During the peak of the pandemic, I began doing my first ever morning routine. I had gone into a deep depression, and just getting out of bed each day took monumental effort. Feeling hopeless about everything, I knew I needed something to get me going each morning. So I gave myself three things to do:
If you've read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, you'll know that the 3 pages of journaling are referred to as "Morning Pages." It's a way to empty out of your brain everything you carried over from the day before. It's just a mental dump, so you can start the new day free and clear. Although I'd read The Artist's Way awhile back, I had never been able to get the 3 pages of journaling to stick. But seeing as I was in such a deep rut, my motivation to get out of said rut pushed me into finally making the habit stick. By the time I'd finish exercising and meditating, I was so ready for my cup of morning coffee! Having this little thing to look forward to really helped with lifting my spirits each day. I loved watching the coffee brew, soaking up this beautiful self-love ritual. As I'd sit and journal, sipping on my coffee, my worries would pour out of me onto the page. After several months of doing this, I began to see patterns in my thinking. I could see that I was focusing completely on my despair and frustration, and I slowly began introducing hope and positivity into my morning reflection. After almost 2 years of this routine, I felt my equilibrium coming back. I began to feel like myself again. And thus I changed my routine once again. I now create a daily meditation in the morning, and while I edit it, I sip on my coffee from my favorite mug (pictured above). If you'd like to follow along with this new series of daily meditation breaks, click here! And if you are also in a rut, struggling to get your good vibes back, you may be interested in my 30 Day Vibration Raising Journey. It's a special journey that involves 30 daily guided meditations that will lift your spirits, soothe your soul, and bring you back into harmony and wholeness. It also includes 30 daily journal prompts that will really help to shift and awaken you! Click the button below to learn more!
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I recently discovered an app that said it could create psychedelic like experiences without any drugs or substances. My curiosity was piqued, as I have been exploring microdosing psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in mushrooms, for the last few months. I had heard mushrooms could help with treatment resistant depression, and I have been afflicted with anxiety and depression ever since I was a kid. The mushrooms provided mostly good results, and I do believe in their benefits. Despite my success with them, I was often nervous if I took too much I'd feel like I'd lost control. Thus, I was willing to give this app a try, which claimed I could turn the "experience" off at any time. According to this new app, all I needed was a dark room and the flashlight on my phone. I was intrigued but also skeptical. What was this bizarre technology and how on earth would my phone flashlight induce a deeply introspective, meditative state? I needed to know more and so I downloaded the Lumenate app. I'd heard about it from Rosamund Pike, and this is what she said about it in an Instagram post: Are you interested in exploring your subconscious? I am creative director of a new psychedelic-inspired meditation app: Lumenate. Based on 2 years of research into the effects of stroboscopic light on brain function, the mobile app uses stroboscopic light sequences from your phone’s flashlight to neurologically guide you into an altered state of consciousness... all you need is ten minutes to yourself in a darkened room and the camera light on your phone... I promise. It’s that wild, and that easy. Before I tell you about my experience with it, a word of caution. This app works by pulsing the flashlight on your phone at your closed eyes. If you suffer from seizures or are sensitive to strobing lights, do not use this app. It's also important not to use it if you've been drinking, as that will have adverse effects. I would also advise you to take caution if you are prone to migraines. I am not a doctor and cannot advise you on whether or not it's safe to use this app. Yes, I know it seems weird to have a medical caution for an app. Is it really that intense? I would say that yes, it is, and from my initial experience it's highly effective. After one night of use, I believe in this technology and am excited to explore it more. Here's how my initial experience went: The day I downloaded the app I was feeling tired. I'd been feeling tired for over a week. It's the way I get when I'm depressed, but I didn't feel depressed. I couldn't say exactly what was wrong, only that I wasn't interested in anything, and I was struggling to get through each day. It was perhaps the beginning of a depressive episode, but I hadn't yet gotten past the initial stage where I just feel like I'm in a funk. As had become my recent habit, I was sitting around watching reruns of a show I found comforting. Unmotivated to do anything else, I thought, why not try the app? I have nothing to lose. I went into my room and turned off all the lights. I closed the door, sat down, and opened up the app. I went to the introductory experience and hit play. I put on noise cancelling headphones and listened as I was instructed on what to do. To use the app, you hold it close to your face with your eyes closed. You want the flashlight to strobe between your eyes. I felt awkward at first and wasn't sure where the phone should be situated. I kept wondering if the flashlight was between by eyes, and so I kept moving the phone up and down, forward and back. Despite my awkwardness with the process, by the time the 5 minutes was up something was definitely happening. Bright colors were beginning to explode in my mind. From the upper left corner of my inner vision, it kept seeming like something big and bright and beautiful was trying to come in. I felt a bit emotional and like I was on the verge of a breakthrough. I was amazed and shocked I'd experienced so much. Needless to say, I needed to know more. So I went to the first full experience, which is about completing a goal. I hit play, fumbled with getting the flashlight into the right place, and fell down the rabbit hole. As I sat listening to the calming music and feeling the light pulse on my face, the colors really did begin to swirl and grow. It truly did have the effect of a psychedelic experience, which was so wild! But the thing that blew me away was the clear visions I began to have. I began to see something that gave me a crystal clear