Brain fog is a way to describe the forgetfulness nature that Ayurvedic Vata minds commonly daily express that we accept as part of us.
Brain fog accumulates in our daily lives.
In this article, you can learn all about brain fog from our daily environment and simple things we can tweak. You’ll also learn how brain fog isn’t always bad like when it’s from spiritual sources.
Brain fog is the general symptom description for not being able to think clearly.
Often this is when you want the mind to work for you.
Brain fog moments often shows up as confusion, lack of focus, or forgetfulness.
So brain fog would make sense as an explanation for simple memory blips.
But there’s more to this from a spiritual lens that I explain further below on how you can see it as a benefit and a blessing at times.
Because usually brain fog only has negative connotations in our practical culture.
And this article provides some healthy lifestyle tips to eliminate those daily negative brain fog aspects, plus presenting the balancing Vata brain fog positives (that’s a common built-in feature in our Vata mind nature).
In either positive or negative case, we don’t often sit around and analyze what’s going on with brain fog when our minds are in the clouded mist.
And what we experience is usually harmless, like forgetting eye glasses on our heads and looking everywhere for them.
While that can be comical, it’s extra minutes of distraction when the answer was sitting on you above your nose.
For daily routines and tasks, Vatas often create forgetfulness habits to set reminders and purposefully not forget.
High Vatas have active minds of worry-anxiety, more so than Pittas and Kaphas that can have other brain fog distractions.
This btw happened to me when I baked a healthy dessert for the morning and next morning. And the next morning, I forgot about all about it in my mind’s distraction.
A simple scenario like that happens to all of us at some point.
Peach biscuit. Recipe is below. 🍑
…And when I remembered the forgotten cool peach dessert, it was actually when I would appreciate the bite more after lunch so it could be an enjoyment positive experience.
In your daily life, if someone ever asks you why you didn’t do something and you answer I forgot, you often don’t get a lot of out-of-the-ordinary questioning.
Because forgetting is so normal.
Forgetting can also be healthy for us who like to control ideas. You let go of controlling your mind or the device in front of you that you’re tethered to.
This can invite in creativity inside us and help us let go of rigid ways.
But then there are also negatives such as cognitive decline brain fog instances we want to help prevent. It’s the “elephant in the room” but a diagnosis growing in our world, and that’s something we can be aware of and doing something about in our lives today.
Preventative Healthy Living Helps With Brain Fog
Brain fog can grow when we have these elements in our daily lives: high-processed foods, pesticides, phthalates, non-purified air, and mold, to name a few culprits in our modern lifestyles.
They alter our bodies and that affects our mind in the body-mind connection and in our mental health.
Processed foods for example become whole nutrient-stripped in the plant process (as in factory plant 🏭).
Organic plants 🌱 are better options where we don’t find the same trace levels of pesticides that are found in non-organic foods.
If you garden, you know what natural sprays you’ve used or not used in your care. And when you bake like I do, you know what ingredients you’ve added. You know the wholesomeness details.
In grocery stores, we see the ingredients in our carts we’ll be using to cook with or eat. And we can read labels.
But we don’t see the processes in-between, so this makes comparing foods an apples to oranges experience.
Cheese is an example. Rennet that is found in some parts of the world isn’t the pasteurized cheese process found along the shelf rows in our American grocery stores.
The goat and sheep’s cheese that the Sardinians farm and eat isn’t what we find in our guts.
And for daily coffee drinkers, switching to organic is good for preventative health as coffee is naturally high in mold.
Mold is a brain fog offender.
Organic coffee is considerably more expensive and more difficult to source, but it’s out there when you look and put your health first.
You can get resourceful and save money by buying whole roasts and then doing the grind work yourself. You can feel much more grounded like your coffee when you do. 😊
Daily clean air is also going to be healthy preventative help against the brain fog cause. Developing daily hayfever-like allergy symptoms is one common sign.
And building in more wellness habits and healthy intentions to your life is going to help you most in your sleep, health conditions, and mental fatigue. Yoga is one way to bring in more self-awareness intention.
When you calm and relax your mind and self that also brings down your stress and anxiety levels that help Vata brain fog.
Calming and Relaxing the Mind
Good answers and thoughts show up when the mind is calm and relaxed, and not anxious or worried like when running with high Vata brain fog symptoms.
When our minds are under stress, often we can’t think of the answer when put on the spot.
If we’re asked a Family Feud game show question like what is the first thing you do in the morning?, we can usually come up with an answer. And maybe one that lights up on the board.
But when someone asks us the same question in an interview where we know others will put judgment on what we say, we can’t come up with the answer under mind stress.
We could just give a safe answer.
…Or you may surprise yourself by blurting an answer that surprises you.
Those answers that pop up in memory unexpectedly often come from our spirit.
The answer that pops in our mind come from our deeper wisdom inside us.
We didn’t rack our brain for the answer. They just entered out of no where.
Those thoughts can be blessings when you connect-the-dots.
I’ve had a lot of time and spiritual experiences to teach me wisdom lessons learned to show me this.
Over time, the lessons gave me a different perspective to gain the deeper meaning behind those memory moment lapse blessings.
Once you know you can’t go back to not-knowing and wouldn’t want to as cracking the code secrets toward a happier life.
And you can notice when thought lapses land in aligned perfect timing.
