Latest / The Shivan Show with Shivan Sarna / Meditation, a Dog and Money: 3 Things That Eased My Fear | Shivan Sarna

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Meditation, a Dog and Money: 3 Things That Eased My Fear | Shivan Sarna · The Shivan Show with Shivan Sarna

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  My mother had cancer.
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  My father had died when I was 13.
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  We had $100 in the bank and a huge mortgage.
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  I was just paralyzed with fear.
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  Every time you have that fear thought, replace it with, Hi, welcome to The Siobhan Show, Health, Wealth, and Wisdom.
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  Today, I'm talking to you about some things that absolutely helped me that I never thought would.
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  So this is Sadie.
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  She's the wonder dog.
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  One thing that I never thought would be an option for me is a dog.
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  dog.
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  I love animals.
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  I was a cat person.
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  I identified as a cat person.
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  Do any of you identify as a cat person?
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  And I never thought I would have a dog.
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  And I am obsessed with this creature.
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  She has helped me in so many ways.
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  And basically, because she's so animated, and so delightful and active and loving, I feel like I'm more in touch with God.
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  I know people say, you know, like dog is God spelled backwards.
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  I get it.
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  But it is this incredible exuberance of life and existence that she has helped me to manifest minute by minute, helping me to be in the moment, helping me to appreciate nature.
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  She gets me out in nature so much more.
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  My business team, who I meet with,
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  multiple times through the week, have said that they notice I am much calmer since Sadie came into my life and that I have to take little breaks to go, you know, be outside with her, walk her.
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  They have really noticed a difference in me.
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  If you have never, ever considered having a pet, a sweet doggie or whatever, and don't look at this, I groomed her myself, then I want you to seriously consider it.
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  I mean, I know what it's like to go, I'll never have a dog.
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  Never.
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  It just was not in my mind.
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  Absolutely the furthest thing from my mind.
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  But through a series, hello, Sadie, I love you.
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  Through a series of events, including my sister not being able to find someone to take care of their precious moksha doggy, that we had to take moksha.
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  for a weekend.
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  It was fine.
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  I have Petunia, the kitty cat.
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  And so out of respect for Petunia, we did not want to do this.
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  We did it though, because my sister was in a real bind.
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  We enjoyed Moksha so much, but it wasn't like we're like, oh, we should have a dog because we love Moksha and this was a great experience.
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  It wasn't like that.
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  It was just like, here's what it would be like.
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  And he's a sweetie pie.
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  We feel like Moksha helped us to make the
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  through a series of other events, get a dog.
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  And then my neighbor, her daughter, worked for where we got Sadie from for three years.
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  So we knew that she was coming from a great home.
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  Sadie is six now, and we are her retirement home.
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  She doesn't have fur.
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  She has hair.
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  She is beautifully well-behaved.
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  She's totally healthy.
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  We totally lucked out.
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  She's our soul dog.
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  And if you've never had a soul dog, or cat for that matter, what?
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  you're really missing out on something.
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  So I want you to seriously consider it and open your mind, open your heart and your mind to the other possibilities.
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  So that is one thing I want to highly recommend.
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  You seriously consider.
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  Obviously, you have to have the right lifestyle.
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  You cannot be like away from your house every day for 10 hours and expect an animal to be doing well.
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  So make it work for you and make it work for the animal.
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  Obviously, it's a big decision.
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  I will just say that for us, an unexpected and delightful blessing in our life.
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  And I wish that for anyone and everyone, especially when you never thought it would be possible.
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  Can I do the whole podcast about you, beautiful?
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  We get Petunia in here.
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  We can have a tea party.
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  No.
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  Okay, we're gonna put you, all right, all right, all right, all right, I love you.
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  Back to things that helped me that I didn't expect them to.
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  Meditation.
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  I have never, ever thought of myself early in life as wanting to meditate.
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  I didn't know what it was.
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  The first yoga class that I ever went to was at the YMCA in Clearwater, Florida.
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  And we laid down.
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  We did shavasana, which is the corpse pose at the end of total relaxation.
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  And as everyone else was gathering up their mats, I woke myself up by how loudly I was snoring.
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  Fast forward, I ended up having a yoga TV show, a yoga studio for 10 years.
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  It was remarkable.
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  So meditation is very intimidating, right?
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  You think, I don't know what you think.
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  What do you think about meditation?
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  I hear people tell me when we talk about it, which is not that often, and I want to do it more, talk about it more, is like they meditate when they're gardening.
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  Right.
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  They meditate when they're on the beach.
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  They meditate when they're walking the dog.
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  That is contemplation.
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  That could be relaxation.
