Watch My Video on "How to Feel More Connected."

Is the velocity of life feeling too fast for you? Like a train speeding toward a destination, there is so much to get accomplished within a small window of time. While this time of year can be particularly busy, if you were to take a moment to pause and take stock you might realize that the pace of your life in general is such that it can contribute to a sense of disconnection. Disconnection from yourself, loved ones, your children, spiritual connection, etc.

The uplifting news is that alongside all the ways in which you may feel disconnected that there are just as many anecdotes available to you right now that will assist you to feel a deeper sense of connection. Over the course of many sessions with my Intuitive Counseling and Feng Shui clients and my own experience, I have distilled a number of practices that can assist you to feel more connected. This in turn can create a ripple effect in your life of opening up your heart and life to even more joy, peace, and possibilities. In conjunction with the inspiring wellness website Happiness Series, I created a video that offers you two very effective and accessible ways to feel a deeper sense of connection in your life.

I would love to hear from you on which tip resonates with you the most. Do you have any suggestions on how you create more connection in your life?  Leave them in the comments area below and share the love!

Watch...Enjoy...Share...Comment...Put Into Action...

P.S. For more inspirational and empowering videos in my series with Happiness Series, please click here.

"We forget we're mostly water til the rain falls and every atom in our body starts to go home." 

Albert Huffstickler (via Arianna Huffington from "Thrive")

Blessings and love,

Elana

New Year's Gift Certificates

"Offering" Photo Credit: Elana Kilkenny

Festive, overwhelmed, merry, overscheduled, uplifted, depressed, inspired...are you feeling any of these feelings this time of year. If so, you are in very good company. This may be your favorite time of year, or perhaps it is a time that brings up a lot of expectations, disappointment and anxiety. Feeling all of the above...check. Yep, it's that time of year where feelings are heightened and the pace is at a gallop.

How can you enjoy this time more, be more present to your blessings, enter 2014 with clarity and inspired vitality? Well that can be a complex answer but gratitude is always a powerful gateway to joy. At the heart of this season is an innate impulse to give, to celebrate, and to dip ones toes in magic. It is a opportune time to open your heart to what is already good and plentiful in your life, for no matter what is going on for you right now I promise there is always something to be grateful for.  

In the spirit of gratitude, I am offering some special gift certificates of soul, heart and grounded intention for the New Year. If you are interested in more information please email me at elanakilkenny@yahoo.com for details.

 In my thirteen years as an Intuitive Counselor and Feng Shui Designer, I am deeply grateful to have the blessing of helping you to unearth, polish, and birth many of your heart's desires. If you feel a longing to be more connected to your innate joy, peace, spark, and abundance, I am honored to be of service to assist you in your sacred journey.

Blessings and love,

Elana

P.S. See my next post for some joy-creating Gratitude Practices.

Gratitude Practices

 

"Gratitude" Photo Credit: Elana Kilkenny

GRATITUDE PRACTICES
Please Note: These practices are sure to open your heart to more joy...instantly.

1)Gratitude Journal...

Start a gratitude journal. Every night spend a few minutes writing down three things you are grateful for. Each night write different things you are grateful for from the night before. Once you have written them, spend a few moments breathing in each item you are grateful for and experience them once again in that moment. This exercise helps your heart instantly and literally trains your mind to focus more on what it is positive. And where your focus goes, your energy goes. And where your energy goes, your life goes...

2)Express Your Gratitude...

*To Your Loved Ones...

Pick up the phone, tell them face-to-face, mail an old-fashioned note, email. Tell people in your life that you are grateful for them and be specific. It feels great to to the recipient and equally wonderful for you.

*To Those Who Provide You Services...

In Brené Brown's brilliant book, "Daring Greatly", she has this powerful section about the "invisibility" of service providers and how important it is to take the time to "see" the people who provide you service and to treat them with kindness and respect. Take it a step further and express your gratitude to them.

Coffee baristas, waiters/waitresses, grocery clerks, clothing salespeople, subway drivers, etc. Express your gratitude for the services they are providing you, for some quality you see in them, pay them a compliment. It doesn't have to be a big gesture but it surely does make a difference. Take it a step further, if you are moved to do so, by asking them who you should speak to or email that would best benefit them and pass that compliment on. Managers are very used to being complained to by a customer but are often very grateful and surprised to be called over to hear a compliment about an employee. You will surely brighten their day and who knows perhaps even help them in a larger way.

