Mindfulness is such a joy and light that I wanted to share with you some practical ways to integrate mindfulness into the activities of a full day. Here are 8 ways to mindfully expand within the activities of daily living:

Each time you pick up your cell phone take a moment to become aware of what your intention is and what you can notice about yourself. Are you expanding or contracting, distracting or deepening?
Cooking a meal gives you an opportunity to be creative and put some love in what you make. Allow yourself to relax into what you are making and infuse some creative flair into your meal while being aware of what makes you feel alive and opens your heart.
Working out can become routine and less effective so push yourself out of the ordinary, notice what comes up in your mind when you go harder or do something that stretches you and your comfort zone. Be in your body with full awareness.
When you go to the supermarket this time start at the other end, wander about to investigate, pick up and explore new foods. Let your imagination guide you and be aware of the self-talk and the urges to return to the familiar. Can you allow yourself to have fun?
How long has it been since you last visited to the library or bookstore? Libraries and bookstores are like giant brains of information. See if you can tune into the guidance the store or library wants so share with you. Walk along the shelves and let books present you with what to read. Are you receptive to guidance from around you? What inside of you wants to be inspired?
The Web is like a library or bookstore but a million times more charged in energy and information. How do you interface with such a force? Are you willing to be shown what you need to know from the airways of the unknown? Now feel your heart, notice your thoughts and be alive in the body as you dance with the mystery of synchronicity.
Sometime today go outside, smell the air, feel the breeze, hear the birds, sense the energy, see the colors and notice the rhythms. Nature is you extended in every direction. How does it feel to be at one with all that you can see and experience? Are you expanded enough to let all of this in?
Now in the silence of the night or early morning, just be in appreciation for life, for those you love, for the opportunities of the day already or soon to come, and can you be in appreciation of you just as you are? Self-love is a wonderful moment of pure enlightenment.

Hope you had some fun and woke up a little further to the magnificence of who you are.

Checkout Sounds True for many wonderful resources about mindfulness and meditation.

Peace Letter #93

Dear President Obama,

The choosing of the Supreme Court Nominee is a challenge with such a politically driven atmosphere in Congress. Please help bring balance back to the Court because politics is not its job. The Supreme Court is to protect our nation but it seems more bent on protecting the rights of corporations. That is not working for the vast majority of us.

While moving the court to balance lets bring sanity to our foreign policy by ridding us of war in the favor of peace.

Joseph Bernard, Ph.D.

Join me and send President Obama emails of support and encourage the end of war and the other dysfunctional ways of government at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact