Episode 67 - Alissa Kriteman, Host of Just for Women: 3 Powerful Keys to Making 2009 Outrageously Successful!

Transcript

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Alissa Kriteman: Welcome to Just For Women dating, relationships and sex. I’m your host Alissa Kriteman. This show is dedicated to providing today’s modern with useful information they need to make empowered conscious choices. On the show today we are talking about how to make 2009 an abundant and success filled year while staying tapped into our feminine power. We’ll be talking about what feminine power is and some practices we can take on to fulfill our dreams while staying grounded, centered, and in touch with our true feminine nature. Our guest today is me, Alissa Kriteman. It’s my pleasure to offer you what I think are some fantastic ways to make 2009 your most powerful year yet. I will give you a little background about who I am in case you haven’t read my bio. I have a degree in business from the University Of New Hampshire, with a minor in Spanish from our sister school in Granada, Spain where I lived for 6 months. I am a licensed massage therapist and one of the travelling massage therapists for Cirque De Soleil. I have certificates in energy management, in clairvoyant reading skills from top teachers in the Bay Area. I’ve been studying tantric yogic Buddhism for the past 5 years and I actually live in a meditation practice house here in the Bay area. I am also engaged to be married in June, so I am planning a wedding. I am so grateful to have met such an incredible man who is now my fiancée. We met interestingly enough at a café called Gratitude right here in San Francisco. One last thing is also I was on a bit of a crazy reality show on ABC called How To Get The Guy. So if you caught that back in 2006, yes that was me.

So we’re going to have such great guests on the show in 2009 and I am going to go deep into the heart of what it takes to be conscious, empowered, and feminine in this day in age with our economy, our new president and all the change that’s going on. So I thought it would be really great to impart some of my wisdom at the onset of this year and share some of the things that I’m doing this year to make this year powerful for me. It is the year of the OX and according to Chinese Zodiac the OX or the Buffalo signs symbolizes prosperity through fortitude and hard work. So if you thought this was going to be an easy year, think again this is the year of fortitude and hard work and I’m hunkering down so. I wanted to do this program to support you and your ability to focus, get in touch with yourself and prepare for this hard work that we’re going to do this year. So let’s see we are going to talk about meditation, and I’ll cover a few different types of meditation and why meditation is so important in our daily lives. I am also going to cover the power of visioning boards and how they absolutely can impact your life. Lastly I want to talk about this feminine radiance and how important it is for us to stay tapped into our needs as feminine beings.

So let me launch in with some information about meditation. So meditation is so important on so many levels. There are many types of meditation you can do, but primarily why meditate? Why meditate is meditation gives us a couple of things. When we actually stop and breathe and sit down with our hips higher than our knees, so you definitely want to be propped up when you are meditating for better blood flow and ability to relax. It’s a time that you give yourself to really just connect with the inner intelligence of who you are. It is so easy to fill our days with this thing and that thing and that person, and going here and going there. That can be deeply fulfilling and joy filled, but nothing replaces that quiet time where we are with ourselves and we are letting all of our thought go. So regardless of the type of meditation you are doing, the real point of meditation is to connect with yourself. One get in the practice of connecting to yourself, connecting to your own internal wisdom and guidance. Seeing what comes up there, relaxing into who you are relaxing into your body. Getting back into touch with the truth of what’s going on with your life. I’ll just add here that many times when I started meditating there was a lot of sadness that came up. I noticed when I first started doing the type of meditation that I do now which I’ll talk more about later this tantric Buddhist meditation. I was just really sad. I found meditation because I was going through a deep breakup, a lot of change going on in my life and I wanted to get back to in touch with myself and what direction was right for me next. I talked to my teacher about it and she said well maybe you are just the weeper, you’re just the meditating weeper and to just allow those emotions to flow. And again not to get stuck there or harbor there or spin out there, but just to really let that emotion come up and fall away. So wherever you are at, if you are thinking about meditation but you might have some fear about it, or you can’t do it or you can’t sit very long, you get uncomfortable you aren’t sure of the purpose. The purpose is to really feel whatever it is you are feeling and to tap in to your internal wisdom and guidance. It doesn’t have to be for an hour, it doesn’t have to be for a half hour. It can be as little as 5 to 10 minutes in the beginning. You can set a little alarm and just notice what’s happening. It’s really about having a practice and again meditating everyday doesn’t matter how long it’s really about tapping in and getting into that practice of being with yourself and trusting that internal wisdom.