That’s when it’s a spiritual miracle and blessing.
An example is we forget what we were going to say from our rational brain from losing our train of thought.
We get other thoughts that enter.
In groups I attended, we called these other thoughts: popcorn thoughts. These answers come from our heart as though we didn’t process the thought first.
If it’s a helpful suggestive thought, it’s often helpful for others to hear who need the suggestion.
If you can get over what others will think or any insecurities you have in those moments, and blurt out what you’re thinking, often it helps someone else.
You don’t necessarily know how it will help, but it does when you dare to stay vulnerable in sharing.
They are spiritual collaboration opportunities that are expressed when you speak them aloud. You can feel good about showing up.
In the same token, sometimes others blurt out something you needed that sticks with you. It’s the same when purposefully listening to a podcast or a message that you need.
So we’re giving back in a way.
We can all contribute and give back in the energy of life in this way and without much effort.
If you want more of these opportunities to show up and are willing to have your day rearranged in some way, ask quietly aloud or in self-talk: what can I do today to be helpful?
Then be prepared to be useful to others. 😊
And in daily life, these prompted thoughts and memories will show up more frequently if you pay attention (that’s an active move).
You could ignore and override those thoughts to stay on your linear agenda.
That’s how I was until I knew better.
As a planner, we don’t prefer going off course. But over the years, I grew to embrace impromptu thoughts entering, seeing this new spiritual perspective.
And maybe that would help you.
Spiritual impromptu thoughts help you align and redirect to a better way, day, and life. They lead to a life of more purpose, happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. 🎉
So you can be curious next time and openly ask yourself: why did I have ____ particular thought? And see if you get anything back as a thought.
Most likely you won’t immediately.
But that makes you consider another way of thinking and living that can be spirit-filled and coming from deeper inside of you that knows deeply what you want.
And you can stay curious and wondering until something clicks like it finally did for me.
So if we wonder about those spiritual impromptu thoughts, that opens the door to our exploring our spiritual wisdom inside us that isn’t brain fog.
This can be our new norm.
And for our daily mattering lives, we can invite in ad hoc thoughts in our mantras, meditation, and centering to help advise us on what to do next.
And as you can tell, I enjoy baking meditation where this dessert was dreamed up and you can enjoy making.✨
Potato waffles are like being born again where you can’t turn them back to the mashed potato form they were before. And they’re so much better. Recipe below. 🧡
It’s a mysterious term that you don’t hear often. It’s a miracle and life changing event like being born. You only do it once by choice, if ever. And then usually as an adult. It’s a personal decision.
Similar to an important event like getting married or landing a dream job that can be highlighted milestones in your life, there’s no taking back.
And like the potato waffles pictured above that started out as another form of the same food, these spuds can’t go back to before. The recipe is below. 🧇
You can’t take back what’s already happened in the past and you can’t go back in your mother’s womb. Or in this born again case, back into your pre-born again old identity.
Once you’re born again, you’re alive with the spirit living inside you. In the Bible, it’s the same as the Holy Spirit. There are no accidents in becoming Born Again… like the miracle of life.
The story of your real life birth from your birth parents may have sounded like you were an accident oops! baby, but it was no spiritual accident.
And it’s another miracle.
In choosing to be Born Again, you won’t have signed up if you’re not ready.
The choice to be Born Again requires a level of maturity that you’ll know when, and your spirit will help prompt when.
Likely, it has been building up inside you. And one day a water baptism opportunity will show up and call you.
And if you do go through, no other earthly person would know whether you’re born again or not unless you told them or they witnessed your water baptism.
The event is the primary marked outward expression. It’s equivalent to an official wedded ceremony and is spiritual bonding bliss.
But unlike most marriage weddings, the dress code is casual wear like a tee-shirt that will get soaken wet and you will too, as you’d be fully immersed in water either in a bathtub of sorts or outdoors in the open waters.
I know this experience because that’s what happened to me. And as life is an adventure, I never set out for that mission.
I didn’t grow up religious either. This was something I grew into gradually. Never having been baptized before and then for the first time, that’s when my Born Again life began.
Born Again Feelings In the Beginning
It was an ordinary day with extraordinary impact. You never forget the day. You wonder how being submerged in a pool of warm water can be so profound. But it is.
And you’re never the same person you were, again. Because you apply meaning to what just happened in your ceremony.
For one, you get to be a butterfly experiencing more of life’s abundance compared to a caterpillar’s existence with even more limitations.
It has unforgettable, deep feelings like the day you experience a once-in-a-blue-moon total eclipse as it’s happening…
You feel chills and something deeper emotionally happening inside you that you can’t explain with logic and leaves you with a wave of tears and emotions.
Or when you see a painted sky where something is special in the air around you even if you’re the only one who notices.
And you know life is not just what you see in your daily busy life. You know there’s so much more meaning and that can make you want to discover more about yourself and your potential.
You know you were touched by the Universe in love and finding out what that means for your life can be the greater step.
When you’ve already been leading a spiritual life and have gained Biblical knowledge that precedes a baptism day, you know the source of what you’re experiencing.
You know there’s a spirit living inside you.
Referred sometimes as the wind or a dove 🕊️, it’s the same spirit that connects us all under the sun.
There’s an energy that connects us all.
