NEWS
Kiss you, kill you, be you
“They will either want to kiss you, kill you, or be you.” Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2
When I heard this the other night while watching the Hunger Games, it struck me. It made me think of running my own online business.
But it also made me think of other times in my life when I have created change. Whether I was learning yoga, changing the way I eat, or standing up for myself.
Whatever you are doing to create change there is always push back. It feels like you are moving through this tight web of people. And it is emotional, sometimes shitty, sometimes wonderful.
The thing is, that web of people are either kissers (loving, kind, super supportive), killers (downers, judgemental jargons, negative commentators), or Be-ers (followers, fans, motivators).
For some reason we tend to listen to the killers even though they make up 1/3 of the web. We love the Kissers but they don’t usually help us grow. It is the Be-ers we want. We want the followers, the fans, the motivators because that is how we grow and share ourselves with the world.
So go out and find your Be-ers! Nevermind the killers, turn and run. And let the kissers, kiss you for god sake.
Love Shauna
Simple Yoga done right at your desk
I received some helpful feedback from a survey I sent out a while back.
I asked you what you would like to learn about during an online yoga for back pain course and one of my favorite responses was, some short poses to do at your desk.
I loved this answer because it got me thinking about being at work and sitting for long hours.
I believe one of the reasons we, as a society, have back pain is because we sit at our computers for such long hours with poor posture.
I have had back pain for most of my life and sitting at my computer doesn’t make it better.
Here are some simple yoga techniques that you can do right at your desk. It would be so helpful for your posture and for your back and neck pain if you were to do this at work everyday.
1. Pelvic Roll – Sit at the edge of your chair. Place your hands on your hipsBegin by rolling the pelvis back so you are sitting on the back part of your sit bones. Then roll your pelvis forward so that you sit on the front part of your sit bones. Do this a few times.
2. TA Contraction – Sit at the edge of your chair. Contract the lower abdominal muscles between your pubic bone and your navel. It helps if you breathe and blow out through you lips. When you blow out think of contracting your lower abdominal muscles.
3. Ground Your Feet – Stand up. Stand with your feet hip width apart. Bend your legs and line the center of your knee with your second toe. Begin to straighten the legs and push your feet into the floor at the same time.
4. Shoulder Blade Tuck – Stand or Sit on your chair. Bring arms down by side. Begin to turn the thumb side of the hand so it faces forward and then away from body. The entire arm will rotate away from your body. Feel the shoulder blades tuck into the back.
5. Head Nod – Sit on your chair. Move your head by moving from the back of your head rather then your eyes. Right at the base of your skull where your occipital muscles live. Begin by moving the back of the head to the right, then to the left. Then move the back of your head down and then up. Repeat.
6. Breath Awareness – Sit on your chair. Close your eyes. Take in a deep breath and then slowly exhale. Repeat 10 times.
With Love, Light, and Soulfulness
Shauna Lay
Long awaited...
Hey there,
I have been working on a project for a long time now. In fact the idea started about 6 years ago when a friend of mine suggested that I teach online classes. I though the idea was brilliant! However, at the time, online video creation wasn’t as accessible as now. Some teachers were doing it but very few. And frankly, I didn’t think I was good enough to teach online.
And then my students began asking me if I could make a video or an audio of me teaching so they could start practicing at home.
The signs were there but I was procrastinating, until now.
A year ago, I decided to create an online “Yoga For Back Care” course. As you may know, I have taught this for the past 5 years in studio. I have gotten great feedback and many of my students wanted a way to practice it at home. So here it is…the long awaited… “Yoga For Back Care E-Course”.
But before I release it, I need YOUR help. I want to make sure it has all the necessary ingredients for a great online course and so I need some feedback from YOU!
I would love it if you could take this survey, and answer these four short questions.
Thank you for listening, for reading, for being you!
With Love, Light, and Soulfulness
Shauna Lay
Annual Review
Dear Friends,
First off, Happy New Year’s!! I hope you celebrated happily with your loved ones.
