In June I started a beautiful meditation practice with the DevaTree School of Yoga.  It is a Metta meditation challenge and it has had a profound effect on me.    This loving kindness meditation started with eight days of turning inward and creating love within myself for myself.   It was a beautiful reminder that ‘Love Lives Here’ in my heart.

As a yoga teacher my intention is to help students find love within themselves for themselves during my classes, workshops and trainings.  When starting this meditation challenge it came to light  I had not been offering the same for myself.   The Metta meditation challenge brought me back to my own loving kindness and opened up the ability to create love and abundance in my own life.

Recently while preparing a restorative class, I found myself bringing in the theme of a courageous heart.  We started with the beautiful courageous heart mudra.  The courageous heart mudra to me creates a reminder to keep our courageous hearts open in the face of anger, in the face of failure, in the face of fear and even in the face of hatred.    When practicing this mudra it felt amplified with my Metta meditation and reminded me love not only lives within myself, it lives within my home and in fact love lives all around me.   Connecting my open heart revealed to me my past tendency to close off my heart to myself and to the world around me.  My work has been accepting that is the past and it is okay to have closed my heart off because I have allowed myself to courageously open it again.   Having a courageous open heart allows me to step into my fears, to accept failure and to be able to accept the good, the bad and the ugly.  I trust my heart and know if it is broken it will heal again.   I feel having a courageous open heart and knowing love lives within me creates a more abundant and fulfilled life.

My invitation this month is a gentle reminder love lives within you and inviting you to courageously allow your heart to stay open through it all.