Month: September 2023

Have you noticed how easy it is to complain or be dissatisfied about the things or situations that you wish you had? Have you noticed how it makes you feel weighed down and negative?

This type of emotion can be triggered by something as simple as getting on social media and seeing the lifestyle’s or accomplishments of others. Even if we don’t notice, that type comparison affects us. Comparison truly is the thief of joy. It robs us of not only of our joy, but of our mental strength, energy and the ability to be grateful and in the moment.

I recently read that in the last 15 years they’ve been researching the effects of social media. The research found that “comparing ourselves to people who seem better off than us on social media can result in several negative psychological outcomes. It can be detrimental to our mental health, self-esteem, subjective well-being, and body image,” (Journal Media Psychology)

So, as always noticing and being aware of how we react to what we see, hear or the ways in which we spend our time can either help us or make us feel worse. If Social media makes you feel this way, then practice staying away from it or removing it from your daily practice. Instead change the habit and choose to do something more uplifting and positive with your time. Once you catch yourself feeling distracted or discontented from it, remember to make the change for your own well being.

The reason that practicing contentment is so important for us is because it brings power in the sense that when we’re grateful we feel more calm, peaceful and centered. Contentment also brings a sense of joy for what one possess. Someone who experiences contentment is happy and satisfied but also willing to put forth great effort to move forward toward their goals.

A complacent person on the other hand, is satisfied but puts forth little to no effort to move closer to their goals. Sadly, many people think that contentment is the same thing as complacency. And that is incorrect. We can choose to be content with our circumstances and still willing to move ourselves forward coming from a place of security in ourselves, God and the divine callings and gifts within us to move forward toward the destination that God has for our lives.

There’s a scripture that I love which says;

But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. (1 Timothy 6:6-9)

I love how he talks about godliness with contentment is great gain. It’s amazing what we can accomplish if we are able to come to God and look for His guidance throughout our lives. Expressing gratitude for what He has given us and moving forward with God as our guide and the security that He gives us.

I also love the reminder of the fact that we brought nothing into the world and will take nothing with us. Sometimes spending our time looking for “more” is something that will only satisfy a temporary comfort. It’s not lasting it’s not of eternal consequence.

Instead, building a relationship with God, will be something that we can take with us. The relationships, the wisdom and the way we use our time on this earth are of greater importance than comparing ourselves to others or trying to compete or “gain more” which can lead us to be distracted from the things of true importance.

So, today I invite you to find power in being content in a Godly way. Disconnect from social media if you have to and instead focus on feeling gratitude for what you’re able to have today.

Remind yourself that you are beautiful inside and out, that you are enough. Allow your possessions to be enough, your home to be enough, your family and friends to be enough.

Embrace the beautiful gift of this moment in time. To simply be in the joy of what you are blessed to have today. To love your life, right where you are at right now, remember that we become hole in our brokenness, in our gratitude and in our acceptance of what is.

The best gift we can give to ourselves is to be in the moment, and to find joy in it. We can give big thanks for what we have, understanding that even the pain, the striving and the smallness that we feel sometimes can allow us to become whole. & It’s because of our creator that we become truly whole and we’re able to understand that we are in his hands and we can let go of the rest. We can realize that we can have contentment and honor him for what He has given us to move forward with faith trusting Him and honoring him.

So, say to yourself today “ I focus on the incredible abundance and beauty that surrounds me now. I accept what is and I don’t judge it or analyze it but instead, I allow gratitude to pour freely over my soul.

I choose to love my life just as it is. Especially as it is, and I celebrate with God the gift of my life.”

Hope that you can feel that power flowing through you today. This is our goal for the week. So hopefully we can choose to invite more of this into our lives and choosing to bring that power into your life daily.

Our physical goal is to let go of sugary drinks for and to move our body each day for at least 30 mins. 🙂

I hope to see you in class tonight at 7pm to strengthen your body, mind and spirit.

Love,

Lili 🌸

I choose Faith over anxiety, hope over worry and love over fear.

These words can serve us in two ways: As an affirmation and as a practice. When fears arise, affirmations and our breathing can move us gently toward the light even as we face the darkness. They make us mindful of our thoughts and our choice to be able to direct them with faith and hope. Choosing to do this over and over again is the practice. When worries settle in, we always have the choice to look at them through the eyes of love or the eyes of God. Instead of allowing fear and negative thoughts to take over.

When we feel stressed and overwhelmed we can close the door to the outside world and instead make our thoughts and emotions known to God. I promise you that He does hear and answer every prayer of your heart. Maybe not always in the timing we would like, but HE does answer. He did it for me this week. He answered me with LOVE. & just as He answered me with love, I know He will do the same for anyone who seeks Him. ❤️

As we’re willing to surrender our challenges to Him with a brave, willing, patient and open heart. Trusting in the God of Love. The creator of our souls. We will see that He will remove the stress and anxiety from our hearts. We have to practice leaning on HIM & Not leaning on our challenges or on ourselves to try to control our situations. Instead, we can pray to be able to accept those things we can’t control and be more willing to hand them to God. Allowing Him to then remind us of the things we can control. Making it possible for ourselves to invite God to guide us each day and replace all of the heaviness we feel with HIS LOVE, LIGHT & PEACE. ❤️

The LOVE OF GOD is the greatest gift in the world. Just to know that you are loved by God, allows you to remove any anything else that makes you feel unhappy, anxious or stressed. Because the love of God fills and covers your heart and soul with peace. It brings an assurance that everything will be ok. The soul that is able to trust in God, is able to gain way more strength to overcome the challenges of life than those who place the trust on themselves.

It’s completely up to us to CHOOSE to exercise our spiritual muscles daily & to focus on His love. ❤️ It’s up to us to choose to place our TRUST ON HIM with everything that happens in our lives and to know and believe that with HIS HELP we truly can overcome all things.❤️

So, Today I invite you to say to yourself as often as you need to; “I choose faith, Hope and Love and when I do, my anxiety, worries and fears dissolve. My focus becomes centered on the highest good for my soul. I believe that all things are possible as I place my trust on the amazing love of a God who is ALL GOOD, ALL KNOWING, ALL POWERFUL & ALL LOVING.”

Let’s trust in His never ending love and blessings and let’s remind ourselves that that He walks the path of life with us and He will carry us through air all. ❤️ Let’s make it a point to have the thoughts of our mind and soul today, come from a place of LOVE. Love for God, Love for ourselves individually and Love for others. ❤️ TODAY I CHOOSE FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE.

That is our Spiritual Goal for the week: To move from moment to moment breathing as deeply as we need to. Inviting ourselves to choose Love, Faith and Hope. Being compassionate to ourselves and others, and inviting God to be with us to guide our thoughts and actions from one moment to the next. 

Our Physical Goal for the week: Is to give ourselves the right nutrition, movement and rest that our bodies need to be able to function their best each day. Remember to come from a place of love in how you treat, nourish and take care of yourself.

Tonight at 7pm Let’s choose to give ourselves more of that love ❤️ By making time for ourselves to disconnect from all the other things going on & to instead come together as sisters to release stress and do something amazing for our Body, Mind and Spirit. We all need it during these times. 😌🙏🏼💖 & It will feel SO Good to do this for ourselves.

If anyone feels that the physical portion of the class is not for you, but you’d like to come meditate with us, just show up at 8pm with your mat and meditate with us! 😍 it feels amazing & it will recharge us all so much! 🧘🏻‍♀️🌅

We all need to give ourselves the best activities we can, to help us strengthen ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually. Hope that you can make it and leave feeling AMAZING & connected to God and to yourself in a way deeper level. 💛

Remember to focus on loving yourself, on giving yourself the best nutrition and on allowing yourself to have moments of peace and quiet to recharge your energy and your connection to God. Take deep breaths, calm your thoughts and turn them into Love toward God, to yourself and to others. This will allow you to handle the challenges of life with a perspective that’s more aligned to God and where you’ll be able to focus more on His divine love for you, rather than on fear, stress or anxiety. God loves you! ❤️ keep trusting, believing and choosing Faith, Hope & Love. You’ve got this! 😘❤️

Love,

Lili

Do you have those days when you feel like everything is going too fast and you can’t seem to keep up? Those days when you notice you’ve been distracted by too many things and you realize that you had no focus to your day?

I think we can all relate when we’re able to recognize the days that we’re being fully distracted by other things and not able to focus on the truly important things.

The first step in wanting to change anything in our lives is to be able to have awareness and recognize what we may not be doing correctly. So, today I want to encourage you to take a moment to recognize your distractions. To write down or figure out the ways that you will remove those distractions so that you may be able to focus on the truly important things.