It’s also the guided handed helper, comforter, and all-knowing messenger all rolled-up-in-one.
And those first few days and weeks after baptism, you’ll likely be intentional to live out life differently.
After The Born Again Honeymoon
But then after some time has passed, you’ll have forgotten your baptism event day like everything else in life.
The feelings wear off. And you’ll want to set reminders to what you want your life to be about post-baptism.
You’re back to your life reality, except you have a desire to do better and grow further.
You still carry the same mind as before (pre-baptism), and you’ll still make mistakes like all us humans do.
But now you are aware that you can lean into your deeper gut or heart feelings where your spirit is for higher answers, and trust those be the ones best if you want to live a life of meaning and purpose designed for you.
Pre-Born Again life, you may have called these gut instincts. They still show up as whispers or hunches, but now you’re aware they’re as real as you are.
So you’re now a little wiser and want to live the higher ways of living. You’ll want to learn from like-minded others and to help you with interpretations from the one resource manual guide (the Bible).
And as a new butterfly now, you went through a transformation. Your human wings are invisible as are your changes.
There’s no going back into your chrysalis.
You can choose to become more humble as you see through another higher lens.
Looking back, I could see that I acted pretty foolishly when I was younger, but I thought I was invincible and smart at the time.
And had I stayed as is, today those would be regrets… but I know I needed to go through those phases to get to the season of maturity needed. That’s usually how it is.
And then by learning lessons, never wanting to go back to those old ways that we’ve grown out of.
Been there, done that, got the kid T-shirt. And now I have an adult baptism shirt (and you can too).
What to Expect With A New Life
Expect to have favor in your daily walk if you maintain a deep relationship with your spirit and God. Also expect for you to be the change as nothing changes around you for certain prayers.
That goes for the details of ordinary daily life from when you walk out the door, run errands, are working, and then are back home.
You also give up some control of your life (yes, more than what you have been experiencing). But you gain more control in other areas explained below, as you keep reading.
And remember, none of us are in control anyway.
For me, that was the hardest part at first.
Letting go was not my strong suit. Because I did life on my terms my way as a strong-independent person.
I learned and was groomed that way since I was a kid.
I’m still fundamentally that person, but I exchanged control for a more fulfilling purposeful and creative life.
I started out my adult life mostly in the structured corporate work life. And had I not been made aligned with my identity (Born Again) and my second act of my life’s work, then I would’ve missed what was in the cards dreamt up for me before I was born.
Dreams I never had when I was younger.
What I did feel when I was younger and in my late-20s and early 30s, was that something was missing inside.
Daily life didn’t seem all that exciting even though I had a good job, health, stable work-life balance, side hustles, great relationships, a lakefront home, nice cars, and everything else that I thought I needed.
And yet I felt unfulfilled.
I thought there had to be more.
That didn’t feel like wisdom at the time. It felt like self-pity.
Then suddenly I lost a job and a career when the industry was wiped out.
About two years after that incident, I got Born Again.
And that’s when life got really quiet around me. I was working but the work was easy.
I found I had time to look at personal and spiritual development areas that I didn’t delve into before.
That’s part of the inner peace that comes with being Born Again, knowing that you’re provided for and having some direction to seek levels of growth.
You know when doors shut it’s not a coincidence and that forces you to keep looking in other directions. And when they do open, you’re magically aligned.
I had work situations like that which were problem-filled but since I was anointed to be there, they immediately got fixed without my fixing.
Those bittersweet open doors were short-lived.
But in those experiences, I starting realizing this life isn’t about what you do. It’s about what you’re becoming in this life.
And on the journey, you can be proud to look in the mirror at who you are that’s not just the aged person staring back.
You’ve transformed fear, anxiety, and worry that don’t have to take over and permeate life. Especially fear.
When I was a child I was afraid of everything from lightning, darkness, to boogie monsters. And then as an adult, the opportunity to exchange fear for love became part of the process.
We can grow away from those unproductive beliefs. When you take action to move toward love that’s part of being Born Again, then you choose to exchange those negative earthly feelings.
It’s also co-created, as you seek toward your growth desires and the spirit helps you from the inside.
You can count on that as the spirit isn’t earthly.
You’re never alone. Not for one moment. When you seek help, you get help, truth, and comforting answers. They may not match or exactly match what you thought you wanted.
But as your perspectives align with the higher ways, you know that they guarantee your highest and best use in this life. So don’t worry if you feel you’re blooming late. You and your spirit will help you grow and make up for lost time.
And you can use the weekend brunch potato waffles as a reminder that these waffles started as mashed potatoes, and became these plate tasty treats. You can find this potato waffle recipe, potato dip, and other brunch waffles.
Shadow work helps dig out the deeper things holding you back that may be hidden from view and you may not be aware of today.
Artwork is one metaphor for our lives. This spiral art piece brings out the light and shadows where you’re seeing only a partial angle. This can be what’s it like when we look in the mirror at ourselves, where we don’t see the light in our inner selves.This is a full view of the same art piece by Ellsworth Kelly that shows many more lines and color dimensions that can shine like us in our discoverable selves.
It’s work and discovery you do on yourself that pays off as you learn more about your inner self so you can better shine in your authentic and best you you’re meant to be.
And you can find your loving self and steer away from your darker sides that cast shadows in your life.