*To Your Children's Teachers:

Write a random note or tell your child's teacher "Thank You" for all the love, care and nourishment they are providing your child with. Be specific, take a moment to really "see" the teacher and reflect back to them their innate grace. Teachers often hear your questions about your child or something you might be upset about but rarely do they receive gratitude for the everyday miracle of assisting your child to grow, learn and thrive.

You Get The Idea...so dive into gratitude and revel in the ripples of goodness that radiate from its joyful core.

P.S. Those of you reading this who are feeling sad, stuck, disconnected, these gratitude practices truly do make a difference. So if any part of you is intrigued by this, don't wait until you are feeling better to try these out. As gratitude practices are a surefire way to move your energy into a more positive direction. I know this through experience, as I have offered these practices to many of my clients and have done them myself. In fact, gratitude practices are one of the first anecdotes I reach for when I am in a down state as they are manageable, instantly gratifying and build positive momentum.

Watch My "How to Calm Down" Video

Hello beloved all,
This has been a very full autumn for many of us. I have heard from many of you that there have been a lot of changes happening in your life and loved ones just over the past few months. That coupled with generally fuller schedules this time of year, has resulted in your feeling more overwhelmed or anxious. You might have even been told by those around us to "just calm down."

Many of us are not sure what to do when we hear that or how to actually "just calm down". So as an anecdote to feeling so frenzied I created a video for you on "How to Calm Down" in partnership with the wonderful website Happiness Series http://happinessseries.com/. Hopefully watching it will give you some insight on how to calm down and also on why we often we react so badly when people tell us to "just calm down".

Watch the video below...enjoy...and please leave a comment here or below the video on YouTube. I would love to hear from you about where you are struggling with this so that I can be of more service to you in future videos!

Watch My Video On What Does "Getting Grounded" Really Mean

Hi beloved all,
I am thrilled to share with you all the first in a series of videos I am doing in conjunction with the wonderful website http://happinessseries.com/. So often in life and books these days we have been hearing certain catch-all spiritual phrases such as just "get grounded" or "manifestation" or "abundance." When I am working with clients I find that while these concepts sound appealing, most people don't really know what they really mean and how to apply it to their every day lives. With this is mind, my first video for Happiness Series focuses on the idea of "Getting Grounded". What does this mean in real life in terms of grounding your energy and also what does it mean in the area of money?

Stay tuned for more inspirational and practical videos in our series over the next few months as well as upcoming articles I am writing as a blog writer for http://happinessseries.com/! If you like what you see, please leave me a comment below I would love to hear from you!

Watch...Apply...Share!

Blessings,
Elana
"

"What Can We Do?"--Coming Into the Light from The Shadows of The Tragedy in Boston

"Freedom" Photo Credit: Elana Kilkenny

 "What can we do?" In the aftermath of yesterday's tragedy, this is a question that we are hearing in our own hearts and all around us. Today, I watched my six-year-old son go on his first class trip out of town to a farm. Yesterday morning I was simply excited for him and after learning about the tragedy in Boston I found myself slowly getting more jittery. Fear creeps in when an old wound lingers...for me it was how close my then boyfriend, now husband, was to the World Trade Center on 9/11.

I tuned in, I felt in my intuition that my son was safe. I prayed for Liam and his class and for the bus drivers. I prayed deeper for the source of my pain which were the lives affected so grievously yesterday and for that dear 8 year old boy who died. I prayed even deeper for innocence to be protected.

After watching his bus leave, I finally was able to move my legs knowing there was nothing else to do as I was releasing Liam once more into the world and I realize that is one of my sacred duties as a parent. I started walking home with my daughter and this "what can I do" question whispered to me. I saw a few women who work for the city cleaning up the streets. One had her head down a lot, I thought, perhaps not even accurately, that these are people who are so often invisible to those who walk past them. And as I truly believe it is our deepest desire to be "truly seen" I stopped and thanked each of them for being angels to our city and for making where we live so beautiful.

