Feeling Lost? | Listen to Your Inner GPS

Could our surroundings be an expression of us? Could our interactions with our vehicles and the situations that arise be a direct correlation to our bodies and state of mind? Just as we are all energy, our vehicles are also energy.

I am excited to be on a date with my husband and to see if I made the final cut as an extra in the new Johnny Depp movie. The journey to the movie premiere is the beginning of another new awakening.



As I drive to the theatre, David and I talk about what's the next biggest thing we can imagine happening. Where do we want to go with our lives? What could we dare to dream? I talk of wanting to teach with all who have inspired me to be my best. My intention is to create an image mind map that I could meditate with every day, helping me to gain clarity in my life. The mind map would include pictures of Wayne Dyer on stage, Louise Hay, Shiva Rea, Amma, Eckhart Tolle with my voice in the background repeating affirmations of my vision. In truth, I had been stalling any movement forward on my dream every time my ego asked "how" instead of why. “I don’t even know what I would do or say If I did get on stage with Wayne Dyer or Louise Hay,” I confess. This was the exact mind dialogue that was putting the brakes on my dreams. My ego wants to know when, how and figure it all out first, looking for control.

I felt lost with no direction.

We enjoy the movie, excited to be at a movie premiere and I even catch a glimpse of myself on the big screen getting shot at by Johnny Depp. The drive to the party turns into the old familiar patterns of the ego. I struggle to get directions from a few people on the way out of the theatre. Not understanding which way I was supposed to go, I pretend saying, "Oh sure, I got it." We even try to get the GPS system to work; yet in my rushed state I am unsuccessful. Instead of getting clear, I just start driving.



My state of mind was a direct reflection of my experience. As we are clearly lost, the tension mounts in our car. "Just pull over and ask," David says. I make a quick U-turn as it looks we are about to head out of town and we find a gas station. The conversation turns to old patterns of blame. The "you should've, I wish you’d just, Why don’t you ever" conversation repeats itself. Pulling into the gas station David says,” Come in with me so you can hear the directions, too." I shake my head answering. "Why should I? I don’t ever understand the directions anyway. You just go in, then you can tell me which way to go.”

Sound familiar? “You figure it out, tell me what I should do. I don’t want to accept responsibility. I am unclear. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m afraid if I take the wrong path, there will be no turning back, I have no control.” All of these excuses apply on the road and also in my clarity of what I need to do in life. My stomach is doing flip-flops, a sure sign that something is not in order. It is time to get clear. Why all this stress around directions? Stress is the same as fear. What am I afraid of? Why am I giving all my power away in this moment?If it is not a positive fulfilling experience, it is time to question why. Why do I do it? What can I learn from this? Where did this come from, when did this start? The ego is creating this fear, keeping me from living the life of harmony and peace, disconnected. It is not possible to be at peace and be stressed at the same time.

The answers lie within. Here is an opportunity to be shown the person I truly am. The answers become clear as I retell the story to my friend the next day. In a new day and a little more perspective, it becomes clear,"I don’t need to know what I would say on stage. In this very moment I am becoming the person who will know. I will be led each step of the way." Five years ago I would not have even tried to be in a Hollywood movie, sit in front of Amma the Hugging Saint, create a yoga TV program, write a book, create a blog, talk on the radio, meet my favorite authors, travel around the world, ect... Five years ago I was not the same person, yet was led step by step on this path to become the person I am today.

Do we ever stop growing? Do we ever stop doing the work? The day I say, "I got it, I don't need to listen anymore," will be a dark day. The process is a never ending joyful process and is not meant to end, ever.

When I do step on that stage or whatever is lined up for me, I won’t be the same person I am today. That is why there is no reason to figure it out. I will be led each step of the way, and experiences of getting lost are the exact pathways I am learning to grow from. Become willing to go beyond what you believe today. Learning means taking in something new. When we see each experience as an opportunity to uncover and remember the Divine part of us, we will never stop growing.


Having no vision, being stuck, feeling lost, feeling loss of control, ECT... Next time you have something go wrong with your car or have certain repeated experiences, take a moment to pause, check in to see if there is any correlation to your thoughts, feelings and state of mind. What do the situations or broken parts represent and see if there is any connection between the parts of the car and what you are thinking and feeling. Are the speeding tickets piling up ( are your feeling rushed, not enough time for everything in your life), too many parking tickets (can’t get your butt moving, not feeling inspired, motivated?) The connection between the mind and body is amazing and each situation can be handled to work for you. As I mentally go back to my conversation on the road, it was obvious that I was feeling lost, out of control, without direction. The contemplation of the self is one of the best tools to grow. There was no one to blame, to fix or to feel guilty about. It is a lesson to grow in order to become the person I need to be for the next part of my journey. Trust your higher self to lead you, follow your bliss.

