A Photo Essay on Llama Medicine & The CSC 1/2 Year Review

Jun 20, 2023

My son, Oakley, celebrated his 15th birthday last Thursday, just one day after his Grade 9 graduation.

Oakley’s grade 9 year was the best year of his school life and we are so thrilled he courageously went out of his comfort zone to land in an ideal school for his last year of junior high. 

Now for the llamas.

For his birthday, Oakley received this card. 

Then on Saturday, I pulled the Llama card from my animal deck as guidance for the Yoga for Divine Alignment class I taught online. The message of Llama is to be unbothered. Little did I know I was going to get to practice being unbothered in just a few hours' time.

Later in the day, whilst taking my iodine supplement, I spilled that very dark amber liquid onto our white marble counter. For a few moments, all I could do was stare as the iodine puddle spread. Thanks to Llama’s energy, though, I remained unbothered.

Since iodine is quite pricey, I wondered if I could somehow direct the puddle back into...

Continue Reading...

1/2 Year Review & What Sunshine on the Wall Reminded Me About Detachment

Jun 13, 2023

Before we dive into sunshine, walls and detachment, a brief announcement: The Courageous Self-Care 1/2 Year Review is coming up later this month. For more details on that, go to the Christina Recommends section below. You'll recognize it by the words Christina Recommends

And now back to detachment learned through sunshine on walls.

In our home, we have some east-facing windows through which the sun permeates the neighbours’ leafy trees every morning. The resulting reflection on our walls can be truly magical because not only are there the shapes of leaves and branches, the light is infused with the subtle grid of the screens over the windows. It creates a diffuse image that dances when there’s a breeze.

Here's an example of what it looks like, although when I asked my camera to focus, it said, "No thank you". You get the idea. 

One morning, I was captivated by such an image on the wall. The way the light shone through created a face of an...

Continue Reading...

Do you want to call more of this in?

Jun 06, 2023

Every year, I work with three intentions. I used to make them really specific outcomes but the more I’ve learned about energy and intentions, the more I’ve released my attachment to how things turn out. Now, it’s all about the feeling. 

One feeling I’m working with right now that I am absolutely loving is the feeling of Victory. It kind of feels like the Winged Victory of Samothrace - all flowy and majestic, but I would go so far as to even add a head. It’s that good!

Here’s how I’ve been connecting with Victory

Intentional Practice #1 - Visit Your Memory Vault

Upon waking each morning, I consider how victory feels before getting out of bed. I go through the previous day’s events and note where there were victorious moments. They might be seemingly tiny (if I were to judge, which I don’t - any victory is welcome), like getting the dishes done or doing my sun salutations. (Yay me! This is what I say to myself to...

Continue Reading...

Graduation Musings, An Ode to my Neti Pot & a Fabulous Song

May 30, 2023

It was another significant week in the Marlett household. The primary theme for the past few days was: Graduation!

Zoe, who turned 18 a couple of weeks ago, went and decided to also throw in a graduation to the mix for good measure, just to get as many milestones into one month as possible.

Although, technically, there’s still another month of school including final exams, graduation ceremonies are usually held in May in Calgary, most likely due to venue bookings. 

Having a child (almost) complete high school causes one to reflect. 

Here are a few musings that floated across my recent awareness.

Rituals

As a culture, we have very few rituals remaining, which is a shame because the brain absolutely needs ritual in order to adjust to significant changes. 

Zoe wasn’t thrilled to be going to a 4-hour graduation ceremony to watch some 700 students she didn’t know walk across the stage to get their diplomas. Frankly, we felt the same way. However, we...

Continue Reading...

This Made Me Laugh

May 23, 2023

I love to laugh. I place a very high value on the things that tickle my funny bone because joy, hilarity and light-heartedness are the vibrations where I want to hang out. When things get super challenging, I do my best to find the levity in the situation because truly, what else can you do?

When we were in Mexico recently and had some challenges with our son, Oakley, my husband and I were discussing what to do and we brought a lot of humour into the situation. Our daughter, Zoe, said, “I don’t think you guys are taking this seriously enough.” 

We loved that she was looking out for her brother and said so. We also said, “If we don’t laugh about it, it would just make a challenging situation even worse. And we’ve worked very hard to get to a place where we can have fun and find the comedy, even in the tougher moments. I don’t think she agreed but at least she saw a new point of view. 

I don’t know if you’ve noticed...