So what are some types of meditation? There are many types of meditation; the meditation type that I do is an open eyed meditation which is very active. Again, I sit with my knees higher than my hips, sorry my hips higher than my knees on a pillow or a Zafu or a couple of pillows so that you are at that angle. It’s all about having the spine straight and yet the body relaxed and it’s very possible to do that when you are sitting up on a pillow. The open eyed meditation is where you just sort of where you look one to two feet in front of you in a very soft gaze, in a very relaxed way and just let thoughts come and thoughts go.  And thoughts come, and thoughts go. That’s the practice. Eventually when you’ve meditated for longer periods of time, daily, again the daily practice is really important. You start to notice that you can sit for longer and longer, that thoughts become less frequent. That you aren’t holding on to things as much. What are some of the benefits of meditation? Some of the benefits of meditation are that internal wisdom starts to flow faster than you ever could have realized without that momentary daily practice of checking in with yourself. So you are checking in with your internal wisdom, you are learning to let go. Many times when we are suffering, it’s because we are having a thought that’s spinning and spinning and spinning. We haven’t maybe learned how to interrupt those thought and how to let them go. The practice of meditation is to really sit with your mind, sit with that chaos they sometimes call it monkey mind because it’s so difficult to stop that chatter. But you are really starting to look at wow, how many thoughts you have that steady flow of thoughts that are coming and that you can actually in interrupting that. You can actually have power in getting connected to your own divine innate wisdom if you just take a few minutes to tap into it. It’s always there; it’s always running meditation allows us to get through those thoughts so we can get to our true essence, our true nature which is really joy, kindles, love, and compassion. We actually come into this world with that. That’s a type of open eyed meditation, where you know again the correct posture opening your eyes, and just noticing what’s coming and going without getting attached or hooked onto any one thing. When you do notice yourself hooking into a thought, you can just say to yourself “thinking”, and then get back to your breath. You always want to be noticing your breath. With any kind of meditation it’s usually the grounding force in any kind of meditation where you want to connect in. The breath is very important; the breath is what allows our body to relax. It’s that calming rhythm that’s happening no matter what we are doing it’s always there. So one thing I like to do if I find myself my mind just will not turn off, if I’ve been sitting for 10, 15 minutes. I’m saying thinking and it’s still not turning off. I’m saying thinking and it’s still not turning off. One thing I like to do is count to 21, I count in and out, 1. I’m following the breath and I count in, and out 2. I got to tell you this isn’t it’s not easy it’s not going to happen overnight. I still do my counting and I’ve been meditating for like a year and a half I think. There are times of high emotion, anxiety where I still go back to my counting because the thoughts are just too much. So it’s OK I think it’s really important to understand that it’s OK wherever you are at in the meditation process. But to just try it, just try it a couple of times a week and eventually daily because that daily practice is what’s really going to make the most profound difference in your life.

So another kind of meditation is a closed eye meditation, I think a lot of Zen Buddhists practice a closed eye meditation. But again, there’s the breathing the breath is always there. The thoughts come, the thoughts go. It’s all about letting go. Sometimes it’s nice to have a guided meditation where you can get a CD or download. I’ll be offering those in 2009 as well. Where you are following the person’s conversation, you’re following what their saying maybe you are doing visualization. Extremely powerful stuff, you are tapping into your subconscious where all of thoughts are arising from. What is going on in the subconscious mind, so again meditation is access to the subconscious mind so that things can be identified, realized and released. So I hope that discussion about meditation helps you and supports you in your desire to meditate. It is one of the most powerful things that I’ve included in my life that helps me be the empowered woman that I am. The cool thing about meditation I think is that you can do it anywhere. You can do it in a grassy field, on top of a mountain, in a tree. You know it really is about your time with yourself, connecting with your own inner guidance as I was saying before. It really doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can be elaborate but it doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can be very, very simple. A lot of people saying walking on the beach is meditative, absolutely. Washing the dishes can be meditative and it is. It’s anything where you find yourself while you’re doing your task, there’s great awareness there. And again, that is the practice of meditation cultivating great awareness for whatever is going on. So you absolutely can wash the dishes and be super aware that you are washing the dishes, and you are super aware that you are cleaning the house, or you are super aware that you are driving. In that state of being in touch with yourself and very, very present. So again I hope that’s helpful, how to meditate, why to meditate and the benefits of meditation truly are deep and wise. I love meditation. So we’re going to take a short break to support our sponsors and listeners I’d love for you to listen to these ads. You know they are created by my sponsors for my show and they help bring me these great experts to you including myself. So, um I would really appreciate if you listen to the ads and you can support them in anyway. This is Alissa Kriteman, the host of Just For Women – Dating Relationships and Sex sharing my thoughts about how to make 2009 an abundant and successful year. We’ll be right back.

