Out of all the Jim Rohn quotes, one of our favorites is "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." Truer words were never spoken. At Black Zen, we consistently look for ways to create the best conditions for our success and our peace, and the most important factor we've found in achieving this has been surrounding ourselves with amazing, ambitious and authentic people who inspire us to be our best. And while there was so much good advice to choose from in this week's articles, we've narrowed it down to the top 3 types that are crucial to have in your friend squad...

E11_#SquadGoals

In a world full of noise, both figuratively and literally, sometimes silence is golden. It can be the most powerful tool at our disposal and, even though it can feel counter-intuitive at first, over time it creates a peaceful stillness that is unshakeable even in the most trying of circumstances. Meditation, in its simplest form, is the practice of intentionally quieting the mind. It’s finding stillness amidst our busy schedules and opening ourselves up to the possibility of living more full, peaceful and balanced lives. This week’s wellness is full of tips, tricks, and things to remember as you start or navigate your way through your own meditation practice…

E14 - The Power of Silence

Has anyone else found themselves taking bad advice from folks who “knew better” or mentally kicked yourself after seeing what happens when you don’t follow your gut? Too many times in our lives we know which path to take, but then, something or someone convinces us otherwise. We’re here to remind you that your intuition is ALWAYS right. The only gap in communication is when we’re not listening to that inner voice. When we take the time to pause and listen, we tap into our natural instincts. These are, by nature, designed to keep us from harm and push us toward our highest potential. It's from this place that we begin to make powerful, life-affirming choices that truly align with what we need. We become okay with knowing that what we’re doing may not look like what everybody else has going on…

E24_You Are Wiser Than You Think

As active meditators, we can be quite comfortable alone or left to our own devices for long stretches of time. Solitude is no longer scary. The "need" for a romantic relationship can sometimes be replaced with personal fulfillment and a contentment with life just as it is. It's a pretty sweet place to be. While we look to stay focused on our areas of personal growth, is it fine to remain single and let that be where our time and energy is invested? If so, what happens if how we feel about our single status changes? For some of us, we reach a certain point in life where partnership becomes important (i.e. the desire for marriage and kids or even just to experience companionship). It is here that our personal growth may become tied to growing with someone else. With both options on the table, do we choose to remain single in an effort to maintain a deep and growing spiritual life or does our spiritual life become enhanced with the introduction of relationships...

E25_Relationships & Spiritual Life

So many of us are dealing with past hurts and traumas, and many times we hold on to them because we are afraid to fully feel them. I don't know about you, but I held onto my pain for so many years because I kept telling myself I had too much to get done and didn't have the luxury or time to fall apart. What I didn't realize, is that falling apart was not fatal. Masking my pain, minimizing it or avoiding it altogether was what held me back from growing through the lesson. Once I let go, I was able to accept that the situation was what it was, but also, that it no longer needed to define or shape how I showed up every day. I was creating my own misery by staying stuck in my feelings rather than giving myself permission to let it go. The past only lingered because I allowed it to be present...

E29_Pushing Past Pain

Time is money. Not sure who said it, or when that phrase became popular, but that has been the focus of our week. Why? Because your girls are exhausted! The Black Zen team has spent countless hours ramping up on partnerships, speaking and teaching engagements and secret projects (Yes, you read that right. Get ready for a big launch – can’t tell you what it is or it wouldn’t be a secret!). In as much, it’s become more and more important to manage our time and energy to bring you the goods. So if time equals money, we wanted to make sure we were spending both wisely. And what we found, could help you too...

E41_Time vs. Money Trade Off

I recently attended a 4th of July event that ended in fireworks and it was life changing! I’ll tell you why. If you’ve ever believed you had a good time watching fireworks, try watching a kid watching fireworks. The way that child literally gasped and became awestruck by the seemingly simple bright lights in the sky is a feeling worth hanging onto, even as we get older. It was so clear in that moment that while I was simply seeing a fancy light show, that kid was having a truly joyful experience. And isn’t that what being present is all about? As adults, our joyful moments may look a bit more subdued than the kid watching fireworks, but it doesn’t mean our experience has to be any less exciting or special…

E48_Surprise & Delight

Last week was all about discovering our superpower, but in any good hero movie there is always a sidekick. It’s the teammate that quietly kicks butt in the background and helps the superhero complete their mission. For us, that sidekick is meditation. In a world full of noise, both literally and figuratively, sometimes silence is the most powerful tool at our disposal. This silence helps us to find stillness amidst our busy lives and provides refuge from all the nonsense happening in the world around us. It even reveals the areas of our life that need attention (and maybe even our superpower). This week’s wellness is full of tips, tricks and things to remember as you start or navigate your own meditation practice and start realizing how meditation is truly your secret sidekick…

