full of people.

Here’s proof that you don’t need an hour a day, in complete silence, on a meditation pillow with lavender incense in the air to reap the benefits of a mindfulness practice!

Use the time you have already. (Please don’t meditate and drive however! 😜) What downtime can you utilize, to drop into the body and practice relaxing, and tuning in to the weather of yourself?

What routine could you add meditation to? Mutlitasking meditation still counts! Are you peeling veggies for dinner? There’s three minutes to listen to a midday reset meditation and build your practice. Having a shower? Put on a gratitude meditation and spend that five minutes reflecting on all the good in your life.

Adjust your expectations, the practice of meditation can melt into your every day life. You don’t need a new wardrobe and sage to burn. All you need is a few minutes a day, and the desire to find more inner balance and calm. Befriending the self starts with knowing the self. Keep coming back and be kind to yourself.

I started with apps like Simple Habit, Balance & Headspace. When I was home and had more time, say – right before bed, or during a hot bath – I would listen to folks like The Honest Guys.

These guided meditations made it easy for me to focus the mind & relax the body.

My free Guided Meditation library is only growing, and new meditations are put out on my Spotify & YouTube every Monday!

Follow along for more meditation tips and leave me any burning questions you have in the comments below. 🔥

With Love,

Esta

Meditation Monday | A Cat Nap

This weeks guided meditation is a brief break for relaxation.

Listen on Spotify.

Listen on YouTube.

Wishing you a very happy Thanksgiving.

With Love, Esta

The WLE Weekly | 10.07.2023

Yoga & Meditation 101 | Let’s Talk About Visualizing

In yoga, if you can picture the pose in your mind before your body begins to find it – the pose will flow so nicely for you.

In meditation, visualization is a muscle I think we can all exercise – allowing you to tap into the creative well within you.

In my humble opinion, the imagination is a powerful & underused tool!

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

If you’ve ever taken a dance class, even just in gym – you’ll know they break it down into “moves” for you. Or – if you were in band, the music is broken down into notes & common rhythms. You learn bits and pieces and then you put it all together. My point here, is that it helps to have a demonstration – right? To see, or hear – how the end result should look.

As you’re learning yoga poses, demonstrations are super helpful. But let’s say, you’ve done 100 downward facing dogs and you don’t need a demo any longer. I’m offering the advice to continue to picture the next pose in your mind – as you’re in the pose before. Even if you’re just starting from standing – let the mind imagine what muscles need to be fired up for this pose. When you’re present in that pose in the next moment – you’re so much more aware of the muscles and can be that much more engaged.

Imagination is a muscle that can be exercised.

I think boredom is required for it – or to put it more yogic-ally “stillness” is required.

In a world of constant screens, distractions at the ready, and quick videos to fill the silence that was otherwise natural to us… we rarely have those moments of quiet in this present day.

Consciously choosing stillness, even just for a few minutes a day, and simply breathing and being aware… has a huge impact on how you show up for the rest of your day.
(Give it a try, and comment below if I’m wrong 😉)

This tool of imagination could be applied by briefly outlining how you’d like the day to unfold. (Just like we did in the Best Case Scenario meditation this week)

What if you started the day by visualizing how you want the day to go?

What if you took a breath, let the shoulders draw away from the ears, and let your imagination show you a movie reel of the day ahead. We don’t control the circumstances in the day, but our attitude and expectations are within our control.

Visualization can be carried off as a tool in your toolbox for many other situations. 🧰 In yoga, meditation and best case scenario days alike.

If you’re more of a writer than a closed eyed visualizer – my Ideal Day Worksheet is a great way to get it down on paper!

idea-day-worksheet_a-with-love-esta-worksheet-1 Download

Wishing you your Ideal Day 🎉

With Love,

Esta

Meditation Monday | Best Case Scenario

Hello. This week we take a pause either at the start or midway through the day – to check the weather of our mind, come back to the present moment & visualize the best case scenario for the rest of our day. Imagine how you feel at the end of the day. Immerse yourself in the present and find that your planned best case scenario is at the end of your day ✨

Listen along on Spotify or YouTube.

The WLE Weekly | 09.30.2023

Yoga 101 | So I learned a few yoga poses… now what?

Now that you have learned some yoga poses, what do you do with them?

Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA on Pexels.com

Here are some ideas:

Practise the poses you know in the morning, or evening – one after the other. (Just like we explore in the miniflows!)
Try a yoga pose as you’re waiting for the coffee to brew, the toast to pop, the water to boil – it doesn’t have to be a full on half hour commitment! Can you get some extended standing pose stretches in as you connect to your breath for a moment?
Third time is the charm – try a yoga pose you’ve learned already but see if you can switch any part of it up, maybe putting your arms up when you had them down, or trying goal post arms and then do that twice more so you’ve tried the same pose (just slightly different) three times.
Put on a YouTube video (or fitness app) that will guide you through a yoga flow. This is a great way to see how the poses you know can flow into each other – and learn new ones!
Check the new #YPB | Yoga Pose Breakdown page out & catch up on any poses you haven’t looked at yet. 🎉

Learn a new yoga pose each week with me & expand the yoga poses that you know! I am so pleased to bring the “visual catalogue” of yoga poses to life over on my new page: #YPB | Yoga Pose Breakdowns. This new page shows you the Sanskrit & English names of the poses, as well as an in-frame video of the yoga pose demo-ed for you! No jumping in and out of apps or tabs – it’s all in one spot. On the side of each pose I have broken down some key cues for you to keep in mind as you learn the pose.

