Guest Post. Wayne Dyer’s Daughter: Skye Dyer, Singer Extraordinaire.

December 20, 2011

Welcome to the Manifestation Station Q & A Series, where I sit down with someone inspiring whom I want to share with the world.

Today’s guest is an exciting one for me. Dr. Wayne Dyer is my main source of inspiration (and I am manifesting doing a Q & A with him. It is on my vision board, folks!). I believe he truly taught me the power of manifesting.

Today’s guest is his daughter Skye Dyer.

I met his daughter Skye a couple years ago when he spoke in Santa Monica and she graced the audience with her voice. Since then, our friendship has developed and I can safely say that she is one of the kindest people I have ever come across. Together, we are conspiring to make an amazing DVD in 2012, with me teaching yoga and Skye singing. Her voice is lovely as many of you who have heard her sing at her father’s talks or on PBS or through Hay House already know.

What you don’t know is what is coming next for Skye!

I want you all to get to know this woman because she is about to take the world by storm with her music. She plans to release an album of her own soulful music at some point next year where the world will get to see her in a new and profoundly different way. I chose Skye to start off the series with because I found her story to be so inspiring and to resonate so closely with what The Manifestation Station is all about. She chose to follow her bliss and take the road less traveled. And for that, my dear Manifesters, I love her.

She loves deeply and lets that love shine through her voice.

Jennifer Pastiloff: What are you most proud to have manifested in your life?

Skye Dyer: I am proud of so many things that I have manifested in my life but I am most proud of the love and respect that I have with my husband.

Jennifer Pastiloff: How much of your dad’s (Wayne Dyer) philosophies and words do you live by?

Skye Dyer: I truly live by all of my parents philosophies. I am who I am because of all the wisdom and knowledge that they have bestowed on me, and the freedom to decide if these ideas mesh with who I am. I never take for granted how lucky I am to have been raised by two of the most spiritually intelligent people I have ever met.

JP: One of my favorite stories to hear your dad share is when you wanted to leave school to follow your bliss and be a singer. Can you share with us a bit about that. Not everyone is as much a Wayne Dyer fanatic as I am, so some do not know it.

SD: I have always known my true passion was for music and truly believed in my ability to sing. I was at college studying Jazz Vocal and at school they were constantly reminding us of how it would be very difficult to excel in this profession and that very few of us would be successful, possibly none at all. These ideas did not gel with what I had been taught my whole life, and that was to never put limitations on yourself, and all they were doing was trying to limit our potential. I decided that I was going to switch majors and sing because I loved it and for no other reason. I then decided to leave school and start traveling with my father and gain some experience by singing in front of his audiences. It was the best decision of my life 🙂

JP: What is your favorite part about traveling with your dad?

SD: Getting to spend time with one of my favorite people in this world. My dad is truly the most intelligent person I know and I love that I am constantly learning when I am around him. He also is the most humorous person I know so I love that we are always laughing. Basically my dad is the greatest and I love him.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCxrarPGQwM]

JP: Knowing you personally, I know there is something else waiting for us in terms of Skye Dyer music. What is next for you?

SD: More songwriting that really expresses who I am and what is going on around me or within me. I am always exploring and traveling the world so that I can connect with people thru my music. Hopefully people will finally really know me!

JP: What or who inspires you most?

SD: People that are living a life of service and on purpose, they inspire me the most.

JP: What is Skye Dyer manifesting for 2012?

SD: I am manifesting songs from my heart and the ability to truly touch people with my voice.

JP: I have set of rules. See below. What are some of Skye’s rules?

Skye’ Rules:

1. If you have the choice to be kind or right, always be kind

2. Love with an open heart

3. Remember to laugh at yourself and others

4. Be grateful and enjoy every moment

5. Never care about anyone’s negative opinion it is their opinion not yours

6. Become obsessed with something you love

7. Sweat and meditate everyday

8. A little wine never hurt anybody

JP: If you could thank one person right now, who would it be?

SD: I would thank my husband for loving me unconditionally and always believing in me no matter what.

Skye and her husband.