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  Even at the end of that yoga class, that was not meditation.
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  Okay?
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  Stay with me.
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  Meditation is when you are sitting upright.
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  Your spine is the antenna for the prana.
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  Speaking of terminology, that is Sanskrit for prana.
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  The energy that flows everywhere, that we are all made up of, it is life force, it is God force, and it comes up the spine and goes back down and back up and through the chakras.
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  These are ancient Sanskrit terms that hold their meaning with a very specific vibration through the ages.
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  When you're lying down, the antenna's not up.
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  That's why people sit in meditation.
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  Originally, meditation was reserved just for a certain class.
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  So Hatha yoga, which is the yoga postures, which is what I taught for so long, that historically prepared the body to be able to sit longer in meditation.
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  If your hips are tight, if your back hurts, your neck hurts, whatever, it's very hard to sit still because when you sit still,
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  you can receive that pranic energy more effectively.
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  If you're wiggling around and, you know, itchy and just tight and uncomfortable, it is very hard to fully receive that vibration, which leads to ultimately, you know, peace, relaxation, joy, ceaseless bliss.
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  If you're lucky, they call it a practice because it does take practice.
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  Meditation was never on my radar.
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  I grew up in a very multicultural household.
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  My mother was from upstate New York and Irish and Welsh, all American.
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  My dad was from India, from another generation of my mother.
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  He literally is the rags to riches immigrant story and was a Sikh.
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  The turbans, the bangle, all that.
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  He did not wear a turban here in this country because he received so much prejudice of his darker skin and the turban that he, against societal norms of his caste and culture in India, he cut his hair.
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  When he went back home to visit, he put the turban on as if he had not cut his hair because it would have literally been sacrilege.
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  So there's a whole bunch of stories there.
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  But I was very lucky because I did not grow up in any dogma.
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  I was able to just be.
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  We had statues of Buddha.
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  We had statues of, you know, different entities, beings, Jain statues in my house because my parents were also art collectors from India.
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  I was really lucky because I would go to Sunday school with my besties when I was in elementary and junior high school.
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  We would overnight to their house on Saturday night.
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  Sunday morning, we would wake up and we would go to temple or Lutheran church or Unitarian.
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  And I would go to Sunday school with them.
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  And it was a great way to be exposed to a lot of different thought patterns, cultures, and things.
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  traditions, and religions.
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  So I did not have to overcome thinking a certain way in order to embrace meditation.
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  Now, on the path that I follow, this allows you this meditation style, if you want to call it that, allows you to embrace whatever religion you are,
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  and to simply be more connected to the divine.
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  That's really it.
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  It's you and God.
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  It's you and the universe.
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  Those words don't matter to me so much as much as knowing that it is you and a
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  on how to meditate, but know that it is sitting upright.
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  It is facing north or east.
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  There are vibrations on the planet.
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  That really does help.
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  And saying a prayer and invoking a blessing from the universe, asking for guidance, doing some very specific breath techniques.
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  Basically, though, if you can, when you're just getting started, just calm.
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  Do your best to do some nice big inhales and exhales
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  and calm yourself as much as possible.
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  Your mind may race.
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  I understand.
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  This is where that word practice comes in.
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  And the more you are diligent and persistent, the more the results will flow.
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  Let's talk about results for a second.
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  So what results happened for me when I started meditating?
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  When did I start?
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  1986.
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  As a very young woman, I'm like laughing because some of you watching this were not even born yet.
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  Bless you.
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  How did I start?
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  I started because I was miserable.
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  And this is where I say God reached out God's hand to catch me as I fell through the trapdoor of my life.
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  I had graduated from college.
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  I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.
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  My mother had cancer.
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  It was a very tough time.
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  My father had died when I was 13, and I didn't know what I was going to do with my life.
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  I, like, literally was working in retail.
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  I worked in PR very briefly.
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  I worked in another city.
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  I moved to the big city of Tampa so I could, you know, make more money and expand out of Sarasota.
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  So it was just a very tumultuous time for me, filled with uncertainty and fear.
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  And I was introduced to the book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.
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  And it was so confrontational.
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  I would read like a page or two and have to take a nap.
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  But I knew I had to change my life so much if I started this journey, this adventure, this path.
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  And it scared me.
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  I was already so full of fear.
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  And then the thought of pivoting even more just because I wasn't enjoying, but I was just paralyzed with fear.
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  And slowly but surely, I started meditating consistently and the fear started to fade.
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  And certain things came into my life that were beneficial and helpful and connections were made.
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  And.
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  And prayers were answered, even prayers I didn't know I had.