Alissa Kriteman: Welcome back to Just For Women - Dating Relationships and Sex. I’m your host Alissa Kriteman and today the interview is with me. I’m sharing some important tools I think that can be really useful for having a wildly successful 2009. Before the break we were talking about meditation, open eyed meditation, closed eyed meditation and guided meditation and some of the benefits that can be gained from meditation. So now we are going to move on, one thing that I wrote in my book is about visualization boards. I called it collaging but now it’s become so popular it has a new name and visioning boards have become really popular. People are so into these boards that they actually now have online programs for you to make visualization boards. Why is a visualization board, it’s harder to say than collaging, a visualization board. Why is it so important? One of the reasons a visualization board is so important is because you are creating a visual representation in real time of your dreams. One of the first things to do when you’re creating your visualization board is to write down, and you know January 2009 is a perfect opportunity to do this. Lots of people are writing down their resolutions for the year. I like to create results and goals. What are the results I want to produce and what are the goals I am working toward? So you want to sit down either alone or with some friends, it’s always fun to get together and hear what other people are doing. Get some support in mapping out the areas of your life where you want to notice results, and achieve some goals.

So some examples might be in the area of health. You want to work out three times a week, maybe you want to drink more water, or do a nutritional cleanse this year. So you would start to look for pictures, anything that represents the health you want to create in the year. Another area you might want to consider is wealth. Maybe you want to create new streams of passive income, or you want to hire a financial planner to start investing things of that nature. You want to just have the important areas of your life, and then start listing things in those areas where you want to have a breakthrough. One of them might be with your spirit, you might want to do more ritual, or ceremony, or prayer, or meditation. Getting in touch with what those areas are and the achievements you want to have is really important. Career, family, you know what are those areas? Lots of women I know are looking to attract a relationship into their life and that’s kind of my favorite area, a relationship. What do you want to create in that relationship? If you are in one do you want more intimacy, or adventure or flair? If you are not in one what kind of a guy do you want to attract or what kind of partner are you looking for? So once you have that list you want to start looking around. It’s easiest I think to find magazines. I always have a ton of magazines lying around whether it’s Oprah or Common Ground. There are ton of magazines out there you can ask your friends to bring their magazines over as well. Get your scissors, get your glue. It’s really fun to make a night of it. I also, I’ve done it both ways I’ve done nights where I am just really internal and I want to do my own vision board on my own, and I’ve also had women over where we did it together. Either way it’s very fun, it’s very exciting. But the whole point of that is to make sure that you are really getting in touch with what is it that you want to create this year and creating this visual context to remind yourself of what it is. I just have to say last year one of my girlfriends was single and we had so much fun getting together and creating her board. She’s very stylish, so her collage looked like a piece of art. We just blessed it, and a few months later she met a man who literally just jumped out of her vision board. I mean, talk dark, handsome, smart, funny, adventurous all of these things that were represented on her vision board. This man showed up and we got together, and she was saying she is dumbfounded and I said no that is the power of the vision board. It truly works.

How does it work, how does the vision board work? Well, you’ve probably heard a lot about energy and the universe and the non-physical universe and the law of attraction and how what your vibing is what you are getting back. I mean the secret, there are so many I mean that just exploded right over the past 2 years. And it’s true, what’s happening is the unseen forces of the universe are connecting in with your vibration. So without a vision board you might be walking through your life not even aware that there are all of these things that you want to manifest in your life but they are not represented anywhere. They are not demonstrated anywhere. You are not tapping into that vibration and so the universe has no idea what you want. With your visualization board you are a magnet, you look at that board, you look at the kind of man that you want to create, you look at the wealth you want to have in your life and you start feeling it. Your heart opens, you’re getting excited, you’re like oh yeah that’s what I want. I want to create an income of 5,000 dollars a month or 10,000 dollars a month or wherever you are at. I want a new car. I want to get a scooter. The energy of desire of joy of happiness is what the non-physical universe is going to connect you with. So whether your vision board is on your computer through one of these online programs or on your wall, the important part just like the daily meditation is to connect with it every day. To walk by it, feel that energy get filled up by it. Get filled up by the fact that you are a human being and your thoughts are creative and amazing and that you can create whatever it is that you desire, focus there, focus there.

Ok so what else do I want to say about my vision board? Ok so about my vision board in particular. You know I just mentioned my girlfriend and her vision board and how she manifested her man. I had already been dating my fiancée at the time but we were just dating. And on my vision board I had a wedding dress and a diamond ring. I had pictures of meditators, I had pictures of – what else did I have on there? Pictures of people travelling, people doing yoga, healthy vibrant food, there were all of these pictures on my collage and when I look back over 2008 and the things that I’ve accomplished and the things that I’ve done. I travelled; I spent time in Chicago, New York. I travelled with Cirque De Soleil, my diet changed, I now live in a meditation house. You know it wasn’t anything that I could foresee, but because I had this vision board up and I was feeding it energy and I was tapping into that desire. That stuff came to me rapidly. So I can’t emphasize enough in January, get together with some girlfriends or do it alone but get that vision board created for yourself. It’s really, really a powerful, powerful tool to help you have what it is that you are desiring. Get into that energetic state and have your dreams manifest. I really look forward to hearing how your boards go, and what results you are getting from having a vision board or a collage either on your computer or on your wall. So we’re going to take another short break to support our sponsors. And again I’d really appreciate it if you’d listen to these ads and do what you can to support the sponsors who support me. Also, feel free to send me an email at [email protected] You can also call in, leave me ideas, comments, questions. And that phone number is 206-350-5333. Feel free to leave me a message, I’d love to hear your feedback or any questions that you have. This is Alissa Kriteman, host of Just for Women – Dating Relationships and Sex. We’ll be right back to talk more about useful tools we can use in 2009 to have it be a conscience and powerful year of growth and success. We’ll be right back.

