All growth is spiritual growth, including our business growth, but only if we recognize how those lessons may show up for us.
We talked about this is my previous blog, where I included a free webinar to help you stay grounded while you consistently and sustainably build your brand on social media.

I want to talk more about the potent growth opportunities that come from deciding to consciously build and grow a wellness practice.

The internet is shakti energy.
She is expansive and hard to contain. When we decide to grow our wellness practice online, we can feel a rush of expansion.

It feels good when you see that with a little consistent effort you have more clients on your books, more people attending your events, more followers on your email list.

Let’s say you decide to host a workshop to promote an intensive you’re wanting to launch. Your workshop sells out. You make an extra $400 just on attendance, not including people signing up for your intensive. Things are going great, but on your way home, you catch a flat and it turns out that $400 has to go towards new tires. Instead of being thankful you have the money to cover it, you fall into the mindset “Oh great, just when I thought I was catching a break.” You stew over having to spend that money on tires. The “why can’t anything just go right” tape starts playing on full blast.
That success high from your workshop and all the connections you made is lost. Instead of staying present to what has been going right, you focus on all the little things that keep you stuck.

When we expand beyond our usual degree of feeling good, we play thoughts & create scenarios to make us feel bad. ← tweet this

​In his book, The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks refers to thoughts and scenarios as alarms which lead to upper limit problems.
Hendricks says,
“Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we exceed our inner thermosetting, we will do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop us back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure…
Unfortunately, our thermostat setting usually get programmed in early childhood, before we can think for ourselves. once programmed, our upper limit thermostat setting holds us back from enjoying all the love, financial abundance, and creativity that’s rightfully ours.”

Upper limit problems can manifest as:

• worry
• criticism & blame
• deflecting
• squabbling
• getting sick, getting hurt
• hiding significant feelings
• not deeping agreements
• not speaking significant truths to relevant people
  
  

Learning to recognize our upper limit problems before we slow down or sabotage our efforts helps us raise the setting on how successful we feel we can be.

As Yogi Bhajan said,
“Happiness is your birthright… the only problem is you have not consciously developed your mental caliber, meditative mind, and the attitude of gratitude and contentment.”

The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks is a must read for creating a powerful link between personal growth and business growth. It’s filled with easy practices, affirmations, and tons of example on how to use these techniques.

Learning how to monitor and adjust your thermostat, is key to sustainable expansion.  As you expand your tolerance for enjoying all the good that is possible in your wellness business, you can apply it to all areas of your life.

To feel more empowered to navigate the growth of your business as a wellness professional, join us for Claim Your Worth, September 8-10. for more information or to register, check out the event details.
Can’t make it to the course? Sign up here to get my recommended book/resources list so you can start growing your practice now and catch us at the next offering of this course.

Originally Posted on Yoga Yoga BLog BLog.

In the cyclical flow of creation, after all the action and doing, comes surrender and possibility. In a culture that does not honor surrender, making the space to receive the wealth of what we are creating, in any form, rarely happens. We end up always on the go and never in the flow.
It’s Venus night, aka Friday night, and I’m listening to a playlist I created specifically for checking my bank statements. I’ve got some smooth sexy jams, because I practice invoking some goddess of abundance vibes whenever I’m working with my money in this way.

I have my favorite Voluspa candle (Amaranth and Jasmine), that I only use with money dates, burning and I’m standing doing some hip circles to free up some shakti, because honestly, it feels good, and when you feel good, you make better choices. And who doesn’t want to make better choices with their money?

I’ve set a big intention to open my schedule up by dropping some days doing massage to make space to see yoga therapy clients in the Yoga Yoga clinic. Even though I feel confident the universe will support me, I am feeling anxious. It’s a big leap to step toward a dream, and even though I feel called to do it and my intuition is all thumbs up about it, it’s still big.
I can feel myself wanting to do more, or thinking I should be doing this, or shouldn’t it look like this? Maybe I should take more trainings so I know all the things. (If you look at my education page, you will see, my favorite hobby is taking trainings. More trainings is not my problem.) I can feel the sense of flow & guidance starting to restrict.

But then I remember the story of Lakshmi and her lesson of surrendering to the flow and being a choice, no matter what.
The birth of Lakshmi is much like all the mythology, in that it is folded into
a larger story, which is a part of a larger story, and so on.

This isn’t the beginning, nor it is the end, but simply a moment in time where some random mischief and miracles took place, and also where a valuable lesson takes place that is often overlooked - but let’s give it some spotlight.

For the sake of time, let’s say: The king of the gods, Indra, was not concerned with trivial formalities and ceremony. He was apparently rude to a short-tempered, and obviously underestimated super sage, who was so insulted by Indra’s actions, he was all, “Oh no, he didn’t”, and cursed the gods, making them mortal.
Gods are mortal? If you’re thinking demon hijinks on the rise, you are correct.

All hell breaks loose and demons are doing what demons do, terrorize and destroy.

To save the world, Brahma, another god, suggests that all gods work together with the demons to churn the milk ocean to retrieve the amrita, also known as, the nectar of immortality.

I’m not really going into all the details about how everyone helped out, gods and demons, and all the magical things that came out of the churning.

