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Parenting & Children

Meet the Author of Good Morning Yoga

Mariam Gates — December 4, 2020

The Author
Mariam Gates holds a master’s degree in education from Harvard University and is the creator of Kid Power Yoga. She is the author of the bestselling Good Night Yoga and many other yoga-related books for children. Mariam’s favorite yoga pose is Tree. She lives in Northern California. For more, see mariamgates.com.

Good Morning Yoga Book Cover

The Book

Good Morning Yoga is a board book version of the bestselling picture book. Targeted for the littlest yogis, ages 0–4, it is the perfect introduction to simple yoga poses at an early age, encouraging children to enjoy moving their bodies, using their imaginations, and learning a new skill.

 

 

 

 

 

The-Monster-at-the-End-of-This-Book

What was your favorite book as a child? 

 

My absolute favorite book as a child was The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone and illustrated by Michael Smollin. (Though on the cover, it really just gives credit to “lovable, furry old Grover.”)

 

It is the original “interactive” book. As a child, the fact that Grover was speaking directly to me, the reader, and that I was in on (and affecting) the progression of the story was nothing short of magical. It was my first experience of feeling amazed, surprised, and delighted by what could happen in the pages of a book—a feeling that has obviously never left.

All of my books are “interactive,” and my hope is that children feel that kind of connection and magic when they read them. I want young readers to be transported and to feel how each word and each image was created as a gift for them to enjoy.

 

Has your book taken on a new meaning in the world’s current circumstances? Is there anything you would have included in your book if you were writing it now?

I have loved hearing over the years about how teachers and parents incorporate Good Morning Yoga: A Pose-by-Pose Wake Up Story into morning meetings and family routines. But once we went into shelter-in-place in 2020, I started having daily and weekly emails and messages from people around the country. I’ve had the honor of hearing personal stories from teachers who are still using it, but now on Zoom, and parents who use the flow and the visualization at the end as transitions and breaks in their homeschooling schedules. In the midst of all of this separation, it has been an unbelievable gift to be connected to people through the book.

mishavayner

Photo courtesy of Misha Vayner

 

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Photo courtesy of MOJA YOGA

 

What is something that doesn’t make it into your author bio?

In my 20s and 30s I was a hand model! It was an incredibly fun (and lucrative) job. I had always received compliments on my hands, so in graduate school, when I did not have time for a regular employment schedule, I started hand modeling on the side. Mariam hand model

This was back when most things were done in person, so I made an appointment for an interview with Ford Modeling and brought in a set of “handshots.” They signed me on the spot, and I spent several years working in commercials and print.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good Morning Yoga Book Cover

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Health & Healing Psychology

In 2020, Find Your Life’s Purpose (the japanese ...

Tomas Navarro — January 16, 2020

Why do you get up every morning? What motivates you to get out of bed every day? In Japan there is a term to describe our reason for living or being: ikigai. 

 

We all have an ikigai, even if we don’t know it. 

 

In fact, the search for an ikigai is what will bring large doses of satisfaction and self-fulfillment because when you connect with your ikigai, your life will acquire a meaning. Often we live a life that is full of appearances, possessions that appear to speak for who we are, jobs that provide much prestige but that we don’t enjoy, inherited stereotypes, scraps of other lives, and only superficial meaning. But that life full of appearances has a tendency to crumble and fall apart, and, when it does, it’s usually in the form of a crisis. For some people, the crisis that tends to happen in adult life is an opportunity to ask ourselves what our ikigai is and what the meaning of our life is. However, when you are suffering, it’s not the best time to find a meaning for your life, because from a place of lacking, everything is harder. 

 

Look for Your Ikigai

 

We have already established that at the very least you already have one ikigai, a reason to pick up your pieces. But I encourage you to think about what other ikigais you can find. Analyze the meaning of your life up until now and evaluate whether you need to redefine it. 

 

Sometimes, because we have good intentions, we mistakenly believe that our lives consist only of our children, partners, work, parents, or a long list of other things, but in reality, you must never allow all your life’s responsibilities to revolve around a single meaning or a single motivation.

