Category Archives: Meditation

Seeding a Soul Inspired Life

Holidays, Meditation

The time has come to seed the garden of your life with new soul inspired seeds.

Tu Bishvat (15th day in the month of Shevat) is almost here.  Under a full moon  this week we will celebrate Tu Bishvat – we celebrate trees and nature.  Go outside and gaze at the full moon, pregnant with new possibilities,  and contemplate seeding soul inspired seeds in your life. What hopes and dreams are hidden in your soul? What do you sense and imagine could bloom in your life when Spring arrives? What needs to be cultivated now and what decisions and work do you need to do now?

Tu Bishvat is a celebration of trees and nature. The trees are very internal this time of year. Perhaps they too are dreaming and growing with strength. Readying themselves to burst with beauty in Spring.

Why do we take time to do inner work? Why should we sit quietly and meditate and simply make time to be? Because, like trees, even before the thawing and the blooming, our insides become alive. Now is the time for deep inner growing; dreaming and imagining.

THE PRACTICE:

We begin by imagining the fruits we want to bring to fruition. What will you grow? Sit and become quiet to reflect on what you love; discern the desires of your heart. What is your heart’s desire?

Make time to meditate, reflect, journal, speak, draw , paint, be in nature and be still for a few minutes a day.

When you have a sense of what are your soul inspired seeds, your heart’s seeds, write them down. You may discover there are seeds you didn’t know were hidden within you. You may want to make a list and read it a few times. Keep the list going and choose to reflect more in depth on 2-3 of the items. Attend to them. Nourish and water these seeds. Try to make time for dreaming and for listening attentively.

Identify the necessary conditions to help your heart seeds grow and come to life.  What are the attitudes and actions you will take, or avoid, to support the growth?

Don’t rush. It is still winter. On Tu Bishvat the trees only begin to wake up and the sap begins to flow. Be patient and generous like a tall and strong tree. You have plenty of time to seed and germinate until Spring (Passover.) Don’t rush. Take all the time you need, but remain focused.

May your heart’s seeds germinate, take root and grow well. May they grow into a beautiful Spring garden and reward you with the delicious fruits. May it fill your life with beauty and peace. Enjoy!

Many blessings, Rabbi Sigal

How to let go and be turned

Holidays, Meditation

horn_and_pomagranite

Hashivaynu e’lecha ve’nashuvah  Come let us turn, return, and be turned to the one.

After Teshuvah, the willful work of turning and returning, we let go of preconceived notions of what we are and how life should be. We breathe, relax and allow life to unfold for us. The more we allow ourselves to be turned, the more we are home.

Our attempts at prayer for help, as it is with any action, is motivated by our belief, laden with guilt, that we need to do something and that belief causes us to never let go or relax. We are always doing, trying, controlling and seeking to get better, farther, etc. Most often we forget to stop after we ask to feel the effect of our “doing” and to let help, joy and life in. We are habituated to do and we rarely surrender long enough to be turned and feel at home in ourselves and where we are in our lives.

The Jewish New Year is here to remind us to wake up and stop the doing and the trying so we could be turned. At the beginning of a new year, willing to be transformed and with hope we stand at a new beginning pregnant with possibilities. We pray and ask to be turned and retuned to the home of our souls. (You are welcome to include more specific prayers that arise in your heart for happiness, health, peace, prosperity etc.) I hope you can stop doing and be. Listen deeply and pray for an opening in the heart, so you could be turned. Turned and returned to more fully appreciate this magnificent gift – your life.

With humility and with hope in our hearts we allow ourselves to fall into the embrace of the Mystery and remain curious and open to enjoy the ride which is somehow mysteriously guided by our desire to love this life more fully before it is too late.

Shuvah, it’s time to come home.

Besefer haim tekateyvu vetechatymu. May we all be inscribed in the book of good life.

I wish you and yours a sweet and healthy new year and wonderful holiday celebrations.

L’shana Tova u’metukah

ELUL – four weeks to Rosh Ha’Shanah

Holidays, Meditation, Mendful Path

How I love the beautiful nights at the end of Summer. The sliver of the moon above is beckoning us to gather a few more sun rays and a couple more days at the beach, to store within for the approaching cold of winter. On August 17, the new moon of the month of Elul will hang in the night’s sky.  It will be the last new moon before Rosh Hashana.

All these signs in nature are  telling us: we are four weeks away from Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

The invitation of the Jewish New Year is to truly have a fresh start; to review, organize and prioritize our lives and how we spend our time. To make amends, forgive, release, mend and at the end of this have a plan of intentions and goals to return to the home of our soul. A return to our kind and loving nature. This yearly internal reflection is necessary and important to help clear a new path of hope to an inspired and meaningful life in the future. To truly clear a new path we must pass through the gates of  forgiveness.

Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past. It is a hard ask, but giving up the hope that the past could be different removes the heavy shackles we carry. The past cannot change. It is in the past. We need to leave the past to the past in order to truly move forward. This is the season to sincerely forgive ourselves, the past and others. Now is the time to release and move forward.

Elul the month preceding the New Year, invites us to spent time at the wellspring of our hearts remembering what we love, what is important to us and what brings us alive. Even when it’s hard to manage through the work of forgiveness, the sweet memory and feeling whole in ourselves and in the world, encourages us to do the work. When we remember there can be peace in our soul and long to return to that feeling, we sometimes experience a strong pull of the desire to be at peace, and are motivated to do the work. We hold before us the hope  to live our highest aspirations, to live in peace and honor the desires of our hearts more fully each day.

Here are some questions and inspirations to Contemplate during Elul:

Help yourself decide what to release and what to keep

Identify: What are the obstacles to living the life you want? What is standing between you and living guided by your values and aspirations? How can you stop engaging in unhelpful habits? How can you help yourself release them? What do you need to do to release them?

Madison Taylor writes: “One of the hardest things in life is feeling stuck in a situation that we don’t like and want to change. We may have exhausted ourselves trying to figure out how to make change, and we may even have given up. If we tend to regard ourselves as having failed, this will block our ability to allow ourselves to succeed. We have the power to change the story we tell ourselves by acknowledging that in the past, we did our best, and we exhibited many positive qualities, and had many fine moments on our path to the present moment.”

Identify: What are the things you need and want to keep? How can you better nurture them to make them grow more in your life?

Each new year we are given the opportunity to review our lives and renew our resolve to change for the better. Each new year we are called to open to new possibilities.  Open to the hope that we can make the changes we need to make.

When we honestly and kindly review the past year, it is possible to open to new ways, new healthier habits and routines. Consciously welcoming an inner shift to allow us to get out of the cycle we’ve been which has kept us stuck.

Sit, contemplate, write…

After the reviewing it’s time to open the heart with forgiveness. To loosen the knots of shame, blame, regret, self-hatred, not good enough and other sticky patterns of thinking and feeling. All those feelings and thoughts about ourselves and others keep us separated from each other and the home of our soul; our joy, our peace, and our ease and contentment.

We release the past and open to new possibilities in the new year.

Shannah Tova

Join us for  Retreats at Kripalu Center

December 21-26 and 26-29  2023  

Celebrate the Holidays in a Welcoming Community 

Reserve your seats for the High Holy Days

Let’s talk about LOVE

Meditation, Mendful Path, Self Inquiry

More than ever before we talk about love in different ways. It seems there is more appreciation to different kinds of love and friendships, which exceed romantic love. More than ever before we are not partnered for life, we are disappointed in relationships, we divorce, we start over again and again; romantic love is not as sustained and fulfilling as we hoped it would be. It’s not as promising as the romantic fairytales we were told. Not being married, or in a committed partnership, is a growing global trend, whether by choice or by circumstances, more people don’t marry and new ways of being in loving relationships are explored. It turns out, there are many ways to be in loving relationships.

Love is a large topic. It’s hard to put our arms around topic of love, but we try; measuring love and defining it. For some love is a feeling, a felt sense beyond words, to others it is a commitment, a covenant. To some it is security, to others a joy of vulnerability. To some a fulfilled desire, while for others an fulfilled longing. 

Whatever the conditioning of our culture is, I sense that underneath it all what we want is to be in authentic relationships. We want to be ourselves and relate to others who are authentically themselves. When we are in loving relationships we want to be seen, heard, feel connected and belong. In authentic loving relationships, these four qualities are important underpinnings, usually garbed with elaborate unconscious and conscious desires and needs. 

Alain de Botton who wrote Essays in Love defines love as charitable interpretation of others’ behavior. To love is to be willing to interpret someone’s not so appealing behavior with a more benevolence reason. Loving is accepting faults; being patient and charitable in our interpretation of unappealing behaviors. 

We are bound to disappoint and be disappointed, especially with people we love and whom love us. Love is not admiration alone, although we want it to be because it would be sooooo muuuuch easier. But real life love must include compromise and tolerance of unpleasant feelings and behaviors. It calls us to be mature in loving and living with the recognition we need to tolerate ambivalence. The disparity between what we like and the things we really don’t like. We tend to spend a lot of time and energy rejecting and resisting the things we don’t want to include in the mix of love and relationships, but reality is what it is and we need to accept it. 

Staying in relationships requires skills. Love is not just a matter of feelings. It hurts when we are disappointed, but with mendful skills and sensibilities we can navigate it better. We must stay in the conversation with others and with the different triggers within us, and not run away from them and avoid them. Resisting and avoiding actually make the things we try to avoid more resistant and painful.

