Meditation Monday

Today is the first day of Meditation Monday.  I started meditating a couple of years ago.  It was a way to relive stress and calm myself down.  I also used mediation to get my mind thinking in different ways.

Meditation is very easy and does not take a lot of time.  I do a ten minute meditation everyday.  You do not have to sit up right with your legs in a pretzel.  Meditation is all about being confortable and aware.  To start you need to find a comfortable position. I tend to sit in my chair, feet on the ground.  You then have to slowly close your eyes and start breathing deeply in and out.  To start clearing your mind of thoughts, you need to concentrate on your deep breathes.  I then use a guided meditation   I find these on YouTube.  There are some short ones and some really long ones.  Lately I have been using a chakra guided meditation.  Chakras are energy centers in your body.  This meditation is ten minutes and aims to relieve stress and energize you for the day.

Today I was lucky enough to share my meditation with Katie, because she was home from work in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.  I suggest you try it, it really helps relax you before a stressful day.

Have a great monday!

-Hari

In case the link above does not work for any reason, you can find this week's meditation that Katie and I did this morning here.

Hey Blog, Hey!

Hello, blogosphere! This is Hari, Katie and Kiley in our first ever joint blog. Exciting, we know. Hari and Katie were born in Massachusetts and New York respectively and we spent majority of our lives (give or take some college years) in Rochester, N.Y. Although we are Yankees, our puppy Kiley is a Southern Belle. Kiley lived in Mississippi until Katie fell in love with her in 2010 and she came to live with us in Rochester (you can find out more about her story here.) Last summer we moved to rural North Carolina by way of Katie landing a teaching job, and our lives have turned upside down.

So this is our "natural hippie blog" (as Hari called it) or just a glimpse into our cluttered, messy, not so perfect life. Katie came up with the blog as we were hiking. I (Hari) found it silly, but after thinking about it, realized we can use it to share our weirdness with the world. You might find natural cleaning remedies, hiking reviews, wedding ideas (did we mention that we are engaged?!), and delicious recipes. We don't really know where this blog will go, but we find it to be fun for us.  It is a way to do something together in our hectic lives.

We have been called "crunchy" and "granola" as if it is a bad thing...but we take it as a compliment. Did you know that we kiss trees, too? We are by no means perfect, nor do we think that we are. We try to respect the Earth and our bodies all while trying to balance our passions, lack of time, and lack of budget. So sometimes we may not be using or doing what someone views as the most environmentally friendly thing, or maybe what we are doing is too friendly - we are just doing us. Love us or leave us be.

Hiking at Raven Rock Park (the blog inspiring hike!)

-Katie and Hari