They stopped, huge smiles...my 2.5 year old daughter then spontaneously says "Thank you" and then the woman whose head was previously down looks up and beams, she says"God bless you." It is a small thing to take that time to simply be kind and to simply acknowledge another human being, but it is never a small thing to be seen...

As I write this I wonder, the person/people who were behind this horrible atrocity...they are human too, what if on a deep and fundamental level they feel invisible and out of that invisibility they swim undetected, seething, planning, and worst of all executing darkness. When at a core level they too are human and hence being human just want to be seen--deeply seen--like the rest of us.

Surely practicing an random act of kindness won't bring back 8 year old Martin Richard, it won't solve overnight what is behind such acts of violence and violation, but perhaps it will add more light where it is dark. And perhaps even one day you will find yourself being kind to someone, who unbeknownst to you, was on the brink of a choice to add more darkness to either their life or others. And perhaps by being seen in that moment something shifts and another choice is made...a choice that adds more light instead...and perhaps, just perhaps that makes all the difference in the world. 

Random Acts of Kindness...Some Ideas
For more ideas on random acts of kindness...be present to those around you and your heart will know. Want more specific ideas, I will be adding ideas over the next few days on my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/elanakilkenny and to give a random act of kindness to the city of Boston check out this amazing Facebook page that sprung from the Ann Curry's beautiful heart...one person can always make a difference. http://www.facebook.com/26acts?ref=ts&fref=ts

Be the change you want to see in the world...
Love and Light,
Elana

Synchronicities, Letting Go and Nora Ephron

"Rainbow From My Window" Photo Credit: Elana Kilkenny

I feel somehow that Nora Ephron has been woven inexorably into the tapestry of my living in this city that I love so profoundly. When I was a college senior I moved into a tiny, slightly decrepit one bedroom apartment in the boondocks section of the Upper East Side. There was scarcely a thing about that particular neighborhood or apartment that felt like me, but on my second night there I went to see "Sleepless in Seattle" in a local movie theater and it hit me...I was living my childhood dream of calling New York City my home. So my apartment was still just an apartment, but I was now at home in New York City.

Years later when I was in my mid-twenties, I found myself blessed enough to buy a one bedroom apartment in my beloved city. And although I had barely spent a minute in all my years in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, somehow my vision of living in New York City was shaped by my adoration of Woody Allen movies and my hundredth viewing of "When Harry Met Sally". My home for fourteen years was in the West 70's and close to Riverside Park. I spent countless strolls passing by the storied Apthorp building. And when I did, I would always look into the courtyard from the street and daydream of all the magical people I imagined lived there. Never realizing at the time that Ms. Ephron was one of those very people.

Years later, I found through a series of synchronicities Nora Ephron's famous love letter in The New Yorker to her apartment in the Apthorp. Somewhere in this timeline, my dear friend Alex D. invited me to the New York premier of "You've Got Mail" and I found myself living out another childhood dream torn from the pages of "The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" of being inside The Natural History Museum after hour. Underneath the iconic blue whale stood both Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks who I adore, but it was Ms. Ephron that I was longing to speak to but too shy to approach. No small violins are playing here though, as in that inevitable way that life presents us all with our own full-circle story arcs, I had my opportunity years later to speak with her under much more meaningful circumstances.

So at this point in my own story, here is my love letter to Ms. Ephron that I posted in the wake of her recent passing:

"I will always remember Nora Ephron, not just because I loved her humor and her movies, but because she obsessively loved her Upper West Side apartment in the Apthorp and her article in The New Yorker about letting it go helped me to let go of my own apartment on the UPW that I was obsessively attached to. I loved her because when I was pregnant with my second child, and my aforementioned beloved home was in contract to be sold, I found myself sitting behind her in a movie theater and mustered up the courage to thank her for her Apthorp article. I told her of my heartache in moving and she turned around to me and put her hand on my arm and looked me squarely in the eyes as she said, "You will feel so stupid that you ever worried about leaving..." 

And it being Nora Ephron, it was said with the perfect mix of tenderness, tough love, perspective and emphasis. And of course, as I sit here looking out my window of my new home where I am greeted by rainbows, fireworks, and all the phases of the moon...I know she was right."

With deep abiding gratitude and love,
Elana