E50_Your Secret Sidekick

Sometimes, all it takes is one Fox news story or an ignorant tweet to rock our peaceful boat. That was the BZ Team experience this week that led to this Monday's all-too-important topic… how to protect your peace and guard your energy from emotional and media vampires. Are we being dramatic with the use of the word "vampire"? Perhaps, but let me tell you, the draining of energy is real! Like all responsible adults, we want to know what's going on in the world around us, but this week the news just had to be turned off. It got us thinking, “How do we maintain our peace while still being active members of society?” In this week’s wellness, we provide a few key ways to maintain our energy and guard our joy in the midst of these tumultuous times…

E55_A New Political Tactic...Guard Your Joy

The insensitivity or criticism of others has a tendency to trigger our insecurities like nothing else. For the ultra-sensitive person, even a quick glance from a stranger can have you questioning your entire appearance, if not just your fashion choices that particular day. For others, it could be that while you don't care about what a stranger thinks, as soon as a family member says something it can trigger all sorts of past hurts and perceived slights. It's in these moments that we have to remind ourselves not to take anything personally. People will do and say the craziest things, and usually, it's to cover their own insecurities and complexes and have much less to do with us than we think…

E69_Don't Take Anything Personally

Through our previous experiences we've developed habits, defenses and thought patterns to deal with the rough spots. We continually create habitual responses to certain circumstances, people and situations (both good and bad).  Now is the time to examine those automatic reactions and see if we're responding in a way that truly moves us forward. Whether we know it or not, we have full authority over our thoughts, the words we say, and the choices we make. These are the things that shape what we experience. And if so much of how we experience our life has to do with how we tell our story - why not make it a good one?...

E81_How We Create Our Story

The most surprising discovery at any stage of life is that we're still in the process of creating our story. Given the average age of life expectancy in the U.S. is now 81 for women and 76 for men, once we reach our 40's we most likely still have another lifetime left to live! This Weekly Wellness is all about acknowledging that we are never too old to do something we want to do and are never too young to live life in the 60+ range when you have the freedom to do what you want, and are armed with the understanding that you are your only audience.

E84_Age Is An Illusion

Embracing imperfection in ourselves is about looking at our internal cracks and personal quirks without disapproval, and instead seeing them as an opportunity to paint those perceived flaws with something wonderful. It’s a gentle process and it happens when we step away from the business of life to truly see the canvas we’re working with. Before our break we encouraged you to truly rest and enjoy the summer, and even to take a break from striving toward your goals if that's what you needed. We all know that soon our "summer-life" will fade and it's back to the grind. Yet, by embracing the cracks and imperfections that we all work with, we can keep a bit of that summer peace with us as the seasons change. When we view our process in the Wabi-Sabi way, learning to work on ourselves with patience and acceptance truly does take the "work" out of it…

E86_Embracing Imperfection

You may be asking, "What do my personal finances have to do with wellness?" In short, it’s about having peace of mind. When I first began meditating, the common theme that ran through my thoughts were around money - not having enough of it to live comfortably, how I could make more of it, and what experiences I was missing out on because I didn't have enough. I knew then that to get the most out of my meditation time, I had to either develop a peace about where I was financially and/or change my financial situation. I chose to do both and we’re encouraging you to do the same. To save you the strife of living from paycheck to paycheck, this week's wellness is dedicated to getting your financial house in order. It all starts with finding peace in your current financial situation, and then taking ownership of that circumstance. From here, we can each make the necessary changes to reach our personal version of financial freedom and find peace of mind with our finances…

E87_How To Think About Money Mindfully

Imagine for a moment going into the store and getting every ingredient for the perfect meal. You come home excited to cook because you’ve already thought through all the steps to make sure this meal is epic! There’s just one problem. As you start putting all of your flavors together, you realize you’ve forgotten the most important ingredient of all – salt. Sometimes, this is how life without a meditation practice can feel. It’s like you’ve got all the right elements in place, but something crucial is missing. The flavors of your experience just don’t taste as good as they should, and day-to-day life seems to lack zest. For the Black Zen team, we’ve found that meditation enhances every moment by training us to be fully present and teaches us to enjoy the fullness of our experiences. This week, take a look at your life and make sure you have a well-seasoned plate of mental, emotional and spiritual food. And if you find any area lacking in flavor, like salt, meditation is always available…

E88_What To Do When Life Feels Bland

The keys to a more balanced way of life are none other than patience and equanimity. Equanimity is a $400 word defined as mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation. It's keeping our cool even when it looks like the needle hasn't moved on our progress or when unexpected emotions come up in our meditation practice. Once we learn patience with ourselves, it's that much easier to extend that patience to the people around us...