 

I have many ikigais that I carry with me every day! I get up for myself and for everything I enjoy doing. I get up for my wife and for my daughter, for my clients; to go for a stroll, to go for a bike ride, or to get lost skiing in the mountains; to use my talent to remove psychology from the confines of the lecture theater, to learn and teach, travel, smile, and enjoy a kiss and a hug. Each morning I get up for the bear hug I will give my daughter, to feel the sun on my skin, to get drenched in the rain, and to curl up with a good book. I could fill pages and pages with my ikigais, though that wouldn’t make as interesting a book, now would it? 

 

An Exercise in Ikigai

To begin this exercise, ask yourself about the meaning behind what you are doing, where you are living, your work, your partner, your lifestyle, and your vacations. I encourage you to go over each and every one of the aspects of your life and to ask yourself whether they contribute to your happiness.

 

Start questioning the meaning of what you are about to do in each moment of your day. Even the mundane things! It may sound silly, but there is ikigai there!

 

What meaning is there in… Drinking a cup of coffee? Attending a specific conference? Helping a neighbor? In getting angry? In walking your dog? In writing a book? 

 

Moving forward, continue to ask yourself about the meaning of what you are about to do in any moment, and there you will start to discover your own ikigais.

 

Learn more about the powerful practice of healing trauma and finding purpose in Kintsugi: The Japanese Art of Embracing the Imperfect and Loving Your Flaws by Tomás Navarro.

 

Tomás Navarro is a psychologist who loves people and what they feel, think, and do. He is the founder of a consultancy practice and center for emotional well-being. He currently splits his time between technical writing, training, consultancy, conferences and advisory processes, and personal and professional coaching. He lives in Gerona and Barcelona, Spain.

 

 

 

 

Read Kintsugi today!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes&Noble | IndieBound

 

 

 

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Conscious Business Meditation

A Meeting with a Pioneering Meditation Teacher

Shinzen Young — November 2, 2010

Tami Simon speaks with Shinzen Young, a pioneering meditation teacher, the founder of the Vipassana Support Institute, and an expert in the field of pain management. With Sounds True, Shinzen has created several programs to help people work with physical and emotional pain through meditation, including a book/CD called Break Through Pain. Additionally, Shinzen has called upon his decades as a meditation teacher to create an introductory audio program on meditation: Meditation. Shinzen discusses what science and meditation have in common and how these two fields can collaborate in the future to create technologies of awakening. (69 minutes)

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Mindfulness Relationships

Solala Towler: The Tao of Intimacy and Ecstasy

Solala Towler — June 24, 2014

Solala Towler—a respected teacher of qigong, sound healing, and the principles of the Tao—speaks with Tami Simon about the Taoist perspective on sex and intimate relationships. Drawing from his new book, The Tao of Intimacy and Ecstasy, Solala discusses Taoist lovemaking, how to apply the energetics of qigong to sex, and how to approach issues of sexual vitality. He also talks about “The Watercourse Way” as applied to relationship and how to approach the natural ebb and flow of intimacy. Finally, Tami and Solala discuss cultural misperceptions about relationships from a Taoist point of view. (62 minutes)

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Self-Compassion Spirituality

Death Makes Life Possible

Deepak Chopra — July 21, 2015

Deepak Chopra is a world-renowned figure in mind-body medicine who has authored more than 80 books. Marilyn Schlitz is a social anthropologist and public speaker who’s been a leader in the field of consciousness studies for more than three decades. With Sounds True, Marilyn Schlitz has written a new book called Death Makes Life Possible: Revolutionary Insights on Living, Dying, and the Continuation of Consciousness, for which Deepak wrote an insightful foreword. In this special edition of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Marilyn and Deepak about the continuation of consciousness after death. They discuss the Western taboo about direct engagement with death and how we might move past it. In this spirit, Tami, Deepak, and Marilyn also talk about increasing “worldview literacy” and how we may be in the first stages of a “death awareness movement” that seeks to ease the cultural fears around dying. (57 minutes)

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Animals & Pets

Nancy Windheart: The Guru Cat

Nancy Windheart — February 7, 2020

 

Freddie and I would sit for hours and just hang out, often sitting in a beach chair that I set up in my laundry room. I didn’t multitask; I just sat with Freddie.