A few weeks ago I wrote about all the goal setting techniques I have been inspired to do this new year. This time, as promised, I will share the details.
I am going to warn you though, this is a long letter, so if you are not interested no worries Feel free to close now.
Here it goes:
The Vision:
One of the practices during the creation of my Business Vision was to write out my dream. It was one of my favorite parts. This is my dream:
“My dream is to teach practices that develop spiritual co-creation and healing among all people. To show that spirituality is about remembering who you are and sharing your uniqueness with the rest of the world. My dream is to teach more….more retreats, more classes, more, more, more.”
The Goal Calendar:
A calendar, any calendar. I have written down one goal per month. And it is only for business. I chose business because it is one of my main focuses for this year. Simple, yet so effective.
The Annual Review:
The Annual Review had several parts to it.
The first part was all about what went well and what didn’t go so well, so here are the high-lights and low-lights of that practice.
What went well in 2014 (highlights):
I held my first Vision retreat and first Yoga retreat and they were both a great success. I have been wanting to hold a retreat for many years and finally had the confidence to make it happen.
I connected with my husband more this year. We had a lot of date nights thanks to our team of babysitters. I volunteer at both my kids schools and have a great connection with their teachers. I started teaching yoga in my son’s K classroom and I am continuing to do so in 1stgrade.
I developed a larger connection with my girlfriends this year and I feel very fulfilled in that part of my life. I have really beautiful friendships.
I am more organized in my house this year and feel connected to my home. I cleaned my garage, organized my attic, framed pictures, made picture albums, amongst other stuff.
I took two online E-Courses.
I filmed and created the Yoga for Back Pain Online Course. Coming out early Spring 2015. I also taught three back care workshops in studio and they were a huge success.
I traveled more this year than I ever have in one year. I learned that I love to travel and really love to be at home too. What didn’t go so well (lowlights):
I didn’t make as much money as I had hoped through my business. And I felt like I worked a lot, more than I ever have. I saved less money than I would have liked,
I did not put my “Yoga For Back Pain” course, online. I created all the content but didn’t get it onto the website. Was I scared, hell yes, it’s going online.
I wanted to do more cardio than I did. I got a bike for my birthday and didn’t ride it as much as I had hoped.
I co-created on a few different projects that didn’t take off this year. Hopefully 2015.
The next part of this process was to create a purpose, outcome, and theme for 2015. This was very easy after having done all the previous exercises.
It goes something like this:
Purpose: In 2015 I will revamp my finances, exercise and meditate more, It will be the best business year ever, etc.
Outcome: At the end of 2015, I will have contributed fully to our savings, IRA, and college accounts. I will be in the best physical and mental shape up-to-date. I will have fulfilled my travel needs, etc…
Theme: My theme in 2015 is Alignment. That means I will focus on aligning with my own truth. Owning it to be exact.
The next part was to create categories for all the things I want to focus on in 2015.
Here are mine (in no particular order):
Finances, Exercise, Wellness, Food, Travel, Blog, Spiritual Work, Business, Give Back, Family and Friends, Cleanse.
Then I wrote down a summary of the actions I would like to take for each category.
Then I broke down the summary into a list of actions.
Next I wrote the first thing I need to do to complete each action with a dated deadline.
And lastly I wrote down any additional goals I had.
Phew! It sounds like a lot but once I started writing everything down it was flowing out of me like water and it got me really excited about the new year.
And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since, in fact, I have added some things.
With Love and Light,
Shauna Lay
Vision, Goals, Reviews, it's almost 2015
Dear Friends,
This year is coming to an end and there has been so much online about setting goals for 2015.
I’ve never been much of a goal setter but I do create visions and commitments so I thought I would check out some goal setting techniques too.
I felt inspired and so I created my Business Vision (Thank you Vision360), I created a Business Goals Calendar (Thank you Amy Porterfield), and I did an Annual Review (Thank you Chris Guillebeau).
All of them were spectacular and I will give more details in my next newsletter. But first I want to share with you how I did them and my takeaways.
