Happy Holidays! This video will make you happy.

      

Mondo Beyondo New Year + FREE downloadable worksheet

Portrait of yours truly, Andrea Scher. Taken by the incredible Anna Kuperberg

Will you join me in a New Year’s Ritual?

The new year is always an exciting time for me. I love wiping the slate clean, buying a new calendar and beginning again. It is also a ripe time for ritual and from what I have seen, ritual is all the more powerful when we can do it together. Will you join me?

The surest way to start fresh and move forward is to be at peace with what came before. You might have had an incredible year, a dull year, or a truly difficult year. Whatever happened, your aim is to celebrate what there is to celebrate about it and grieve what there is to grieve… and then, as best we can, let it go.

Making room for joy

I have cooked up something special for you. It is a completion worksheet for the year. It’s where we get to acknowledge what was great, what was hard, what we’re proud of and what we’d like to let go of from 2011. It’s an opportunity to say sayonara to 2011 with integrity and a full heart. It is a POWERFUL ritual and will get your spirit primed for creating more joy in 2012. Promise.

Mondo Beyondo begins January 9th

Get your coupon!

Because the New Year is such an extraordinary time to create change in our lives, I want the January Mondo Beyondo class to be chock full of people like YOU. Why?

  • Because we want our lives to be juicy and rich.
  • We want to grow our courage and be BRAVE with our dreams
  • We want to know what makes us come alive and do more of that

Just a few easy steps

  • Tweet it, Facebook it, share it with your friends! Just give them this link: http://tinyurl.com/82q3y5r
  • Leave a comment below with your word of the year

Everyone who leaves a comment will get a $20 discount on the January Mondo Beyondo session!

Just wait for it in your inbox. (It’s also valid for gift certificates for those last minute gifts)

Excited to hear what your word of the year will be!
I’m still test driving mine, but I’m loving words like alive, juicy, fluorishing… I might have to steal yours. ;)

      

Nutcracker Ben*

This was the adorable Ben at Fairyland yesterday while the Oakland ballet did a mini Nutcracker performance. It was his first time seeing ballet and I think he’s a natural.

      

Sponsor Spotlight: Catherine Just

If you’d like to be a sponsor (includes your ad in the sidebar + ongoing sponsor spotlights) we’d love to have you! Just send a quick email to Dani at: [email protected] to get all the details.

Catherine Just: Soul*Full eCourse

I believe you are valuable and your stories are important
Personal Growth + Connection + Soul*Full Photos = Transformation
You deserve abundance in all areas of your life!
Why wait?!
Join me!

Join award winning photographer Catherine Just in this Soul*Full eCourse designed just for women.  Interviews with: Miguel RuizDouglas BeasleyAndrea ScherBeth NichollsSheri RosenthalAline Smithson and Susannah Conway.

We will dive into photography to help you re-learn how to “see”
Writing exercises to move more toward gratitude
Learn new ways to trust that the universe supports you
Mix all that with some healthy recipes, pampering, rest and rejuvenation and you’ve got the ingredients for a more Soul*Filled Life! Join us!

What others are saying:
I have so much more to say to you about your lovely e-course – it’s been by far the absolute BEST I’ve ever taken…It’s been exactly what I needed…every week – totally spot-on. Catherine, oh fearless leader, I hope you seriously consider a SoulFull 2!” – Rachael F.

Don’t miss your chance. Starting January 16th
Spaces are already filling up!

Register Now!

 

 

      

Are you ready for a digital sabbath?

What beauty are we missing that is right under our nose?

Digital sabbath

Sounds like a heavy metal band, right? But it is something I have been fascinated with for years, and have been really inspired to try.

The traditional sabbath is about setting down work, machines, cars, phones, etc. from sundown Friday night to sunset on Saturday night. It is a time and space that is carved out for family, for connection, for nature. It is a sacred space for stillness, for contemplation, for creativity. It’s a pause in the week and a powerful ritual.

Wayne Muller, in his extraordinary book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in our Busy Lives, speaks about it so beautifully: “There comes a moment in our striving when more effort actually becomes counterproductive, when our frantic busyness only muddies the waters of our wisdom and understanding. When we become still and allow our life to rest, we feel a renewal of energy and gradual clarity of perception.”

The modern version of this ritual is in the form of a digital sabbath. It is a space we create consciously, where we step away from our screens and our gadgetry, from our blackberries, tv’s and cell phones. It’s a time when we decide not to check our email obsessively and hopefully discover that we didn’t really miss anything anyway. Every time I have experimented with what I call a media cleanse, I have seen really miraculous things. As with any cleanse, you begin to notice when/where you habitually reach for something. What precedes the moment when I check my email AGAIN even though I checked it 30 seconds before? Do I feel bored? Lonely? Is it just a nervous tic? What’s so scary about being in the moment I’m actually in? Am I longing for connection? and if I am, am I finding it in these places? Is there more connection to be found in the woods? or at the roller rink? or inside the pages of a book?

“We have lost this essential rhythm. Our culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment is better than rest, that doing something–anything–is better than doing nothing. Because of our desire to succeed, to meet these ever-growing expectations, we do not rest. Because we do not rest, we lose our way. We miss the compass points that would show us where to go, we bypass the nourishment that would give us succor. We miss the quiet that would give us wisdom. We miss the joy and love born of effortless delight. Poisoned by this hypnotic belief that good things come only through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we can never truly rest. And for want of rest, our lives are in danger.” Wayne Muller, Sabbath

Longing for Balance

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that this is one of my obsessions. Finding that balance between living my real life and my life online is a puzzle I am always contemplating. I am highly sensitive (so many of us are) and get overwhelmed easily. A lot of data coming at me in whatever form- advertising, radios playing, email messages, tweets, all starts to feel like noise, fast. My threshold is low for how much media I can take in.

Whenever I hear the words “digital sabbath” my ears perk up. Yes! Carving out a space like that, a sanctuary of time that is about connection, real connection– to self, to nature, to each other- makes every cell in me say yes. When I think about Ben growing up in the modern world such as it is, I get scared that one day he will forever bury his face in a screen (perhaps a video game) and forget how much he loves to walk in the redwoods or perfect his dance moves. He already prefers watching a movie over doing just about anything else. And I wonder how much I am modeling the kind of distraction I am trying to protect him from- staring at my own screen, checking my email, even taking videos of him with my phone while we’re in the park.

I heard an interview with the author of Hamlet’s Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age and can’t wait to read it.

Have any of you instituted a Digital Sabbath? How do you find balance? Do you all crave it as much as I do?

I’d love to hear in the comments.