Alissa Kriteman: Welcome back. This is Alissa Kriteman, host of Just for Women – Dating Relationships and Sex. I am offering today some of my tools that I can think can help make 2009 a completely powerful year for us. One of the things that I talked about was meditation, the power of meditation, the power of meditating everyday even if it’s for 5 minutes. Then we talked about vision boards and the importance of knowing what we want to create this year and putting it into a visual representation that we can connect with everyday. We’re almost out of time, but I wanted to end with a discussion about needs and the importance of putting our attention on getting our needs met. Identifying and getting our needs met is such an important part of being an empowered woman. You know in our culture we are not supported in taking care of ourselves, knowing our needs, identifying how to get those needs met. And, we are actually encouraged to work, work, work. Be sleep deprived, eat poorly, you know fast food everything is go, go, go, rush rush, rush. Which is why so much of my work is focused on slowing down and tapping in. There is nothing more powerful than our own internal wisdom and guidance and so this is what we need to focus on. Identifying our needs is definitely an important part of the equation. So how do we identify our needs? One great way that I identify my needs is I think about what nourishes me, what fills me up? What do I enjoy doing that’s just for me?
So I’d love for you to take out a piece of paper and a pen, or for those of you who are more technology inclined you can go to the notes section of your PDA or IPhone. Just type this in, it’s so good to have it handy so you can remind yourself when you are feeling a little cranky or low energy, or exhausted or overwhelmed. That wow maybe some of your needs aren’t getting met and you can look at this list and start to put some time into what is really going to serve you. So in the first column I would like for you to write down what that thing is that inspires you. What it is that would really fill you up right now. One of things, well on my list is I love to go to this hot tub that is close to where I live where I can go with my girlfriend. That alone serves two of my very important needs getting met. One is the relaxation of soaking in the hot water, two connecting with one of my girlfriends and catching up and having that connection to another woman that feminine energy completely fills me up. Those are even doubly powerful ones where you can um, maybe its going food shopping with a girlfriend. You know something where you are with a girlfriend, you’re with someone who supports you, knows you and loves and you’re getting something done. So, again one column, write down what it is that thing that will fill you up. In the second column, who is it that can support you in having that need met? Whether it be a friend, a family member, your partner, a colleague even. And mapping out for yourself what are these needs and who can support me in getting them fulfilled. You know I did a course with Allison Armstrong in 2008 it’s called The Queen Course. I think its celebrating women and power, something like that. Anyway I remember it’s the Queen Course and she dedicated a whole section, probably you know 4 hours to talking about identifying needs and the importance of having them met. She’s done so much amazing research and it really hit home for me that when I’m feeling off, irritable want to take things out on my partner or other people. There is a need that is not getting met, it’s not even rocket science you know it’s kind of simple. Wow, but we are not trained again we are not trained in our culture to think about getting our needs met as a function of our empowerment. So, I really wanted to say that I really wanted to put that in there about getting our needs met. You now Allison Armstrong talks about it as filling the tanks so our car, our bodies can run properly. The Buddhists have a saying, it’s called Wind Horse. You know, it’s all about taking care of our bodies, our mind, our spirit, our space. Energetically the wind horse and raising that wind horse and having our attention on what is it that we can do  in our lives that’s going to raise our energy, very similar ideas.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this interview with me and thank you for listening me to share my wisdom with you about how we can all have amazingly years ahead in 2009, I wish you all the best for happy, healthy, prosperous year. May all your desires be fulfilled, needs met, and dreams realized. And I hope these three keys can really help you do that. So that brings us to the end of the show thank you so much for listening. For text and transcripts of the show and other shows on the personal life media network please visit our website at personallifemedia.com. And how you can hear more about me, the coaching that I do the courses that I facilitate you can go to sacredspa.org, or also a website it’s called askalissakriteman.com and there you will be able to write down any question that you have for me that you want answered either on the show or personally. Again that is askalissakriteman.com. I am more than happy to hear what you have to say and respond. So again I’m your host Alissa Kriteman always expanding your choices here on Just for Women – Dating Relationships and Sex. Tune in next week for more juicy news you can use.

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