Business Vision:
I wrote my business vision by using the “Free Guide to Creating Your Business Vision” written by Vision360’s Ali Schiller
My takeaway: I love to create practices that serve people’s health and wellness. I want everyone to be as healthy and well as possible and I believe EVERYONE deserves that.
A true aha moment for me.
Get the guide for free and create your business vision for 2015!
Business Goals Calendar:
I created a Business Goals Calendar because I saw a picture on Facebook of one made by Amy Porterfield.
My takeaway:
Goal setting doesn’t have to be so intense. I just got a 2015 calendar and wrote ONE overall goal for each month of the year. If I didn’t have one for a month, then I left it blank or I wrote VACATION.
Annual Review:
This one was more descriptive then the last goal setting technique. Chris Guillebeau provided the template. And it was really fun. I first reviewed 2014 and then I set goals for 2015. I hit all the things I really want to focus on in the next year.
My takeaway:
A lot of things went really well in 2014 and some things didn’t go so well. I will share all of these in my next newsletter. The things that didn’t go so well became part of my focus for 2015.
With Love and Light,
Shauna Lay
A beautiful reminder from our kiddos
Dear Friends,
I just got back from dropping my son off at school.
We have a storm brewing here in CA and the news reporters say that it is going to be the worst storm in a decade. As we all know, the news tends to instill fear in us peeps.
So people are buying water and sandbags and food and such, in preparation. While I think it is good to prepare for a storm; I also believe that they like to exaggerate just a wee bit.
While us adults are planning for disaster, the kids at my son’s school were laughing and playing and running.
I saw one kid with his arms stretched out, the wind blowing hard at him, his clothes flapping quickly and a huge sense of gratitude for the natural elements.
I saw another kid holding an umbrella, the umbrella was flipping around all about and she was laughing trying to get it to situate itself accordingly so that it would actually do it’s job, keep her from getting wet.
And another kid was using his jacket as a kite. Throwing it up in the air and catching the wind to watch it fly.
It was a beautiful reminder that kids live in the present moment without fear of future disaster.
They welcome the storm with open arms and open hearts.
Might they get scared if it gets really strong, why yes, but that time will come when it does, if it does.
Spend some time today cuddling up, looking outside, and finding joy in whatever you see.
With Love and Light,
Shauna Lay
Commit to Yoga
Hey there,
So, tonight I finished teaching my first “Commit to Yoga” workshop. It was a five-week workshop and we talked about YOGA.
We didn’t just talk about yoga as a thing we do for exercise, although that was certainly included. More importantly, we talked about yoga as a way of life, as an experience.
When I came up with the idea to teach this workshop I wasn’t totally sure what I would teach. I knew it was needed because many of my students were expressing their difficulty starting a home practice. I thought we would talk about committing to the asana practice but as the weeks went by what happened was different. What happened is that we started to talk about yoga as a way of life. We talked about the inspiration, the questions, the exploration, and the frustrations that arise from “committing to yoga”. We talked about how yoga is a way of life. We talked about how yoga is so much more than the asana practice. In the end, each person felt the freedom to explore, develop and share “their yoga”.
And then it occurred to me…
I shared my whole self, not the teacher who walks in the class and teaches an asana sequence. But the teacher who gets to share all of herself. All of the reading, the writing, the thoughts, the frustrations, the discoveries, that have made me who I am today. I was able to share “my yoga”.
And I loved it…I am grateful…
Thank you for listening, for reading, for being you!
With Love, Light, and Soulfulness
Shauna Lay
WDS 2014
I recently returned from WDS 2014 (World Domination Summit). My great friend, Ali Schiller, invited me and I said yes because anything done with her is bound to be fun.
WDS is a conference for people who live their lives in a non-conventional way. It looks from the outside to be a conference for entrepreneurs, but it is so much more.
Chris Guillebeau, author of “The Art of Non-Conformity Blog” and “The $100 Startup”, is the head of the conference. He is super cool because he is doing remarkable work and he is genuine and very real! What a treat to see and meet him.
