Archive for the Fun, Funky Free Stuff

hello and welcome to 2013!

i am a bit of a thesaurus addict and dictionary devotee.

when writing this post about vows and commitments (good and worthy topics for the top of a new year), i found these definitions striking:

VOW:

:: to solemnly promise to do a specified thing; to dedicate to someone or something, especially a deity.

COMMITMENT:

:: to pledge, devote or bind to a certain course of action; to be in a long-term emotional relationship with

somewhere in the moment when 2012 became 2013, i made some simple vows to myself for the upcoming year:

* Be Oracle Led. (have my Sourced bodily wisdom, the deity that is in me, lead the way)

* Take My Full Share. (of the moment, of life, of love)

* Be Bold. (insert my wisdom into the moment, with exuberance)

for the ceremony in which i committed to these vows, i created an intricate dance performance – involving a projection of me dancing with my live dancing self, a beautiful musical score, to an audience of the most extraordinary humans i know.

here’s a sneak peek image from the performance:

and here’s my guideline for creating your own vows and commitment ceremony:

your own commitment ceremony (your vow exchange with You), need not be as complex as all that. it can certainly be involved, and include the goodstuffs of ceremony, or you can keep it simple and simply Hear Yourself as you make your vow(s).

all that stuff of ceremony (like candles, incense, singing, dancing, setting the space, gathering witnesses, etc) PREPARES you to step into the Sacred, Holy and True, but you don’t NEED any of it.

the moment your heart speaks the vow IS the moment of commitment, and that can happen anytime, anywhere, no bells, whistles or cathedrals needed.

the Divine is everywhere. the Holy knows when you mean it or not. and you know when it’s True. (if you liked that, feel free to tweet it)

so, your mission, should you choose to accept it:

Your Commitment Ceremony To You

1. create a vow (or vows) to You.

what do you solemnly pledge to do, be and uphold for yourself this year, even when you don’t feel like it – especially when you don’t feel like it?

(said differently, what course of action are you devoted to? what do you promise to yourself? what do you agree to uphold? who do you vow to BE, in rough times as well as smooth, in this long-term relationship you happen to be in, with Yourself?)

i say, come up with ONE powerful vow. or two or three. when you can remember them off the top of your head, you know you’re really going to do ‘em.

2. plan (and do) your commitment ceremony.

it can be long or short. take yourself on an afternoon, a day or a weekend getaway. or grab 2 minutes of silence on the bus on the way to work. rent out a church, or do it on the toilet.)

it can involve real jewels and killer duds, or a gum-ball ring and your favorite sweats. however, i do recommend you have some item, like a ring, a necklace, a picture, or somesuch that acts as an anchor to remind you of your vow or vows.

(that’s the real reason we use a ring in a marriage commitment ceremony: to look down at your hand and see the daily reminder of your vows)

thazzit.

get Real, get Sacred, bring your vow(s) and your talisman and do the deed.

and of course, make my year by letting me know a vow or two of yours in the comments below!

welcome to 2013 and the You you are bringing into it,

LiYana

How do I make this the best year of my life? My newest expert video answer, use this link:

http://www.yourtango.com/2012126689/how-do-i-make-year-best-my-life-video

Big, Bold, Beautiful 2012 to you,

When you have the keys to how a man works, he gives you the keys to himself.

I have spent the last month interviewing a series of phenomenal men, asking them things like:

“What do you want most from a woman?”
“What would compel you to commit?”
“What makes you feel like a stud, a rockstar, a MAN?”
“What shuts you down and makes you want to leave?”

If you are anything like me, their answers will shock you in all the best ways, move you to your core, restore your hope in love – and make you piss your pants laughing at times.

Watch your email inbox over the next days and weeks, because I’ll be letting you know when the videos are ready for your viewing pleasure.

In the meantime, check out these choice tidbits … let me know your favorite moments from the video and WHY … and get yourself read for the Man Whispering video interviews!

Enjoy,

Courage (from the French word for “heart”): to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

I got that from a fabulous Ted Talk with Brene Brown, which I have conveniently placed below for your viewing pleasure.

It will take 20 minutes out of your day, but it may just give you some courage to have real Courage.

“What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.”
~ Brene Brown

Watch it here, and don’t forget to leave your thoughts below:

Next week, I’m in the Super Women Summit, a powerful posse of women entrepreneurs sharing our super secrets.

If you are in business for yourself, this may be right up your super-alley.

I’m offering a class titled, “Turn Your Sensuality into Business Power”

I’ll cover the four secrets of feminine energy so you can rev your business engines and stimulate your bottom line!

