Ready to go on a treasure hunt and find out what makes you, you?

I have been on a transformational journey to get to know myself better lately. In some of the conversations I have been having with my girlfriends, I have noticed a theme emerging - everyone has post COVID desires of “getting back myself''

What is Self anyways? I would love to share with you a little bit of wisdom that I have received when I first began exploring all the dimensions of being.

I am back exploring the Koshas which are the layers in the yoga tradition that act as a road map on the journey inwards to self. A less frequent translation of the word Kosha is “treasure.” I kind of like that!

The first layer is our physical layer. The Annamaya Kosha. Think of this as the food layer and everything that makes up the matrix of our physical layers. When you think about it. The transformational journey usually starts with the physical body. Think of those New Year’s resolutions to lose 5 pounds - or even better yet, what I am working really hard myself to try to do these days - finally accepting your body and loving it exactly as it is. Hear my exploration of this in my Podcast #39, The Annamaya Kosha.

By expanding our awareness, we are more than our physical bodies. This is where the breath comes into picture. I shared with you before being with each of my parents at the time of their passing. On her deathbed, my mother’s last breath was on a long, slow exhale, while my father, as he met his final days in January of this year, took his last breath as a sharp inhale. It is indeed the first thing we do when we arrive on this earth and it is certainly the last thing that we do as we leave. Life can not be sustained without our prana. I talk about Pranamaya Kosha, the breath and Prana, our energy body in my Podcast #41, Exploring Our Energy Body.

We now begin to see that we are more than our physical bodies and move to more subtle realms and dimensions of being.

Today, we are all about our third layer. In my latest podcast, Episode #43 Manomaya Kosha, our Emotional Body is revealed. As we journey inward to self, we arrive at our thoughts and feelings, all of our emotions that comprise our personality.

“Manas” is the Sanskrit word for Mind. Here at the mind layer we move to the field where our greatest happiness and our greatest sufferings might appear. Are you ready to make friends with the emotional layer of your being? Let’s go on a treasure hunt inward to embrace the landscape where there is a level of being without judgement or rejecting thoughts and feeling beyond our emotions. Are you ready to move towards living with a greater sense of lightness and ease?

For me this is a journey towards our heart space. Many of my blog posts build on each other. If you haven't read Joie de vivre, I really lay out the concept of non attachment and contentment. I mention it because it really was an important stepping stone for me personally on my own transformational journey. I really had to do some deep digging myself to understand the ins and outs of non attachment and not letting my past be an anchor. Non attachment is a transformational tool that I use daily to really help me to stay in the present moment. But for now, let’s continue to focus on the Manomaya kosha. The layer or sheath that encompasses our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions - our emotional body sheath.

Let me ask you this…. Are you someone who welcomes all your thoughts and feelings without trying to push any of them down or back? The Manomaya kosha, our emotional body, is the dimension in which we seek happiness but it is also the layer in which we experience suffering. This 3rd dimension of being was really one of the trickiest for me to explore. I am a person that likes to be happy. So, I spent a lot of time the first half of my life moving towards that which I believed would make me happy and avoid that which caused me pain or heartbreak. However, and this is a big however, when you think of life as this zero sum game you are on a hamster wheel of loss/gain, happiness/pain, right/wrong, good bad.

Have any of you watched the Disney movie Inside Out?

The plot of the movie is basically within the mind of a little girl named Riley, there are the basic emotions that control her actions—the emotions of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. Her experiences become memories, stored as these brightly colored orbs - Joy is a luminous Yellow sphere, Sadness is Blue, Fear is Purple, Disgust Green and Anger Red. Once these emotions are experienced, these solid colored orbs are sent from the front of her mind into long-term storage as memory each night. These emotions, these memories become her five most important "core memories" which in turn power the aspects of her personality. In the movie these are floating memory islands which make Riley, well Riley. The emotion Joy acts as the leader, and she and the rest of the emotions try to limit Sadness's influence. Joy does everything in her power to keep young Riley on the positive train and far removed from anything that could make her unhappy.

I will let you watch Inside Out on your own and you can follow the journey of these 5 emotions and, of course, Disney does it well, but I think you can guess the ending - the truth is, it is hard to experience Joy all the time. Some of the best life experiences can be bittersweet and a mixture of many emotions. The emotions go on a typical Disney arc line journey but towards the finale of the movie the orbs are no longer singular in color. Emotions begin to mix and her memories are a mixture of all the emotional colors and look more like marbles. Our life is richer when we are multicolored marbles. There is a profound change when we do not push away or deny our emotions and instead allow all of our feelings and all of our experiences to help shape who we are.

So here we are. When we can get to a place where we do not deny any of our emotions and maybe even more importantly we can be in a state of being without identifying with them so completely, we might get to a state where our mind is not the enemy. I want to help you get off the hamster wheel of your mind and help you connect your head to our heart space and it is at this place where we can be more open for love which is the very essence of our truest being isn’t my friend?!

What better tool to use today than a little heart meditation? Today, we are going to do Purna Hridaya Mudra. It is a sanskrit mouthful but it is a beautiful gesture for opening the heart and getting you into your manomaya kosha. Your emotional body. I invite you to explore this hand gesture that will help you become more comfortable with this dimension of your being.