Removing our distractions will help us to invite more focused attention to each task that we want to complete. Of course It’s important to recognize and remove the distractions but it is also important to give power to those things that we would rather focus on. Those things that we know are good for us, and that will allow us to feel happy about the way we spend our time and energy.

There is power in a focused thought. God reminds us to keep our thoughts on things are good and that bring peace. He reminds us that what we focus on grows, and what we invite we attract. That’s why He wants us to focus our thoughts on better things.

Philippians 4:8 tells us Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

He reminds us to have our thoughts focused on things that are uplifting, pure, lovely and that will direct our thoughts to Him. We can dedicate each task of our day to God. Even something as simple as cleaning our home can be dedicated to Him. It can be done with focused attention and feelings of gratitude for what we are able to do.

Today I am motivating myself, and I hope to encourage you as well, to focus our thoughts on things that are uplifting and good. For each task that we work on today let’s try to do it by first, dedicating that task to God and asking Him to help us accomplish it. Let’s feel grateful for the opportunity to focus on this task and for the health that we have to do it.

*Make a list with our to do’s and pray for guidance to know the top 3 things that we should focus on.

*Let’s focus on recognizing and eliminating our distractions. Leaving the phone in another room or turning off the TV are all ways to remove those things that may distract us.

*Set a 25 minute timer to focus on each task and take a 5 minute break at the end of each 20 minute session to celebrate what you’ve been able to do during those 20 mins. A 5 minutes break f feels great! Even if it’s to step outside for a minute or drink some water. 🙂

*End each session by taking a moment to notice how you feel after completing it. Allow yourself to feel gratitude for having been able to focus on the task. The more positive we are at viewing each task and visualizing each accomplishment, the better we will feel while doing it. 😉

Finally, practicing mindfulness is another great opportunity to create better focus. Sometimes we tend to do things with other distractions around us. For example, we may listen to a podcast while we are cleaning or listening to music etc.. All of those things can be great sometimes, but it’s also important for us to have moments when we turn everything off and when you’re able to fully focus on the task in silence. This is called mindfulness.

If you’re able to practice being in the moment, noticing what you are touching, smelling, hearing, feeling etc you’ll be able to notice how your focus will sharpen as you give yourself moments to practice mindfulness during your day. Sometimes just washing the dishes for example, just being in the moment. Swelling the soap, feeling the water etc are all things that we do “robotically” without noticing or just being in the moment. Practicing mindfulness is incredibly beneficial to our mind. The more we practice the better we will feel.

I know that God wants us to strengthen our minds, as well as our bodies and our spirits and I want to remind all of us that our mind and our spirit are very much connected. What we think about we become. Choosing to align ourselves to God, to hear His words, to pray to Him, to make our thoughts, focused, higher, uplifted, and positive will bless our lives in unimaginable ways.

Our goal for this week is to practice focused attention. Even if it’s only 20 minutes at a time. The more that we practice, remove distractions and invite good thoughts, the more we will be able to develop a habit of mastering our attention. We will be able to focus more on all that is good for ourselves, our families and those around us.

Hope to see you tonight in class at 7pm to give ourselves some love and to take care of strengthening our body mind and spirit & leave feeling peaceful, uplifted and renewed. 🙂

Love,

Lili 🌸

Sorry that It’s been months since you’ve heard from me. I know that I have amazing friends and family who continue to read these messages after all of these years and have wondered where I’ve been. 🙈 Unfortunately life throws challenges at us and there’s times when we have to let go of some things to focus on others.

I want to share this experience with you and I hope that you’re able to gain something from it. My goal is to continue adding messages to this blog. I pray that these messages will help you in any way or encourage you to strengthen your relationship with God and with yourself.

I’m thankful for all your love and support as always. I hope that you can focus on the moments that you have today and are able to nourish yourself in the ways that are needed today. Love you all & Here’s the message that I wanted to share with you this week. 🙂

Sometimes our bodies don’t always act the way we would like. After dealing with months of discomfort and pain from a cervical disc herniation, I feel like I dealt with all kinds of emotions.

This whole experience was super hard for someone who is relatively active like me. Not being able to move my body the way that I used to was extremely difficult. & to deal with pain on top of that, was horrible….My heart truly goes out to those who deal with chronic pain constantly. 💖

As the months have passed, I’ve realized that I’ve had to rely on God, faith & the things that I have learned from my class to get me through this.

