Meditative Movements

There have been many significant, transforming moments in my life; the most profound was when I realized that I have the free will to choose who I want to be and how I want to live my life. Claiming my personal power has allowed me to let go of my fears of living. While I am grateful for the support and love of the people in my life, I am not dependent on them to make me feel good about myself.

Because I was raising my three children alone, working forty hours a week, and going to college fulltime, I needed my 30-minute workout time to meet more than just my physical needs. My mental and spiritual health needed attention too. To meet all three needs, I combined positive core value affirmations with different forms of exercise, thus creating Meditative Movements.

Throughout the various stages of my life, I have experienced different challenges. This program has helped me raise my children alone, quit smoking, lose weight, graduate from college, remarry and start my own business. More importantly, it has allowed me to love and accept myself. Now in my fifties, I continue to use the program because I want to experience exceptional health and well-being. I choose to live in the present moment, enjoy the changes in season, feel t

he sun on my face, play with my grandchildren, embrace and be excited about my life.

I have been inspired by the writing of Mattie J.T. Stepanek. He lived his life striving to be at peace with himself and others. In his book, Just Peace, co-authored with former President Jimmy Carter, Mattie states the following:

“Everything in life has choice, even if the only choice we have is the attitude with which we embrace the moment. While we cannot choose the life we are born into, we can choose how we embrace the moments we are given.”

This program has enabled me to fulfill my need for affirmation and exercise on a daily basis so I can live confidently and with gentle peace. I hope that by sharing this exercise program with you, you will be able to more fully take hold of your own personal power and become the person you really want to be.

What is Meditative Movements?

We all experience life differently but we are all basically the same. In order to be who we are intended to be, we need to feel loved, important, confident, accepted, freedom and be at peace with ourselves.

This spiritually based exercise movement program is about healing. It’s about exercising our minds, our bodies, and our spiritual beings in concert so that we can experience life as confident, loving, and energized individuals.

Meditative Movements is an exercise movement program showing how the synergy of combining affirmations with movement can change lives. Cardio, strengthening, flexibility, and balance movements are carefully illustrated and their benefits explained, then are combined with spoken positive affirmations that energize body and being. Informative charts concerning heart rates and burning calories, a quick reference card, list of affirmations and life-changing concepts are also available.

Whatever unhealthy tendency you inherited (chemical dependency, eating disorder, gambling, co-dependency, or low self-image) or significant/tragic events that have occurred in your life (death, divorce, loss of employment, illness); you can create the changes in your life that you desire.

My Personal Journey

When I was a young adult, I both hated and yearned for change. I had grown up in a traditional family, had become pregnant at the age of sixteen, and by the age of twenty-three, I was divorced with three small children. That was 1980, and I was making $80 a week and r

eceiving small sporadic child support payments. Struggling to raise my three children alone, I experienced a lot of emotional pain because of my attitude about my divorce. I felt like a worthless nobody. Who would love me now? I certainly didn’t. To add to my feelings of inadequacy, I was comparing my life to the countless television shows I was watching. I felt inferior to the perfect lifestyles they portrayed. Then, standing in front of the mirror one day, I remember asking myself, “What do you like about yourself?” I recall looking at my own reflection in the mirror and thinking, “Well, at least I can like my hair.”

My body also suffered because I was filling it with cigarette smoke, eating unhealthy foods, and becoming more sedentary. To make matters worse, I thought I was fat when I weighed only 110 pounds.

Looking back, I believe my spiritual being suffered the most. Fear, self-pity, anger, and guilt were my constant companions, and I thought I was so worthless that I did not deserve to be here. Ironically, my mind was constantly focusing on what other people should change in their lives so I could be happier.

At that time, I was unaware of the impact that my thoughts were having on my current life situation. I did not understand that my repeated, destructive self-talk was causing an overall unhealthy state of being in me. Because I internally repeated, accepted, and identified with toxic thoughts like “I am useless, I am not good enough, and I am a failure”, I was essentially destroying myself. In front of that mirror many years ago, exhausted and depressed, I knew that I had lost my energy and enthusiasm for life. I was no longer able to go on living like this. Life was too painful.

I thought of the medical professionals who had told me that I was in deep depression and that I was the one that needed to change. I thought of my children and the pain and hurt that they were experiencing. I thought of the hope that Al-Anon gave that life could be different. It was at this incredibly low point of my life that I decided I needed to explore how I could change.