Continue Reading...

Here’s why I have faith in humanity

May 16, 2023

Well, it’s been quite a week over here (in all the best ways possible).

My daughter, Zoe, turned 18! Celebrations were had. With black forest cake. And Oakley singing like a choirboy.

As a parent, one of my highlights of the occasion is that Zoe is more interested in getting to vote than she is in drinking alcohol. Hooray! And as luck would have it, there’s an election this very month. What perfect timing.

Zoe was born on Mother’s Day so every few years we share that day. This year, however, her birthday was as far away from Mother’s Day as possible, which was fitting, what with her venturing forth into adulthood and all.

Which takes us to the next celebration. Mother’s Day.

First, I received these lovely cards. Oakley’s made me laugh. (It has a play-by-play account of what he said he's heard a million times from Dr Sue teaching yoga.)

 

Zoe’s made me cry. 

 

Next, we had spectacular oat pancakes and berry sauce (after all...

Continue Reading...

What’s really going on when you wake up at night

May 09, 2023

I just finished a weekend course with my mentor Dr Sue and learned so many fascinating things about spirituality, the body, the breath, the mind and how to bring them all into unity.

When reflecting on what stood out, there was a conversation about sleep that I thought you might find valuable. 

What I love about Dr Sue and her work is that she always offers a new perspective. Here’s a one on waking up in the night.

It’s not a problem. (That’s right; not a typo - it’s not a problem!)

When you wake up during the sacred hours (any time it’s dark and not time to get up), it’s not that you did something wrong. It’s actually a great sign. What’s happening is that your soul is waking you up because there’s an opportunity for conscious integration.

At a certain point during the night, the body is finished all of its digestion and detoxification tasks. When that happens, it has energy ready and available for integration (of emotions,...

Continue Reading...

I decided I didn’t need this in my life

May 02, 2023

In 2020 when things went sideways, I got a very strong message to let go. At first, I didn’t really know what to let go of, but over time, my intuition guided me.

And PS (yes there is a PS in the second paragraph), it wasn’t a lightning bolt of clarity. Rather, it was a little nudge every so often; an idea that kept coming back. Initially, I didn’t listen very carefully but there it was, over and over again until I decided to take action. 

The nudge was to close my LinkedIn account. My mind had things to say about that because I had thousands of connections. I had taken courses in using LinkedIn effectively, I had poured a lot of time and effort into it and it was part of my business.

However, intuition often doesn’t make any sense and regardless, it’s good to act on it. So one day, I clicked delete. I was very surprised at what happened next. 

(Just like this:)

A wave of relief and energy washed over me. It took me a while to realize why but...

Continue Reading...

How are you making your decisions?

Apr 25, 2023

There are basically two ways. You can either make decisions from love or from fear. 

The status quo is to make decisions from fear. It can be fear of what will happen in the future or it can be fear based on what’s happened in the past. Fear rarely has anything to do with the present moment. (Unless there is real and present danger, of course, but that is actually more rare than you would think.)

Some fears that get involved in the decision-making process include:

  • Fears around money
  • Fear about what others will think
  • Fear about being judged (closely related to the previous fear with a subtle difference)
  • Fear about time (not having enough, not being productive enough, wasting it, etc)
  • Fear of the unknown

Fear doesn’t tend to be the best helper, though, because it’s often made up.

Love, on the other hand, is a great helper when making decisions because it aligns you with Spirit (aka Infinite Intelligence, which has a much greater grasp on things than our little...

Continue Reading...

Singing, Yoga, Healing and Expanding Comfort Zones

Apr 18, 2023

In March, we went to Mexico. I know I already told you all about it and yet, there’s something else I’d like to share that caught my attention.

First, though, in order for it to make sense, you need to know this seemingly unrelated other thing (don’t worry - I’ll pull it all together eventually).

14 months ago, I got my Body Awake Yoga Certification and I was very keen to start teaching classes. Online was the immediate solution (maybe you’ve even attended a class or two?)

For my own practice, I take regular online classes from Dr Sue Morter (my mentor) and during her savasana at the end of class, she plays music known as the Gayatri Mantra. Since it makes sense to emulate success, I thought I would do the same. 

Then I realized that I don’t have a team of people like Dr Sue does and so it wasn’t super easeful to get a song going in my own savasana portion of class. What did seem (mostly) easeful was just singing the prayer myself. No...

Continue Reading...
Close