In Mendful Path Living we cultivate a remembering we carry in our heart, namely, the intention to mend. The mendful mindset and the intention to mend are tucked in our heart and in our consciousness to help bring us back to love and mending.  How?

I have a regular daily practice of meditation and prayer to orient me ever so strongly to mending. More and more I see how it helps usher me back from the edge of discomfort and discontent to balance and calm. It’s especially helps me respond with more understanding and care in challenging moments. Remembering all humans experience disappointments, hurts, and challenges, we prepare and support ourselves to respond more calmly and productively in stressful situations. The question is not whether we will be challenged, because we surely will, but instead we prepare and plan how we will respond mendfully. How in the moment we don’t allow our habitual reactivity to get the best of us and create more suffering and harm. And, when things get away from us sometime we mend from there. We ask for forgiveness, forgive others and make amends. 

Mendful love is how we live. One conversation, one encounter, one small mend at a time. May your love flourish in many colors and textures within you and in all your relationships, whether you are partnered or not.

 Mendful Living from Your Heart – It’s all about love!
Even disappointments, loss and heartbreaks are about love.

Retreats at Kripalu Center  in May, July, December  

MAY 15-17 MENDFUL RETREAT
Resilience After Disappointment, Loss, and Heartbreak

JULY 15-17 RELEASE, MEND, AND THRIVE FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Information about Mentoring – See Special Offer


Instead of setting goals, set optimal conditions

Meditation, Mendful Path, Self Inquiry, , ,

I loooooove retreats!

I’m honored to be entrusted with the opportunity to create optimal conditions that allow for learning and transformation at retreats or many years. I pray and hope “ah ha” moments and seeds of insights are planted during the retreat and are taken home bloom. The conditions you set at home along with the heartfelt intention to thrive will change your life.

The biggest benefit of a concentrated experience, like a retreat, aside from having fun, is having the time and guidance to learn with experiential methods. We have the time to mend and open to our authentic nature and our heart’s desire, try new things and listen intently. We return home with our commitment to pursue our desires, we better discern because we learn in the retreat how to best set the optimal conditions to succeed.

I’m reminded of the positive effect of being on a retreat when I read students’ reflections. They consistently express renewed hope in themselves and in life, and connected to expanded awareness and growing commitment to self love and care they are sure to succeed. I feel grateful to be able to contribute in this way to my students’ lives, and I’m inspired by my students’ courage to open their hearts to themselves, each other, and the experience. It’s especially moving to hear about the positive and sustainable changes in their lives after the retreat.

Where to begin? Knowing our heart’s desire is  a good beginning. It points the way to loving self-care, giving proper attention, and cultivating nourishing behaviors and practices for the seeds to grow. Unless we learn to listen to the call of the heart and commit to taking the steps and actions to fulfill it, it will be hard to affect change.   

Take small steps to self love and care on the mendful path

Remember why you are doing what you are doing! You love yourself and your life and what to feel more joy, contentment and peace.

Schedule regular time for practices that support listening and living from your heart. Resolve to keep your commitment to your practice especially when resistance, negative thoughts, discomfort and forgetting arises. Be patient. It will take time to adjust and cultivate new habits. Plan for small, measurable and reachable expectations. Endure, adjust and stay focused until they become habits.

Use tools of remembering through  out the day. Write a meaningful word and display where you can see it, write it in your daily calendar, read a daily affirmation you like for 10 days and then choose another. Set a reminder alarm on your phone every hour to breathe a relaxing breath, repeat your word or affirmation and settle into a moment of stillness. Pray.

Develop new supportive habits. Daily “refilling activities” are centering and helpful. I like to take walks in nature, ride a bike, sit in a sauna or a hot tub, listen and read inspiring thoughts, write a gratitude list, and meditate in stillness for 10 minutes or more throughout the day. Also, resolving to participate in group activities, like yoga classes, and inviting others to walk or meditate with you is important and nurturing.

May you remember your heart’s desire each day and create the right conditions for the seeds of your intention to grow and guide your life. May the time and effort you invest blossom into what you desire to have and experience in your life. May ease and contentment find you.

Mentoring –  individual and small groups 

RETREATS

Mendful Living is Soul-Centered Living

Meditation, Mendful Path, Self Inquiry

It takes courage to embrace the unknown and to find our way in new situations. Change can be scary and confusing. We must find “ground” first to calm down, so that the fear based part of the brain is not the only thing controlling our behavior. I call that part of the brain, the F brain; fear, fight, flight and freeze.
The Mendful Path mentors us to find our soul-center so we can stay settled in the calm and peace of our being, especially when we are feeling scared and confused. Mendful  practices teach us ways to bring more calm to the body-mind, fostering understanding of the underlying deep interconnection of all things. 

