Meditation Jam - Celebrate Life With Guest - Elena Mironov

Warm welcome to a new pod episode of “Meditation Jam with Maria Rinné”.
I am so happy to share this beautiful and warm talk I had with Psychologist, Yoga and Meditation teacher trainer, Sleep therapist, Yoga and Meditation retreat organizer and Composer Elena Mironov.
Elena shares her story and experience from her burnout in her early 20’s to learning the importance of listening to your body and how Yoga Nidra helped her move through it.

Music by Steen Thottrup - Balearic Bliss and Moby LA7

Transcript

I ended up overdoing it and at the time I had the best motives.

I was really very passionate about what I was doing and My former partner was also a very driven individual So we kind of we were kind of pushing each other forward and at one point I just realized that I could not continue like that because my body started to communicate to me that it was enough and that Rest was needed that it was pretty much like telling me to slow down and I was not listening So I was continuing to do the same thing.

I had like super long days Sometimes 16 hour long days and I was taking no days off I guess it also is linked to the working culture and working ethic in my family,

Which was really glorifying business and glorifying Hard work and that's great in many ways But I think that it's also important that we would teach our kids that rest is necessary like even a machine can not go on forever.

Hi,

You are listening to Meditation Jam with Maresa Rini and this is support with Igniting Energy Meditations designed to connect you with your own beautiful inner wisdom that I like to call your pure heart that infinite wise Part of you that is connecting to all but also comes with its own journey its own challenges and when we connect to this pure heart energy through the igniting meditations it bypasses all these and go straight to your core so that you can open up and Hear feel accept and have fun with your beautiful self And I see the energy as a key that unlocks parts of us and I will also invite guests to speak about their work experiences journeys and Listen to their wisdom so before we start I would also like to just put out a little warning that please don't be driving while listening to the meditation or Doing something that demands your full attention because I know that for some this energy can put you in to a deep Relaxation almost like sleep.

So please no driving Okay,

So warm welcome and let's start this meditation jam So today I am so happy to share with you this warm and beautiful talk that I had with Elena Mironov and Elena has a lot of things going on both in her days and in her background So she is a trained psychologist She is also a trained yoga and meditation teacher She is a composer she is a singer and has released two albums also composing for others and She is organizing beautiful yoga and meditation retreats all around the world She has been featured in a lot of magazines like yoga journal Vogue and some other beautiful magazines and right now she's combining her tools as psychologist and all her yoga meditation tools into sleep therapy practice so a lot of beautiful tools to share and Right now her yoga training is focused on yoga,

Nidra and she is holding courses for meditation teachers To spread these beautiful tools further So we are going to talk about her work and how journey and how she went from being burned out to finding her way back to celebrate life So I'm really happy to introduce to you warm welcome Elena Mironov So warm welcome Elena.

How are you?

Thank you.

I'm really good Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah.

I'm so happy to have you here and where are you situated?

I'm situated just outside Zurich in Switzerland Lovely and what's the weather for you today?

It's very gray and it's a little bit overcast and it's kind of It's you know,

It's that kind of weather that reminds me of Stockholm And that invites me to kind of stay in this cocoon of coziness And a lot of work that normally you like you postpone for a day like that You're not like very like you're not very drawn outside So today I'm working on editing some of the recent music recordings and some of the recent recordings and you know creating all of this content for for the listeners and for the teachers I just love what you do because you are a yoga teacher and you teach yoga teachers and you are also a psychologist and you are a composer So let's just start from the beginning What should we start with the yoga?

You started really young or did you start maybe with the music first?

The music yeah that has been that has been a part of my life as long as I remember myself So that was a bit of an obsession as I was a child actually so it started when I was like around four My parents were a little bit worried about that because I was completely obsessed about anything to do with pianos.

Oh yeah they took their time before signing me up for classes so they really wanted to make sure that I'm dedicated and they kept putting me through a lot of tests to show how committed I was to music.

Yeah it wasn't an easy journey they always wanted to see that it's not like a temporary interest but something that I wanted to continue showing up for So music started really early I started with classes when I was like five or six years old I'm still taking classes both given and taking classes these days but still on that journey Is it mainly piano or do you have you spread out to further instruments or maybe singing as well?

Yeah both actually yeah I did a vocal academy in Copenhagen many years ago so this is like a part of my formal training and I did a lot of music and I did a lot of music in the UK a part of my formal training and at this point I work primarily with piano but I also create music for strings so I write for different string instruments even though I don't play them but I write for them and yeah I do use the voice as well when I perform and sometimes when I write Beautiful and I know that you have released two albums?

