Elena Brower: Following Your Homing Intuition

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3 Ways to Practice You This Holiday Season

Elena Brower — December 18, 2019

Practicing being true to ourselves is a delicate dance of knowing ourselves, then respecting and serving that truth. This requires cultivation of both internal stability and external ease. How can we do this when we are surrounded by cultural chaos as well as our own family dramas? Here are three ways to Practice You this holiday season.

Write It Down

Set a timer for five to ten minutes; write who you are and where you’re going. Note every label and defining element of who you perceive yourself to be, and then note your vision for yourself next year, in five years and in ten years. Coming to know yourself will help you be steady when confronted, soft when you’d normally get agitated, and more kind at just the right times.

Sit With It

Nothing changes in an instant, and we can continuously and simply ask to be shown what the next step might be. If prayer is when we speak to our idea of a higher power, meditation is a moment to listen for healing, becomes a respite, a break in the day, a time to heal ourselves. Sit with it. Sit with what you learn when you listen a few minutes more.

Move More Slowly

One of the simplest ways I practice being myself is to simply slow down. I’ve learned this from every moment of deep loss, grief, or heartache–if i move more slowly, I won’t break. I can see what’s useful, what’s nourishing, what’s holy about this moment. Slowing down for myself helps me refine what I’m practicing and choosing in my life.

Elena Brower is a Mama, author of Practice You, yoga instructor, designer, and artist based in New York City. Devoted to cultivating meditation as our most healing habit, she’s created potent online coursework and produced On Meditation, a film featuring personal portraits of renowned meditators. For more, visit elenabrower.com.

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Draw, Write, and Dream Your Way Home to Your Self

Elena Brower — December 14, 2017

“Home is not a place. Home is a state of consciousness..”

“This is how worry becomes wisdom…”

“Consider your 33 year old self …”

Looking for more great reads?

Excerpted from Practice You by Elena Brower.

Elena Brower has been teaching yoga since 1998. After graduating from Cornell University with a design degree, she was a textile and apparel designer for six years. Having studied with several master yoga teachers for over a decade, Elena offers the practice of yoga globally as a way to approach our world with realistic reverence and gratitude. Her classes are a masterful, candid blend of artful alignment and attention cues for body, mind, and heart.

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Practice You: A Personal Message from Elena Brower

Elena Brower — September 26, 2017

Dear friends,

You’ve been practicing you, your entire life. You have always been the author of your own experience. My new book, Practice You, is a journal, filled with over 150 pages to draw, write, and dream. It’s an invitation to become the author of a sacred text of your own design, an opportunity to write a personal field guide to your highest self.

Practice You contains a series of Explorations, one for each of the nine aspects of your being. Each Exploration begins with a meditation, a chance to contemplate from a new vantage point. Today I’ll share the Embody meditation with you, from the “I Am” Exploration that opens the book.

Begin by taking a moment to sit and get grounded. Place your hands on your thighs, palms down, and begin breathing, deeply and slowly. Sense the weight of your seat, and let your spine rise tall. Feel yourself embodied, present, and steady.

How do you define yourself?
What are the words you’d use to describe your current attitude about your life right now?
What’s the most visceral, urgent need you have right now in order to feel alive, happy, and at home in yourself?

With gratitude,

Elena Brower

P.S. Look for me on Sounds True Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter on Tuesday, September 26—we’ll be giving away copies of Practice You & much more!

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