lara simmons

"It is not what we carry with us, but what we let go that defines us." -- Charlie Crews , " Life ," S2 E9 The focus for this week (Week 3) is on RELEASING.  Releasing can take many forms: letting go of something that is not working, moving on from a relationship that no longer feeds us, forgiving someone who has hurt us, detoxifying our bodies and minds from that which we consume that somehow damages us, etc.  One of my favorite tools for releasing is The Violet Flame Meditation. If you are a long-time reader you have almost surely heard me talk about this before. It is one of my favorite tools for forgiveness and is also great for RELEASING. In fact, I have a whole page on my website devoted to it . If you would like to learn more about this meditation, I encourage you to check it out.  Or, if you just want to give it a try, follow the instructions below:  Think of one thing that you would like to work on releasing and use the Violet Flame to h...

"If you LISTEN,  you will know everything  you need to know."   -- The Universe 

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." --Anaïs Nin Starting next Monday I will be doing a month-long series of Write Your Life mini-sessions. Woah, that's a mouthful! So what does that even mean - "a month-long series of Write Your Life mini-sessions?" Starting May 9th I will be posting one exercise from my new book " Write Your Life! " on my blog every Monday, allowing you to get a taste of the book and to begin to write your life. How will that work, you ask? FIRST, sign up in the sidebar ---------------> to receive blog posts via email. That way you are sure to receive the exercise for the week every Monday. NEXT, join my Facebook Community - Being & Becoming - to receive daily inspiration and responses to your questions LIVE every Tuesday and Thursday between 10:00 and 2:00 PST (I may not be online the whole time, but will respond as soon as I can ...

  "And we should forget, day by day, what we have done; this is true non-attachment. And we should do something new." --Shunryu Suzuki After almost five years - and more drafts than I can remember (fifteen? twenty?) - I am pleased to announce that I am publishing my first book today. What began as a class I first taught in August of 2011 at East West Bookshop , was scribbled out long-hand in a series of sketchbooks during a somewhat uncomfortable weekend writing retreat in New Mexico , and revised and designed over the past nine months since I began my blogging hiatus in May of last year, is now complete. It is not perfect, but I am proud of it. I hesitate to say proud because pride brings to mind an overabundance of good feelings about oneself, but checking the dictionary just to be sure this is the word I wanted to use, I found that "overabundance of good feelings about oneself" is actually the secondary meaning of proud and that it primarily means...

       + "...I believe that if you imagine, and keep on imagining, a better life....then events will conspire to present the opportunity to you." --Maisie Dobbs in "Messenger of Truth" by Jacqueline Winspear On January 12th I will once again be teaching WRITE YOUR LIFE at Mosaic Coffee House in Seattle. See below for more information. Would love to see you there! ~   *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~ WRITE YOUR LIFE! Are you STUCK, unsure about what comes next? Ready to re-create your life and move in a new direction, but don't know how to get started? Join me for a 1-day mini-retreat designed to help you discover and live the life you desire! DATE: January 12, 015 TIME: 10:00am to 1:00pm PLACE: Mosaic Coffee House 4401 2 nd Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105 This class is FREE! FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO REGISTER EMAIL: larasimmons(at)centurylink(dot)net Pre-registration is ...

Thanks to all of you who joined me for Session 1 of WRITE YOUR YEAR last night. While cold winds blew and snow threatened to fall, a diverse and committed group of writers came together in a cozy little nook at East West Bookshop to focus their intentions and write their year. Here's what we did: After introductions, I read the poem, " New Year's Day ," for a bit of inspiration.  Then we got down to the business of writing. The first exercise: to write a letter to an advice columnist about the biggest challenge or problem you are facing this year.  Taking this column from Carolyn Hax as an example, we wrote for twenty minutes.  After a short break we came back together and shared our experience; then spent a few minutes in head-clearing meditation before tackling part two of the exercise. Next it was time to turn the tables on our ego and write some "advice to myself." Striving to be as objective, kind and compassionate as possible - while keeping ...