Two and the third one is very actively in the making right now so yesterday was a full studio day and I'm going back to the studio again soon so yeah these days is all about putting together the music that has been kind of brewing for a period of time I've taken a break from writing for a couple of years but I realized that I can't really take a break from writing because I continue to do that yeah so I feel like it's fair to also share this with with others and it feels like some of the listeners are putting a little pressure now to come up with new things yeah and it might be a good thing and so so you start with music but then how do you stop with yoga because you stopped really early yeah I was I think 12 or 13 when I started with yoga and the reason why I came to that is because I injured my back while skiing and actually there was quite a lot of pain that I was living with and other treatment modalities like physiotherapy for example weren't really making a difference so I just remember being very young and I was very young and still you know I'm still having to go through this ordeal and I was a very curious kid so I was trying a lot of things and I just remember signing up for yoga class in my local community center so at that point I was taking a photography workshop there but the teacher that I had shared with me that I started in the yoga class and I was really curious I thought I'm going to give it a try and I didn't even think that it would have like an on my back situation yeah but it did and honestly like it removed a pain for many days after I had classes there and I very quickly realized that it was great for my posture it was great for my confidence and also helped me work with quite a lot of stress that I was experiencing as a school kid you know of course yeah yeah and during that time I just felt it was so much pressure it was so much stress to deal with the yoga and meditation were the tools that I was using in order to kind of at that point escape the stressful situations but then I realized that it was not only an escape strategy but it also gave me some of the tools that I could use on my own as well so very fast it kind of became that part of my lifestyle that helped me to get through the school years and the university time without losing myself and I know that in Sweden there are some schools there and I'm sure in other countries as well that are starting to add like playful meditation time or a little bit of yoga in the in the gymnastic lessons and I think it's so good because it's so important with this busy day that we all have to have those calm moments and I'm sure all the parents are really happy when their kids also become a little bit calmer and release that stress exactly and that's a tool that they get so early on that they can really hone and integrate into their lives I feel like it's it's a tremendous gift to get introduced to that really early on in your life yeah these are some of the things that I feel belong pretty much like in every person's life regardless of how spiritual and non-spiritual we are I just think that you know some of the basic mindfulness principles are just so so fundamental for our mental well-being just that moment when you become aware of how busy your mind is because a lot of the time we are so caught up in that process and that busyness of mind where we are recycling the same thoughts all over again without them actually like having a value or solving an issue we just go into the same thing again and again and again and I feel like with meditation and mindfulness we can at least zoom out for a moment and and become conscious of what we're doing yeah except I think that's the thing that you I mean of course my mind is is buzzing at a time as well but then I find myself noticing that and I can like hone it back and before maybe I even just spin off exactly yeah so you are starting your yoga and when when do you get into teaching yoga and what yoga practice was the first one well actually I started teaching very early as well I was 21 when I started teaching and the the first couple of years it was actually my way of giving back so I remember like the first year of teaching I was actually offering the classes in the same community center where I started as now I'm returning what I have received from the community it was never really my plan to be a yoga teacher at all so the teacher that I had at that time had a way of kind of like really pushing me very gently and very kindly into that yeah she thought that it would be nice if I decided to give back and she also saw a potential of a teacher in me I suppose and I declined that lovely offer a couple of times but she was very insistent and she knew which buttons to press she knew that I would probably not say no to giving back because I did feel like this you know these years at the community center have been so enriching for me you know and how they actually changed my life even as as a teenager so she pressed the right button and she also provided an amazing support system the whole first year of my teaching and she was doing a lot of one-on-one mentoring a lot of training she would bring me lots of books she would bring you lots of material so yeah even before the formal education there was already such a journey in in that space of teaching actually so I'm very grateful for that and then you started to become a psychologist actually I was even before yeah so by 21 I already had my bachelor and instead of oh wow instead of studying with psychology I actually started with yoga and it was already a way to kind of integrate both some of the knowledge from from the psychology training into the way that I was working with the teenagers at that time I love that because to have those two together because as I understand it you you bring in like a physical part into your sessions what results do you see and are the people who come to you are they open for that that okay now we're going to do a little bit of this posture or this breathing technique or how does that come about well it's also a good question because I tend to work with very different demographics yeah so like one of the demographics is people who are already very dedicated yogis or yoga teachers actually a lot of a lot of people who can come to yoga retreats yeah are already teaching so they are very ready and they're very open and they like the physical aspect of things and they also have a lot of appreciation for the meditation practices that we have pretty much every retreat you know it's so important to me that I feel like a yoga retreat without the meditation part would somehow like feel a little bit incomplete so I like to add that but the other demographic that I tend to work with are people who have either a psychological challenge or a crisis sometimes a psychiatric diagnosis so different you know different challenges in their lives and a lot of the