WDS brings people, who are living unconventional lives, together to show “just how possible anything is”. We are unique individuals, with unique skills, and are job in this world it to live in a way that cultivates that. Take what you’ve got and dominate, not in a crazy-ego way, but in a way that says, yes I CAN choose how I want to live my life and I will help others in the process.
I returned with strong drive within me to be more of me, do more of what I want to, and trust that everything is happening exactly as it should be.
Next month, at the end of August, I am co-leading a retreat at the Land Of Medicine Buddha. If you are feeling the need to get away to a really cool spot, join Kate Coughlin and I.
Thank you for listening, for reading, for being you!
With Love, Light, and Soulfulness
Shauna Lay
The word busy is keeping you busy
Last week I created a list of things I had to do. I was planning two birthday parties, I started a 5-week yoga workshop in addition to my other work and classes, I was shooting yoga videos, and we were headed up north to camp. For me this is a lot. I don’t usually pack my day, week, or month like this.
I had a phone call scheduled on the day where my to-do list was largest. I knew I would not have a lot of time to talk. So I wrote her a message asking if we could re-schedule for the evening. My message was…Hi, I have a tightly scheduled day so if we talk in the evening it would give us more freedom to chat.
That one sentence really got me because I purposely avoided the word busy, I always do, I hardly ever use it, because I think it is an OVERUSED word. So I used tightly scheduled (which is what was) and then realized that if we moved our conversation to the evening, there would be more freedom.
Freedom is the opposite of busy. Busy, Free, Busy, Free.
I am all about freedom, freedom is space, space to do as we please, space to live the life we want, to do the things we want.
Create space in your life. You don’t have to cram your life with things to do. Here’s a few tips on how to get started.
1. Prioritize, what is really important to you? Create your to-do list and then cross off the things that aren’t important.
2. Words are powerful. Stop using the word busy, find another way to describe the act of doing a lot.
3. In those moments when you are waiting for something, breathe. Don’t look at your phone, don’t call someone. Instead breathe.
Thank you for listening, for reading, for being you!
Written with love,
Shauna Lay
Expectations
This month I have been working diligently on my business; expanding my services, creating more yoga videos, updating my website and my newsletters. I am going for it. I am moving out of comfort and into the uncomfortablity of changing.
Whether we create change or not, it can be difficult. But the more change we consciously create, the better we get at dealing with the unexpected. We begin to welcome it knowing that it is followed by growth.
I have been part of an accountability group for the past two years and let me tell you, I have changed. I make commitments and then I check in with my group weekly. I tell them whether I did or did not do what I said I would do. You would think it was just a to do list but it is so much more. So much more, that I definitely feel 100% comfortable saying, “It is transformational”. One of my group members recently said, “It is life-changing”!
This week was my last call for this session. This session I decided I was going to focus on making commitments around my business. I got a lot accomplished and made some great changes. But on our last call, I got some unexpected change too.
I was telling my group about my week and when it was time for feedback, the words that I heard from my leader and group members were “high expectations” and “is there a lesson?” and “what are you telling yourself that is not really true?”. I got sad hearing those words because I knew they were right. I realized in that moment that the lesson and the truth was that I have high expectations of my friends and family. And then I realized that I have high expectations of myself. It was a revelation and it was a feeling of damn it! That is not fair, not fair to myself, and not fair to the people I love. I’ll be working ON and working OUT this one!
I’ll be singing the “Frozen” song, “Let it be, Let it be, Let it be…”
Accountability Works is brilliant, it reveals to us our own selves which inevitably creates change, expected and unexpected! And when we get to know ourselves, when we really get to know ourselves, we love ourselves fully and completely.
I love this work and I love this conversation and I am so happy to announce that I have joined the Accountability Works team. And I am offering 4 sessions this Summer.Join Me!
Thank you for listening, for reading, for being you!
With Love, Light, and Soulfulness
Shauna Lay