Hello beautiful friends! My name is Sharon, owner of The Full Exhale, and I wanted to invite you to join me in reconnecting with yourself through yoga.😌🧘‍♀️ I have two invitations: First is for my weekly yoga Hatha or Vinyasa style yoga, always with a loving meditation at the end. I teach every Sunday at 12:30 at Sweet Apple Yoga. This is a community, donation based class, so it's pay what you want, or just let this be my gift to you.🥰 Sign up at SweetAppleYoga.me (there is a liability waiver to sign) or just show up. Second invitation is a Beginner's Yoga Workshop I am putting on tomorrow (Sunday) from 4-5:30. The workshop is for anyone brand new to yoga or who wants to give yoga a try but is a little too intimidated to look like an uncoordinated doofus in a class full of skinny, bendy people. I got you😉. (This workshop was originally just for the patients at The Village Chiropractic, but I only have a few people signed up, so I figured I'd open it to anyone) The first hour is going through proper alignment in all the basic poses, integrating props (blocks and straps), and how to modify for YOUR body. We're just going to play😄 The last half hour is taking everything we learned into a short, half hour vinyasa flow with a meditation at the end. This class costs $35, at Sweet Apple Yoga. Comment below if you're coming, this is a private class so no sign ups through Sweet Apple. Hope to see you on the mat!

Part I Lesson 1 🔉Listen to Audio in the attached file. Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything. 1. Now look slowly around you, and practice applying this idea very specifically to whatever you see: ²This table does not mean anything. ³This chair does not mean anything. ⁴This hand does not mean anything. ⁵This foot does not mean anything. ⁶This pen does not mean anything. 2. Then look farther away from your immediate area, and apply the idea to a wider range: ²That door does not mean anything. ³That body does not mean anything. ⁴That lamp does not mean anything. ⁵That sign does not mean anything. ⁶That shadow does not mean anything. 3. Notice that these statements are not arranged in any order, and make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied. ²That is the purpose of the exercise. ³The statement should merely be applied to anything you see. ⁴As you practice the idea for the day, use it totally indiscriminately. ⁵Do not attempt to apply it to everything you see, for these exercises should not become ritualistic. ⁶Only be sure that nothing you see is specifically excluded. ⁷One thing is like another as far as the application of the idea is concerned. 4. Each of the first three lessons should not be done more than twice a day each, preferably morning and evening. ²Nor should they be attempted for more than a minute or so, unless that entails a sense of hurry. ³A comfortable sense of leisure is essential.

Hi friends! I was reading some of the ACIM texts and it got me thinking about emotions of the ego, taoism, and a few other thoughts. It inspired me to write this blog that can hopefully help to pinpoint the higher states of being and transform the emotions of the ego. Feel free to check it out or add any practices that have helped you! For me, qi gong has been an awesome practice. The law of conservation tells us us that energy cannot be created or destroyed. I think the same lens could be applied to emotions. Fear, anger, jealousy, and craving are not final states. They are energies that signal the ego often misreads, but are opportunities to transform. The real work of consciousness is to recognize them, honor them, and raise them to their higher octave. Eastern & Western Perspectives In Taoist philosophy, the body is a landscape of energy with three main centers, or dantian. The lower dantian, just below the navel, is the seat of primal will and vitality. It receives signals of hunger, lust, and fear, which the ego interprets literally as survival commands. Taoist practice refines these impulses. Hunger can become a cue to awaken qi, sexual desire can become creative energy, fear can become spiritual vigilance and clarity. The middle Dantian, in the heart, refines emotional flow, grief into compassion, and sorrow into depth. The upper Dantian, in the forehead, refines mind and spirit, transforming doubt into wisdom and confusion into vision. The ego interprets all these centers through the lens of lack and survival, but awareness allows us to read them differently. Early Christians spoke of the “old self” or the “flesh.” They did not mean the body itself was bad but that the false self interprets reality through illusion. Passions, such as pride, wrath, envy, and greed, were seen as distortions of a deeper longing for God. The spiritual path was not repression but transfiguration. Pride could become humility, wrath could become courage, and envy could become gratitude. The ego’s emotions were illusions that could be dissolved into truth.