Christmas Classic: Loving Kindness!

In this special Christmas replay episode of The Stress Therapist, host Cheri Flake celebrates the holiday season by exploring the power of loving-kindness and connection. Through a calming guided meditation, Cheri invites listeners to reflect on shared humanity, embrace the present moment, and spread love and peace to themselves and others. The episode also highlights the importance of self-care and setting meaningful goals for the new year, all while using soothing music from Sonic Yogi to enhance the experience.

In this episode we will:

~Loving-Kindness Meditation: Learn how to use meditation to cultivate feelings of love, compassion, and connection for yourself and others.

~ The Power of Presence: Understand the importance of living in the present moment and how it can transform your perspective and reduce stress.

~ Shared Humanity: Explore how reflecting on our commonalities rather than differences fosters greater peace and harmony in relationships and the broader world.

Meditation Music byhttp://sonicyogi.com
http://sonicyogi.com
https://open.spotify.com/track/7lpLx4vtoQusvoqidRY6vN?si=0db8efd9082c40eb
https://open.spotify.com/track/0Qotx90teY3iZ00PgUCwty?si=44a1c18c52e24e1f

Listen to Sonic Yogi on:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2xJT8mRbrqa7rTY6d4y5Fq?si=q2YYpPSzQOmu4R8-W4jkpw
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/sonic-yogi/722350162
https://amazon.com/music/player/artists/B00FQMVVIC/sonic-yogi?marketplaceId=ATVPDKIKX0DER&musicTerritory=US&ref=dm_sh_Y5q68A8LSQQGzl01PQC7Uaw6c

https://youtu.be/p2jtMEkdh6g?si=rVq-Q8o85mI75S4_

INTERESTING MENTIONS:
Shantaram Inspiration:
The literary example of seeing everyday objects through the lens of admiration reminds listeners to appreciate the beauty in their surroundings.

https://www.heartwood-retreats.com : location for Cheri’s Georgia Mountain Retreats

https://www.jekyllisland.com: Location for Cheri’s seaside retreat

The Host for this podcast: Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW The Stress Therapist and Author

Join Cheri Flake on her Next Meditation And Yoga Retreat!
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or
https://thestresstherapist.com/beach-retreats/

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Thank you!

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OR
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15903117.Cheri_Augustine_Flake

https://www.amazon.com/Honey-DONE-Productive-Household-Absolutely/dp/0997950919/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8: Honey Do To Honey DONE! A Simple System For A Productive And Happy Household With Absolutely No More Nagging!


A word from your host, Cheri Flake, LCSW: Feeling good after our Stress Therapy session? Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, The Stress Therapist on social media or go tohttp://www.ilovetherapy.com/ to find out about meditation classes & meditation and yoga retreats.T
RANSCRIPT:00:00] The Stress Therapist: Hey, beautiful people, what's up? So it's Christmas time and whether or not you celebrate a holiday this time of year, it's hard to ignore that there is a lot of good, juicy loving kindness and beautiful juju coursing through the ether right now.[00:18] Let's take advantage of that and listen to a classic stress therapy episode, loving kindness during Christmas time. Relax and settle in and listen up because your stress therapy classic edition is about to be begin right now.[00:48] Hey, beautiful people. It's time for some stress therapy. A podcast about how to meditate and get better at stress for people living in the real world. Finally, a place to park my 25 plus years of experience of working as a psychotherapist in the mental health field.[01:03] And now your host, host me, the stress therapist, Sherry Flake.[01:22] Okay, y'all, I can't believe it. Beautiful people. But here we are. And we have been together 100 times. Can you believe it? It's so exciting. 100th episode, here we are.[01:34] And I think it's a really cool time. Whether you're Christian or not, whether you're celebrating some sort of religious holiday this month or holiday season or not, it's always a beautiful, wonderful time because a lot of people are and there's a lot of love in the air.[01:49] To examine the idea of one love, that we are all one love, that with respect to value, we are all exactly the same. We come from the human race. We come from this beautiful, beautiful earth.[02:03] And when we think about our sameness rather than our differences, things look better, we feel better. If I was able to open up your body and take out your beautiful soul, it would fill up the entire universe and more.[02:17] It would fill up galaxies and galaxies and light years and light years. That's how valuable and beautiful and lovely that you are. And you share that with all these other people.[02:28] And there is an opportunity here to feel connected rather than feel separate. To feel love rather than feel hate, to feel peace rather than feeling discord. And it's an awesome opportunity to be in the very moment that you're in because it is so beautiful.[02:47] And every single moment is a gift. And I know how cheesy I sound right now, and I don't even care because it's so good and it's so loving and it's filled to the top with juicy.[02:59] And if you want some of that, then you're going to have to spend some time in the sweet, sweet stillness. Paramahansa Yogananda said, live in the present. Launch yourself on every wave Find eternity in each moment.[03:14] The future will take care of itself. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to change it. You just sit in your loving, beautiful present moment, this beautiful stillness, and you can find your future in being in the present.[03:32] Because nothing's going to happen in the future. It's all going to happen right now. And nothing ever happened in the past. It happened all right now, and you don't want to miss it.[03:41] And sometimes during this time of year, people say, oh, I can't believe it's crazy, you know? You know, this is one of my pet peeves. I can't believe it's Christmas.[03:47] I can't believe it's the holidays again. I can't believe it's the new year again. I can't believe 2023 is over. Whatever.[03:53] Maybe you can't believe it, but the reason why you can't believe it is because you're not spiritual spending any time in it. You're thinking about next week or this holiday party or this gift you need to get, or that person you need to acknowledge or this thing you need to do, or that cocktail dress you need to buy or whatever, rather than being in the very moment you're in.[04:12] And there is a juicy loveliness in doing that. And one of the ways that I like to think about how we can remember how we're all exactly the same, even though we don't think we are, okay, we all think we're extra special, extra horrible in some way, right?[04:25] Because we're attached to these ego identities.[04:28] But one of the ways is this cool hypothetical question. And the question is this. Imagine that you don't know anything about yourself. You don't know your age. You don't know if you're young or old.[04:39] You don't know if you live in the north or South. You don't know if you live urban or rural area.[04:45] You have no idea. You don't know how you look. You don't know if you're black or white or brown or man or woman or child or baby. You have no idea if you had to choose, though, who or what you might support based only on what you think is right.[05:05] Who or what do you think you would choose? And why Changes things a little, right? You don't know if you're rich or poor.