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  But it was my vibration, my energy improved myself.
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  Debris was kind of coming off of me from my aura or my field, and I was able to move forward.
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  Is it always that you're going to see a vision?
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  I don't see visions.
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  I don't.
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  I have friends who, when they meditate, they see visions.
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  That is not my deal.
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  I meditate, and I feel more connected.
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  I feel more peaceful.
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  I feel more peaceful.
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  I feel more prepared mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to be able to move forward.
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  So it's not one size fits all in that way in terms of results.
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  But it is one size fits all in terms of the intention, the intention to reconnect with the divine.
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  So Yogananda's whole intention was for all of us to have self-realization, God-realization, and
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  meditation is the vehicle for that.
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  This is where that term namaste comes in.
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  Like, my soul bows to the soul within you.
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  The God within me bows to the God within you.
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  And this is where some people will be like, if you don't love my God, then you are wrong.
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  I don't think that
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  it's that selective.
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  I think it's self-selecting because by your very nature, you are a spark of the infinite.
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  And that reconnection is the choice that you make by those intentions of your behavior, but also of your nature and your effort to reconnect.
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  Practicing the presence of God, praying, meditating, being kind—
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  all those things bring you closer.
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  Alcohol, pot, I'm just going to say it because like, what do I have to lose?
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  Meat.
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  They all dull the vibration receptivity of your physical form.
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  So that's why I don't drink, I don't eat meat, and I don't smoke anything.
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  If you are looking for a spiritual path, if you are looking to reconnect, if you're
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  I just want you to consider some of those things.
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  When I stopped drinking in 1986, that same year that I read the book, I just said to myself, I wonder how long I can go without alcohol.
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  And then I never looked back.
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  I remember going to a restaurant and
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  I always ordered the same meal and I always ordered the same drink.
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  And out of habit, I sat down and ordered the same meal and the same drink.
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  And I consumed them because I was like, oh, I didn't mean to do that.
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  I felt very ill afterwards because I had already started to like purify my body, detoxify my body from those things.
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  I'm just telling you what has worked for me and for your consideration.
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  This is kind of a wealth and wisdom concept, but I never thought I would feel this way about money.
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  And as a result, it has reduced my stress.
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  So I'm pulling in the idea of wealth and wisdom.
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  I have broadened my perspective about money to see it as
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  an extension of God.
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  And when I did that, it became so easy to be more in a more prosperous state of mind that when I buy something, when I pay someone, I am simply recycling God's money.
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  I read this book that I wish I'd written by Tosha Silver called It's Not Your Money.
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  It's a short, fabulous read.
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  And it totally reconnoitered, like chiropractically adjusted my brain about money.
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  I hope that you will start to see it as an infinite source, a tool for you to be able to make decisions that are good for you and the planet and that are not limited to what you currently are aware of.
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  This is an expanded view of currency, of prosperity, of abundance.
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  There's definitely an argument for, yes, more, obviously, more money in the bank.
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  Yay!
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  But there's also the idea that true wealth is having what you need when you need it.
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  It's such a different perspective, isn't it?
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  So it's truly trust falling into the idea of being supported.
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  Whatever it is that you want to do with your money, you want to buy a real estate situation so you can have some rental income, whatever it is, just keep expanding your consciousness.
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  And every time you have that fear thought, replace it with what if and for the highest good and the idea that only good can come of this.
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  So it's a huge shift.
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  It took me that book and years and years and years of reconditioning my mind.
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  Because when my father died, we had $100 in the bank and a huge mortgage.
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  Don't even get me started about how we didn't have life insurance.
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  Yada, yada.
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  Poor little rich girl.
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  It was a very complicated set of circumstances.
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  So that's why I also love estate planning.
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  for end-of-life circumstances to make sure that you leave a clean situation for those left behind, or you can change someone's life with what you do leave behind, or and you can change someone's life with what you do leave behind.
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  So lots for your consideration today.
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  I love you.
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  I hope you're doing great, and I hope some of this will help you to do even better.
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  Namaste.
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  So that's a wrap on today's episode.
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  Thank you so much for being here.
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  It genuinely means everything to me.
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  If something in this conversation sparks something for you, share it with a woman or a guy in your life who needs to hear it.
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  That's how this show grows.
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  That's how we heal the planet together.
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  And that's how we really connect.
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  For more resources, free tools, and everything we talked about today, head over to SiobhanSarna.com.
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  That's S-H-I-V-A-N-S-A-R-N-A.com.
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  It's all there waiting for you.
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  And until next time, keep asking the questions, keep finding the answers.
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  You deserve the full picture and the very best.
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  Namaste.
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  you