Meditation: my progress and my thoughts

Hi guys! How are you getting along with the 21-day meditation challenge? I hope you have seen my link to the interview of Oprah Winfrey with Deepak Chopra. I linked it in my comment to my first post announcing the 21-day meditation challenge. It's a lovely interview and Deepak is explaining and motivating meditation. Try to watch it as soon as possible because I think it won't be available for a long time. 

I started the meditation challenge on the 6th of November in the morning. I am using this challenge to also get ahead with my Qi Gong routine with which I really have struggled a lot. My mornings were completely stuffed with biking and showering and meditation didn't fit in anymore. Hence, I tried hard to do it in the evening but it just didn't work. I have to admit that I wanted to do it every evening but did it only for 3 times in the last 2 months. 

So, when I discovered the 21-day meditation challenge, I had to take the chance and change my routine. I moved biking to the early evening and have put meditation into the morning. This is a major change and I was worried to loose my biking habit. But as biking is already a pretty ingrained habit (I'm doing it now for months on a daily basis), I am doing it in the evening, too. I admit that I lost a day in transition but the following day I was able to catch up. And the new habit of meditation which I try to create, is tough but as I usually biked at that time in the morning anyway, I am keeping up with it. Furthermore, the meditation podcasts of Deepak Chopra are pure fun and it's such a joy to follow them. But I am doing it the tough way like I've learned it in my Qi Gong class. And I also try to do a couple of Qi Gong moving exercises before meditating in a Qi Gong pose while listening to Deepak Chopra's meditation podcasts. However, as they are so much fun and as I am no native speaker, I like to listen to each of the podcasts for several times. E.g. I listened to the first podcast for 3 mornings now and will listen to the second podcast starting from tomorrow morning. 

This is my meditation setup for each morning: 

21-Day Meditation Challenge

Tomorrow, a 21-day meditation challenge with Deepak Chopra will start and I will participate and would like to invite you to participate as well. (I'd like to also take the opportunity to recommend reading the blog HappyIch of Sue because it is there where I read about this meditation challenge for the first time. Sue also already participated in such a 21-day meditation by Deepak Chopra in July and reviewed it on her blog.)

Meditation is not new to me. I started to meditate in September to alleviate the stress my thesis is putting me through by starting a zen buddhistic meditation course. Actually, it is a Qi Gong course, but we are mostly meditating. I don't know how common it is to meditate within Qi Gong courses but in my course we are doing it all the time. Currently, I am meditating once a week within that course and afterwards I feel incredibly relaxed and happy and powerful and this sometimes even holds for a couple of days afterwards. I'm quite impressed by the results. Unfortunately, I am still finding it quite difficult to practice meditation also on my own at home. This is why I am looking very much forward to join the 21-day challenge of Deepak Chopra. It will be my first meditation with Deepak Chopra and also my first guided meditation as my meditation practice in my course hasn't been guided yet.

The meditation challenge that will start tomorrow will be all about "Creating Abundance". The participants will be taken to a journey to an authentic abundance consciousness. According to Deepak, we'll discover what true abundance is, the source from which it springs, how consciousness and the mind affect its flow, and that each and every one of us is worthy and deserving of an abundant life. We will learn how to leverage the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success to manifest our heartfelt intentions and live a more abundant life, attracting more comfort and ease, joy, peace, love, or anything we desire. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Joining the 21-days meditation challenge is free. You can subscribe here either with your facebook account or with your email. Starting from tomorrow, each day a 15-minute guided meditation will be made available. Here you can find more information about Deepak Chopra who is well-known for his books on yoga and meditation.

Are you interested in meditation as well? Will you join the challenge? 

New Alverde Limited Edition Sets

Today I have been in the city center and discovered two new limited edition sets by Alverde. Each set consist of a shower gel and a body lotion. As I have made only good experiences with such kinds of Alverde limited edition sets, I wasn't able to hold myself back and bought them both. The sets don't cost that much. Each was available for only 4 Euro.

Here is a picture of my DM haul. I also bought winter chocolate by Alnatura which currently is my favourite choclate. Actually, this is exactly why I went to DM in the first place. :-)

(The magazine was available for free ;-))

Beauty Favourites October

In October I had a lot of fun with a couple of products and I'd like to share that with you. (I know, I should be working on my thesis and will do so immediately again. ;-)). 

I loved these cleaning and caring products in October:

These are in more detail:

• Blütezeit organic almond showergel: It smells like camomile and I love this scent. It's relaxing and soothing and I enjoyed it very much to start it as I haven't used it up yet.  Besides this shower gel, I also loved the Alverde Lemon Love shower gel which I emptied and therefore discussed it already in my October empties post.
• Apothekers Lippenbalsam: This is a new discovery. I bought it because it was mentioned by Paddy from Innen und Aussen as her favourite soothing lip balm for the night. It is a pharmacy product and it is really great. I am using it now each evening and my lips look great in the morning. I also like the taste and the scent of this product. It is on its way to becoming a holy grail product for me too.
• Lush Therapy massage bar: I love it. It smells great and nurtures the skin. It has to melt when put on the skin and therefore you need a lot of time for applying it by slowly massaging it onto the skin. But actually, this also contributes to the joy of using this product. I.e. being forced to do it slowly can be fun, too. But I admit that I prefer to use it on the weekend because only then I have the time. ;-)
• Alverde Apricot nail and cuticle balm: Smells lovely like apricots and nurtures the nails and the cuticles. This one is also on its way to becoming a holy grail product. However, I think that Alverde stopped selling this product. I have to check but last time I had a look at Alverde products at the DM, it was not available. So terrible. I can't understand how this could have happened. I hope that I am wrong and the product is still available. 

Concerning makeup products, I enjoyed using these products in October (sorry, the soap is not a makeup product of course. I don't know how it got into the picture below - it is a favorite though and maybe I added it to this picture because I also like to clean my brushes with it ;-)): 

See below a discussion of these products.

Beauty Empties October

This month I was able to get rid of 36 products. I went through my nail polish collection again (this is something I do quite often as you might have observed) and decluttered a lot of nail polishes again. However, don't worry, I still own a ton of them (around 30). Hence, I won't suffer of a lack of nail polishes after this huge decluttering action.

Here is a picture of all products that left me in october (my hair tint by Khadi is missing, sorry, I forgot to add it to the group picture - you can see it below though):