Workshops and/or series with Ana Pila Cruz & Jamie Waggoner are great sources for experiencing the stories and myths in person or look for the Devata Mentorship with Libby Cox and Ana Pilar Cruz.

For our story, we will fast forward to the churning of the ocean. Everyone is pitching in, gods and demons, hoping to trick the other and keep all the amrita to themselves. Shiva, Vishnu and the whole gang are all working together, doing their part. This churning causes a whirlpool in this milky ocean.

Well, at the bottom of this ocean, meditating comfortably and happily, is the Goddess Lakshmi. She’s sitting on a lotus flower (obviously, because what else would a goddess sit on at the bottom of the ocean), just beaming with love.

Lakshmi, being the goddess of beauty and bounty, sits back and surrenders to the flow. You could say, she was open to receive a new experience and with faith, chose to ride the current and float to the surface.

Yes, the amrita was retrieved and yes, the gods fooled the demons and the gods became immortal again, but our story comes back to Lakshmi.
Surrounded by the gods and demons, all desiring her for themselves. She is a radiant goddess born of the ocean. As Sally Kempton describes her, she wears a rose-colored sari, has golden skin, lustrous dark hair and large almond-shaped eyes filled with love.

Imagine a scene from The Bachelorette. The Goddess, a breathtaking beauty and the suitors have all just churned a huge mountain in milk ocean but are still ready to impress and they’re all trying their best to catch her eye.

But Lakshmi, she only has eyes for Vishnu, and she chooses him as her consort.

Even in her birth, we can see the power and ease that comes with the divine feminine. She did not swim to the top or stress about what would be at the surface when she finally arrived. She used the energy that was around her and surrendered to the flow.

This is the feminine super power.

Just like what happens with our menstrual cycles.  The mature egg simply flows down the fallopian tube towards the uterus. The egg isn’t racing to meet the sperm, nor is she worried if anyone will show up or not. The egg just goes with the flow, sending out a chemical signal to let the sperm known she’s ready to receive.

The sperm, racing to the be one of the first ones to the egg, surround her and the egg, oh yes, just like Lakshmi, she chooses which sperm to allow in. And that choice creates and sustains human life on this planet.
We need both the masculine and the feminine to create everything, including wealth.

We live in a culture dominated by the masculine, the solar and the driven. When not tempered with the feminine, the lunar and the receptive, we can feel like we are just spinning our wheels, going after the things we are “suppose” to strive for & then find ourselves burnt out and broke.
We are not designed to be “producing” all the time. There is a flow and cycle to everything.

For me, I have set the intention, I have done the work, I am present and mindful and now it’s time to surrender to the flow and receive this new experience.

Learning how to leverage currents within us and around us will bring wealth, clarity and pleasure towards all areas of our lives.

Cant make it to my in-person workshops and events??
Luckily, I'm all about sharing the wealth:

My Top 5 Ways to Plug Money Leaks:

1. Create Pleasure Around Finances: 
   When sitting down to look at your bank statements, light a candle, play music that feels good, and give gratitude for whatever you have, even if in the red. The Goddess, Lakshmi is associated with abundance, beauty & pleasure. They fuel each other and you always make better decisions when you feel good.
2. Check in with your Gut: 
   Your body knows before you do and she’s trying to tell you something. Pull up your latest bank statement and look at each thing you spent money on. Giving each item 1-3 breaths, and ask yourself how did spending this feel? Remember why you spent it, the people involved, what it was for, and what category. Listen to your body and notice if you feel expanded or contracted. A purchase that feels contracting could be a money leak. Be mindful of how you feel when spending your money.
3. Count Your Blessings:
   Giving gratitude for your blessings also includes your bills. Your bills are not suppose to be a punishment; They are simply a company requesting payment for delivering you a specific value. Hate paying your electric bill? How about that a/c you’re enjoy during the summer? I’m in Austin, it’s basically 100°f. That's a blessing I'm always happy to pay for. This is not my idea, I’m not sure who started this concept, but many money mavens reframe bills like this and I’ve noticed a huge shift. Kate Northrup, Author of Money: a Love Story, suggests labeling all bills: invoices for blessings already received.
4. Choose Your Words, Wisely: 
   Mantra means "to train the mind", specifically the words we think or say. If your mantra is always "I can’t afford that or I live on a _________ salary, that'll never happen." That mantra will slow and sometimes stop the flow of money. Instead, change your mantra, train your mind, focus your energy with something like: "I’m choosing not to spend my money on that right now, or I am currently directing my money towards ___________. " Be at choice and focus on what you want. Try creating your own empowering money mantra.
5. Conscious Clarity: 
   Money loves clarity. Energy goes where we focus and where we are clear, and since money is just energy the same can be said of our finances. Often when plugging money leaks, we focus on what is leaving, what we pay, but we give little focus to what is coming in. This means submitting your invoices in order to be paid, knowing when checks & auto-deposits should be arriving, and knowing when and how you get paid.
   
   

Now, over to you. As you look at where you spent your money last month, see what made you feel contracted or expanded, what purchase makes you feel the most expansive?

Let me know in the comments below. I’ll post my most expansive moment there