Better posture in under a minute with a yoga strap!

Letting go of fear

Global Consciousness

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

Fun Quick Yoga for Beginners

Enjoy!

Fun Space Exploration Happening

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-31

Empty yourself and let the universe fill you.

Ahhh thank you yogi tea for the beautiful wisdom.

Amazing Heart

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/09/the-heart-as-the-center-of-consciousness-fahad-basheer/

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.~ “Lead” by Mary Oliver

Libraries Matter

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/371084/why-libraries-matter/

Olber's Paradox

Solution to Olber's Paradox:

"We do not live in an infinite and static visible universe. The universe has a finite age and is expanding. Because only about 13.7 billion years have elapsed since the Big Bang, we can only observe stars out to a finite distance. This means that the number of stars that we can observe is finite. Because of the speed of light, there are portions of the universe we never see, and light from very distant stars has not had time to reach the Earth. Interestingly, the first person to suggest this resolution to Olber's Paradox was the writer Edgar Allan Poe."

Pickover, Clifford A. The physics book. (2011) p. 166.

YOU! Yes, you. You are beautiful. You have a light in you shining bright, breath running through your body, and a universe that loves you. Love yourself and others exactly as they are in this moment. Love yourself and your body right now... not a few pounds from now, not a haircut later, NOW. Send your body thanks for being your vehicle through this world. This body that allows you to communicate and connect with others. Throw out a compliment today that goes beyond the physical, such as, "Your passion shows through in your work. Thank you." or "You are a fantastic father." 

I hope everyone has a blessed moment, day, week, and so forth...because we aren't entitled to the very next one.

Beautiful song and message.

I hope you celebrate the Summer Solstice!

How will you celebrate and honor the longest day and shortest night of the year?

Love and extra light!

Charlene

Beautiful song for this Friday.

The pleasure of nature.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

Posts are always typed with love.

Δlways with LOVΞ

We Are.

We are mosaics - pieces of light, love, history, stars -- glued together with magic and music and words.”

Anita Krizzan

https://www.facebook.com/akrizzan

Join me and save the Spirit Bear Coast from destruction

Join me and save the Spirit Bear Coast from destruction

Thank You Maya Angelou for all of your grace, honesty, wisdom, art, and compassion.

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot ...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed; It can only be changed from one form to another.”

~ Albert Einstein

Elephant Journal article by Moi!

Please check out my first published piece on Elephant Journal:

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/05/the-union-of-yoga-honey-bees-charlene-wells/

Love,
Charlene

1 minute poem

Try writing whatever you want for 1 minute.  Get the timer and go!
Here is what happened from my minute:

Feeling the heat

Enjoying the thought and memory of Nebraska

In june/july

It’s the best place to be

The golden corn

The heat waves

Water!

Tea!

Fun

Evening into night

Crazy thunderstorms

Make you feel alive, small, and beautiful

Electric

I’m in love.

Nebraska summer

The nights in sundresses, messy hair that looks the sexiest of all.

Tanned skin, even with the smell of sunscreen lingering.

Love. 

Solar Panels Paving the Way of the Future?

Check out this cool article from Outside magazine.

Radiation: Learn what is happening to the Ocean

http://www.planetarianperspectives.net/?p=1103

Namaste

Think about it...

We reside in this huge universe.  That entire universe is also inside us.  Instead of the time we use with our head down looking at our cell phones, imagine if we went inside and explored the universe within.  Realizing the constant life and death taking place by our cells.
Finding stillness during all of the change.
Connecting with our higher self, so that we can connect with others in this sacred space more easily.

What is beauty?