I know this from my own journey. I was a late bloomer for many years and areas of life. And just when things were coming together nicely, then all of the sudden around 35, I went into a now what do I do? season.
I was hit with a spiritual intervention and no roadmap life manual to help me along that season.
Life springs things on you where you have no concrete guide to follow. No one teaches you that a spiritual intervention can happen at any time in your life journey on your life blueprint that you don’t have access to.
A spiritual intervention is not commonly heard of but it does happen in this miracle we call Life.
And yeah, that’s what happened to me.
Before I get into the details, the reality is we’re not in as much control of our planned future as we want to think. We get to choose to believe in faith over what we think is our future based on our past and what we’re currently working on.
And believe that a greater force above has our back and a better plan.
And in my spun out-of-my control season, I ended up relocating back to where I came from when I had no plans or thoughts to do so. It was more shocking to me than to my friends and family who were happy to hear I was moving closer back to the area.
It was a healthy move, even though it was unconventional as spiritual changes and growth often are.
The days leading up to my move, the healthy marriage I was in fell apart because of the intervention reveals that made the step-to-step moves easier. There was sadness leaving, but no drama.
I ended up in a hospital with no physical health diagnosis. There was nothing wrong with me. What appeared as a mental breakdown I knew as a spiritual awakening. Is that how you diagnose inner voices? Apparently.
The immediate trauma reality I felt when I was released was the sting of the hospital bill. Ouch and oh btw, I would have to pack my life up today and start all over with new work, step back, and build a new adult life while the world around me kept going.
I couldn’t even tell you the songs playing on the radio waves then or what the major news headlines were going on.
Those few final days and weeks before were a total blur. I must’ve thrown out many scrapbook album memories in the preparation for my move. Discarding my past was a metaphor representation of how I felt with this new life ahead of me.
It was nothing less than an invisible higher force that took over and moved me one step at a time.
And I knew this as God co-creating and ordering my footsteps, who got in the car with me and drove me back to the area I had left.
It was surreal. My hand was on the wheel but he was unmistakenly the GPS, so I felt safe even though I was confused.
So there I was back to the area where I grew up with a higher plan that I expected would unfold. An old church friend God-wink coincidentally had a room available as her last roommate had just moved out.
Even though I was in the same area I grew up in, it seemed miles away from my growing up familiarities. This time around I was closer to the city and further away from the towns where many of my first memories of childhood and early adulthood were formed.
Some memories were accumulated past trauma from childhood and early adulthood that I needed shadow work for to help me discover forgiveness.
And others were happy memories from friendships and past experiences made.
It was a bittersweet come back. I was then recently laid off from a career job I had been at for years, so I had to lean on trust that I would be provided for during those recession years that wiped out businesses and the corporate tech industry I had just come from.
But this life changing event wasn’t about just a move, a job change, or a season transition. This was a life transformation.
I was entering a new way of life on earth that was foreign to me and the cascade of events leading up were so bizarre. Even though I felt secure under the Universe’s wing, I didn’t know how to start this new shaken up chapter of life.
Now what? kept coming up in my thoughts.
One of my first set of tests was letting go. I didn’t know how to surrender my old thinking ways. And that’s when I got really deep into introspection and shadow work and trying to figure out what happened on my own.
Miraculously, planted in me was the awareness of harmful ego ways. With a little freed up headspace from not being so busy, I became aware that I had healing work to do on myself. I had never paused before from work to successfully get to know the real me.
I went to church healing rooms to see if I could gain a little insight and closure. And got some comfort and was able to purge some past trauma. This was as close to therapy as I would get.
Life Before The Spiritual Intervention
I was always choosing to be busy and that was ingrained in me in the DC metro area culture I grew up in and was now back in. But this time around, my surroundings were quiet as my friends were grown up too. They were busy with their family and lives. I had to figure mine out.
My life looked nothing like most those I went to college with where they moved up the corporate ladder, settled down, and had a family. They lived close by but our world’s were far apart.
I felt alone in navigating what next, but I also felt optimistic that my life would take off because of the spiritual intervention experience I had lived out in the hospital that showed me some prophecies about work and relationships in my distance-off future.
I knew there was a plan but I just didn’t know when, how, and what the real life specifics were. And when some life pieces came to life, I recognized them later on as shown to me in prophecies.
Those were miracles, and it all sounds bizarre on paper, but that’s how it also felt. Beautiful and bizarre.
And at the end of the day, none of us know the uncertain future so nothing looked that unusual about me or my life from an outside onlooker.
One area I knew I could focus on building was my deeper spiritual self and building traits I would need and may have missed developing along the way.
Ego work was just the tip of the iceberg. As mentioned, I was in and grew up around America’s capital. This is an area filled with smart, affluent people where pride and ego are waved as invisible badges of honor, but now I was ready to get rid of those non-serving ways.
People outside or living there in short transition or temporary assignments don’t realize how strong the political daily air is there outside the news. And so much so that nobody talks about it there as common practice to not create further divides.
It’s a unique invisible bubble that rarely gets talked about as ego is not usually a subject matter of discussion.
So, now you know the situation better.
And a year before this new season’s reveal, I was made aware I was holding onto past trauma from childhood and an adult situation that created PTSD I had blindly been holding onto. That’s what a spiritual intervention and shadow work can help reveal.