Things like:

• How to stay a woman as you’re making it in a man’s world
• What creative opportunities you may be wasting when you are cut off below the waist
• How your hormones can help (rather than hurt) your efficiency
• The #1 ingredient you need in every relationship – without which they are doomed
• How your unique brand of femininity can be your secret business sauce

Click HERE get in on the Summit yourself.

For a majority of my years in business for myself, I tried to be successful by ignoring the irrefutable fact I am a woman.

Surprise, surprise: that didn’t work very well.

I had to figure out, with a lot of trial, error and tears, how to stay connected to my body, my juice and my joy, even while in business!

It will be fun to share what’s been working for me, so I hope you’ll be joining.

Oh, and some other super women I highly suggest you listen in on: Anastasia Netri, Carey Peters, Jenn August and Alexandra Jamieson – Fabulous Femmes I know personally.

That link again to get in on the Summit, use this link: http://tinyurl.com/supwom

Enjoy, super duper woman,

LiYana

You know how it goes. The conversation starts out OK, but all of a sudden it is like someone lit a fuse and set off a fireworks display of defensiveness, blame, lashing out, accusation, icy silence or hurled insults.

Want to know how keep that fuse from being lit, especially around this holiday time? How to De-Fuse an upset or conflict?  How to cool it all down enough to restore some rationality, create some space for some real communication and connection?

I thought you might.

It is unchecked reactivity that is the highway robbery of connection.  Reactivity can sideswipe and derail any well-meaning communication. By De-Fusing reactivity, the other person will feel like you still “have their back” rather than have suddenly become the aggressor or their opponent.

Some of these 12 ways will work well for colleagues and friends, others for your partners and family.

They are generalizations, since all of us humans are different and unique, but for the grand majority, they hold true.

These will work at the first sign of reactivity – yours or theirs. And it goes without saying that none of these will work unless they are 100% genuine and from your heart.

12 Ways To De-Fuse, this holiday season:

Pick one, or try all 12!

(You can sing along, if you’d like: “On the 12th day of De-Fusing, my true love gave to me …”)

1.  Start With Appreciation: It may not always be the first thing on your mind, but make it a practice to have it be the first thing out of your mouth. Tell ‘em what you honestly love about them, what they did for you, said to you, how they moved you, etc. You’ll not only activate your ability to be grateful, but you and others will rise in value and worth in your eyes.

2.  Be Gentle. A full-frontal assault on someone, all guns blaring is usually not that effective, unless your aim is a knock-down, drag-out fight. If your aim is healthy communication, start with some vulnerability, with your throat bared, so to speak. This will set the stage for you both to be kind and considerate to each other.

3.  Repeat It Back. What you hear is often a far cry from than what person intended.  Since language is an approximation, we all interpret the same words in often vastly different ways.  A good rule of thumb is to repeat back to someone what you think they just said: “So, here’s what I think I just heard you say. You are feeling/thinking…” Stopping to clarify in this way can save you so much of the pain that comes from the build-up of repeated misunderstanding.

Especially effective with men:

4.  Consider Your Timing. Can he focus on you right now or would you do better to wait until later?

5.  Acknowledgment. Tell him some way he has touched you, impressed you, something he has done well.  Thank him. This opens him up to let down his guard and hear you.

6.  Give Him Space. Sometimes guys need to take a long time to answer you, or they need to go away for a while and figure it out.  If you give him space, he will come back with something great.

7.  Give Him A Way to Win. Consider posing your communication in the form of a problem he can solve or you can solve together, rather than as something he isn’t doing right. Guys come in to their element when there is a way for them to “win”, to show up as a hero, and when there is something that they can fix.

Especially effective with women:

8.  Make Physical Contact With Her, like a touch or a hug. Physical contact is grounding and calming like nothing else, and reminds her of your presence. She will stop worrying that you are outa there, and will then be open to hear what you have to say.

9.  Remind Her That You Are Not Leaving. In a highly emotional and heated situation, especially if you walk away or become emotionally distant, women can become triggered and feel like you are leaving for good.

10. What Do You Love About Her? Is it the curve of her neck? Her rapier wit? Her grace? Tell her. Often in an upset, she may feel that you no longer love her (even if you said it earlier in the day), or that because you are angry, she is losing your love. Is there limit to the number of times you can tell a woman you love her, or what you love about her? Um, no.

And, for all humans, again…

11. Say It Differently. If someone is responding as though they haven’t heard you, no matter how many times you have said it before, THEY are not stupid, YOU have not said it in a WAY they can hear. Try using different words, tone or intention.