As many of you know, this class started out as a Zumba class many years ago and it eventually changed into what we now call “Strong Body, Mind & Spirit” I began adding meditation, mindfulness & spirituality to my classes.

Spirituality is something that people don’t normally add into fitness classes for obvious reasons. But I kept feeling that I needed to continue to do this for myself and for those who needed it. We still had fun and danced, but adding meditation and spirituality allowed us to see past our physical bodies and helped us to connect more on a spiritual or a soul level.

This allowed me to see the hand of God in others lives way more clearly than I had before. I met people from all kinds of backgrounds
and situations. In some cases people who were looking for a “sign from God” or who just needed a hug for that day. I’m thankful that God answered many of their prayers in ways that I’ll never be able to understand. I’m also thankful that I was a witness of what each “miracle person” told me that they had experienced and how God was there for them, even in the moments when they thought He wasn’t. All of those experiences helped me to solidify the knowledge that God is very real in All of our lives.

Practicing Meditation and has also helped me to connect to God in a higher way. I’ve experienced countless of times the immense and indescribable love of God. & there’s nothing better in this world than to feel that love, peace & that security that can only come from a divine, all knowing God.

The mindfulness part of class, has also taught me to practice gratitude and be more present and in the moment that I’m in. It has allowed me to check my thoughts more often and direct them in better and more positive ways rather than letting them take over (which is easy to do when we’re going through something difficult) Also, practicing my ability to use my senses to bring me back to the present and inviting feelings of gratitude, healing, peace, love etc is super healing when we’re going through hard times. But It all requires practice & I had to strengthen that part of myself.

This class has not only taught me mental techniques on how to process emotions, but it has also taught me to PRACTICE them weekly and to make quiet time daily to talk to God & to be present and in alignment with Him and His incredible love and wisdom that can guide me from one moment to the next. But just like with anything else in life right? We have to practice. & I’m thankful for the practice that this class allowed me to have & for the opportunities to practice I continue to gain. 😓

It was during the meditations of class, where I tried to turn off the world and make a conscious effort to connect to God. It was during those moments where I remembered that I am more than my body. More than what the world is constantly telling us that’s “important”…I not only felt that I am more than my physical body but also more than what I physically posess, more than my accomplishments, more than any type of beauty, popularity, status, wealth, etc. but instead I began to feel and realize more and more that we are beings of light, that we come from an all loving God and that I can call myself a child of God. I have felt very known and loved by my creator. Not only during the meditations but during my moments of prayer and most importantly when I have to remind myself to remember those “God moments” when times are tough.

Honestly, If we can get to a point in life where we can know for ourselves that we are known and loved by God, that is the biggest accomplishment we can gain in this life. To have that knowledge that we are known and loved by Him and that He truly cares for us is extremely healing for any soul. & it will fill us with greater peace, love, confidence and abundance than anything else on this earth.

Now, after months of having dealt with pain and discomfort, I can say that I am healed. I’m thankful for the Faith that I’ve been able to exercise and develop. I’m thankful for the PRACTICE that this class has allowed me to have. & for the difficult times that allow us to polish ourselves and see things clearer.

I’ve learned from this experience, the importance of what I try to “ preach” lol that “BALANCING” & STRENGTHENING my Body, Mind & Spirit is so important. Because you never know what life will throw at you. & in my case, for example; when my body was weak and in pain, my spirit was strong enough to help me through the physical challenge that I was experiencing. I’m thankful for the practice that I had previously gotten in strengthening my spirit to allow me to deal with the physical challenges that I was experiencing.

So, my reason for writing this is to encourage you to take care of yourself physically, mentally and also spiritually. To be balanced in that way is my goal and my purpose for creating this class. 🥹💖 So that when things come at us, we can know who to go to for help. ☝🏼😉I testify that God lives. I know that for myself and I know that He loves you in an indescribable way. Trust Him & believe in Him and in your ability to overcome each challenge. All will work out for your good.

I’m blessed to be able to start teaching Class again starting tonight and every Thursday at 7:00pm. I’ll be dedicating each class to my healer & my Savior. & I leave these words with you in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, Amen. 💖🙏🏼

Love,
Lili 💖