time they're open to holistic methods of treatment but not all of them have a yoga experience so there we usually start with practices like breath work and you know the tools which are somehow like in that space between psychology and yoga so there are quite a lot of tools that have been demonstrated to be efficient by psychologists like certain breath work techniques that help to shift the nervous system from the sympathetic activation and move us into parasympathetic state so you know those kind of practices that have been studied that have been proven to be effective are usually very well received by all and then like over time as students who are new to them begin to see that it's working yeah the tools that we use are working and they're more open to the yogic practices they're more open to trying out yoga nidra and other techniques and tools this is what I noticed so a lot of the time the more neutral type of work is is a great way in and obviously it needs to be experiential so you need to be able to see as as a student or as a participant that that it's already working then then you can take in more yeah it's so nice to have these two parts brought together and also that the medicine is opening up I don't know how it's in Switzerland but in Sweden we've been kind of separating like the mental spiritual part and the science and all that but it's starting to merge and I have a friend who is have done a lot of research of medicine yoga for hot people with a bad heart and she has got this really good resource so now the bigger hospitals are taking in this as a rehab way to to mend or yeah help the patient and like 20 years ago you wouldn't even be on the map for that yeah exactly and you mentioned as well you you host retreats that sounds so nice and it's not only in Switzerland but it's all over the world yes yes actually there's been a lot of retreats in Sweden yeah you know a lot of retreats in Norway so Iceland Norway Sweden Denmark the Nordic countries have been pretty much covered except for Finland we were once planning it but yeah I think that the participants were too afraid of the mosquito attack in summer yeah yeah yeah but other than that actually retreats have been a pretty much a full-time job for more than 10 years with COVID it started to change and I started to do even more teacher trainings but it's been really full on for a very long time so retreats are a huge part of my journey as a teacher and I should mention as well that we will put links to your web page where you can follow you and your social media if someone wants to just check this out thank you yeah so how did you get into yoga nidra so this is a story that maybe is like a little bit a little bit sad to begin with yeah but it ends well so good yeah what happened is I actually it's not very usual for people to have a burnout early in their lives so typically that's something that happens later but in my case I had a burnout in my 20s and it's quite early on I think I was 23 or 24 at that time and I didn't even realize that like the moment that I started experiencing symptoms that this is where I was headed so it took me some time to kind of you know put two and two together and get some get some input on that and figure out what was going on but it was not an easy time at all I was working two jobs or actually I had two businesses one together with my then partner and one on my own and it was a very like very intense time of my life and I've always been very driven and this was the time of my life when my drive kind of worked against me and I ended up over doing it and at the time I had the best motives I was really very passionate about what I was doing and my former partner was also very driven individual so we kind of we were kind of pushing each other forward and at one point I just realized that I could not continue like that because my body started to communicate to me that it was enough and that rest was needed that it was pretty much like telling me to slow down and I was not listening so I was continuing to do the same thing I had like super long days sometimes 16 hour long days and I was taking no days off I guess it also is linked to the working culture and working ethic in my family which was really a glorifying business and glorifying hard work and that's great in many ways but I think that it's also important that we teach our kids that rest is necessary like even the machine can not go on forever sometimes we say like oh I'm not a robot I'm not a machine but even if you just like if you run a machine without turning it off you're going to overheat the machine's engine or the system that we're talking about now even a machine needs to be plugged out and turned off every once in a while and that was actually like not a message that I received from my parents and I always you know used to pride myself in being a hard worker but this was the time when it kind of backfired I also think because when you are that age and also after or when you're older when you're doing something that you really enjoy you think that but I'm enjoying this it's so much fun so I can't I can't burn myself or yet burn out but yes you can because your body can't take it for a longer time yeah so so what happened for you to then realize I have to shift this right so what happened is I started to have the psychosomatic pains in my body and at that point I did not even realize that it was that I was dealing with psychosomatic pains I just thought that oh I just need to have the shoulder fixed you know so I would go to a physio and I would like do all sorts of exercises and that were not working and at one point I just realized that you know the physios that I was working with they were seeing like it's interesting because some of these pains are non-specific and this is kind of pointing us in the direction of thinking maybe it's not just the poor alignment that we're trying to fix or not just something that has a purely like physical background but we might be dealing with something that actually has to do with other things with your nervous system you know is your nervous system wired is there something else going on and I would just completely discard those ideas at that point I was like no I'm completely fine like nervous system is great like I'm a high performer you know why would I need to definitely everything fine there and over time I think that it took a couple of months for me to figure out that there was more to that because the pain started to spread to different parts of my body and I felt like it's really very strange because I'm so healthy why would that be happening and little by little I started to kind of piece that puzzle together and see that there are some signs that were pointing at the fact that my body was just completely depleted and my nervous system is defeated exhausted needing a pretty serious break and it just came to a point where I started