12. Go For Humour. For example, if your Aunt Mildred always badgers you about why you aren’t married yet, or why YET AGAIN you didn’t bring home a prospective partner, you can tell her something like, “Listen, I know you are excited to hear about the scores of marriage offers I’ve had to turn down this month and all the love letters I’ve framed on my wall. And I know you want to discuss what to cook for the eight suitors I brought, but let’s find something else to talk about, OK?” Adjust humour and content accordingly…

Enjoy – and for extra points, tell me which one worked best!

LiYana

This was sent from one of my readers and I thought it too cute not to share:

“And thus, dear students, we have arrived at the formula for understanding women”.

Can spirituality + sexuality?

Does spirituality + sexuality = non-duality expression in body?

Or should it be that spirituality – sexuality = the path?

Or sexuality – spirituality = more fun?

Have fun watching this video. If it turns you on, you’ll know you’re on the right track – or you’ll know you need some more math skills.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SOULSHAPING#p/a/u/0/AoJBD1T7oc0

I ran across this Mary Oliver Poem as I was working on a segment of a class I’m teaching, to help women locate and live from their joy, from what they en-joy:

You are young.
So you know everything.
You leap into the boat and begin rowing.
But listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul.
Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me.
There is life without love.  It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe.
It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied.
When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life toward it.

As you get more acquainted with your Named One, take a look at how She’s shown up in nature, religious and spiritual traditions and art.  These are images taken from the book, The Yoni: Sacred Symbol of Female Creative Power by Rufus C. Camphausen.  “Yoni” is the Sanskrit word for female genitalia, the source of life.  It’s counterpart is the Lingam, the phallus.

Notice, as you pay more and more attention to your Named One, which stage you are in (we all go through most all of these stages): disgusted, numb, indifferent, interested, celebratory, awe, reverent.

1. Natural rock formation!

2. The “lips” of this natural rock formation in the southern California desert were painted before the site was used for initiation ceremonies for the girls and women of the indigenous Kemeyaay tribe.

3. Natural rock carving!

4. A unique altar of the goddess, clearly designed for the practice of Yoni Puja. This eighth-century stone sculpture clearly showe the rim where the libations poured upon the Yoni would collect.

5. Another natural rock formation used as a place of worship in the US. this one can be found on the Crawford Ranch in California’s San Diego County.

6. In this unique Japanse terra cotta, the Buddha is seen meditating in front of, and perhaps, about, the Golden Gate, a Chinese term for the Yoni. Although it may be surprising to many contemporary Buddhists, this sculpture conveys the same message as a passage from the Condamaharosana Tantra, wherein the Buddha is quoted as having said, “Take refuge in the yoni of an esteemed woman.”

7. Most famous among all the sheelas is this stunning stone carving from the church at Kilpeck, Herefordshire. By opening her vulva as wide as possible, this figure seems to show us where we come from and, perhaps, to invite us back into her womb once life comes to an end.

8. In this fifteenth-century painting, the artist has embedded Mary and her divine child within a madorla, a universal symbol of the Goddess and the Yoni.

9. Georgia O’Keefe’s GRay Line With Black, Blue and Yellow (c. 1923) is as beautiful as it is suggestive.

10. This beautiful wood carving from southern India shows a woman menstruating, most likely during a ritual celebration in which this specific female energy was both venerated and absorbed by the practitioners.

11. Fascination as well as a feeling of inferiority are depicted in artist Gottfeild Helnwein’s surreal work Lulu (1988), an imagery harking back to prehistoric times.

12. For his time, Gustave Courbet’s Origin of the World (1866) (L’Origine du Monde) was a daringly realistic and explicit work of art. Although his title suggests a respectful stance toward the Yoni, his contemporaries could not but regard this as pornography.

13. A real live yoni! (nope, not mine! ;-P) Body adornment. In essence, piercing one’s genitals is not truly different from piercing one’s earlobe. It does, however, require a positive view of the body and sexuality.

14. The famous Doni of Laussel, a 26,000 year old limestone relief found in France. In her hand she hold the archetypal mode of what later became known as the “horn of plenty” or the infamous “box of Pandora.”

15. Convincing evidence of yoni worship can be found in this 12th C stone carving from the Sixty-Four-Yogini Temple at Bheragat, Madhya, Pradesh, India.

16. Natural rock formation. A place of mystery and stillness, but not of solitude. To the worshiper, the Goddess resides in such natural formations that reveal the Yoni of Mother Earth.

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17.  The Virgin Mary of Guadelupe; any resemblance to a Yoni or is it just me? (this image is NOT from the book Yoni)