E89_Hurry Up and Wait

It's been a minute since your girls have completely nerded out on a Weekly Wellness, so let's get into it! In this week's post, we're studying The Room of Requirement. If you are not a Harry Potter fan and have no idea what we're talking about, The Room of Requirement supplied the students of Hogwarts with whatever they needed in that moment. How great would it be to need something and then instantaneously have the means to acquire it? I know what you're thinking, and no, this is not a post about meditation being that room! In fact, that room already exists and everyone has access to it. Here's what we mean...

E90_The Room of Requirement

The butterfly effect concept was articulated best by meteorologist and mathematician Edward N. Lorenz. His theory stated that the flapping of a butterfly's wings has potential to cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. While this may not generally be the case, it's a good example of the idea that tiny changes in complex systems can cause huge and unknown effects. If we think of ourselves as the system being altered, how large of an impact could we potentially have in affecting our trajectory with tiny changes made in our everyday life...

E96_The Butterfly Effect

I'm going to go ahead and date myself here and say I miss the 80's! Gone are the days when I can hop on a bike and head to the Boys and Girls Club after school. There I would squander my days away with Chinese jump rope competitions and tetherball battles (more of a slaughter since Jasmine stopped growing in grade 2, lol). Reflecting on it now, I think I just miss being playful. And while we touched on this back in June in an effort to bring back the idea of a traditional summer vacation, I see no reason to relegate fun to just the summertime. This week's wellness is dedicated to taking the seriousness out of life and finding more playtime, in every season, and even in our meditation practice…

E98_Less Work, More Play

As people interested in meditation or for those of us with a developed meditation practice, we tend to hear a lot about being "present". Generally, we equate being present with mindfulness in our daily activities and noticing our lives as they are happening in real time.  But what does being present in the day-to-day actually look like when you’re also an ambitious person working to put important plans in place for your future? In this Weekly Wellness, we set out to find examples of what being present looks like and how to remain in this state of awareness when working on long-term goals (even when your present is less than pleasant or downright sucks!)…

E99_Present While Planning

We’re celebrating our 100th episode of the Weekly Wellness podcast! In honor of this milestone, we’re taking some time to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about meditation. As we continue to grow our organization and move our mission forward, we hope each Weekly Wellness is an opportunity for you to enhance where you are, let you know that you've been seen and give you the motivation and the humor to keep on moving towards your best life! 

Humbled to be your partners in progress,
The Black Zen Team

E100_What Is Zen?

At Black Zen, we consistently look for ways to create the best conditions for our success and our peace, and the most important factor we've found in achieving this has been surrounding ourselves with amazing, ambitious and authentic people who inspire us to be our best. It's these folks who truly make up a winner's circle. When selecting your team it's also important to know when to trim the fat. There are some people in our lives who just aren't all that positive. While we would never cut them out of our lives entirely, it may be necessary to create a bit of distance to make sure their influence is not derailing our progress. Listen in to find out the best benchmarks to look for when picking your winner’s circle…

E101_Who Is In Your Winner's Circle?

Since February is always associated with love, we thought it was the perfect month to take a deep dive into relationships! In Part I of this topic, we include the 1 key thing to remember about all of your relationships and we humorously break down the most important element that holds every great relationship together…

E111_Relationships - Part I: The 2 Most Important Elements in Every Relationship

The Black Zen Team has been debating for the last few days about meditation versus wellness retreats and the benefits of each. After numerous discussions about our own personal experiences, we did come to one shared conclusion. Every style of retreat has to have some component that helps us drown out the noise of life to give us the space to find and hear our inner voice. And when we say drown out the noise of life, we’re talking about both the internal chatter within our mind and the external noise we experience every day. This external noise can include things like the sound of traffic, taking in the news, interacting on social media, or even just listening to the conversations around us. The appeal of a retreat is that, by design, it removes us from our daily obligations so that we can get a bird's eye view of our lives, and this month’s Weekly Wellness podcast discussion is focused on building that retreat wherever you are...

E115_Your Personal Retreat - Part I: Setting The Expectation

With all that's going on in the world right now with the corona virus outbreak, it's definitely putting all of our inner-peace skills to the test! In this week's podcast, we take a detour from our regularly scheduled program to address what's happening in our nation and the world around us. We talk about how we as meditators can meet this challenge and come out peaceful and whole on the other side. Listen in now to get a free perk and to find out how to create the boundaries necessary to guard your peace and joy amidst these uncertain times...

E118_March - Part IV: The Meditator's Response to Covid-19

With all this extra time on our hands, your girls were digging through the archives to find things that would help us all navigate this "new normal". This week's podcast includes 3 of the most important clips we found relevant to creating a home retreat, whether that's watching what we consume in our newly found free time, tips to building that meditation practice or what we've been personally putting into place, trying to make lemonade out of lemons. As a reminder, for the rest of March (you have one day left!) we will be sending this month's guided meditation to everyone who needs it and without subscription. Message us at info@blackzen.co to get your home retreat in gear. There is LITERALLY no time like the present...