I grew up under the house of an immigrant parent who had a dominant ego disorder that grew worse over time. And after I moved off to be on my own, I fell victim to a dangerous work situation in a brick and mortar business.
This all came to light in this revealing spiritual intervention season.
I realized my past situations grew my victim mentality. And that fed my ego that loves to hang onto woes me for my situations.
It’s the same ego that thrives on protecting our pride and does so much damage in all of us, showing up in all kinds of daily, harmful non-serving ways.
If you’ve worked around people long enough, you will have seen this and not necessarily know that it was their ego that created their undesirable behaviors.
Our ego is our shadow until we become aware. Bringing out your shadow into the light is the shadow work that can align you to your whole self where your life begins to unfold more purpose and meaning.
I became ego conscious-aware that my ego played me in my subconscious insecurities as it does for most unaware.
Before then, I could be emotionally triggered and all of the sudden be stricken with an ugly cry with my then-husband.
It was like a recurring sound bite scene from Love is Blind where the American dating participant, Chelsea, is crying “clingy?”
Clingy wasn’t my manifestation, but my ego reared its ugly head wanting me to be right and win in partner conflicts.
And instead I lost the debate and all conscious streams of thinking that came from allowing the ego game to be played in me.
I didn’t know how to shake off or walk away from my turmoil feelings that started out as harmless thoughts.
That was work I needed to do. A real life mirror partner had reflected back to me what I needed to work on.
I ignored those prompts until I became aware of the ego years later.
Today’s Lessons
Your old brain is still a part of you that you carry along wherever you go. When you’ve moved on, your past memories and old lessons learned never die.
They travel with you and show up on your vacations.
If you’ve ever seen couples or friends fighting on vacation and you wonder, what’s there to fight about on this dreamy once-in-a-lifetime beautiful serene blue ocean or castle fantasy backdrop?… it’s the ego rearing its ugly head into the situation.
At any time, your ego can take old information and create fear and exacerbate worry in your situations today and in the future that are related to your past. Bring love to the situation is the cure.
If you bring out love from your past situations to your present, it shows up in your calm emotions today and also in your healthy body.
Ego situations and how they play out look different for everyone. If we could pinpoint one situation for everyone we would have figured this out collectively. But ego is a trickster.
Some even refer to their ego as an imposter that shows up.
The outward sign is that it’s not reality happening even though it feels like it is to you or the person. You’re not being chased by a tiger, but it can feel that way with modern digital message triggers.
Unknowingly, you undetect where the havoc source is coming from as it’s subconscious.
You can’t see through those thick clouds and insecurities. And that can lead to knee-jerk reactions.
Another sign for everyone is an unhealthy ego acting up is rooted in negative thoughts about yourself or others like self-pity, self-loathing, or blaming others.
It’s Edging God Out. The opposite is love and being conscious.
An unhealthy ego moment is a twisted form of overprotection for your best interest where you lose, lose control, and those around you lose if they get intertwined.
Bottom line: it doesn’t come from love.
Everyone is best to walk away in peace rather than play the counterproductive ego games.
Becoming aware of ego’s ability to harm you and relationships today and healing your past with new rewritten loving narrative thought memories are two of the healthiest shadow work moves you can make.
On a larger scale, you can rid of victim mentality so you can live fully whole and healthy in the now. You can be happy for others and their progress as you are for your own.
The ego will try to make these darker sides invisible to you so you continue as is, but if your desire is to grow and be happy, you can outwit your ego and not play the games.
We all are damaged goods in some way because of this built-in ego feature that we have a choice to change. It’s no one’s fault.
And that’s why when you’ve been aware long enough you can forgive others for their unconsciousness and behaviors… and hope they will try to get informed, grow, become conscious, and be accountable for their behaviors.
The Healthy Shadow Work You Can Do Today
So many of us would benefit from shadow work.
For one, you could discover and change negative moods coming from inside you. You could learn more about what triggers you.
You can replace these non-serving moments with higher and loving words such as those found in the New Testament Scripture.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
A daily reminder verse to call out your ego thoughts front and center daily helps.
You can build lasting character traits such as those in Galatians 5: patience, kindness, goodness, self-control, peace, joy, and love. These are the higher living ways.
They can take deep inner work and the first step can be shadow work discovery.
Becoming self-aware is timeless and absolutely necessary for growth.
And knowing the ego never shuts off and can show up in many ways in our mind roles such as:
critic
judge
competitor
fighter
dictator
imposter
One role ego doesn’t play is peacemaker. When ego is behaving and healthy, it helps you to strive for healthy goals.
We need some healthy pride to push us along. Or if you’re in real danger, ego can help motivate you to protect you.
But the undealt with unhealthy daily ego critic sitting on one shoulder shouts loud thoughts that appear logical to you (or the person), while the whispering angel spirit in you is gentle and loving preferring humility over pride.
The more you practice the softer humility sides, the more you can see the harmful pride.
Ego is subtle to you…
If you have a balanced way or a sense of making good decisions usually, logic can appear as harmless as “everyone is doing that.”
In those thought moments, you have a choice to not be everyone and do what you know is best or loving when you know better. We all have a choice.
If your ego is fighting you, you can be prepared with spiritual weapons like the armor of God spelled out in Ephesians, and in renewing your mind.