When I started learning yoga at home, I wished there was a visual catalgoue of the poses I could follow. As I upgrade my Yoga Teacher Training from 200 to 500 hours, I am honoured to bring you this library of yoga poses to help you learn from the comfort of your own home!

This is just a friendly reminder that yoga poses are made up – so adjusting them for your body isn’t bad. Not every pose is good for every body. If it hurts, don’t do it. Support yourself with blocks, or a chair or the wall as you build balance and strength!

If we keep the yoga pose goal as: breathing fully & exploring the mobility of each pose – we will get so much more out of the practise, than you would trying to yank or push our bodies into a position it doesn’t want to be in.

Wishing you little moments of yoga throughout the weekend!

With Love,

Esta

Meditation Monday | Sleep Talk Down

Read along below or listen on YouTube / Spotify.

Hello, and thank you for joining me for today’s guided meditation: a Sleep Talk Down intended to send you off for sweet dreams and a deep rest all night long.

Together we’ll find a comfortable resting position. Make sure that you have a blanket and a pillow, that you’re the right temperature. Take an extra moment now to fuss over yourself just a little bit.
How can you make yourself just a little bit more comfortable?

And once you’re ready, relaxing into the surface beneath you and letting the body get heavy, feeling the weight of gravity, pulling on your resting body and let your limbs get heavy.
Let your hands rest, all of the muscles letting go, and letting all of the muscles in your feet go just relaxing. There’s nowhere to be now, now is the time to rest.

And we’ll find the breath wherever it is in the body. Maybe you feel it at the nostrils, in and out.
Maybe you feel your chest rise and fall. There’s no need to change the breath. We’re just finding it where it is going, easy.
There’s nothing left to do today. Letting the to-do list fall away and letting any worries, just set them aside for now, you can come back to them later. And any revision of the day that comes forward, let it come forward and review.
Let yourself re-remember the joy or the happiness or the gratitude that you felt today.

And as you bask in that, we will imagine together somewhere natural to relax. Maybe it’s a beach, a forest, a meadow. Maybe it’s somewhere from your past, somewhere imagined.

Just let that natural image come to mind, perhaps you’re in a garden. And let your mind fill with details of this image: the sun on your skin, the gentle breeze, the way your shoulders relax and release all worries here. Imagine the surface beneath you. And what does it feel like?
Letting your imagination go a little wild here, visualizing this relaxing natural space and making it uniquely yours.

And you’ll find a place here to sit and rest and take in your surroundings. You’ll allow yourself to drift off into sleep, letting the body melt away into sleep. The mind calming, quieting, following the breath and letting the eyebrows rest, the jaw relax and the tongue relax, the throat and chest, letting the shoulders rest further into the surface beneath you, feeling the weight of the elbow joint, the weight of the wrist joint, and letting every vertebrae of the spine melt into the surface beneath you.
And the hips. Not holding or forcing any movement or tension, just melting and feeling the bones of the legs heavy and warm, and feeling the knee joint easy in space.

Just resting.

And as, as I leave you here with the breath, give yourself permission to drift off into a deep, relaxing sleep, trusting that you’ve done your best today. And that tomorrow you will create a new day and begin again.

But for now, it’s time to recharge and plug back in.

Wishing you an incredible sleep, with love, Esta.

The WLE Weekly | 09.23.2023

Meditation 101 | How Do You Begin Meditating?

& how on earth do you “empty the mind”?!?!

Meditation does not require emptying the mind – first of all.

After a decade of meditation practise, I recommend starting with guided meditations. They are still my favourite style of meditating because the worry of “what do I think about?” is removed.

A guide will literally take you through the steps of relaxing physically and mentally.

Guided Meditation was the starting point for me.

Back then, it was a burnt CD of a guided relaxation meditation.

Now, there are guided relaxations at your fingertips.
(Check out my latest 10 Minute Guided Relaxation on YouTube!)

Some of my personal favourites are The Honest Guys, Ally Boothroyd & RosalieYoga on YouTube.

You can download free apps like Balance, Simple Habit, or Headspace & explore their libraries of guided meditation.

Meditation is the practise of coming back to the present moment again and again.
Having the patience and persistence to sit with the self over and over again.

Here at WLE – a new guided meditation is released every Monday on my Spotify & YouTube channels:

In meditation, we are not blocking the thoughts, instead we are stepping back and witnessing them. Identifying with the one who is witnessing, instead of the emotion, thought stream, worries and tangles that pop up when we are still enough to listen.

I think we are craving some undistracted time, as a community. There’s a missing piece, but we ignore it with Doom Scrolling and constant distraction. If we were quiet enough, we would hear the whisper in us, telling us the key to that missing piece. We’re just never quiet enough.

Meditation drops the distraction and reconnects you with your body; differentiates between you and the present drama of your life, putting the bigger picture in perspective.

If you want to read more about the benefits of meditation, I’ve got the perfect article for you: “Why Meditate?”

If you are skeptical about the benefits of meditation, I encourage you to read my article above, or just check out Mayo Clinic – they’re pretty sure it’s good for you:

Thank you so much for joining me for this week’s article.

Hopefully it’s made starting meditation simpler for you! It’s such a beneficial tool to keep in your toolbelt.

See you next week.

With Love,

Esta

What if you don’t live in the mountains and tend a garden for a living – how do you fit meditating into your real life?

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& how on earth do you “empty the mind”?!?!