Benefits of Yoga | See What Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle and Madonna Have to Say

With a restless mind and body, I step onto a mat for the first time. A single mother, operating my own salon business, I’d just called off a wedding two weeks before the big day. Unable to sleep at night, my sister in law borrows me a Rodney Yee yoga tape P.M. Practice. I am hooked. On my path to self-realization, yoga has been the solid thread that keeps bringing me back to a deeper exploration of the self. The change occurs as I take a look within and take responsibility for my life.


I’ve found yoga to be a deeply personal experience and it’s not the same for everyone who practices it. As you incorporate the practice into your daily routine, the benefits of yoga become easily apparent. This article features the many benefits of yoga and a few people we all know and love who also recommend yoga as an avenue into the moment.


The health benefits have been divided into 3 categories. The Physical Health Benefits of Yoga, Emotional Health Benefits of Yoga and the Mental Health Benefits of Yoga. A short explanation is given along with each benefit to further help you understand better the mechanisms that Yoga employs to bestow it.



Physical Health Benefits of Yoga:

1. In the yoga practice there is an emphasis on learning to take deeper longer breaths, increasing the oxygen level in your blood while doing yoga exercises. Breath control training (pranayama) and the use of yoga bandhas work to activate and create balance in your bodies energy pathways and that in turn leads to a more energetic overall feeling. Breathing better will help to increase your lung function and set off the body’s relaxation response. There are different breathing techniques that create energy, some create calm or stimulate the digestive system, while others bring balance to the right and left brain. As you feel more energy through your breath and feel more flexible in your body you stay more active and this leads to feeling your naturally vital state of being.

2. Yoga not only strengthens your muscles but also increases the strength or your internal physiological systems. The practice can increases your immune system, nervous system, digestive system, respiratory system, circulatory system, reproductive system, etc. Before finding yoga I spent hours in the gym weight training, building larger, more powerful muscles and completely ignored any work towards flexibility. These short powerful muscles left me open to injury. The holding of yoga poses and the exercise yoga incorporates has helped me increase strength but also making my muscles flexible to protect me from injury.

3. As I incorporated yoga into my daily life I noticed my levels of flexibility increase, helping with my range of motion. This flexibility is crucial for avoiding injuries as you lengthen the muscles, tendons and muscles. Sometimes in the yoga daily exercises, in the beginning some people cannot even touch their toes. This practice can open many areas of your life that seemed difficult at best, from swinging a golf club, playing tennis or simply making it easier to get in and out of your car. The entire Lakers team practices yoga few times a week, to improve performance and to help prevent injuries during games. Using yoga techniques to warm up before games, the Lakers prove that yoga is a technique to be reckonened with as they are convinced that yoga helps them perform better.



Emotional Health Benefits of Yoga:

4. Peace and Joy: This is one of the main reasons people do a daily exercise of yoga. Today’s busy lifestyles can take its toll on us physically and mentally. Yoga meditations and practice methodology help to relieve stress, calm the mind, allowing you to tap into an appreciation for the present moment. The slow stretching movements and deep breathing promote a clearing of the mind, opening a portal into a state of appreciation and deep peace to surface. As you enjoy your practice of going within, the joy and beauty of life become clear and your natural state of joy emerges.

5. Yoga cultivates Compassion: Yoga helps to develop mindfulness of the self, treating and giving yourself compassion as you move through the ego, the want or need to get somewhere in a pose. I use this time as an invitation to honor my body, taking my time rather than forcing and pushing through a pose or sequence. As I cultivate compassion thoughtfulness and generosity for myself, I can then give it to others. "Become the change you want to see in the world." Gahndi



Mental Health Benefits of Yoga:

6. Yoga breathing and meditations develop parts of the brain that create greater coordination, memory skills, clarity of thoughts and improved concentration. These benefits you carry with you from the mat, creating awareness in the rest of your life. As we tune into our true nature we also drop the veils of the ego, opening to the Divine nature within, increasing self-awareness and self-esteem.

Dr. Wayne Dyer, world-renowned self-help advocate, author, inspirational and lecturer -"I'm an inch taller since I started doing yoga because it stretches the spine. It doesn't just teach us to be flexible in our physical world, but to be flexible in our thinking and keeps us balanced. Because I am a public speaker, I first noticed a difference in my mind. I started thinking better and my lecturing was more focused. I didn't have to take notes on what I was going to say. I also noticed I was sleeping better. Practicing yoga works every part of your body not just the outer part, but the inner parts like your thyroid, pituitary gland, and your digestive system.”



Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now and A new Earth - “Spiritual practices that involve the physical body, such as t’ai chi, qigong and yoga are increasingly being embraced in the western world. These practices do not create a separation between body and spirit and are helpful in weakening the pain-body. They will play an important role in global awakening.”