Let’s begin:

Purna Hridaya Mudra, gesture of the Open Heart to access the Manomaya kosha, our emotional body, and ride the wave of feelings.

First, simply hold your hands with the palms facing towards each other and the fingertips pointing upward, in front of your heart.

Next, interlace the fingers inward so that they cross at the upper segment, with your right index finger being closest to your heart.

Now, stretch the thumbs downward to touch at their tips. As you see now, a heart shape is formed.

Take a moment to roll your shoulders up back and down and allow your shoulders to soften and relax as you extend your elbows slightly away from the body and your spine is naturally aligned.

Take a moment to breathe slowly and steady as you hold Purna Hridaya mudra and just notice all of the sensations and all of the feelings that might be awakened by the gesture.

Inner body bright, outer body soft.

With the next inhalation can you sense your rib cage expanding evenly and with each exhalation can you sense your chest, side ribs and even your upper back soften and relax completely.

Continue to breathe and as your rib cage softens and expands with your breath, just witness the growing openness within your heart center.

As your heart center opens and expands, take a moment to embrace your emotional layer, welcome all the thoughts and feelings in this space to arise and subsequently pass away freely.

Begin by allowing a positive thought to come to the surface and as it does experience the feeling that naturally accompanies it.

Allow this feeling to simply be, can you embrace it without resistance and allow the pure energy to come as waves washing over you as you are in a state of synchronicity with your breath.

With the breath’s inhale ride this feeling to its crest and with each exhale experience ease and release throughout your emotional being.

Take several such breaths riding the wave of positive feeling with greater ease and witness how your heart center is nourished with vital energy.

Deep breath in, deep breath out

As the bloom of your heartspace opens even more completely you can now gradually allow and even welcome challenging thoughts and feelings, feeling them as waves of pure energy.

To deepen this ability, invite the difficult thought to arise within your being and go ahead without trying to push or tap it down. Fully feel your feelings and experience all the feelings that come up when thinking about these difficult thoughts.

Keep breathing and take all the time you need here - fully sense this challenging feeling as you ride together the wave of your breath.

With the next inhalation can you welcome any tension or resistance to what arises and with the next exhalation all this very tension will be released leaving you with a greater sense of peace and ease.

As you continue to release, take several breaths here to fill your heart with serenity and peace.

Bath your entire heart center with lightness and ease.

Now either aloud or in your minds eye repeat the following phrase three times

Riding my wave of feeling, I sense greater ease in my emotional being.

When you are ready, butterfly open your eyes, returning to the present slowly and gently grounded and fully present in your psycho-emotional body, the Manomaya kosha.

How do you feel, my friend? It is my heart's deepest desire for you to experience the oneness and unity that arises through meditations work. I know the transformational journey isn’t always an easy path. I really love using hand mudras to guide the breath. Did you notice how almost immediately the hand gesture changed the speed, focus, location and quality of the breath? With repetition using breath and meditation, we establish a firm foundation that brings a sense of integration and harmony as a foundation to support optimal health and healing.

As I was doing the meditation I really felt the massaging effect on my upper back. It released a lot of tension and tightness. At the physical level this meditation releases a lot of tension and increases the circulation in the area of the thymus gland. It is fantastic for our immunity. I also love the mental effects of meditation on the body. With repetition it has certainly helped me instill a sense of calm within my mind and helped me to create just a little bit more space between my thoughts. I know this meditation is a good one for me. When I do this meditation on a regular basis, it really instills a sense of compassion and acceptance towards myself. So good for your heart chakra! Purna means full and hridaya means heart, so this mudra really balances and expands our energy at our very heart’s center. Keep doing this one. Keep riding the waves of feelings. I hope you enjoyed experiencing a deepening connection to the more subtle layers of your being. When we can welcome the coming and going of our thoughts and emotions they lose their heavy dense quality and allow us to feel more joy and radiance that arises from deep within our hearts.

Again, I am going to continue to sprinkle these meditations in between my podcasts. So, be sure to hit subscribe and turn on your notifications so that you get alerted to their release or go to my website GirlfriendsGuru.com and sign up for my bi monthly newsletter. The next meditation to heart center is the wisdom body. It is the dimension of our being that allows for discernment and spiritual transformation. I hope you will join me.

It is in my heart to share these tools for transformation because I want everyone to boost self love, compassion, extend understanding and even maybe there is even a little bit of forgiveness. If you are new to meditation or hand mudras I just give these practices a try - if you haven’t listened to the ones I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, I hope you will go back to them - they may just have a profound effect on how you relate to yourself and how you relate to others. If you know of someone with whom you would like to share this podcast, please do not hesitate to do so.

I believe that we're shards of glass broken from the same vessel. It is in looking at our own pieces of shattered glass that we seek to unify these pieces and recognize that same light in others.

I am here to support you, you know where to find me, GirlfriendsGuru.com but regardless of the actions you choose to take, the essential element will be the internal gesture of choosing to remain in love. It's all that is needed. - Until next time - Love and Light - Namaste !!!