Susan's Sharing Space

The Not So Big Life By Sarah Susanka

Susanka is an architect famous for The Not So Big House book series. The Not So Big Life is her account of how she discovered her purpose in life and how she continues to have a spiritual perspective in her daily living. Her practical, real-world examples bring down to earth the seemingly vague concepts of living in the present moment, creating a meaningful life, finding the time to do what really matters, etc. This is an excellent book that I highly recommend. The following blurb from the book’s back jacket is a nice summary:

In The Not So Big Life, architect Sarah Susanka expands her revolutionary philosophy on inhabiting space to show us how to better inhabit our lives. Through simple exercises and inspiring stories, Susanka reveals that all we need to do is make small shifts in our day–subtle movements that open our minds as if we were opening windows to let in fresh air. The result: We quickly discover that we have all the space and time we need for the things in our lives that really matter. These small changes can yield great rewards. In her elegant, clear style, Susanka convinces us that less is truly more–much more.You can read more at www.notsobiglife.com

Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

        This book really surprised me. I am a bit of a health nut and chided myself for picking up yet another book on the subject thinking I should instead be spending my time learning something new.

        Pollan takes four very different meals and traces their ingredients back to their original sources. In the process, he gives us an incredible view of today’s agricultural industry. He sheds light not only on our mainstream agriculture industry, but the organic one as well. Little did I know, for example, that many organic food producers are owned and operated by big industry and that many pesticides are “allowable” in products labeled organic.  I was also surprised to learn that corn fed beef was not the preferred beef that I’d always thought it was. I have actually made some changes to my food purchases as a result of this book. If you are at all interested in health, nutrition, gardening and/or the environment, this is a book you will want to read!

Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table by Cameron Stracher

        If you’ve ever spent time and energy creating a meal for your family only to have them not eat or appreciate it, this is a book you’ll welcome! Stracher vows not only to be home for dinner with his family 2.5 times per week, he takes it a step further and commits to actually cooking that meal. It’s a fast, fun read that men and women, cook and non-cook alike will enjoy!

Courageous Souls by Robert Schwartz

        This book was recommended to me a number of times, but I resisted it because I’m such a staunch believer in free will and didn’t think a book about our pre-birth plans would have anything of interest for me. Fortunately, I finally picked up the book and found it quite both fascinating and inspirational!

The author explores 10 people’s lives that have significant challenges. Through mediums, he works to discover why the individual may have chosen the challenge and what meaning can be derived from the experience. It’s thought provoking at a minimum, but hopefully you will become as inspired as I did. As an aside, the author’s research and experience confirms his beliefs that while we do make plans, aka blueprints, before we come into a body, it is our choice on whether or not we follow those plans; in other words, we do have free will.

Let me know how you like or dislike these books. It’ll be fun to hear your interpretations!

Best Regards,

Susan

Grounding is the first meditation technique I ever learned. It’s simple, powerful and is instrumental in any transformation endeavor! It’s literally the foundation for all other meditation techniques. Grounding allows you to bring more of your spiritual self into the body. As Mary Ellen Flora writes in her book, Mediation: Key to Spiritual Awakening, “Grounding is the way you, as spirit, connect with the physical world and take charge of your creativity on Earth.”

We are all energy, and just like an electrical outlet that needs to be grounded in order to be safe, our bodies need to be grounded as well.  You can ground by creating an energy cord from the base of your spine to the center of the earth. Attach it firmly at both ends and voila, you’re grounded! It’s as simple as that!

To do this, sit quietly and close your eyes. This helps you tune into yourself more intensely. Visualize an energy beam flowing from the base of your spine going all the way down to the center of the earth. The energy goes through the chair, the floor, the foundation, dirt, etc, all the way to the center of the earth.

When I first started grounding, I liked to visualize a tree trunk as my grounding cord. It was easy for me to see how the strong trunk and roots held me to the center of the earth. Then, when I was learning about amusement (tune in to my next post for more on this), I had a Barney-purple stacking-plastic-cup grounding cord. My oldest son was really into Barney at that time, and the image just came to me. Seeing this grounding cord in my mind’s eye always made me laugh, which in turn made it easier to groundJ!

You can visualize a water fall, tube, chain, beam of energy, or anything that works for you. You can change it at any time, and you can also increase or decrease the amount of energy flowing down your grounding cord. Most people need to increase their grounding, but my point is just that you have control over it.

In this way, you can use your grounding cord as a release mechanism. You can let go of anything down your grounding cord that you’d like to release such as stress, pain, old concepts, other people’s energy, etc.  For example, you may find that you often compare yourself to others. To release that behavior, just get the concept of competition in your mind’s eye, and let it go down your grounding cord. “See” it flowing right down to the center of the earth where the energy is neutralized.  I find that releasing unwanted things down my grounding cord is a huge energy boost!