 

As we’d sit together each night, Freddie offered me a visceral, embodied experience of dropping deeply into the lake of awareness that was present underneath my constantly running thoughts. Through his example, which included a kind of energetic transmission that I felt with my whole body, I was able to enter into a relaxed and open state of being where there was no me, no cat, no chair. “We” were simply a great pool of vibrant energy, deeply grounded, connected, centered, and resting. Sometimes we’d both sleep, but mostly I’d find myself in a deep place of awareness that had no edges, no boundaries. Often, insight and wisdom would bubble up, and the clutter that was ever present in my mind and life would simply fall away.

 

Freddie’s telepathic communication with me was clear and precise. If I popped up into thinking, worry, spinning, or obsessive thoughts, he’d wake up, look at me with intense clarity through his torn and scratched eyes, and send me the clear message: “You’ve left. Come back.” And with that guidance, I could. He’d put his head back down and close his eyes, and I’d drop back into presence and awareness. Through his example, I learned that rather than trying to control or remove my frenetic thoughts, I could simply allow them to exist on the surface and drop “beneath” them into an ocean of awareness that was Freddie’s natural state. 

 

I discovered that the essence of this quiet, open, deep space of pure presence that I shared with Freddie was love. It was not the confusing, complicated human version of what we often know as “love,” but a pure, deep, connected flow of energy, devotion, and presence that I could feel with every cell of my body.  

 

With Freddie’s body in my lap, and our shared experience of deep presence and connection, I discovered that love and awareness were not separate things. I was love, he was love, we were love, love was. We floated together in a lake of love. Everything was love—just love.

 

I didn’t realize at the time that this was what people called “meditation.” I was simply spending time with my cat, my beloved friend, and sharing an experience that helped me to relate to my life and the world in a different way than I’d known. It was years later, when I learned meditation practices from human teachers, that I realized what Freddie had taught me.

 

Freddie became my wise, loving lap-cat guru, but he always hissed at me. It became our little inside joke. He would hiss at me, and I would hiss back at him, in my best imitation of semi-feral street cat. I would laugh, and he would look satisfied and amused.

 

Eventually Freddie’s FIV brought his body down, and he died in the year of my fortieth birthday. My heart cracked wide open—and as I grieved the loss of his physical presence in my life, I knew that our relationship was alive and would continue in a new form. I continued to feel the essence of his spirit surrounding me, and I knew that he was not gone but had shifted into a different state of being. 

 

Two years after his passing, Freddie came to me in a vision on New Year’s Day. He communicated to me, “It’s time. This is the year you step onto your path and begin your training as an animal communicator.” I listened to him. I listened to Freddie because I trusted him more than I had trusted anyone in my life. He knew. He knew everything. I began a period of several years of training and apprenticeship, with Freddie’s wisdom, guidance, and clarity supporting me each step of the way. 

 

My life changed profoundly and dramatically from that time on, leading me in directions I never could have imagined. I left my job teaching music, began my journey as a professional animal communicator, and now have a life I could never have imagined all those years ago, teaching an international community of students and professionals a curriculum that has its roots in the teachings I received from Freddie.

 

I now perceive Freddie as a spirit guide, an energy that is much bigger and vaster than could have been contained in his small cat form. I remain in communication and connection with him daily, and he continues to teach me and guide me. He continually reminds me of the true nature of reality, the web of connection that I perceived in my childhood—the fundamental, universal, creative fire of love. Usually his guidance is gentle, clear, and loving, but when necessary, I hear his unmistakable, kick-in-the-pants hiss.  

 

This is an excerpt from a story written by Nancy Windheart and featured in The Karma of Cats: Spiritual Wisdom from Our Feline Friends, a compilation of original stories by Kelly McGonigal, Alice Walker, Andrew Harvey, and many more!

Nancy Windheart is an internationally respected animal communicator and interspecies communication teacher. Her work has been featured in television, radio, magazine, and online media, and she has written for many digital and print publications. Nancy’s life’s work is to develop deep harmony and understanding between species and on our planet through interspecies communion, connection, and communication, and to facilitate physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing and growth for beings of all species through her services, classes, training programs, and retreats. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her animal family of dogs, cats, and chickens. To learn more, visit nancywindheart.com.  

 

 

 

 

 

Read The Karma of Cats today!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes&Noble | IndieBound

 

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Sounds True is a multimedia publishing company founded in 1985 by Tami Simon, with the mission of disseminating spiritual wisdom. The company is based in Lafayette, Colorado.

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