Finding Your Flow: From Survive to Thrive

 

thriveIn Arianna Huffington’s new book, Thrive, she asks: “What is a good life?” How do you find a flow to move from simply surviving to loving every minute of your life and thriving?

Huffington says: “To live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a third metric, a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving.”

American Express commissioned the LifeTwist study examining what do people want. Their findings are in synch with Huffington’s new book that people are “placing a greater premium on work life balance and are looking for ways to pursue their passions. In fact, more than two-thirds (72%) of respondents would rather spend money on experiences than things.”

The “youngest American to go to every country,” Lee Abbamonte, told me that you “have to work towards things and establish what you want to do. You can thrive. You can do anything.” His passion led him to set his goal to see 100 countries by his thirtieth birthday. He accomplished that goal five years early!

To build the life we want Huffington suggests using “meditation, yoga, getting enough sleep, renewing ourselves, and giving back” as tools that are the “ultimate everyday performance enhancers.” Finding our wisdom by “recognizing what we’re really seeking: connection and love…we need to drop our relentless pursuit of success as society defines it for something more genuine, more meaningful, and more fulfilling.” Defining success individually and living with enthusiasm is a worthwhile endeavor.

As Huffington states: “We’re all on a journey, a voyage, a quest to slay the monster, free the princess, and return home.”

Hula Hoop Class on the beach near Santa Monica Pier
Hula Hoop Class on the beach near Santa Monica Pier

In Los Angeles, there are four internationally renown master teacher trainers who can help you on your path to becoming unfrozen and in the words of Huffington: “find your place to stand—your place of wisdom and peace and strength. And from that place, remake the world in your own image, according to your own definition of success, so that all of us—women and men—can thrive and live our lives with more grace, more joy, more compassion, more gratitude, and yes, more love. Onward, upward, and inward!

Wondering where to start?

Katie O’Brien Eychis will have you spinning from the moment you enter her hula-hoop class at Loews Santa Monica twice a week. As she says, “Hooping’s greatest gift is the mind body connection that uniquely creates both a workout and a moving meditation at the same time. It is invigorating to the body and calming to the mind simultaneously. In this way, it resembles yoga, which is why I teach both. I’ve recently worked to create a fusion class of yoga with hoop. It’s the new future of fitness and Hoopnotica is a big part of it.” I cannot wait to go to her hooping classes and learn a new trick or simply be told to move around the room and take up space.

Noah Maze Yoga is “a doorway into a new way to understand and practice yoga…We explore the stories and symbolism behind many of the poses that you regularly practice…Yoga [can] facilitate the theater of the mind, and body and heart…and create a tapestry with evocative power of metaphor and myth at the forefront…Speak your deeper interest and originality.”

Join Yoga with Rocky and Noah Maze Yoga in Los Angeles (Rocky, Lisa, Noah pictured.)
Join Yoga with Rocky and Noah Maze Yoga in Los Angeles (Rocky, Lisa, Noah pictured.)

Noah and Rocky are starting a new online yoga-training course or meet them in person at the next Los Angeles intensive workshop on March 29 at Noah Maze Yoga studio on Beverly and La Brea. I loved his FireStarter Workshop and we were all still friends after nearly three hours of backbends!

When I interviewed Dr. Benjamin Karney, UCLA Professor and author of Love Me Slender, we discussed the tools people need to better support their loved ones to achieve their goals. Your life partner can be your best advocate and coach for weight loss and support in turbulent times. Sadly many people feel relationship paralysis and while they want to give and receive support, they feel stuck and unclear on how to make their relationship work. I highly recommend Ann Bradney of Radical Aliveness and Kamana Hunter of Bloodline Healing as ways to find new strategies for empowering your life, your relationship and bringing passion into all that you do.

Ann Bradney states: “When you can engage powerful feelings without the need to control or tame them, that’s radical aliveness.” Her website explains that “Radical Aliveness work is challenging, because it asks individuals to be fully present and honest; surprising, because it builds on the energy, emotions, and issues that pop up at any given moment; and exciting, because it connects us with our potential to bring a more authentic and powerful self to our lives, our interactions with others, and our connection with the world. It teaches us how to be effective, influential leaders in a new socio-political environment where we are all connected, where we can all participate, and where each individual is needed to create the wisdom of the whole.” Start by joining in the Healing Drumming Circle on April 4 or Community Night on April 5 to prepare yourself for exploring the Radical Aliveness Core Energetics Institute.

When you are ready to be the free one in your family, meet Kamana Hunter for “Bloodline Healing, which was largely born in Los Angeles. My work as an Intuitive Healer with Holocaust survivors has shown me how each human being carries an invisible burden of their family’s history. Unburdening is a rite of passage that has been largely lost in American Society, but we’re bringing it back in our workshops and seeing amazing results. People of all backgrounds leave the workshops so inspired that they change jobs, forgive old hurts, and leave toxic relationships in order to reclaim their lives. If Holocaust Survivors can make such great leaps in their personal healing, then everyone can be more free.” Join him at Brandeis-Bardin Institute Retreat Center for a weekend intensive starting May 30, 2014.

Are you ready to Thrive? Use the words from the song, Let It Go, from the movie Frozen, as your inspiration: “Fears that once controlled me, can’t get to me at all. It’s time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through. No right, no wrong, no rules for me. I’m free. ….Here I stand in the light of day: Let the storm rage on!”

It is your time. What will you choose?

About this ArticleLisa Niver Rajna has been traveling the world since 1990. She is the chief spark at We Said Go Travel and on location in Puerto Rico filming with Richard Bangs.

First published on the Jewish Journal.

***Note from Lisa: I have personally met and worked with all the people in this article (except Arianna Huffington who I hope to meet soon!). I can highly recommend them all. Any questions, please contact me or them through the weblinks in this article. ***

Lisa Ellen Niver

Lisa Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries on six continents. This University of Pennsylvania graduate sailed across the seas for seven years with Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, and Renaissance Cruises and spent three years backpacking across Asia. Discover her articles in publications from AARP: The Magazine and AAA Explorer to WIRED and Wharton Magazine, as well as her site WeSaidGoTravel. On her award nominated global podcast, Make Your Own Map, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors, and as a journalist has been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty-two times. Named a #3 travel influencer for 2023, Niver talks travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, her YouTube channel with over 2 million views, and in her memoir, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

We Said Go Travel