Information from the book Fruitless Fall by Rowan Jacobsen

I used this book in part to help with my writing topic on yoga and bees and how they connect.  Here is one thing that really stuck out to me from page 253-254:

"McInnes has spent a decade researching the role of glycogen in enhancing restorative sleep--the type of deep sleep when most healing and growing takes place. Glycogen is brain fuel; the brain needs a steady supply all the time, even during sleep. If it runs out, brain cells begin to die. Yet at any given moment, the brain has only a thirty-second supply of glycogen, which is manufacture by the liver. So the liver steadily feeds glycogen to the brain all day and all night. But the liver itself can store only about eight hours' worth of glycogen, so if you eat an early dinner and then nothing before bed, your liver runs out of glycogen during the night. That's an emergency for your brain, which floods the body with stress hormones, particularly cortisol. Cortisol sounds the alarm, making your body melt down muscle tissue and convert it to glycogen for the brain. This keeps the brain going through the night, so you don't fall into a come, which is nice, but the stress hormones also shut down restorative sleep. Instead of repairing  bone and muscle, building immune cells, and other maintenance projects (which are all fueled by fat-burning), your restless body spends the remainder of the night in a cortisol-fueled "fight or flight" state. The heart beats faster and glucose and insulin levels rise in the bloods (to fuel motion that never comes), and fat gets stored instead of metabolized. The results: diabetes, obesity, heart disease, immune breakdown, and accelerated aging.

The key to preventing this chain reaction is to fully fuel your liver before you go to bed. It doesn't take much: just a hundred calories equally divided between fructose and glucose--the liver's two favorites--plus some minerals to act as metabolites. McInnes searched until he found the ideal source. You're way ahead of me again. If McInnes is right, a teaspoon or two of honey before bed promotes deep, restful sleep, weight loss, and long-term health. In children, it promotes learning and growth."



The Birth of Beauty was a fantastic chapter as well.

Jacobsen, Rowan. (2008). Fruitless fall: The collapse of the honey bee and the coming agricultural crisis. Bloomsbury USA: New York.

Eclipse Next Week!

Check out all the details of the eclipse happening April 14 - 15 next week:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140410-lunar-eclipse-blood-moon-space-viewing-guide/  

Happy April!

Today I encourage you to try dandelion root tea. 

my yoga teacher training art piece

We were asked to create a piece based on the Eight Limbs of Yoga from our readings in Light on Yoga by B. K. S. Iyengar.  I decided to work with oil paints and this is what came about.  The fruit are circles that correspond with the lighting up of all of the chakras.  The reason the fruit looks the way it does is because of my love for the paintings of Klimt, so I incorporated some admiration for one of my all time favorite artists.  I think it's good to appreciate others while maintaing the self and following a true path.    Lastly, I'd like to point out my OM swing.  Wouldn't it be amazing to swing on OM??? 

XO,
Charlene

A little writing I had to get out... Enjoi!

Walking down a path

Straight out of a magical story

The small forest

Sharing Spots of sunlight and shade

 

Another walking my way

Not crossing paths, but soon to be parallel

“It’s pretty isn’t it?” with hands open, touching more around me

“It’s really pretty” you said and you meant it, with happiness across your face.

 

We both knew it was more than that

Pretty is just a word, but something had to be said

A way of saying thank you for the moment and the creation experience

 

Continued walking for a few moments more

Before the birds and magic

Drowned out by the sound of (de)construction.

Heart Opening Backbends

Open up your heart with some backbends.  Baby cobras, camel, wheel pose, fish, and so many others open us up to the power of love and decrease negative commonalities such as depression.

Namaste.

Togetherness chant:

OM saha nAvavatu 
saha nau bhunaktu
saha vIryam karavAvahai  
tejasvi  nAvadhitamastu mA vidviShAvahai
OM Shantih Shantih Shantih

Singing/chanting this together evokes such peace and togetherness.  I highly suggest it. 

Power of Positive Intentions

http://altering-perspectives.com/2014/01/scientific-proof-thoughts-intentions-can-alter-physical-world-around-us.html

Extremely Sad & Real

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/01/in-syria-sleeping-between-his-parents-sad-photo/

Feel Alive Juice

Beets, carrots, ginger, lemon, broccoli, and a heavy sprinkle of spirulina.