Tag: selfacceptance

Could You Really “Do What You Love” These Days?

I have always loved music. I received music awards in high school. So it’s not a surprise that I started college as a music major. It was a mercifully short experiment. As I like to say, I majored in music until I discovered that there was an uncertainty generating money in the future for a job by majoring in the field of music. Simply  “doing what I loved” would have been a poor career advice for me. And yet, it is advice I have always followed. Is doing what you love a ridiculous concept in this economy? 

It seems to me now to “do what you love” is one of the worst pieces of career advice ever. Today’s economy, coupled with endless media coverage about the best-paying jobs  and the need to pursue a “practical” education,  seems to give lie to this classic career advice.

So where did this controversial advice begin? Like its companion philosophy, Follow Your Bliss...the philosophy of “do what you love” has been around for centuries, dating back to early spiritual texts. And also just putting down the book Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow has some responsibility for promoting the much heralded phrase.

Unfortunately most job seekers haven’t read her book, and the phrase has been turned into a bumper sticker, devoid of meaning and potentially dangerous in its simplicity. It reminds me of another common piece of advice, “Leap and the net will appear.” Yes, sometimes it does. And sometimes you just crash.

In the introduction to this book I was reading lately it isn’t suggesting in any way that doing what one loves means doing what one feels like doing. She describes people who are still waiting for the money to follow: an actress who has yet to catch her break; students enrolled in “tedious, often boring” graduate studies they hope will propel them to what they love; a painter who, knowing it will take years to master her craft, works at a day job and paints on weekends.

I am reminded of a quote from one of my favorite movies, The Peaceful Warrior  “A warrior does not give up what she loves. She finds the love in what she does. There are compromises and creative solutions along the path to doing what we love to do. To find the love in what we do. Money doesn’t just “follow” we must do the work first, invest in ourselves, and gradually see the results of our efforts. Finding the love in what we do in all aspects of our lives might be the best way to move forward in today’s career path. It’s all about mindfulness.

Take a few minutes and ask yourself if you have found your right livelihood. Are you pursuing what you love? or have you found the love in what you do? Because it might be that doing a less-than-ideal job that puts food on your family’s table is one aspect of the love you can find in it. And then you can begin to seek openings for what else you can love. Even in this economy there are ways to incorporate what you love into what you do. Because the truth is you probably love many things. I know I do. Once music was off the table, I shaped my career around other loves. Psychology. Writing. Literature. Art. Teaching. Counseling. Films. and YOGA.

It seems that our right livelihood will evolve over the years, that is, in a mindful way. Do what you love can be the best or the worst career advice depending on your self-awareness and mindfulness..

love, k

 

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Cooking for your Spirit

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To Ayurveda,

Kelly Krishna Dunn 🙂

Meditation for Creating Self-Love Healing through Ayurveda

 

Ayurveda Self-Care has changed me. Bringing a much greater awareness of how disordered eating has a negative impact on the quality of life. Much has already been said about anorexic ballet dancers, but that doesn’t mean the problem has gone away.  Young girls within today’s culture experience crushing pressure to be thin and attractive.  Eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified) can all have life-threatening consequences.

 

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Dance is a highly competitive, high-pressure and physically demanding profession. I have been dancing since I was three years old, competed throughout childhood, selected for apprenticeships to Russian Ballet Companies and American Ballet Companies such as the New York City Ballet. NYCB presented a full-time contract when I turned 14 which is traditionally a difficult time when young dancers make the jump into a major company and go Pro.

 

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You can imagine what the mantra or programming that was signaled every day to  a professional ballerina. “Do Not Eat” This became engrained in my nervous system and learned to have a sense of control over my body and the competition which is thought powerful for ballerinas. The same discipline that a ballerina uses to master a skill after hours of practice is the same force of will she uses to deny herself food.

Eating disorders range from anorexia nervosa (deliberate self-starvation) and bulimia (recurring binge eating and purging) to disordered eating, and ritualistic compulsive eating problems. Within the demanding whirl of being a teenage professional dancer, developed an unhealthy relationship with food. I had lost any sense of a center for self-esteem and self-worth. I either was relying on my own perfectionist idea, or was basing it on the ballet world’s idea of success, which I wasn’t living up to because being skinny meant being worthy.

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Since I wasn’t allowed to eat the development of discovering  Ayurveda  and how to eat healthy and enjoy the process was later on in my life. Ayurveda has brought in a new perspective about my relationship to food. Ayurveda understands all eating disorders are defined by having an unwholesome relationship with food to the point of negatively affecting one’s health. Ayurveda (India’s traditional and ancient system of health) has a unique perspective about eating disorders and may offer some insight to the individuals out there affected by them. Establishing more awareness about my inherent body constitution, satiating the absence of the feeling of love for oneself with food, or reinforcing the feeling of lack of self-love with food, are the underlying emotional reasons why a person develops this specific disorder. Ayurveda suggests that lack of self-love is the root cause for all types of eating disorders. During the course of Ayurveda Self Care Class I realized to add an exercise called Reverse Adi Shakti Kriya also known as Meditation for Creating Self-Love. Here you are mentally and hypnoti­cally blessing yourself. This self-blessing is to affect and correct the magnetic field, you discover how strong you are,  when you discover how strong you are, you can find the strength to overcome your personal demons.

Meditation for Self-Love

 

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Sit in Lotus Pose with a straight spine. The right palm faces down, blessing you. This self-blessing corrects the aura. The left palm faces forward and blesses the planet.

The eyes are closed and focus at the lunar center (middle of the chin.)

Breathe long, slow, and deep with a feeling of self-affection. Try to bring the breath to one breath per minute: Inhale for 20 seconds, hold for 20 seconds, exhale for 20 seconds and repeat 3-11 minutes.

 

The Ayurveda system of medicine, nutrition and self-care creates a perfect alliance with holistic treatment, recovery, and healing from eating disorders and disordered eating. Ayurveda combines the Sanskrit words ‘avur’ which means life and ‘veda’ which means knowledge. As we recover from an eating disorder some of the most powerful results are the deep knowing of the self that allows for a more meaningful life.

 

 

Sat Nam -8/18/16-Kelly Krishna Dunn

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