answer as to why I'd been feeling tired and semi-depressed. Before I knew it, tears were falling down my face. I felt an immense sense of relief, as if I'd just taken off a constricting belt and I could breathe again. I was so fascinated and I had to know more. So I tried one more session, this one for relaxing. Once again, the strobing light soon turned into a kaleidoscope of colors, followed by a clear vision. And once again, I cried tears of relief. I was so floored by what had happened I hit subscribe after my session ended. To be clear, I have no affiliation with Lumenate or its creators. I write this as someone who had a deeply profound healing experience, and who wants to share this healing with others. This was only my first experience with Lumenate, and I'm curious and excited to see where it takes me next. I have shared this app with friends, and I cannot wait to hear what kinds of experiences they have with it as well. If you are interested in alternative forms of healing, meditation, exploring your subconscious, relief from treatment resistant depression, or just like to be on the forefront of new technology, I suggest giving this app a try! Update!After nearly 10 months of using this app, I'm still a fan, and am still using it! If you're in need of some deep healing yourself, I invite you to join my monthly healing membership, The Healing Sanctuary. For $5 / month, you'll have access to over 100 powerful guided meditations and visualizations. You'll also receive each new exclusive weekly audio! These powerful audios will do everything from Chakra balancing to connecting you to your Higher Self to healing fear and anxiety. You won't find a healing resource like this anywhere else, and I can't wait to connect with you inside this sacred space! The Healing SanctuaryI have been reflecting lately on a story I began telling myself when I was 22. It was at this time, that I dropped out of college for good. I was suffering from severe depression and failing class after class. At the time, mental health was not addressed in the way it is now, and so I just sort of floundered, feeling that if I wasn't such a failure, I wouldn't be making such a mess of everything. Considering I left the year I should have graduated, I was surrounded by people who DID graduate. All of my friends got their degrees, and I began to tell myself a story that would stick with me for nearly two decades after. As my friends graduated, they got their first post-college jobs. Jobs you could only get if you had a college degree. Some went to work for big companies, like Netflix and Walmart. Some jumped around, trying out different jobs, all while exploring their adult lives in a way I could only watch with awe and jealousy. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to feel capable and like I was progressing in my own life. I wanted to feel like I was a part of the world, but instead, I felt shut out and alone. The job I got was cleaning after hours at my dad's office. Cleaning is by no means a bad job, and I recognize the hard work and ambition of all who become home and office cleaners. The problem was, everyone around me was doing something vastly different, and I began to determine who I was based on the perspective I was standing in. What I saw, based on my limited information, were people with something of value. They had a degree, they had something that people wanted, and therefore, they had value. I did not have this thing, and therefore, I concluded I had no value. I was on a much lower level, and this is where my mind got stuck for many, many years. It makes me sad to write this and to think about how much of my life I've spent repeating this story ad nauseum. If there was any evidence to the contrary, anything that said, "You have value and the world needs you!" I disregarded it as anomalous. Surely these messages were a mistake, because I saw so many other messages that said, "Worthless. Incapable. Loser," and those I determined to be the truth. I held onto those messages that hurt like heavy rocks that I somehow felt I couldn't live without. At this point, you may want to shake me by the shoulders at the faultiness of my thinking. How could I have determined my entire sense of self-worth based on whether or not I graduated from college? There are so many people who went on to be wildly successful who never graduated, or who never even went at all. And there are those who never went to college, never felt much desire to be ambitious, and lived a happy and fulfilling life based on what felt good to them. But that's the thing with stories. They aren't based on the full truth. They are only based on glimpses of reality that we blow up and piece together in a way that satisfies our own inner narrative. When I look back, I can see how easily this story fit my sense of self at the time. I had no way of knowing what I would do with myself. I had no way of knowing I would one day create my own guided meditations, and offer something to the world that I really do believe has value. I only had what I knew then - which was a sense of failure and worthlessness. I looked around at everyone around me, which was in itself a very limited perspective, and made a conclusion so fixed I may as well have carved it into stone. It's incredible to me to look back and consider how much information I filtered out so that I could affirm this ONE story about myself over and over. I wish I could go back in time and talk to 22 year old Melissa. I wish I could tell her not to determine her entire life's value based on .02% of the information she is seeing. I wish I could hug her and tell her she's going to be okay, and there is beautiful path ahead of her, completely unique to her. But I cannot go back in time. I cannot change what's done. And so I can only start a new chapter. One I write with more information, and from a place of love and self-acceptance I never allowed myself before. I don't just want to start a new chapter though. I want to start a whole new book. I want to look at a blank page and ask myself honestly, "Who are you? What is the story you want to tell about yourself?" I want to fill my new pages with love and hope. And I want to fill them in such a way that I look back 20 years from now and think, now that's a hell of a good story. Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
The following are some simple tools to keep on hand for anxious moments.
The first is a calming statement that will bring you into the present moment and help you to see things different. The second is an Inner Peace & Relief Cheat Sheet. It's a one page sheet for you to print out and keep on hand. The third is a six minute audio with empowering affirmations. Calming Statement
In this moment, I am safe.
