this is my season's greetings card that i've sent to different people around the world...& i just love it - it's joy, wonder, innocence, simplicity, celebration all in one!

Free to be!

Today I was just thinking about how our energy can go in 2 places, trying to controll what's happening ouside of ourselves or what's going on inside us. The latter always being the most fruitful.

Have you ever found yourself, not listening properly to someone, or listening in such a way you put words in their mouth and finish off their sentances. I suppose the extension of this is where we try and control the way others go about doing something: Don't put that there put it here! ...... Don't do it that, do it like this....

I was reflecting in moments like that we cannot live our own uniqueness or let others live their's - we're too caught up with what's happening trying to control, for numerous reasons and often to do with fear of loosing something or just trying to be perfect. So today, I had to check myself and see am I enjoying being in this moment, being in my own space, in my own feelings and making that really special, positive and peaceful and powerful? Try it while your on the phone it's so enrichening, just letting yourself just be. Today I noticed in each of the interactions that I gave myself this special inner attention to, that I had such a laugh with the other person in a really natural way. I was really myself and I also felt like they were really themselves. It's so nice not to be provoking anything from any space of force, and just being with another. It felt very innocent and clean - incredibly special!

Breathe. Easy.

One of the first relaxation techniques I ever heard about, went something like this: "Take a deep breath, and breathe out your tension." Simple, easy and, sometimes, quite effective. One of its enduring appeals is that it appears to use the body's natural rhythms to help us turn around our everyday challenges.

Recently, our Teacher at meditation class was telling us about the natural reservoirs of peace, love and joy all human beings have deep within them, and it struck me that there may be a small problem with this simple breathing exercise I and many others take for granted.

In a world filled with anger, tension and frustration, it occurred to me that we may be adding to these with each breath, if all we ever do is exhale these into the environment around us.

Yet, every breath we make is as beneficial to our world as the breath we take from the air around us. We breathe in oxygen, produced by plants as a by-product of their natural cycle, and we breathe out carbon dioxide, which plants use to make sugars for their own growth, and oxygen for us!

So, if I physically benefit my world with every breath, what if I could do it spiritually too? What if I could breathe in the world about me, then breathe out the peace and joy I have within me? What if we all did the same?

I have a new relaxation technique now: take a deep breath, and breathe out your peace. See how it works for you.