The more preparation and practice you have, your discernment increases the next time and you grow.
Still wondering how the ego shows up?…
So, I used to let the ego run the show. The daily mind show that is where I accepted all thoughts to enter as mine.
Some days a whole day would go by with the same repeated past memories. That’s classic ego.
I didn’t know I could exercise changing my thoughts. That was revelation when I learned and how to replace the thoughts.
Even if you had a great childhood or life so far, your ego will at some point take something from your past and spin it to a negative thought even if others would see it as a healthy and happy moment. It’s in your control to change the narrative fed to you.
Being the observer of thoughts and not letting the thoughts play out after the thought movie reel has been played once is a good strategy, so you don’t lose a whole day of productivity and peace.
And then stay aware the next time. You can make a decision that there’s no room for the two of us as it’s cramping growth, and simply kick out your unhealthy ego. Don’t play the games.
Sometimes it take mental wresting strength to let the thoughts pass through without energizing them to replay. Be determined to do what you know will eventually work for you.
And as part of my light bulb moment discovery, I found that ego was not just once in a while playing havoc in our lives, it’s the source of most problems in our day.
Because the ego is a feature in all of us in this world. Behaviors are trickled down among other people involved and their operating egos.
Imagine if the leader of a group or business had ego issues that showed up. You could only imagine (or have experienced before) the tricked down dysfunctional effect in the management hierarchy.
This observation becomes more obvious when you know (or have been made aware like I may be stirring in you today).
You witness in your daily interactions with people… one minute they are agreeable and friendly and then one day the season ends and they turn out to be something else. They’re unaware they’re being played by their ego.
This happens in relationships all the time and is at the crux of partner power struggles.
Without the harmful ego aspects, our world would be a better place because we would be better acting humans, heal ourselves, and those around us.
But until my hospital incident, I didn’t know how destructive the subconscious and invisible ego is on our planet, in our lives, and in me.
Shadow work examples such as going to therapy or light journaling tools can help open the doors to discover more of your deeper and hidden self.
The answers are inside you so deeper spiritual self-help may help you like healing rooms did for me.
And in my spiritual intervention rebirth.
Leading up to that point, these shadow work resources helped and can help to open the awareness…
What Did Help and Can Help You in Shadow Work Discovery
Turning to some self-help books opened my eyes. One in particular, Eckart Tolle’s The Power of Now is one of those books that comes alive in your when you’re ready for the message because your spirit lights it up.
It’s a deep book that you’re either ready for or not. You’ll know if you are because your eyes won’t glaze over the sentences. And when it’s an easy flow read, the chains have been released and the pain-body is exposed. The book is an experience. It can be so powerful that you may only need to read it once to gain the knowledge, and it’s forever in you.
That opened the spirit inside me like a lotus flower to make more room for awareness when my spiritual intervention season entered years later. 🪷
The Bible was another spiritual book I had as a tool. I had let the contents and words of Scripture occupy space and spill over inside me. 📖
You can re-read Scripture over and over again and find new tidbits of wisdom and helpful Biblical truth. You don’t get the same experience each time.
New words can jump off the page with meaning to you when you’re ready. Like my eyes skipped over the mysterious “spirit” word on the pages until I was ready.
The Bible is an instructional self-help life manual and is the only book that’s still being translated in so many languages.
Letting the higher words permeate to brain wash out all the muck that occupies the day for things that won’t matter in the years to come, is life giving.
Those are good starters.
And then be open and let your life’s journey unfold.
There’s so much more to this world and it’s inside you. As Deepak Chopra says, “the world is in you.”
“I am not in the world. The world is in me.” – Deepak Chopra
Doing deeper shadow work is underrated and will produce so much more in you and out of you as you impact the world with your greatness you were born with. 🎉
And can be born again with. Something to consider and maybe enjoy over an angel cake recipe 😇
Vinyasa yoga flow is good for getting movement and activity flow through your systems. Learn some of the common mistakes below.
Creative expression flow from winter to spring in a healthy (gluten-free) chocolate mousse dessert. 🎉Recipe below…
Vinyasa was introduced a few years after I started regular yoga that was just starting to grow in America. We were slow to catch on, immersed in our busy Western ways.
And the Vinyasa series was repeated.
Classic Vinyasa yoga includes 4 parts: Downward Dog, Plank, Chaturanga, and Up Dog.
Start at Down Dog and end in Up Dog.
These poses help your arm strength and back flexibility. All are great for flexing your back if you’re having back tension issues.
Vinyasa flow is good for life balance rhythm especially when you’re having a tough season and wanna work out your Pitta frustrations on your mat. And of course, yoga helps your body balance in the process.
The Vinyasa front down, on-the-mat poses complement your Plow Pose restoring your back.
We can easily need a tune up. And learning good form in the beginning helps to use as a guide.
When we don’t know any better, we choose the easiest form for our bodies.
Note: by the time you get to Up Dog, your tops of feets will roll transition and be on the mat vs bottom of feet. So your feet position is evolving as you move into the Vinyasa yoga pose.
And is often forgotten about.
On that topic, these are some of the common Vinyasa Yoga mistakes:
We forget to flow our feet. In Down Dog, our heels are not on the floor. Or our toes can be curled under on the mat in Up Dog, like in Plank Pose.