to get ill a lot so but in addition to the symptoms like the like the pain in my muscular system and the joints etc started to also manifest as me catching colds and having infections and things like this and then I was like okay it's time to step back and take a little take a little look at what's going on so did you take like a break completely or did you slow just slow down or eventually I took a break also like I was so slow at figuring things out at that point yeah because I was completely not experienced in in that particular manifestation of exhaustion and burnout it was so new to me so it really took a while and reflecting back I remember there was some really beautiful turning moments turning points like when I would take finally I would take one day off and I would join a yoga class and then stay on for meditation and I remember there was one point where a colleague of mine Naomi invited me to join her yoga nidra class and I had no idea what yoga nidra was but she said no but just try it just try just be open to that and yeah that changed something completely changed something in that perception I just remember I walked out and I felt like like someone pressed a reset button oh in my nervous system like all of a sudden the anxiety was gone that survival mode was not as relevant because I think that it was not just passion that was driving me but also that kind of you know I was existing in a survival mode because we were trying to make this two companies work and it was during a very difficult financial time like economically these were very difficult times to kind of set anything into motion so those survival drive there was anxiety there were so many things going on and suddenly it was like a silence oh lovely thoughts were giving me a break and it was just so beautiful I was I was almost crying I was just like sitting on my own and reflecting on what happened yeah I knew that it was it was major somehow it was it was gonna it was a very it was gonna be a practice I would go back to yeah this was like one of those moments and then there was another moment when I joined um it was actually um a vegan lunch kind of event that we were organizing with some people I knew in that community still happening in Sydney in Australia where I was living with my former partner and they invited a teacher who learned yoga nidra class so that was probably like the second time that I've ever done that in my life and I just flew away completely so I was both listening and I was hearing the words of a teacher at the same time I felt so far away from just being this from identifying with this physical body I realized that it was not just this human experience it was something else um as a part of um as a part of a bigger journey somehow like for a moment things change like change like the meaning of things somehow changed and I was able to see a bigger picture and also like I came back to my car and I was I was actually crying for like half an hour there was this like release of so much emotional build up and um like the story that that we sometimes create for ourselves right yeah so those moments were like like when I look back pretty um pretty important points in the recovery journey yeah it's so beautiful to hear and also that you listen to it because sometimes those stories show up and we still don't hear it so I think maybe sometimes we need to be receptive and you were you had come to that point where you were or maybe they get knocked into us a little bit harder but some people still don't listen and that's when it goes really wrong and it takes a lot longer to get back maybe very true I feel like I also spend a lot of time not listening and then the body was just like if you're not going to listen to that let me just show it to you even clearer okay so there's like one morning when I couldn't get dressed on my own because I had so much pain in my shoulders that I couldn't lift my arms and I just remember um like my ex-partner helping me get dressed and comb my hair that day because I couldn't lift my arms oh god it was like okay that's pretty much like a red flag here yes I was really ignoring the signs for so long and then the body just gets more and more persistent it's so intelligent right yes and I always say it's when our body speaks or acts out like you know showing us it's not to punish us it's actually to show us that hey you know you need to change yeah you need to pay attention or else if you don't it's gonna be do you want it the hard way or the easy way exactly I'm gonna be even louder exactly so for those who don't know how would you describe yoga nidra so yoga nidra is often considered to be a form of meditation I'm saying is often considered a form of meditation because some teachers don't agree and it's also a practice that is called pratyahara or sense withdrawal it's also a practice of self-realization there's a part called sankalpa when you create an intention that helps you realize yourself as a human that helps you realize your full potential so there are multiple ways to actually define and describe them but I would say like from the experiential perspective it's probably closest to meditation it takes you into a very meditative state and sometimes even fall asleep however like if you look at the brain scan of people practicing meditation versus brain scans of people practicing yoga nidra the signature brainwave pattern is actually very different in what way is it more active or more calm or is it that's a great question so if you of course I haven't looked at the brain scans of every type of people practicing like every type of meditation yeah look at some brain scans from the Buddhist monks who are practicing for example metta or loving kindness meditation we have quite a lot of data from American universities who have been putting them the Buddhist monks into the brain scanning machine machines into the MRI machines for example and observing what happens to the brains when they're practicing and so what they found out is that a lot of the time when for example loving kindness meditation is practiced the brain wave frequency goes up so they tend to experience what is called gamma waves or like super high frequency brain waves yeah and this kind of brain waves are also observed in people who are at the top of the game as elite sportsmen or prodigy musicians for example or people in the state of law yeah it's actually going really really high up in in the hertz like very high frequency and in yoga nidra we we see the opposite so going from the beta brain waves of day-to-day functioning the brain waves begin to gradually slow down and descend first of all into alpha then into theta and then in some cases even into delta which are the brain waves that correlate with the deepest form of sleep so it's it's a very interesting trajectory and quite different from from other forms of mindfulness meditation i love