"I cannot think of a better portent than this day for you... A clean slate A fresh canvas A pristine and absolutely cloudless dawn Nothing to intervene between you and those potent rays Of the dawn of a new day. It bodes well... May you travel smoothly across these waters through the unerring Guidance from on High, and may all that was best in the year gone by be preserved and all the rest be eclipsed by the best that is to come!" -JM My dear friend Jonathan shared these beautiful words with me in his New Year's Day email. I cannot think of a better way to start the year. If you are ready to start the year right and to make this your best year yet, join me tonight at East West Bookshop in Seattle and WRITE YOUR YEAR! Based on my manifestation writing class WRITE YOUR LIFE , this class is designed to help you create the life you desire, using writing as a tool for manifestation and change. You do not need to be a “writer” to benefit fro...

"There's only one very good life. The one you know you want and you make yourself. " -- Diana Vreeland Are you ready to live a very good life? Are you ready to make 2013 your best year yet? Then join me in January at East West Bookshop in Seattle and WRITE YOUR YEAR! Based on my manifestation writing class WRITE YOUR LIFE , this class is designed to help you create the life you desire this year, using writing as a tool for manifestation and change. You do not need to be a “writer” to benefit from this class, but you do need a willingness to look openly and honestly at your life, to forgive and let go, and to put words into action and to take the next step with courage. If you are ready, go here to register. Hope to see you there!

WRITE YOUR LIFE Session Two tonight at East West Bookshop . Join us!

Wow! What a great group of writers - 21 in all! - showed up on Wednesday to write their lives at East West Bookshop . I enjoyed getting to know you all and hearing about the role writing plays in your lives and where you would like to go from here. If you couldn't make the first session, here's what you missed: For a bit of inspiration we read Dear Sugar's column " Write Like a Motherfucker ." Then we each wrote our own "Dear Sugar" letter, to Sugar or our favorite advice columnist, about what we felt was the main thing holding us back right now or what we needed advice on to move forward in our lives. After a time of sharing, we came back to our journals, put on our advice columnist caps and wrote back to ourselves with some objective, kind and compassionate advice. (ADVICE TO MYSELF) Putting our advice columnist hats away, we shifted focus to Part Two of our mini-session: RELEASING YOUR STORY. In this section of class, we focus on letting...

Today's the day! WRITE YOUR LIFE tonight at East West Bookshop.

This is it! Only one week to go until we are going to write our lives together. Are you signed up yet? If not, click here to sign up. Hope you can join us! 

Are you feeling STUCK, unsure about what comes next? Do you want to WRITE, but never seem to find the time? Are you ready to RE-CREATE your life, but don't know how? Please join me at East West Bookshop in Seattle on August 15th and 22nd and WRITE YOUR LIFE ! Over the course of two evenings we will take a look at where we are in our lives, where we want to go, and how to use writing as a way to get there. Whether writing is what you truly want to do, or "just" the means to your ultimate goal, this class can help you learn how to manifest that which you truly desire. Hope to see you there!

Are you feeling STUCK, unsure about what comes next? Do you want to WRITE, but never seem to find the time? Are you ready to RE-CREATE your life, but don't know how? Please join me at East West Bookshop in Seattle on August 15th and 22nd and WRITE YOUR LIFE ! Over the course of two evenings we will take a look at where we are in our lives, where we want to go, and how to use writing as a way to get there. Whether writing is what you truly want to do, or "just" the means to your ultimate goal, this class can help you learn how to manifest that which you truly desire. Hope to see you there!