We forget to pause. You can slow down (as also a metaphor in life) and insert in a Child’s Pose from the Up Dog to Downward Dog transition if you would like a rest.
Another common mistake is in the hands. Hands are partially flat relying on finger strength on the mat (when it’s good to have full hands flat on the mat). Ideally, hands and fingers are flat on the mat that also helps to protect your wrists and awkward arm bends that could send strange sensations to your hand parts.
In Up Dog, often the position of hands are too low beside the body as you shift the top half of your body forward. Try to align with your shoulders.
And while we focus on hands and feets, we forget about our mid areas, where:
The buttocks are not peaked high enough in Down Dog for a higher pronounced “V.” If you’ve been to a class and received individual instruction, often the teacher will pull your mid-section body up. And that feels lighter and totally different than in a comfy “V” where the body feels weighted toward the ground.
Using a body mirror can help you better assess if your form is good.
Then naturally as we just hiked ourselves up: when we move into Plank pose, our Buttocks are too high in the air resembling a hill in Plank pose. Lower just a bit, so in a mirror you look more like a down sloping seesaw. There aren’t bumps in the middle.
And then in Chaturanga, don’t be in a hurry. Stay there longer for a few breaths and gain the arm strength building benefits. You feel control over your body.
Then Up Dog if you choose is your last part of the flow. There are slight differences between Up Dog, Cobra, and Sphinx. Up Dog is the one with the highest energy vibes.
Then before you get back into Downward Dog, pause into Child’s Pose if you like a rest.
And this is also a good place to insert other inspiring creative poses for Vata especially if you need more energy in your life (feeling Kapha tired).
Your Creative Vinyasa Flow
When you feel comfortable with the basics, you can also add your own yoga spin. Just like each yoga class is different, you can make your own yoga pose moves with your basic Vinyasa Yoga flow series. And these movements will benefit your body.
Yoga is about feeling good and getting the kinks out. And being physically creative can do just that!
One instructional move is that yoga is different than other forms of exercise.
For one, many of the yoga up moves are inhale breaths and down moves are exhales. It’s the opposite in many other forms of exercise.
Like, in weight lifting, when you lift up, you exhale and let go of the air. So switching up your breath inhale and exhale for yoga can be helpful and tricky. The most important point is just to breathe naturally and then let the rest follow. It’s more important to follow good breathing habits in weight lifting where you can unintentionally hyperventilate if you overexert yourself.
Give yourself grace in yoga!
Another move that’s fun to do (if you see it that way) is when you’re in Chaturanga: shift your toes and arms forward and backward on the mat where your height or plane distance on the mat doesn’t change. You’re constantly moving. 😊
What makes Vinyasa special is it keeps you flexible and moving and this helps your creativity. As you use your breath in flow, you get in touch with your deeper senses inside you. And this can help you tap into your creativity that can be missing in your life.
In modern life, unless we surround ourselves in creative environments and inspired, we can get out of touch with creativity.
That’s my story (and maybe yours) in corporate where creativity is as far removed as personal expression unless you have intentions to improve those areas in your day.
One easy way is create your own Vinyasa yoga flow. Maybe you add a Pigeon pose in between your Downward Dog and Plank pose. Or a Hare pose coming out of Up Dog. Or you add a Mountain pose after your Plank pose and then step or take a jump back.
You can reach your Mountain with just a ‘lil creativity and nudge. Sometimes you just need the suggestion or permission and then you’ve enhanced your day with a few more calming breaths and moments without breaking a sweat.
And if you’re feeling energetic, you could get into your hands up Tree or full Dancer poses. And then come back to your Mountain, fold down and jump or step back to Plank. And from there get back to Chaturanga.
The possibilities are endless in your creative day of activities that take just escape break minutes away from your work and devices.
Discernment helps grow us and protect mental health that’s so needed in our world. I learned about discernment in a confusing time in my life when I didn’t feel aligned.
Life can be like these two baked corn tortilla that look similar. But the one with craters and holes is healthy lime-treated, while the one with the pretty lines you’re more used to is not. You could be fooled by looks into believing which is better, and more discernment could help you choose the healthier and tastier choice on the left. 🌱
Early adult years, I was living out my old life daily with old ways I had learned. I was also blending in a newer life with a new group of mature adult friends I could bond and confide with.
…And you can probably relate with the different sets of circles you hang out in.
But unlike feeling well-rounded, I felt like I was living two separate lives at the same time during those seasons… because I had to leave the old ways that I shared with my former friends to move closer to the new ones.
Gossiping wasn’t a part of this new way that I had grown up around.
And the transition put me at odds for fitting in either groups. That’s how it can be when you’re not quite ready to leave an old identity and adopt a new personal growth one in front of you.
I had many brewing questions…
Discernment was an area of spiritual growth that kept coming up and I was curious about.
…So delving deeper, I soon discovered discernment and wisdom came from the same place that I was missing back then.
Wisdom was another area I was hoping to develop more of… wisdom is getting higher insight than what’s in daily headlines.
Leaning into the miracles and blessings of this world and Godly teachings grows us closer to our spirit.
And you can choose a different choice or path in life than the one you started in. That was my story as I started out with no religion in my life… but the journey of life showed me a spiritual path.
