Shakti Sutriasa
3 Ways to Manage the Rate of Change in the World

Have you experienced the past few months as intense, chaotic, and full of uncertainty?

Yes?

You’re not alone.

Some days feel like a tough slog. Like we’re moving through dense resistance. Which is all the more reason to embrace your spiritual practice and deepen into it. 

Many seers have spoken of this time we are in as an amplification, when everything is speeding up and gaining power. This is exactly why you have to choose your own sanity, clarity and peace.

Not only because the chaos is ever growing, but because the benefit of you doing your inner work is amplified during this time. In other words, you can use this time to fast track your liberation.

3 Ways to Manage the Rate of Change in the World
Shakti Sutriasa
How to Know What Archetype You Embody

Recently, we explored the big idea in which I asked you what myth are you living. If you’re still ruminating on this, here’s another tool that might help you drill into it: archetypes.

The concept of archetype is something Carl Jung spent a tremendous amount of time exploring and is so rich! Caroline Myss has built on Jung’s work and expounded on how we can access and utilize archetypal energy to better understand ourselves and the world.

How to Know What Archetype You Embody
Shakti Sutriasa
What Myth Are You Living?

A powerful way to help understand where you are on your life path, is to recognize what story or stories are playing out in your life. This is a question/idea that comes from Carl Jung. He famously said:

I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: “What is the myth you are living?”

I found no answer to this question, and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud
of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust.

What Myth Are You Living?
Shakti Sutriasa
Step Confidently into 2025

Happy New Year!

Are you ready for 2025?

It still feels pretty new, which is why it’s helpful to employ some anchoring exercises to support you as you get clear about how you want this year to be for you. 

I always start my year by choosing a word or phrase, something to focus on, dive into, and act as a theme or inquiry for the upcoming 365 days.

Some of the ones I’ve chosen in past years include: receive, relax, joy, shine, communion… you get the idea. Once you hit on your word (or phrase), the invitation is to spend the next 12 months deepening into how you can experience it in your life.

Step Confidently into 2025
Shakti Sutriasa
Stay Present Amidst Uncertainty: My Fave Tool

I love sharing spiritual tools with you with this blog.

Sometimes it's a poem, mantra, prayer, breath exercise, or affirmation. But each technique is one I’ve tried and tested over the decades and is now part of my box of go-tos. The ones I rely on when I need additional support, assistance or help reconnecting to the truth of myself, which is love.

Today I felt called to share one that I return to again and again. It's a breath I was taught by my guru over twenty years ago called the Chittakash, which is the heart space over the head.

Stay Present Amidst Uncertainty: My Fave Tool

3 Ways To Have More Gratitude in Your Life

3 Ways To Have More Gratitude in Your Life

Of all 52 weeks in the year, this is the one when Americans reflect the most on gratitude.

It’s hard not to when you sit down at a beautifully decorated table, in front of a mouth watering feast that typically includes a succulent, roasted turkey, creamy mashed potatoes, candied yams, piping hot green bean casserole, chestnut stuffing, cranberry sauce… hungry?

Gratitude, just like delicious food, fills us up. Only it fills our souls not our bellies.

If you’re ready to use Thanksgiving as a springboard to deepen your gratitude practice, here are 3 ways:

Pushing Through- 5 Tools to Achieve Your Goals

Pushing Through- 5 Tools to Achieve Your Goals

We all have dreams and goals.

The question is: How do you successfully achieve them?

Often, in order to attain your goals, you have to push yourself a little harder, a little bit more.

You have to move out of your comfort zone, and into a space of uncertainty, of unknowing.

When you come up to the edge of what you know, do or know how to do, it frequently feels scary, and kicks up insecurity, vulnerability or fear.

In spite of these scary feelings, how can you succeed anyway? How can you move into that next level of creativity, success, satisfaction or weight goal

Your Life Is A Creative Venture

Your Life Is A Creative Venture

Lately I’ve been doing inventory.

I’ve been reflecting on my life and examining it by asking this question: Did I make a significant decision according to a set of rules, some kind of pre-ordained/ family inspired plan or because it was truly and deeply something that I wanted to do for my own self growth?

Take a moment to look back at your life and ask yourself the same question.

Turns out that we make a lot of decisions based on: pleasing others, fulfilling expectations, because it’s the right thing to do or is what we’re “supposed” to do.

Ouch.

What Do You Deserve?

What Do You Deserve?

How much we allow ourselves to have in our lives is a function of what we think we deserve.

Let me ask you this:

Have you ever been at a party or a club or walked down a block of a ritzy area of town and wished that it was your life, that you lived there or had those friends?

I sure have.

And over the summer I had an interesting realization.

Re-Entry With Ease

Re-Entry With Ease

I just got back from a 3-day business workshop that was designed to help women entrepreneurs break through success and money barriers. It was informative, emotional and healing but it was also a bit of a marathon, going from early in the morning until late into the night.

I enjoy these kinds of events especially because I’m committed to my personal development and self-growth. I love to immerse myself in new ways of thinking, bond with other women and meet fellow entrepreneurs. I find the experiences to be fulfilling and inspiring but then I have to come home.