The first step in my healing journey began when I started listening to and owning my own thoughts. As I began to learn about my personal power of choice, I realized that my mind, body, and being were all affected by my limiting, negative beliefs and self-talk. I had been using words like have to, never, always, should, and not good enough. I also was not able to separate who I was from who I thought others wanted me to be.

or example, if someone said they would call me for a date and then didn’t, I immediately reacted by thinking the problem was with me. I didn’t allow or even entertain the thought that the other person had dropped the ball! Why did I immediately think something was wrong with me?

I have since defined personal power as the energy source that enables someone to become who she or he wants to be in the present moment. Once I realized that I had the power to choose how I thought about myself, my will to claim my personal power was also awakened.

I started out making small and what might appear to be insignificant changes. For example, I didn’t understand how people could be by themselves at a restaurant. Didn’t they have any friends? What would one think about? How much courage did it take for them to be alone and in public? So for my 31^st birthday, I took myself to lunch. That was an accomplishment that was truly a present to me.

I also attended a weekend retreat where I was asked to use a hot penning technique and write a letter to someone who had hurt me. The technique involved being in a quiet place alone, with no critiquing of my writing; just allowing my mind to think freely as my hand wrote the information down on paper. When we returned to our group, we were asked to read our letters. I was shocked that the letter was to me. I started crying as I read my letter aloud. In essence I forgave myself for accepting and believing the untrue things others had told me about me. I also forgave myself for not listening to my inner voice and consequently not speaking my voice. Gradually as time passed, I felt this self forgiveness change my life. I continued to read the letter until the tears no longer fell.

So instead of simply reacting to an endless train of self-defeating beliefs and thoughts, I began to respond intentionally. I began to challenge the old thoughts and own only the ones that I knew would produce in me a sense of well-being for my mind, body, and soul.

At that time, I also learned that positive affirmations, whether repeating them out loud or silently, have a healing effect on the mind. The subconscious mind stores our thoughts and experiences. It doesn’t differentiate between thoughts that are good for us and those not so good for us.

Because the subconscious mind creates exactly what you tell it, replacing the damaging and untrue thoughts with positive, core value affirmations began a powerful healing process in me. Phrases like “I am stupid” became “I am learning”; and I replaced “I am worthless” with “I am good enough.” I wasn’t waiting for someone else to love me; I was going to love myself. Gradually, I felt my personal power and place in the world change.

When listening to your own self-talk, you may realize that some of your thinking stems back to childhood or to a particularly difficult time in your life. Specific people may have told you harmful things about yourself or you concluded damaging things about yourself based on other people’s interactions with you. What is truly important to understand is that you can think differently in this moment and that you are not locked into thinking like your message-giver, no matter who he or she was.

When we felt unloved, we didn’t have the sophistication to wonder whether our parents loved themselves. We didn’t have any way of knowing that loving has more to do with the capacity of the giver than it does with the deservedness of the receiver. Children don’t reason that way. “If you don’t hold me,” we assumed, “it must be that I am not holdable. Other kids are loved. The fault must be with me.”

We are not children now. As we mature, we can gain the insight to understand, to take responsibility for sorting out what was from what is. We can ask for support when we need it.

Now we know there wasn’t anything wrong with us. Not back then, and not now. Knowing this, we are able to forgive and let go--to move on. We deserve to be loved, just as we always did. We don’t have to think with the mind of a child anymore.

One goal I had was to quit smoking. I had tried quitting multiple times in several different ways and had been unsuccessful. But once I began to apply affirmations like “I can” and “I am successful” while visualizing my life without cigarettes, I was able to break the smoking habit permanently! Unfortunately, I also began gaining a couple of pounds a week. Being reasonably good at math, I knew if I continued this habit, I would be sixty pounds heavier by the end of the year. I was determined not to start smoking again to avoid the weight gain, so I decided to try combining core value affirmations with a movement program.

This was really the beginning of what eventually developed into my life-changing Meditative Movements ^TM. I am an average person who has been blessed with discovering a way to heal and love myself. My hope is that by following this program, YOU--- your mind, your body, and your being will also be lifted and set free.

At this time, I ask you to pause and think about your own story. I encourage you to write it down. You have purpose and meaning. The time to rediscover you is now; today in the present moment! This may be difficult for you – foreign, uncomfortable, and scary. An affirmation that may help is: Just for today, I am unafraid. I embrace this moment, I support the child within. Feel, smell, touch, think, and move with the moment. Remember you - the inner child who is excited about life and protect that child by exercising your adult thinking. Now think about who you want to become, what you want to have, what you want to do.

Table of Contents

Author Note

What is Meditative Movements?

My Personal Journey