that we have the science to kind of see this and also that because i mean as you say you can use meditation for so much and so i have my energy meditations to help ignite and open our and work with our energy within and of course they are relaxing but if you like want to go into a deep relaxation with that purpose to just just do that then i would say yoga nidra is beautiful because then you really go deep deep deep right into the relaxation purpose in a way and how how long do you do with the are you how if you were to do it is it like a half an hour or if you have a class is it longer or it used to be like more rigid before i would say that all masters like swami satyananda sarasati and other yoga nidra masters and yoga masters they used to be like really particular about the length but in the recent years there's been so many studies on yoga nidra because they caught the interest of neuroscientists and some really famous ones as well like andrew huberman for example and there's been a lot of like a lot of new data that we've been receiving so now we can see that both the short ones and the long ones can be very effective and in some ways for different purposes i would say so before it was always a practice that would be used to kind of practice consciousness and stay away aware and awake but now yoga nidra is also used for inducing sleep because now we have the data that shows that it can be very effective for people with insomnia for example so the shorter practices can be like a really nice quick reset the nervous system actually i just made one for the nervous system recently and um a level of the feedback you know that's a shorter practice which is maybe about 15-18 minutes long yeah but you know it's easy to fit into your day and it does actually reset the the brain and the nervous system very nicely and yeah yeah and then there are some long practices that can be great for those who are suffering from insomnia or if you have like a really really busy mind or something's going on that is you know creating that kind of emotional unrest or turbulence and you need to really take the time to slow things down to kind of shift gears a little bit so there i would say a longer practice could be great my favorite length is maybe about 25 minutes because it still fits in the middle of the day and yeah it's pretty short so it kind of feels like i get two days out of one because uh when i get tired after morning hours of work around lunchtime i take that and it feels even more powerful than taking a nap sometimes i know you said um we talked a little bit before that you also use this as a sleep therapist and i'm sure you use this yoga nidra in that as well yeah yeah i do and here as well we can actually be very creative in the strategy um because you know the person is already really sleep deprived or has been struggling with this for a long time we can use yoga nidra to even in the morning after a turbulent night to actually get the energy for the entire day so that way they can get to the day or to half of the day and then maybe do a little one in the afternoon and so not only the sleep inducing practice but it can also be something that actually is solving the energy lack issue during the day so yeah it can actually be super super helpful and the other thing that it does is is i've been observing that as a therapist for years now i noticed that like a lot of the time insomnia doesn't just come on its own it has a host of so many different reasons symptoms um you know so many different sources that it comes from and i find that a lot of the time it's really related to our baseline level of stress being really high and that leads to this kind of chronic cortisol overproduction in the body we don't flush it out because we don't properly relax and then it kind of you know perpetuates the problem you know and when the chronic level of stress is pretty high to begin with then it's difficult for us to just go to bed in the evening and suddenly get it done yeah you know even with the meditation practice so here i would say like taking a little break during the day and really working on that baseline level of stress is also something where yoga nidra can be very useful because you know you don't go into this overdrive yeah you keep yourself on a more leveled plane or yeah exactly then it's easier to self-regulate and self-suit later on oh i love that and also i every month i um take taps on the energy to come my way of interpreting it and for december actually i got this like really strong message that it's so important to connect with peace and of course it's always and but we also know that december is can be a bit of a we have to get everything done before the end of the year and we have to enjoy ourselves and we have to make it cozy and so much pressure right yeah yeah the month of celebration right yeah so so um there's even a pressure to celebrate exactly so i'm thinking that um yoga nidra i'm i'm of course doing my meditations but i feel like everything that can help with this is so good so uh i absolutely do recommend anyone listening to have a look at your page and your yoga nidra practices because i think you have it on your web page somewhere is it on spotify or soundcloud or all over yeah on my website they can even download them the high quality track for free for example oh lovely it's a lot of a lot of free resources that i'm creating for those and you know and in my own experience it's just been such a big part of my recovery that i want to give back and i really enjoy receiving the feedback and hearing how it's been helpful yeah and i mean i always say it's it's also like a win-win for everybody because when you get peaceful then you spread that around and then the more of us that could you know stay in that vibe the better it is for everyone so yeah it's a win-win yeah it's a ripple effect i think yeah exactly from that ourselves the more others see us being different i think then we can talk all we want about things that we feel are working but the best testimony is how we are like how we show up right that is so true i also know that you are teaching the teachers or training the teachers and you have an event coming up for january for that actually it's going to be a new a new training group or teachers yeah so i normally do that once or twice a year this is a big part of my year because it's a way for us to connect with the community and normally it's a group of people from different parts of the world yeah you do it online yeah now it is online i used to do that a lot in person in iceland and in denmark but these days i feel you know it's it's so much more practical to actually do that from home and at the same time still have a sense of community so what i ended up doing is creating a training it took me forever to create that actually but i'm very happy about how it turned out so what i ended up doing is creating a