The Hazards of Busy & 4 Ways to Remedy it

The Hazards of Busy & 4 Ways to Remedy it

I love being an American but one thing that’s been vexing me lately is how work and career have taken over our lives. It’s as if we are no longer human beings but human doers. The overriding message is that when I’m not “doing”, I’m nothing.

In essence, we’ve allowed work and success to define who we are.

Live Stress Free By Being Fully Present

Live Stress Free By Being Fully Present

It’s easy, when we talk about spirituality and living a “more spiritual life” to forget about the body.

We use expressions like, “we are a spirit having a human experience.” Or, “focus on the essence not on the form.” The emphasis is always away from the corporeal body because it isn’t really who we are.

Many of us who have struggled with weight or body image issues, certainly know this to be true.

There were years when I saw my body as the enemy – it was fat and ugly. Why would I want to be in it? I wanted to dissociate from it entirely. It was definitely not me.

Who’s Limiting You?

Who’s Limiting You?

I was listening to a speaker recently explain why people don’t obtain results. And do you know what she said?

It’s about our beliefs.

Think about one of the New Year’s resolutions you made ten months ago. Maybe, like many of us, you had ‘lose weight’ on your list. Let’s say fifteen pounds.

Have you accomplished it?

Being In the World But Not of the World

Being In the World But Not of the World

How do we take our spiritual practice and live it everyday?

Those of us who are committed to a spiritual path can sometimes feel split in two. There’s the contemplative, ascetic side of our nature, the part that loves meditation, silence and oneness with God. Then there’s the other side of us that’s out there in the world earning a living, being a consumer, friend and partner.

How do we merge these two aspects of ourselves that seem disparate but in reality are one? 

Is there a way to apply our spiritual practice into everyday living?

The exciting answer is, YES! 

As Pema Chodron reminds us, “Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.”

What My 'Ready or Not' Baby Taught Me

What My 'Ready or Not' Baby Taught Me

When I was twenty-six, I discovered, quite to my surprise, that I was pregnant.

I panicked because I was not ready to have a baby.

I’d only been married three short months. My new husband and I were still getting to know one another. Were we, as a couple, prepared for a child?

And I certainly didn’t know enough about anything – life, parenting, culture... There was so much more I needed to learn before I could be a mom, wasn’t there? 

After spending a few weeks in denial, I quickly moved into anger. How could I have been so stupid? What was I thinking?

Time to Stop Struggling

Time to Stop Struggling

Ever have one of those days when you just hit the wall? When your efforts create no results and nothing seems to work?

Days like that are frustrating, tiring and, frankly, discouraging.

The good news is that tomorrow you get to start again, fresh.

And what if tomorrow you embraced a new idea, a new way of looking at life? One that felt more invigorating and enlivening. A perspective that was less about doing and more about receiving.

I recently had an a-ha about this when I saw a post on Facebook. It was an image of a woman floating effortlessly in the water and said:

When I stop struggling, I float.

Get Your Creativity Flowing

Get Your Creativity Flowing

Have you ever wanted to paint, throw a pot or play an instrument?

Turns out that you aren’t alone. More than ever, Americans are enhancing their every day lives by incorporating some kind of creative outlet. Whether it’s painting a plate on date night or joining a weekly Bollywood dance class, we’re choosing to spend more of our time in creative pursuit.

This is great news and here’s why:

No Excuses!

No Excuses!

Last week I was super lucky! I listened to a talk by business coach, Amanda Moxley. One of my big takeaways from her hour-long webinar was this:

We have to take 100% responsibility for our lives. For what we do AND what we don’t do.

Hmmmmm.

I remember that word, responsibility.

It was the agreement I made with myself when I left my spiritual teacher in 2004, when I agreed that I would be in charge of my life – good and bad. That whatever happened, I would own it.

Had I forgotten or was I now at a new level?

Embracing Your Process: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Embracing Your Process: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Can you relate?

Things are going exactly according to plan and you are clearly in charge of your life. But then- all of a sudden- life takes charge and is controlling the wheel of your destiny.

When that happens, tasks take forever to complete. No one calls you back. Or maybe you think things will go a specific way just to get entirely rerouted.

When life seems to be in charge - it can trigger uncertainty or the internal skeptic- and make us feel unsure or cloudy.

We wonder things like:

  • Is this really the right direction?
  •  Am I doing what’s in my best good?
  • Is this moving my career/life forward?

Here’s the good news, if it’s happening then it’s exactly what you need.

Being Okay With Change

Being Okay With Change

Change is everywhere, whether we recognize it or not.

Day turns into night, flowers bloom and wither, stocks rise and fall. We move houses, change jobs, meet new people, and shift our mindsets.

Change is a natural part of life but sometimes, especially in our intimate relationships, change can be a challenge.

Part of what makes change difficult is that most of us prefer certainty.

We want to know that there is routine, that things will stay the same. That my assistant will be at work on time, that the bus will stop at the corner at 8:30 every morning, that Safeway always carries the deodorant I prefer.

Consistency gives us a sense of stability, of reassurance.

Just as we have our coffee every morning, we come to expect people to be the same day after day, too, and when they shift, that can upset out status quo.

So the question then is, how do we give each other space to change?