Coach Elliott

I think that the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life was to try to live as though I am a human being when in fact I am a spiritual being.  I also believe that there are many of us who fail to understand that we are not human beings, we are spiritual beings having this human experience.  Where we make our mistake is in believing that we are so powerful in our humanness that we can literally do everything right if we just live life smart enough.  We are in our heads all the time and not only are we not in our heart, we avoid that part of us, a spiritual aspect of who we really are.  I know that many would not agree with me and I am OK with that, yet I feel as though I am honoring myself and others by pointing out that we are not simply human and that there is so much more to us than that.  At the core of who we are is a spirit, a deeper part of us, where our souls reside and where our heart speaks to us.  At the center of our being is that we have a s...

We all know how difficult it can be not to let things get to us.  Whether it is the opinion of a loved one of us or an illness we cannot make go away, rising above it all is sometimes all that we can do.  We have to be able to take what we have and what we feel and lift ourselves to a higher vibration, a higher place in our heart.  Doing this takes intention and courage because when things are not quite as we planned it is really the only good choice we have.  We can dig ourselves deeper, focus on the bad or decide that this is not going to take us down.  In part, we take our power back and we do our very best to rise above the fear, the sadness, the disappointments and the expectations that people will be loving and kind all the time.  How do we do that?  Decide in this moment that you are going to enjoy this time in increments.  Take it one minute at a time.  Make that one decision to do whatever you can to rise above it.  Sit outsi...

So many of us Americans will claim to be stressed and busy all the time.  I think it is a personal goal of some to stay busy all be it to feel overwhelmed all the time .  We go to work each day, we run home to cook for our children, we help our children with homework and by the time bath time is complete it's time to go to bed.  We then repeat that same pattern every day, changing nothing about it and feeling as though this is the life we must live.  We overspend to feel happy, we drink to kill stress, we overeat because we are emotionally drained and we don't get enough rest because by the time we get to bed we are an atomic bomb of thoughts and feelings.  For the moms who are normally the hub of the household and who want to be super heroes there is yet another set of problems because they feel a need to be behind everything, everyone, all the time.  They have to be in control because that feels right for them but in the end they create their own stressfu...

We live in a world where we play different roles in different situations.  We are one personality at work, another at home and yet another socially.  How many people we are depends on need and although it can become difficult most of us are at least 2 personas we work with each day.  In some of our roles we avoid vulnerability because we have been programmed to believe that this is being weak.  Hence we hide our true feeling at the cost of becoming unhealthy and at times bringing on terminal illness that speaks to our inability to be in our truth.  Still in our world we celebrate strength and we look down on weakness.  We are so fearful of being vulnerable that we work long and hard to create an illusion that says: She has it all together OR He is such a strong man OR She is always happy and never lets anything get her down.  What we fail to see is that hiding the truth about how we feel has an emotional toll on us.  For this reason alone we must...

Most people believe meditation to be stationary and still.  For some of us this simply does not work, especially when we are already feeling anxious and feel unable to stay still.  I would like to share that meditation can be what we would like it to be and that if movement helps then we should put some music on and move to the music.  Here are some steps: Put on some music that you love and that is conducive to a soft movement.  Some like Buddha Bar while others might pick Yani or Liquid mind.  Stand still for a moment while you allow the music to move you, closing your eyes.  As the music plays start to move to it in place using every part of your body.  Sway to the music using your arms and hands in ways that feel natural to you.  Let yourself be taken away by the music and focus just on your movements.  While for some dance is natural, there are many who find it unnatural yet my contention is to make it about moving and connecting your ...

As part of my graduate work at USM in Spiritual Psychology there was one statment that was repeated every so often and that was: "we are spiritual beings having a human experience".  Since then I have been reading a book by Deepak Chopra, Power, Freedom, Grace that has furthered this truth for me and that makes complete sense to me.  In the past I have seen myself as a human being who has on ocassion had a spiritual experience.  Now I know that it is quite the contrary, I am a spirit having a human experience and eveything around me, the trees, the flowers, the clouds and other human beings are a part of me and I am a part of them.  Today I read a part of the book that cited a table as the energy placed into it by a carpenter and at first I thought, well that is nuts, only to understand that it makes perfect sense.  For so long I have said that old furniture has the energy of those who owned it, not really believing this but rather intuitively thinking it. ...

I guess some of you may be a bit tired of my conversations on dying.  I feel as though for me it is an endless dialogue  that we should have but don't.  Many of us do not think about dying until we are literally dying.  It is in that moment that perhaps we wish we'd thought about it a little more, planned it to some degree and then begin to ponder this idea of eternal life in spirit.  And so I invite the conversation to happen and that this talk be one that is open and honest.  I for one feel it a need to be more open about death and how important it is to live yet be more prepared for that moment when we leave this earth on bodily form. My first experience with death was when my great grandmother died in the middle of the night.  I remember being a young boy of about seven and waking up thinking: "something is not right here".  Once I got up and moved into the hallway I was stopped by my grandfather who warned me that there was something seriou...

Many of us believe that living in extremes either on the black side or the white side of life.  We fail to see the gray areas and when it comes to dying we are not any different.  We look at death as either really horrible or something we don't talk about at all.  We fail to see that death is just death and that discussing it does not put us any closer to it and in fact helps us to understand it on our own terms.  Although there are many ways to look at death and some plans to be made for our loved ones, we cannot live as though we are already dead.  I understand in a deep and profound manner that some of us are dealing with health issues that are severe and whereby the symptoms remind us that we are going to die.  It is easy to fall into an emotional trap when someone is diagnosed with cancer or heart disease.  Yet what I know in my heart is that life can be done even when death seems so close.   Affirming what we want often times gets us ther...

Had I been asked how I wanted to die in the past I would not have thought, gracefully.  I would have thought quickly, painlessly, but not gracefully.  Today I think differently about death.  I think about dying with grace and that means in gratitude.  After all, one can die in agony and angry and that does not seem to me to be such a great option.  Dying gracefully means that we let go at the precise moment when it is our time.  It means that we simply let go and surrender to the process of dying in a manner that is respectful to ourselves and to others.  Although many people die kicking and screaming it is not the way that we should transition.  I find that leaving this earth is a sacred moment and one that we can take with ease and grace of spirit, asking our guides to embrace us on a journey we are to take and one that we are to end. It is tempting to think that death is unfair, especially when we see young, vibrant people dying.   It is...

Every day we make a conscious decision to live.  Every day we decide if our day will be about living fully or about regrets and resentments.  Every day many of us get up and wonder what our purpose is and believe that it has to be a big purpose, something earth moving.  What we don't realize is that our purpose can be as simple as doing the best we can at work, loving our children with every part of our heart and being grateful for what we have.  Just one of these at one time is enough to fill our day up with a sense of purpose.  On the converse we can get up thinking what is the use we are going to die anyway and although that is true there is not any good reason to allow that to be the focus of every day and in fact some days we should completely avoid that kind of thinking.  At least for today we can decide that we are going to be focused on living and that death is not going to hover over us like a dark cloud following us every where we are and in every...