107 - Liza Kindred - Eff This! Meditation for When You’re Feeling Anxious, Stressed-Out, or Overwhelmed
I’ve tried meditation but...eff that!
Sound familiar? If meditation’s super-precious, über-enlightened rep has put you off in the past, Sarah’s guest Liza Kindred is here to reintroduce you to the practice - using language that this wounded healer is f*cking down with! Liza is a wearable tech consultant, a trauma-informed meditation instructor in training, and the author of Eff This! Meditation: 108 Tips, Tricks, and Ideas for When You're Feeling Anxious, Stressed-Out, or Overwhelmed. In addition, she’s also the creator of the Eff This! Meditation community, home to free meditation resources as well as a soon-to-be-launched online course. Accomplished as Liza is, she’s about as unlikely a guide as you’ll find within the rarified ranks of meditation teachers. In other words, she’s perfect AF.
“Have you heard of the phrase teach from the scar, not from the wound?” Liza asks near the end of the conversation. The quote, she says, reminds healers, parents, and teachers of all practices to use their wounds for good. But, doing so authentically can only be accomplished after the teacher has embarked on their own healing journey.
For Liza, the journey has taken twenty years. The author’s wounds run deep and have shaped her teaching style as much as her own spiritual education. Baptized at eight years old into a faith that, even at such a young age, didn’t align with her beliefs, Liza quickly adopted a coping strategy that left her feeling unworthy. A period of petty teenage rebellion was met by her parents’ decision to forcibly institutionalize her from the ages of 14 to 17. Liza legally emancipated herself shortly thereafter and found herself alone in the world without a high school education. Without the subsequent college degree. Without a job or, according to friends and family, any hopes of a successful future.
Did we mention the baby she had at 20?
Not exactly the meditation expert you were expecting, right?
Fast-forward 20 years. “I really started at this meditation as a way to say, okay, here's my experience. Can you relate? Is there anyone out there who is having this experience?” The answer was a resounding yes!
For her book, Liza borrowed wisdom from a millennia’s worth of teachings and distilled it into a guide for the modern age. Easy to flip through yet substantial enough to have an impact on even the most sceptical AF reader, Eff This! is mindfulness for anyone not buying into the Insta-imagery of what spirituality should look like. Instead, her book gives everyone permission to come into practice as they are.
“That's one of the things I love about meditation and that I teach,” she says. “There are so many ways to do it. There's different techniques that we can do and different things we can try with full respect for the fundamentals of where the practice came from. There is a richness of experience out there. If we're trying something and it's maybe not resonating, try something else, you know?”
Yaaaassss!
CONNECT WITH LIZA
Special invitation for you!
Sarah is hosting a complimentary online gathering April 1st, 2020 from 7-8pm CST to support those of us feeling anxious, isolated or overwhelmed by current events.
Go to:https://www.surveymonkey.com/rSPQP896 and share your email to receive an invitation to join.
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