I feel unsafe because of past experiences. In the past, things happened that made me feel unsafe and afraid. My brain has carried those past stories into the present, and it is distorting my perspective. My brain is not doing this to sabotage me. In fact, it’s trying to protect me from being hurt and afraid again. But each day, I am growing stronger and my brain is learning to see things more clearly. Each day, I find more acceptance for how I feel and for the anxiety that is showing me how to love myself more. In this moment, I feel anxious, but that’s okay. It’s only for this moment. It will pass. It always does. I just need to take a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. Inner Peace & Relief Cheat Sheet
Download the following one page cheat sheet and print it out. If you can, fill it in by hand (rather than typing). When we write things out we take them in deeper and fuller. Hand writing also activates our brain more than typing, helping us to really get creative and find answers we didn't know were in us.
Self-Empowering Affirmations
The following affirmations will reinforce and retrain your brain for confidence and empowerment. This six minute audio can be used in the morning, for a brief meditation, while driving to work, or any time you need a boost. These affirmations are for your solar plexus, which is your seat of self power. They are from the Chakra Balancing and Healing package, which includes 8 guided meditations, chakra affirmations, sound healing, and a comprehensive workbook.
I hope these offerings have helped you! For more chakra affirmations and chakra healing packages, click the button below. I wish you many blessings. When I was introduced to meditation, I was awed and humbled by how much it changed my life. I was so profoundly impacted by it that, for many years, I considered it the most important thing I could do for my mind and my life. However, as time went on and I began to understand more about how my brain works, I began opening up to something else - visualization. As I learned more about it, I could see how it was a powerful companion to a meditation practice. These two things compliment and enhance each other so well that I now see visualization as the yang to meditation's yin. Meditation, as a yin force, is gentle and passive. It allows us to let go, to clear, and to open up to our true selves. Visualization, as a yang force, is active. It's creative. It's the energy we use to build our visions in all the space we cleared during meditation. We are creatures of habit. This is due to the fact that the more we think and experience something, the more neurons cluster together to reinforce this particular thing. This, essentially, is how habits are formed. Neurons continually coming together is how we save energy. Our brain creates shortcuts, and so when it sees something familiar, it follows the familiar neuron cluster and responds in the same way. When we break habits, we must literally change our brain's physical makeup. Which is why it can feel so hard to change. Your brain, in all its energy saving efficiency, keeps trying to follow familiar thought patterns, which are just neurons that formed together over time. Depending on how long you've been thinking something determines how deep these rivers of thought go. A lifelong pattern that's never been questioned can be changed - but it's going to take effort. And this is where visualization becomes a powerful tool and ally. Trying to change habits in the moment is like swimming upstream in the Nile. Eventually, you're going to get tired and think to hell with it and let go. And then you repeat the thing you swore you'd never do again. You fall back on old habits. Maybe you get really angry at yourself, feeling like you've failed and you're a loser. If this is you, it's okay. This science, which is known as the neuroplasticity of the brain, is so new it's still in its infancy. Very few of us are taught how our brain actually works. Which can make it feel like we're weak and worthless for not being able to change. The truth is, I got interested in this because I kept having anxiety, which was making me want to FREAK OUT over nothing. In the grocery store line - freaking out. Waiting for a yoga class to start - freaking out! Asking the librarian for a book - SUPER FREAKING OUT. And why? Librarians are the nicest people and I love them so much. I couldn't understand why I was so nervous ALL THE TIME. But then I began to understand that my nervousness was building on itself. I began to anticipate myself having anxiety, which made me want to PANIC because I could go Chernobyl at any second. I could be buying bell peppers and have a FULL MELTDOWN and then what!?!?!? I felt like I had no control over myself or my reactions. Making it all worse was I kept trying to fix it in the moment. When I was freaking out, I tried calming myself using all the tricks and tools I'd learned. Anxiety would hit and I would breathe and count and do all the stuff I was told to do. But nothing worked and it only made me feel like a failure. It also scared me because I began to believe nothing would ever help. But then I was introduced to visualization. It was through this that I saw the error of my ways. Rather than trying to change habits in the moment, which Oh my God, no, no, just no, not possible, I began changing them before I ever left the house. I began laying a new foundation, an alternate belief system for my brain to try on. The more I visualized myself calm and secure, the better I began to feel. And the better I felt, the more I trusted these new feelings. The more I trusted them, the more I switched from DROP THE BELL PEPPERS AND RUN to, it's okay, breathe, I'm safe I'm safe I'm safe. Visualization, essentially, created a new story in my brain. And because my brain likes shortcuts and is energy efficient, my brain began following this new story. And then it began to tell it on its own. Meditation continually helps me to release anxiety that's built up during the day. Meditation is still a powerful tool I use all the time. It's just that I'm now pairing it with visualization, which allows me to replace those anxiety-creating beliefs with empowered and confident ones. Visualization, like meditation, is a practice. It takes time to become familiar with it and to see the benefits of it. But once you do, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.
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