I am leading retreats at Kripalu in Decembe and May to explore the relationships between mendful, soul, contentment, ease and happiness.
These holistic retreats provide a direct approach to living authentically and cultivating peace and well-being in all aspects of your daily life. I will explain puzzling concepts and guide healing contemplative practices that focus on reducing discontent and strengthening trust in your authentic experience. Practice transformative meditations, relaxation, and self-inquiry to point the way toward wonder, enjoyment, ease, and contentment.

I hope to see you there.
Blessings,  Rabbi Sigal

Contact us for details

Weddings   Bnai Mitzvah

Mentoring &  Meditation

Contact us when you are ready for individual mentoring. Sigal has room for a few new students

It’s Mending Time

Meditation, Mendful Path

Together we mend our lives and the world. One conversation, one action, one commitment, one small step at a time.

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More than ever, the world is calling us to fulfill our mission of Tikkun Olam.

Tikkun Olam is rooted in Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah and is summoning us to strive toward repair, healing and mending the world.

Disconnect and loneliness are common now a days and we need to find ways to bring our attention together for caring conversations. To reconnect and begin to mend our feelings of brokenness and separation.

With Mendful, a new word I coined, I hope to communicate a big idea in a simple and direct way.
MENDFUL, describes in a word a healing mindset.  A cluster of ideas and attitudes informing a mending and healing way of being. 

I hope MENDFUL the new mind set becomes a primary m i n d s e t  for healing ourselves and the world. In Mendful I combine several ideas and attitudes to reclaim our connectivity and humanity. Among them are: kindness, mindfulness, gracefulness, heartfulness, caring conversations, listening, sharing, patience, authenticity, creativity, remembering our deep interconnectedness, generosity, receptivity, forgiveness, compassion and peace.

Let’s gather, connect and mend… Please join us in cultivating and spreading mendfulness and healing our hearts and the world. We gather to meditate, pray, learn and engage in healing conversations. We are bringing more people to the conversation with virtual forums and resources, and we hope you join us.

What we need is TIME TO MEND … Join us to learn how to relax, feel less burdened, breathe a little easier, mend and heal.

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Mendful Living Mentoring with Rabbi Sigal for individuals and small groups. contact us for details and to schedule a free 15 minutes consultation for new students.

RETREATS at Kripalu Center, MA, With Rabbi Sigal (Registration and Information)
Midweek Retreat October 17–19
Mendful Living from Your Soul: Fall Back Into Ease and Contentment
December 23-25
Wisdom of Kabbalah: A Retreat for Inner Peace
December 28-30
Mendful Path Retreat for Mending Heart and Soul

Paving a Mendful Path with Questions

Meditation, Mendful Path, Self Inquiry

How do you orient back to love, balance and peace? What do you do? Is there a special way you shepherd yourselves back to wholeness and kindness? What could help you find a mendful path in your life? Can you discern what calls you back to the home of contentment and peace, despite the disappointments and heart breaks? Is there anything that beacons you to begin anew with hope and passion in your heart?

By now, reading all these questions you may think: Rabbi, why are you asking so many questions, it’s  not Passover.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Albert Einstein

Questions are vehicles born of curiosity to carry us back home to wonder, peace, appreciation, contentment, innovation and joy. Some of the biggest discoveries and inventions in many fields of study and life happen after long periods of inquiry and contemplation. 

We pave a hopeful MENDFUL PATH as we open, realign, and balance our lives with what we love and with our hearts’ desire and purpose. We ask and consider what we and others love and need. We ask how can we help, serve, live more fully, bring more to life. We ask new and old questions and contemplate possible answers and responses.

Questions are essential in the process of mending and healing. So much so that I am thinking that maybe we should declare 2018  A YEAR OF QUESTIONS! To dedicate and focus our attention to opening to new possibilities, to ask new questions, to become unstuck and more free to explore. Asking, conversing, connecting, and more actively offering fresh ideas to solving core problems and see in new ways our lives and our world.

In Kabbalah, mindful mysticism for soul-centered living, we are invited to venture to the unknown and risk, yes risk by trusting in the mystery.  Kabbalah is a way to ask questions with curiosity seeing beyond the veil of what is known, into new fields of  possibilities within our souls, our lives, world and universe.

I invite you to explore the landscape of your soul and your life, and inspire your heart to occupy itself more fully from now and into the the new year. Join me for special retreat at Kripalu Center (October 17-19) where we will journey and learn together. We will share in learning and practicing mendful living methods with self-inquiry and self care.

May we be inspired to open our hearts and ask elucidating questions, be extra curious and open, contemplate possibilities in conversations with others, meditate, reflect, identify patterns, think and act mindfully, and experience new levels of healing and mending.

I wish you a wonderful time of discovery and falling in love with yourself and your life and all your beloveds and all the beauty and joy you can experience. 

Blessings, Rabbi Sigal

See when are the next Kripalu Retreats with Rabbi Sigal