Madonna - “Yoga is a metaphor for life. You have to take it really slowly, You can't rush. You can't skip to the next position. You find yourself in very humiliating situations, but you can't judge yourself. You just have to breathe, and let go. It is a workout for your mind, your body and your soul."


Thanks to the celebrity status yoga has also been globalised and people from all parts of the world get to learn, practice and enjoy yoga. Yoga has very much turned into an option for everyone who wants to tone their bodies and who want to be healthy in general.

The benefits of yoga are deep and long lasting. There is no one other exercise avenue you can take that will address all of these issues in one simple session. For those of you that think yoga is too easy, I encourage you to try one class. You may find it is just what you are looking for.

6 Myths About Stress You Really Need to Know About

Contact: Sarahspeaks@gmail.com

Crushing lines at the grocery store, infuriating traffic jams, annoying text and endless phone calls; it seems were getting stressed out by everything. It doesn't matter if you're a firefighter, a farmer, a clerk or a kindergarten teacher, these days everyone complains about stress. According to the New York Times, workplace ailments contributed by stress costs the nation $300 billion in health care. Stress is the biggest epidemic of this century and it’s worldwide.

Certainly, human beings have been coping with stress for eons, but it looks to be getting worse as we become more entangled locally and globally. The current economic situation is only the latest big cause for stress in many people’s lives. Workplace stress is on every one's mind in today's economic unrest. Thousands of workers have lost their jobs due to downsizing, layoffs, and bankruptcies, creating even more stress in the workplace. Millions of more workers are wondering how much longer they will be employed, causing stress in the workplace to rise for everyone.

As much as we all live with stress, many of us do not understand the basics about stress and its role in our lives. This ignorance can lead to very real negative consequences: Stress can bring on and exacerbate a host of physical illnesses — from heart disease to Alzheimer’s disease. And stress can also trigger or make many mental illnesses more severe.


Here are a few myths about stress that you really need to know about with explanations for why they are not true.

Myth 1:

Stress always comes from outer circumstances.

We usually blame stress on something outside of us; the tyrant boss, crushing traffic, kids that don't listen. But over half of all the stress in our lives comes from within. Perfectionism, worrying about things you have no control over, and living a life of procrastination are all examples of inner stress. Dealing with inner stress involves admitting you have a problem, recognizing the sources of stress, and getting to the root of the problem, working through it to get rid of it, not only for now but in the future as well. Remember that stress is neutral: it doesn't become a problem until we accept it and make it into a problem. Learning to deal with stress keeps stressors from all being the same size and helps you prioritize your knee jerk reaction to them.

"Stress" is only a word that we use to stand for hundreds of specific problems and conflicts we experience day in and day out.

Some of these problems exist outside ourselves, such as relationship difficulties, work-related pressures, and other obligations or demands from the outside world. Others occur inside our bodies, such as feeling tense, angry, worried, or depressed. Thus, whenever we say we are "troubled from stress," what we really mean is we are having a problem that is painful and troubling us. This means we have all been trained to think about stress inaccurately. Instead of asking, "what can I do to cope with my stress?" you should be asking yourself "what exact problems or conflicts are showing up on a consistent basis, and how can I deal with each of these problems effectively?

Myth 2:

If you're feeling stressed it means you're important.

Some people think that if they're not too busy, you're not vital to the workforce. These same people revel in having full schedules, unbearable working hours and thrive on overload. But stress does not mean you matter. It either means that some thing's wrong at work or you're not efficiently matching your tasks to your time. Worse, it may also mean you're being less productive in the long run, because stressed people are less efficient, worse communicators and worse at making good decisions. To accept stress as a normal condition of work is bad for people and bad for the workplace.

Myth 3:

Being overworked causes stress.

Why do some people work 80 hours a week and feel great, while some people work 30 and get majorly stressed? Here's why; stress has nothing to do with the number of hours you work, and everything to do with how you feel during those hours. If you feel great working 100 hours a week, having fun and taking satisfaction in what you do, you won't be stressed. If you work 30 hours a week feeling inadequate, bullied or unappreciated you will be stressed.

Myth 4:

Stress is always bad for you.

People have always had stress of one sort or another, whatever the society, whatever the decade. We have become dependent on certain types of "good" stress to keep us active and motivated. Excitement is a type of stress, as our hunger, or looking forward to a fun event.

Stress is to the human condition where tension is to the guitar string: too little and the music is dull and rough; too much and the music is shrill or the string breaks.

Stress is fundamental to the daily living of life, and is not bad in and of itself, especially in small doses. Once you properly understand what stress is and what really causes it to occur, you can prevent or eliminate much of the "Bad" stress you ordinarily experience.

Myth 5:

Stress is the same for everyone.