Wisdom vs. Smart Moves
Choosing another path led me to more wisdom. I started out doing the smart things I was influenced to do like get good grades, go to college, and start a career.
Looking back, I also remember when “work smarter, not harder” was a catchy phrase I grew up to in simpler times. But cutting corners isn’t wise. And years later, the cultural zeitgeist went back to hard work as good work, and good for realizing longterm dreams.
…That’s wisdom.
So from then, I separated the two: smart vs. wisdom. You need both for a great life you won’t regret and where you don’t wish you did most of it differently.
Misery is a choice and some sadly make.. But these days we have so many better choices available.
Using personal discernment and wisdom helps achieve those better desires, while smart is practical and gets the right things done.
With smarts, you use your daily thinking skills, while discernment uses your heart, gut, and spiritual mind.
If it’s easier to picture, you can think of being smart as using your frontal and left part of your brain and wisdom on the right side where your intuition is.
…Growing wisdom is one personal growth area that helps you with your better life outcomes you won’t regret. It’s an area that most of us aren’t developed in. But something you can develop (like a skill) and get better at when you use the deeper mind muscle.
The more strengthening discernment exercises you do in your daily life, the stronger the wisdom muscle becomes. This article is about how to exercise and practice better discernment in your daily life (that can be a good life skill tool you can have at your hip!).
Cultivating Discernment
Because remember with improved discernment, you get better at making wise decisions for yourself in your unique life.
Find quiet time and practice discernment.
And discernment is quiet like the wind. You look for it in your quiet moments, feelings, and thoughts. It’s not in your face.
When making a decision when you’re busy or distracted, listening to a noisier source like culture influences can be the deciding factor. Screaming headlines and popular trends are hard to miss while internal-gut feelings are easy to miss.
Practice discernment by thinking what’s a wise, longterm choice for forks in the road. And sleep on ideas or decisions you get to make. Find quiet time balance like you had when we were all in quarantine.
Let discernment be as natural for you as scrolling social media.
One effective way to grow discernment is to remove the blocks.
Discernment can be at odds with smart, popular cultural opinions and trends that often block out the whispering and opposing wise thoughts.
Popular culture doesn’t often reward wisdom that’s countercultural especially in younger cultures.
I know when I was younger and very easily influenced, I would listen to what everyone was doing first before listening to my own internal guide.
I thought: if everyone is doing it, how could it be wrong? But over years, I learned that was the wrong belief.
And yes, everyone (groupthink) can be wrong so it’s good to use your own judgment and developed discernment.
And that can be for any area in your unique life. If you live out your one-of-a-kind, good, and authentic ways without giving up, you will succeed in your life that you’re the star in. 🌟
Grow patience.
Another common block stems from wisdom-discernment being slow to show rewards. Being individually thoughtful is part of discernment which creates uncertainty because you’re not sure on your own.
It’s like making a long-term investment that you let sit on the sidelines versus making quick buys and sells for short wins. Then years later you see the abundance of fruit from your earlier decisions you were then-unsure about.
Those that take action and wait, win. They don’t miss out.
Waiting is part of the process for anything great. Slow cooking makes for a great stew over microwaving soups.
And yet in modern culture nobody wants to wait in areas where they’re eager to move forward in if they don’ have to. With more practice and confidence in your discernment skills, you can also get better with patience that helps your daily joyful temperament.
Invite in good thoughts.
Good discernment comes from wittling through your thoughts and only letting the good ones pass through. Reject the trashworthy thoughts after you figure out if they have any useful message for you. Sometimes that takes just a split-second decision.
Like a self-pity woes-me thought. You can just put those away.
Every day you have thoughts that enter that you have no control over. And you can decide what you do with them so they don’t decide for you.
You have complete control over rejecting thoughts. You can simply walk away in self-awareness. Or self-talk back saying, “I reject this thought.”
You can rewrite the thought narrative ending and your entire day! You can heal yourself in the moment if it was a hurtful memory.
And if unsure on a thought, you can sit on it to see how you feel later about it. You don’t have to do anything with them as they go nowhere unless you take action or have a reaction.
Write off thoughts (from your ego)
And for those ego thoughts that don’t serve you or others, you can write those off. You’re best to catch those often and not waste any more time than it takes to discern that those thoughts are not helping you.
They provide zero benefit to your life. And can add to the fear and irrational actions. And that further pushes your Fear buttons (aka false evidence appearing real).
If they’re truthfully there to serve as a warning, you will get more clues in your life. It won’t just be one thought that keeps pestering and doesn’t go away. You’ll see and hear it from various sources that build up the facts. Be like a jury trying to determine fact from fiction.
And sometimes warning thoughts are helpful. That’s where discernment comes in handy. You can decide for yourself if they are meant for you for a reason you can’t yet decipher.
…Sometimes out-of-the-blue you may get thoughts that are good reminders or new ideas that you can credit the Universe for in trying to help you.
What you let impact you, you also have degrees of control over. An example of this is what you let into your mind from what you watch on media.
You can flip the channel or walk away. You always have a choice in the matter. And there’s always headphones for noise barriers.
This can help you find your quiet time and mind peace as we enter a season of peace, Lenten peace, and Easter around the corner. 🐇
Enjoy this sour cherry bun recipe you can easily make into Hot Cross Buns.