training where people can go through the materials on their own at their own pace and at the same time we also have the live gatherings for them where we have a sense of community and everyone gets a training partner to work with so that way you are not alone on this journey you get a lot of feedback you get to share your work you get to to do all the things that help you get the experience and before you start to teach that in the real world and that way it kind of reduces the pressure and the stress there's a lot of interaction as a part of that and i love that and i love how people connect and i love how people end up creating projects together or collaborations together so it becomes much more than you know a course that is anonymous that that doesn't require that you show up so here you definitely have to show up you definitely have to create your own scripts to create your own practices to share them with others and also offer others feedback on their work and that becomes a community event as opposed to something anonymous oh that's lovely and for anyone who wants to join do you have to have like this background or be in this advanced level or can anyone join this to become a teacher so you can actually join even if you don't have a background in that so some of the participants were just very interested in yoga nidra received a lot of benefit um personally and they wanted to know more and this is in a way deep dive you know you go much much deeper into the roots you go much much deeper but into the mechanisms of stress into the mechanism of yoga nidra in the brain in the nervous system also the biochemistry of stress and the biochemistry of yoga nidra so you can you can actually see that from so many different perspectives from brain waves to the stress hormones and and how exactly that works then you get a very rich practical tool kit that helps you integrate that into your web and so we've had therapists taking that we've had teachers including school teachers take the training oh we had people from different walks of life and of course there's also a lot of yoga teachers who do that so for those who need their professional credits this is also a course that is accredited by the yoga mind so you get points from them and but if it's not something that you need to do professionally but you're only doing that for your own knowledge that's of course an option as well it sounds really nice you just don't need to practice with your training partners and do assignments if you're only doing this for yourself which is a benefit if it's just for your own knowledge but if you intend to teach that then you get a very rich foundation and experience for teaching too it's so interesting i could talk to you for such a long time so we have to have another episode later on but before we end i always i have three questions that i ask all my guests going through this that you have i'm thinking hitting that wall of like exhaust and everything what's the most positive thing you take with you from that journey i love that question well first of all i like that that mindset to begin with i like that you don't linger just on the negative maria but that you actually see everything as a learning experience yeah i mean i would say this was um this was first of all awareness and learning to listen to myself you know and i think this is such an important thing that we underestimate you know a lot of the time with dysfunction on autopilot which i did too so learning to really listen and becoming more aware is a very big one and the other one is really learning to rest and when i say rest it's rest in different forms it's rest in a form of prioritizing your sleep and really enhancing your sleep in the ways that you can so you don't just spend certain numbers of a certain number of hours in bed just in turning but you actually really get the rest out of your sleep you really feel replenished and there's a big distinction between the quality of sleep that we get on average as opposed to what um what we get out of really good sleep when we have when we have that proper slow down time before we go to bed when when we let ourselves like really savor and enjoy sleep and really take that as an important part of our lives but you know the other the other thing about rest that i took out of that experience is community you know being with your community being with the community of your close ones is so important for reducing the stress levels and preventing burnouts before staying in touch with with the reality because they give me a very important reflection and feedback about how much you work and how you are showing up and whether you appear to be stressed and whether you appear to be healthy so community resting with my community of friends and of course i think a very big part of of learning is that i learned about yoga nidra and it's been really instrumental and continues to be such a part of my life that yeah i love i love both getting the benefits and sharing it with others that's lovely that's really lovely and when did you feel most like yourself at peace and relaxed i mean i can imagine but still could be something that's gonna be like a very personal sharing moment i would say recently i felt most myself while dancing because it's another important part of my life i love moving and i love my practice of yoga yeah but another expression of my creativity is through dancing and you know especially this time of year when it gets a little bit gloomy and a little bit dark and we're just kind of you know we have a tendency to retreat back into our cocoon and just like wait for spring this is the time of year when i feel like a combination of good rest including your vanita and moving your body in a way that works for us i know that obviously that's not for everyone enjoying dance as i do perhaps it's not for everyone but for me this seems to be another form of of joy that that infuses that i can infuse my life with these days yeah i would like that and also i mean we need them both sides we need to have this active as well as the peaceful part so fun yeah but i have also have to say because i broke my shoulder at least this last spring and i've had this um steel plate uh operated into my arm so it took me some time to get some movement back and at the beginning of course it was hurting like yeah a lot and i'm not much for taking like pain medication so i would have difficulties fall asleep but then my body just took me out of the bed every time i had difficulties and i would go up and like rave in my living room and dance because then i got blood to my shoulder and then i could go back and fall asleep so after that it's like now i'd like to see that yeah exactly like if someone passed at four in the morning it's like maybe your neighbors have some really cool footage of that probably maybe it's already on the internet yeah but then when i did this because i was