While many burnout risk factors have to do with work conditions and lifestyle, certain personality characters can intensify your experiences of stress, making you more predisposed to burn out. Perfectionism can cause unwarranted stress and sometimes put the brakes on completing a task. Pessimists cause needless stress in everyday situations, worrying about things going wrong and always expecting more bad than good. Some people are just naturally more excitable than others and are easily triggered to respond to stress. For those who feel on purpose and believe in what they're doing, stress is less of a factor: but if you don't believe in your life's work, it's harder to put up with problems that come with it. If your life's work conflicts with your values, it can take a toll and lead to an increased risk for burnout.

Myth 6:

Stress is cured by focusing on stress.

Most of the people who returned from anti-stress classes feel more stressed than people who didn't attend. No wonder, focusing on stress is not the way to remove it. Instead you must focus on what brings you peace and energy. Simple breathing exercises only take five minutes out of entire workday but it will reduce stress, make you more creative, and give you more energy. Most importantly it works as an early warning system against many problems at work. When things get crazy and hectic it's easy to miss the warning signs in the body. Things like tense shoulders and neck, headaches, anxiousness, shortness of breath or simply feeling rundown all time can all be early symptoms of stress. Stress also produces psychological effects commonly felt as feeling overwhelmed, disorganized and having difficulty concentrating. Breathing exercises will help you actually notice the symptoms before they become more serious and turn into migraines, depression, conflict or worse. Early warning signs are best listened to earlier rather than later. A change in lifestyle and attitudes to deal with stress will be far less costly in time and money than dealing with the effects of not listening to the early warning signs.

Breathing exercises are an ideal way to relieve stress in that they’re fast, simple, free, and can be performed by just about anyone. They can also be done anywhere and at virtually any time. This makes stress relief breathing exercises one of my most popular and convenient tension tamers. Learn how basic controlled breathing works.

Contact Sarah Starr to book your Breathing Vision Seminar today: sarahspeaks@gmail.com

New Excerpt | Video from Be It Live It Love It with Sarah Starr

In_Joy the new video and excerpt from Be It Live It Love I | Can I Teach and Still Give Children Freedom? | Sparking Thirst for Knowledge

New Workshop - Vizualize & Realize starting in September

Sarah Starr interview on "Just For Quitters"

More fun stuff:) I have a new radio interview with Jason Hopkins from "Just For Quitters". Jason's site is all about helping people get out of running the rat race and create new lives for themselves. He interviewed me about being an entrepreneur, what it takes to start an internationally syndicated television program, and the roadblocks I encountered along the way. Listen to the interview here:

http://justforquitters.com/2009/09/02/podcast-interview-with-sarah-starr-of-happy-yoga-tv/

Volume 1 of Be It Live It Love It Available Today!

Be It. Live It. Love It. | Vol. 1


https://www.createspace.com/1769503


Be It Live It Love It originates from questions asked by individuals in seminars, classes and workshops. Also included a moment for you in-between each story to enjoy a short breath meditation.


Are you ready to be the change you seek? Are you ready to start the most important journey of your life? Are you prepared to never mind the good opinion of others, uncover the happiness within that you have forgotten and become the joy you want to see in the world now? If you answer yes, it is then time to Be the change in your thoughts, live the change through your actions and love your life with appreciation.

I have written this book based on my own life experience as I move onto my conscious path, creating and hosting internationally syndicated "Happy Yoga with Sarah Starr", sharing classes such as "Power of Now" and "Breathing Peace" with thousands of people in hospitals, schools, workshops and conferences. I would like to thank those extraordinary people for their courage and their readiness to embrace inner change. This audio originates from my personal experiences into its present form in response to questions asked by individuals in seminars, classes and workshops. And so for this audio experience, I have kept the question-and -answer format. Each question leads you further down the path to my freedom as well as your own. I have also included a moment for you in-between each story to enjoy a short breath meditation, creating an entry point into the present, a gift for you. These breathing breaks can be used throughout the day to help you stay connected. As we become still and breathe, we open our minds to any possibility, we open the doors to allowing. Allowing it in with our joy, our exuberance, eagerness and passion.

I have grown as much creating this audio as I had living the many stories. I hope that this audio will find it's way to those that are ready to break out of old mind patterns and begin a radical transformation into their own magnificence.

My intention is to inspire others to love themselves unconditionally and to live lives with passion. In knowing that all of us are the creators of our experience and that life was meant to be fun!! We are extensions of God and by living joyfully; we all assist in bringing harmony to the Universe. Breathing through the tantrums, the celebrations and the lowest of valleys, remembering that this too shall pass. Breathe, allowing yourself to be guided every step of the way, trusting and expecting miracles, knowing you never walk alone.
Be It Live It Love It includes two discs. Each disc has a running time of approx. 74 minutes for a complete running time of 148 minutes.