This might seem like a simple visualization technique in the beginning, but as you practice and gain more experience with releasing things down your grounding cord, you may actually start to “see” energy leaving your system and/or feel it with your physical body. My son once said, “I like when you do your readings because I can feel the warmth”. Unbeknownst to him, he was “feeling” my grounding (I do my psychic readings upstairs from his room).  

By bringing more of your spiritual self into the body, grounding also helps your body feel safe. When I’m nervous or afraid, the first thing I do is increase my grounding, and instantly I start to relax. Once you start grounding regularly, you’ll notice when you’re not grounded because you’ll feel agitated and restless.

It’s fun to practice and play with this technique. Several times throughout the day, just check in and see or feel whether or not you are grounded. You can also drop your grounding cord while talking with someone -- just let it go. Notice how that feels. Then take a moment, reground, and notice the difference. 

My children have taught me a lot about having fun with grounding. After moving on from tree trunks and plastic stacking cups, I now just create my grounding cord as a beam of energy, and give it a color. I recently started asking my kids what color their grounding cords were and they would sometimes say, “silver” or “blue, green, and red”. Wow, what a concept! I’d never thought about combining colors before! My daughter’s favorite right now is “pink and yellow,” while my oldest son sometimes matches his grounding color to something he’s wearing and usually throws in a silver or gold energy for fun. My middle son likes his grounding cord to be a rainbow. I love that they have no limits about how they can create and use their grounding cords -- they’ve taught me to loosen up about mine too! Right now I’m purple and gold with curls—woo hoo!

As always, I’d love to hear your stories whether you are just starting or a seasoned grounderJ.

Best regards,

Susan

Dear Friends,

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had a long drive to visit family for the holiday weekend, but it was a great opportunity for me to catch up on some reading thanks to my husband who was willing to chauffer most of the way. I thought I’d share some of the interesting and inspiring articles I read:

There are several good articles in the December issue of Oprah Magazine. I’d love to link to them to make it easy for you, but they don’t have the full articles on the website. Bummer—although I can understand the need to actually sell the magazine in order to be able to keep it going. I’ll paraphrase the main article that really fascinated me. It talks about people who listened to their intuition despite friends and their own intellect telling them it was crazy, even potentially dangerous to do so.

The tile is The Hallelujah Chorus by Aimee Lee Ball on pg 311.

To summarize:
There was a group of boys living in an orphanage in Liberia. Their parents had died or disappeared during the civil war that had taken over their country. They had been chosen to form a cappella choir that would tour the US and raise money for the orphanage. While the boys were visiting the Charlotte, North Carolina area, their orphanage was attacked and decimated.  

This next part gives me chills so I’ll quote it for you.

Lysa, a 37-year old motivational speaker, was going to hear the choir with her then 8-year-old’s Brownie troop. She decided to take all three of her daughters imagining no more than an ordinary day,” she says. “Nothing led me to believe life was about to be seriously interrupted.” But listening to the honeyed voices of the young travelers, she was overwhelmed with a sudden thought: Two of the boys were meant to be hers. She literally put her fingers in her ears to drown out what she assumed was a divine message she didn’t want to hear. At the post concert reception, two boys named Mark and Jackson separated from the crowd, wrapped their arms around her, and called her mom.

…The idea of adoption was crazy, she understood—not even in the realm of possibility—but she made him (her husband) promise to hear the boys sing. And “crazy” became a calling for both of them.

The story goes on to describe how their friends and family gave them every reasonable reason not to adopt these two boys, but they followed their hearts and did so anyway. Not only that, but some of the more ardent opponents ended up adopting a child, too. In fact, through Lysa’s encouragement, several families adopted every single one of the boys and then sent for their siblings and adopted them as well.

The article goes on to describe how each family was “drawn” to a particular child or children and how mysteriously they have become an integral part of their families. A whole community is now raising these young people. If you get the chance to read the full article, do so! Here’s a pic: http://www2.oprah.com/omagazine/200612/omag_200612_adopt.jhtml

This is a link to an article by Gloria DeGaetano, author of one of my favorite parenting books, “Parenting Well in a Media Age”. You don’t have to be a parent to appreciate the message: creating meaning in our lives. http://thepci.com/articles/degaetano_LookingForMeaning.htm

This is the link to an article in Parent Map called Creating a Family Spirit of Giving. http://www.parentmap.com/dec_06/1206_1.htm

This links you to an article from Bright Horizons about the potential pitfalls of constantly teaching your kids without giving them time just to be. http://www.brighthorizons.com/efamily/article.aspx?id=56&mailing=305&user_id=95449&campaign_id=240#continued

Hope you enjoy!

Best regards,

Susan