Now I want to share one last secret which will put you on a path to freedom where you can find your true purpose and reignite your life!

Technology today is one of the major influences in our daily lives but it comes with a pretty heavy longterm price tag that I’m not sure our society yet fully comprehends. Our incessant use (and some would say addiction) of technology comes at the expense of our own internal awareness, our surroundings and our relationships with others.

Have you noticed that you have a continuous mental dialog going on inside your head that never stops? We all do! Our mind literally narrates the world for us with incessant chatter. We usually don’t even notice it because we never really step back from it to look. This internal chatter keeps us from being present to our true selves.

I wanted to share my personal story with you about how I went from being totally stressed, overwhelmed and stuck to feeling empowered, free and excited about my life. You know the type...hyperventilating through life, running from one thing to the next while the e-mails pile up and more keeps getting added to the proverbial "to do" list.

Mindfulness and Meditation go hand in hand. Meditation lays the foundation for you to go out into the world carrying a sense of peace and serenity within. While mindfulness is the integrated practice you can employ in all of your daily interactions and relationships. Establish a daily meditation practice with a little mindfulness sprinkled on top!

Sitting on a cushion with an agenda will never produce the result you might be seeking. You can’t show up to meditation with the same agenda and mindset that put you to sleep to begin with.

To embark on your spiritual practice or enhance your current one, consider connecting with expert certified mindful life coach and meditation instructor Maggie Kelly.

Being "in control" is a big issue in most people's lives. Most of us are uncomfortable being out of control because it brings anxiety, uncertainty, confusion, panic, and a loss of self-confidence, depending on how severe the loss of control is. 

Stressed, unfulfilled, stuck? Do you have the feeling that there just has to be more to life than the way you are living it today?

Anyone who has had even the slightest introduction to Buddhist teaching is familiar with its starting point: the inescapable truth that existence entails "suffering." This is The First Noble Truth, one of the most central teachings of Buddhism. One of the fundamental teachings behind Buddhism, its ethics, philosophy, practices and community life, is the discovery that freedom and joy are possible in the face of the regular "suffering" of human life. 

It’s no surprise that some of the strongest areas of research centered on attention. Researchers at MIT and UC Santa Barbara found that merely eight minutes of meditation practice improved concentration and reduced mind-wandering. They also found that mindfulness had a dramatic effect on working memory - the facility we have to manipulate stored information in order to reason and make decisions.

Honestly, I can't tell you how many of my students tell me the "can't meditate, my mind won't stop chattering!" Do you feel the same way? We'll, let me debunk one of the biggest myths about meditation + mindfulness: you AREN'T SUPPOSED TO STOP THINKING in meditation!!  The very fact that you might have attempted to meditate and notice all of the chatter in your mind literally indicates that you are on the path toward a healthy meditation practice!  The path begins with you actually noticing. That is the practice of meditation! That we come out of our fog of thoughts long enough to notice we’ve been stuck on automatic pilot for years and not really even living our life.

"No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew." - Albert Einstein

There are no “quick-fixes” to the stress and craziness we have settled into as the “norm” these days. The practice of meditation is not fast-food spirituality. Developing a meditation practice that leaves you feeling centered, joyful and serene takes time and dedication. Start where you are. If you miss a day or two, that’s ok, start anew. Just start.

Ever tried to stop the incessant flow of chatter in your mind? Have you tried to meditate before but just can’t seem to settle your thoughts long enough to experience what people say meditation is supposed to bring you? The Sanskrit word mantra literally is translated as “vehicle of the mind” which is exactly its purpose. Meditation dates back over 2,500 years and while there are many forms of meditation, the use of a mantra is quite adept at helping you quiet that internal dialog.

Feeling scattered and having trouble focusing? Is your attention divided all day long and you don’t seem to feel as though you can catch your breath? Sit. Stop moving. Just try it for five minutes a day for this week and begin to notice that incessant internal dialog that doesn’t seem to want to give you a break. Don’t expect instant results. Enlightenment and awakening take practice and dedication. Start right where you are. Just start.

Do you notice that at times you seem to react to situations and circumstances with a bit more emotion than seems warranted for the situation? If you are like millions of us, stress puts our nerves on edge making it super easy to overreact. I’ve seen it in my own life time and again when I haven’t taken as good of care of myself as I’d like to, haven’t slept enough or have just way too much on my plate.

Are you one of the millions of Americans who has a difficult time getting to sleep or staying asleep throughout the night? Do you lay awake ruminating about the day or worrying about the day ahead tomorrow? Research has proven that the regular practice of meditation promotes sound sleep that is deeply restorative.

Why should I begin and foster a meditation practice? Have you ever noticed that the moment you try to sit still and stop thinking, it’s next to impossible? Having trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep? Consider the many benefits of a dedicated meditation practice.

Most of us believe that stress is related to and caused by external forces and events beyond our control but in fact, stress is actually an internal response. Stress is really our reaction to those events or circumstances or the perceptions we have about them.

It doesn’t have to be a big, life-altering event to trigger your body’s stress response. It can be something as simple as your neighbors dog keeping you up barking all night last night or your kids not getting along for the third day in a row.