dancing to get my blood in my shoulders i wasn't thinking about it has to look good it was just like going for it and i remembered how much fun it is to dance and just let go and so now i kind of continued not four in the morning but oh damn yeah it's a good it's a good thing to do just yeah feel your day okay it sounds like it could be a movement you know like it could be yeah it could be like a social movement yeah okay so what is your the last question here what is the joy for you today and if you were to put a color on it what color would you put so i would say for sure dance would be an answer to that one yeah yeah a big joy for me is the process of leading the trainings that just like leaves me with such a big smile on my face i just finished leading the group last week we were together for six weeks that every week we were connecting and there's so much contact and there's so much interaction there are moments of pure joy i think for all of us and it's just been an amazing journey and the last thing would be that i have a piano right next to me the last thing would be the the moments when i get to compose music and just completely go into that creative flow that's also such a beautiful source of joy oh i also have so do you ever combine your music with your classes is it that yeah that's oh that's i love that that's just bringing it all together kind of yes yeah i created this thing called the sleep concert so yeah every like six weeks or something here in switzerland i organize a thing called sleep concerts i think that might be one in january in copenhagen as well we are looking into that this is when meditation and life music come together and i play myself and also invite the guest musicians oh that sounds amazing you should come to guffinburg it's a pleasure yeah what's next in your pipeline is there something apart from this training group do you have a retreat coming up or is there something else that you want yeah in the alps in december and then in may and in july um in in december i'm also opening a course on my fascial release which helps to relax the tension in the body so that's something that opens once a year always in december because this is when i feel like most of us are starting to get like really really tired after a few months of sitting in the offices and in front of the computer so tension free it's called tension free program and in january then the yoga nidra teacher training and hopefully if everything works out in january there's also going to be a copenhagen city retreat the second weekend of january from the 13th to the 15th of january so if you feel like a little city trip and trip with um with yoga and yoga nidra you're very welcome oh yeah lovely oh this has been really really lovely and i'm so happy that you joined and took your time and as i said i would put the links below and i would love to you talk to you later on as well because there's so much to to get into in this subject i feel likewise i'd love to know more about your back as well so thank you and have a beautiful beautiful day thank you you too so that was such a lovely moment to talk with elena i really hope you enjoyed it as well and again you find her links below in the text for this pod and now let's get into today's igniting energy meditation so please get seated with your back straight your palms up if you're lying down your palms up close your eyes and let's do some meditation jam welcome let's start by taking three deep breaths so then imagine that way you are sitting or lying down there is a pillar of red healing earth energy that is coming up from mother and it's going up through you around you covering your body inside and out and continuing up and out into the sky and the universe and we now have this red healing earth energy keeping us grounded on this journey and imagine that there is a similar pillar of divine bright light universal energy that is coming from above and it's going down through you around you covering your body inside and out and continuing down into mother earth and we now have this universal energy keeping us balanced on this journey and we take another deep breath so and imagine that you are standing somewhere outside and it is a windy day and there is a lot going on all around you maybe there is a bit of a commotion going on or a stressful vibration let whatever comes up for you be the right image but where you are standing or seeing yourself there is a sphere of calm and peaceful energy that is starting at the center of your chest your heart chakra and spreading out throughout your body there's a cocoon of light that is covering you and within this there is a still and beautiful vibration and you feel relaxed at ease clear now we're just taking this beautiful still land and expanding energy in bit further so and if you like you can start to play with this energy see how it's moving out further from you and how it calms this busy surrounding without you having to do anything other than stay in this peaceful and quiet vibration just observing as you expand this light out to the surrounding maybe you feel the wind starting to slow down and what seemed like maybe a stressful or commotion all around you is clearing up like clouds in the sky disappearing and instead of experiencing this whirlwind of action and actions you now see things clearer in a beautiful light and it's a calm and comfortable environment so the place where you can easily go in any direction without being caught up or attached to something outside of yourself being in this beautiful light connected to your peaceful heart you are facing the day you are facing the day feeling at ease and maybe even a bit excited grateful just let whatever image feeling or sensation that comes be the right one without trying to control or push and if you don't see or feel or get anything don't worry just by you being here listening to this your energy is doing the work for you so you can just relax and keep on following the journey in this lovely relaxing mode and from this still beautiful energy so there is nothing you can't do or handle and still feel confident and relaxed it's almost as if this energy is sorting out what is important and letting the rest go fall away any attaching thoughts or feelings that might take you in another direction it is falling away from this strong beautiful energy originating within you within your peaceful heart and spreading out and if there is any situation or something coming up with you know you would like this energy to be with you when you set your intention for it to be so and maybe see yourself in that situation or maybe it's a thought pattern that you like to shift add it to this light and see it change see how it could look feel when coming from this quiet and peaceful abnormal vibration Now we take another deep breath and if you like you can set your intention to keep this flow going throughout your day,