E119_March - Part V: How To Navigate In This New Normal

Last month Jas and I talked about creating your own personal wellness and meditation retreats and we hope you’ve been able to implement that in your home, especially now! One of the most direct actions we can take post-retreat is to start becoming more intentional about our food choices. This may seem like a small thing, but the foods we eat affect our energy and moods a lot more than we think. We now have the time to cook at home as we stay in place, so tune in to find out about the 4 happy hormones you need to know about so you can start cooking up some happiness in your home...

E120_The 4 Happy Hormones

Last week we discussed the 4 happy hormones that keep our spirits up and our lives feeling healthy and full. We’re following that up this week with the low cost, easy access foods we can incorporate into our daily meals to help keep all those good vibes going! This is also the episode where your Black Zen team may have cracked under the pressure of shelter-in-place. In this episode we’re definitely at our silliest, but always serious about making sure that our community begins incorporating some feel good foods into our diet. Tune in for laughs, good vibes and to unravel the conversation that covered everything from oats and almonds to grits and a good malbec…

E121_Foods That Support the 4 Happy Hormones

Now that we have a handle on some of the great foods we should be incorporating into our diet, we decided to use this week to find out which foods to avoid to ensure we’re living our best life. We also uncovered some surprising things about junk food that even we were shocked to find out! Food is so integral to our bodies, our mood and our health, so it only makes sense that being more aware of what we eat can have a profound effect on our day to day experience…

E122_The Real Danger Behind Toxic Foods

This is definitely one to get your pen ready for taking notes! The more we looked at how to start viewing food as medicine, the more information we found. In our final episode of this month's topic, we provide you with the Cliff's Notes version ;) We highlight the every day foods we can incorporate into our diet that not only help prevent sickness and disease, but can also heal certain ailments over time. Listen in now to find out the obvious (and surprisingly, not so obvious) things we can eat that significantly improve our health and well-being...

E123_Foods That Heal

We can't even begin to describe how your girls have been affected by recent events. We've been in Minneapolis for some time and the feeling in this city is fraught with anger, frustration and ultimately a heavy heart. The murder of George Floyd has confronted us with the important question of how do we, as peaceful meditators, manage our rage and handle all of the other emotions that we experience living in a world that too often doesn't make sense, while also holding on to our core values of compassion and love in all things?

For us, that means utilizing meditation to help fortify our resolve for the work ahead. It means providing our community with a safe space to process grief and to continue building a community that is mentally and emotionally equipped to do what needs to be done to create change.

In light of this, we're providing free, community guided meditation for anyone who needs it. Sign-up is available on our website - blackzen.co.

To our community members protesting in the streets, we are donating I STAY ZEN face masks to reiterate this message of being peaceful while protesting and holding onto our zen while fighting for our right to exist.

This is a lot to hold, but know that we are here to support you and help you carry it.

The Black Zen Team

The Murder of George Floyd and So Many Others...

We hope everyone has been well and pushing through this crazy time in a thoughtful and peaceful way. Over the last few months, we’ve had quite a few partnerships with businesses and schools looking to introduce guided meditation in a virtual way, to help students and adults alike cope with this new environment. In an effort to continue this work and really stay true to our mission of bringing meditation to the masses, something has to give.

The need right now is working with our partners to further our mission of making meditation accessible and relatable to those who are struggling in this new environment and we're creating the time and capacity to answer this call by putting an indefinite hold on the podcast. While this decision was made reluctantly, please know that it was carefully considered.

As you know from our past breaks, we will always leave you with resources. To help you build during this time, we've compiled our best 10 topics and recapped them in this episode. These are all the episodes most likely to keep you growing while we’re away!
For those of you who may miss our couch conversations, jokes and banter without the Weekly Wellness podcast, we encourage you to start from the beginning. We've covered so many topics over the years that we feel comfortable in taking this step without leaving you hangin'. You have access to all of our past podcasts on Soundcloud, iTunes or other streaming services to keep you going and we have over 100 episodes of mindful wellness tips to keep you engaged, peaceful, and growing.

We’re also not going anywhere. If you miss us, reach out at info@blackzen.co to chat or say “hey”. We love you all like family, so please treat this as an open invitation to keep in touch. We'll also update our website (blackzen.co) with news when we have it, and you never know, with us we could be back in the near future if the feeling strikes ;)

Always your partners in progress,
The Black Zen Team

E124_Top 10 Podcasts Most Likely To Help You Grow

This podcast is a weekly discussion on selected wellness topics designed to make you laugh, provide insight and support meditation-based practices.

BLACKZEN.CO

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