"Ask and you SHALL receive." --From Voice of Choices Jan 2006 (paraphrasing Matthew 7:7 from The Bible) For months I have been saying to myself, "I should submit a proposal to teach WRITE YOUR LIFE at East West Books (a local New Age bookstore)." And for months I have done NOTHING about it. Last week I was having my weekly check-in with my sister and I asked for her intuitive hit on this. Was it not happening because it just wasn't meant to be, or was I sabotaging myself because I was scared of it? She said that she was getting the latter and that perhaps I should ask my ego to step aside and let me do this thing I said I wanted to do. The next day I decided this was it, I was going to submit the proposal and go for it. Luckily they make it super-duper easy to do online and within 30 minutes I had sent the proposal off and given it to The Universe to decide what happened next. Twenty-four hours later I got an offer to teach an abbreviated versio...

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching another class in January of this year. My sister will be in town for the holidays are we are going to be co-presenting: Get GLOWING for 2012 and WRITE YOUR YEAR! An Experiential Empowerment & Intention-Setting Workshop Follow YOUR Passions! Find YOUR Purpose! Love YOUR Life! Write YOUR Year! The Den @ Mosaic Coffeehouse 4401 2nd Ave NE Seattle, WA 98105 Tuesday, January 3, 2012 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Love ♥ Offering   Email to: dearsoulsisters@gmail.com to register I hope you will plan to join us! I wish you all the JOY of the season and nothing but the best for 2012!

This week is the culmination of all of our work together over the past five weeks. This is the part where we WRITE OUR LIVES. First, a couple of my favorite quotes on manifestation: "Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it...You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.” --Liz Gilbert "We are living in a dynamic, intelligent Field capable of instantaneous response to each one of us. (It may help to read that statement again.) Instead of living in a gigantic machine in which we are only a tiny cog, we have the opportunity to recognize and identify ourselves as something much more significant – something that the awesome and intelligent creative force that has created the plant kingdom, weather, human beings, this planet, and galaxies beyond, responds to.” --John Nicholl To start flexing your manifestation muscle, begin with the Radical Manifestation Worksheet from Colin Tipping (a...

Who is a writer? Often we think of writing “professionally” as the only legitimate way to call yourself a writer, but looking back on my own writing life, it wasn't until I started writing “just” for myself that my writing really took off. The writing I have done because it really pleased me has been much more satisfying than the writing I have done for money. I would urge you to use this measure of your success - Does my writing please me? Am I enjoying the process? Am I satisfied with what I am  writing? - rather than how much money you make from it. And if you write, dare to call yourself a WRITER!   Here are some of my favorite quotes about writing:   "Everybody is talented original and has something important to say." --Brenda Ueland from her book " If You Want to Write ."   “...[A] writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a wri...

In today's session we worked on bringing more presence to our lives and to our writing. Class began with a ten minute full body meditation . Taking a few deep breaths and then bringing awareness to each part of our body, starting with our toes. Feeling into each part of our bodies, feeling its structures, its movements, its energy. After the meditation we began to explore the concept of small stones. This exercise was created by Fiona Robyn a writer in England whose website is called Writing Our Way Home .  A small stone is "a very short piece of writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment." Writing small stones can help us be more present to our lives and to our writing. We read some examples of small stones from Fiona's small stones blog , her blogzine a handful of stones , as well as from my own small stones blog pebbles are small stones . Then we went out and wrote small stones of our own for 30-35 minutes before coming back together to share our...

Another great session of WRITE YOUR LIFE this week. We welcomed a new member to the class (Welcome Mary!) and missed those of you who couldn't make it. Hope to see you back next week!  In this session, we started off with the idea that we all have a "story" about who we are. This is not necessarily a bad thing - it is part of being human - but sometimes our "story" no longer fits and we need to let go of it in order to write a new one. So ask yourself this question: WHAT IS MY "STORY?" and AM I READY TO LET IT GO? (Some examples might be, "I am the 'good girl,'" or "I am the 'black sheep of the family.'") As a way to let go of the part of the story that no longer fits, we did an exercise from the book, Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping . It is called The Three Letters Process. In this exercise you write three letters to someone who you feel has wronged you or in some way treated you badly. Choose someone w...