Your week,

Your month and you can come back and reconnect as often as you like.

Now we start to move back with our awareness into our body to the place where you started and we give thanks to Mother Earth and Father Universe and our higher self for joining us today and you can start to come fully back,

Start to move your hands,

Your feet,

Your neck,

Maybe clap your hands and stamp your feet and I thank you for listening.

So warm welcome back from that really beautiful and peaceful energy and I love that we went straight into our own source,

Our heart chakra and just allowed that light,

That vibration that we carry with us all the time and that is connected to everything to just expand and in a way hold us like a cocoon of beautiful peaceful energy and from this vibration it was like,

Or the image I got was like anything could happen all around,

There was like this busy,

Busy,

Busy situation going on but it didn't matter because we were standing in our own peaceful light so no matter our circumstances our energy and our approach and experience was one of peace and then that made it spread out further into our surroundings so that it started to calm itself down.

So a truly beautiful energy and I again,

I said it in the interview with Elena and I say it again because I really got this strong message from when I was tapping into the energy of December this year that it is important for us to tune into this peaceful energy and of course it's always important and it's always good to stay in a peaceful vibe because we do see things clearer,

It makes it easier for us to make our decisions,

The ones that we trust and feel comfortable with because they come from within so that is of course always important but what I got from the channeled message for the month was it's even more important this month so there is a shift happening,

There is something going on in the energetic realms that is asking us to pay extra attention to our own inner peace and when we do that of course that is spread out like this wave of light and energy and moving into maybe situations and people that is having a harder time to connect to this energy so it's helping the overall energetic net to calm it down but also ourselves and from this we do see things clearer when we have a peaceful mind,

Worry,

Fear,

History,

High expectations,

All those things kind of fall apart and it's more about being present and enjoying and feeling the gratitude of the moment and that is a truly beautiful place to be in so I hope you enjoyed it and as always please journal after what your insights were or your journey and maybe there were just a few bits and pieces that came up for you,

Maybe you had a whole different journey.

The energy that I am translating is my interpretation,

The words and you could have yours but no matter what interpretation in the words the energetic journey is the same so the words are more something for our mind to lean into and get an understanding so that it's easier for it to trust what we are doing and since I got this message of the importance of staying peaceful this month I have this offer for you to have your own pure heart ignition where I tune into your energy,

Record it,

It's about 20 to 30 minutes,

I do it from a distance and all you have to do is make your schedule,

Your appointment,

Your time and at that time I will tune in and then record it,

Send it to you as an mp3 for you to listen but the activation,

The peaceful activation starts already when I am connecting to your beautiful pure heart to tune it into that peaceful lovely vibration and it could be because you know that you are,

This is a stressful month,

We have to finish all the things,

There is a lot of celebration going on,

There is all these expectations going on so it could be that you want to tune into that peaceful energy so that you really enjoy and stay present and mindful and appreciative throughout the month but also to see things clearer and as we move through this shift too,

To stay in that peaceful vibration and spread it and it could also be to just have for you to relax throughout the days,

Go even deeper into your beautiful heart connection.

So the purpose of the peaceful December Shift Your Energy ignition is to tune into your peaceful vibration and bring that forth but of course I will be communicating with your heart so if there is something else coming up then something else is coming up but this is the focus as when we connect and again it is done from a distance so you don't have to be meditating but I do recommend you are not doing anything too active or where you need to stay focused because you will feel the energy and it might put you to sleep or you might feel a little bit drowsy as it is going on.

Oh yeah and the price is 50€ and you can book your appointment,

I will put the link below but also you find it on my blog,

On my webpage.

And of course by the end of this month,

The 30th of December,

I am hosting this year's last live group online Pure Heart Ignition so I'm really excited about that and that is free and you join that by joining my Facebook group called Pure Heart Studio.

So again I also would like to just say a warm thank you to Elena for joining this pod today and sharing her wisdom,

Her journey and her beautiful tools and I absolutely also recommend trying out Yoga Nidra if you haven't already.

It's an amazing relaxing tool as well.

So thank you so much for listening and have a beautiful December or whenever you are listening to this,

A beautiful day,

Week and month.

Satom!

You have been listening to Meditation Jam with Marisa Rinne and I am so grateful that you have joined today with your energy.

If you liked it,

Please remember to subscribe,

Hit the like button and leave a review if there was something specific that you enjoyed and you will find more links in the text below from my guests and also to my social media if you like to follow me there.

So thank you again for joining and I hope you have a beautiful day,

Week and month.

Satom!