JP: My dream was to be on Good Morning America. Did it! My next dream is to tour with your dad to at least one city and have him give me a blurb for my upcoming book. ( It’s also to raise at least $500,00 for Prader Willi Syndrome research.) If you could have one dream come true in regards to your music, what would that be? THE WORLD IS LISTENING.

SD: I want my album to come out this year, a collection of songs that really shares who I am with the world, to be touring and singing those songs for people everywhere. And loving every second of it.

The stunning Skye singing her heart out.

JP: I am excited that we are partnering up for my yoga dvd, and even more excited about how our friendship has developed. For those that don’t know, I am a firm believer in ” ask and you shall receive.” The burning question is: Do you practice yoga?

SD: Lol I knew you would ask me this. I do practice yoga but I am not as diligent as I should be, maybe you can whip me in shape 🙂

JP: How does family play a part in your life?

SD: My family strongly shapes every part of my life. They are my world and I am so grateful for each and every one of them. They are all my teachers and my best friends and I don’t know what I would do without them.

To learn more about the lovely Skye please join her Facebook page. Stay tuned for her album and her own world tours!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Skye-Dyer/113118728730689

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Jen Pastiloff’s rules:

1. Be Kind.

2. Have a sense of humor especially when it comes to yourself

3. Write poems, even if only in your head

4. Sing out loud, even if badly

5. Dance

6. If you don’t have anything nice to say… you know the deal

7. Find things to be in awe of

8. Be grateful for what you have right now . yes, even your little one bedroom apartment with the ugly carpet

9. Watch Modern Family

10. Duh, do yoga

11. Don’t worry. Everyone on Facebook seems like they have happier and funner lives. They don’t.

12. Tell someone you love that you love them. Right now.

13.. Take more pictures.

14. Forgive yourself for not being perfect. no such thing.

Daily Manifestation Challenge

Mean People Suck. The DMC. Daily Manifestation Challenge.

December 19, 2011

Today’s DMC, or Daily Manifestation Challenge is about Kindness.

I have had so much kindness displayed to me in my life.

For this I am eternally grateful.

While I was still waitressing at the Newsroom, 5 years ago, my regulars, The Simons, came in for lunch as usual. I was upset and they noticed. My nephew Blaise had just been born in Atlanta and there were major complications. He was in Intensive Care (NICU) and was having his brain scanned. I was crying as I was taking their order for Arnold Palmers. I had no money to fly there, I was scared. I got their iced tea-lemonades and came back.

They told me they were sending me to Atlanta.

They did.

I will never forget that act of kindness.

Now that is a big example, but there are lots of small ones. Every time I go in my bank, the tellers all know my name and say hello. It’s like Cheers. Small acts of kindness like this are not small to me at all.

They keep me going.

So back to mean people. Yea, they pretty much suck. And kind people pretty much rule.

And, yes I know that their lack of kindness is coming from a deep well of unhappiness or insecurity or tiredness or because someone else was just lousy to them. So here is my advice to them: take a deep breath in, bite the inside of your cheek if you have to, but, under no circumstances, should you do or say something to tear someone down or to try and make them feel less than.

So what I decided is that to make up for every person who is less than kind I will be extra kind. Take today’s DMC with me! It feels good. Be kind for no reason. Be kind to a homeless person. Be kind to the person in the car next to you. Be kind with your thoughts. Be kind to yourself.

That, Dear Manifesters, is the essence of yoga to me.

II.33 Vitarkabadhane Pratipaksabhavanam

“In the face of negativity, one should cultivate the opposite view.”

So yea, mean people may suck a little tiny bit.

There may be a moment when you feel like they have sucked the life out of you but you will get back up, with a smile and you will go do something nice for someone or yourself. You will forget about anything else. Your kindness, whether it was given or received, will overpower anything perceived as meanness.

The bottom line really is this anyway isn’t it? If we are to take nothing personally then even “meanness” should go unnoticed.

Yea, I am working on it too.

So today let’s kill ’em with kindness.

Oh, and PS, If you are of the “meanies”, here’s a little secret: It is way easier to be kind than mean. And it makes you look cuter!

Keep Kindly Manifesting your life,

one laugh and one SMILE at a time

@manifestyogajen

MUST WATCH THIS KINDnESS ViDEO & SHARE

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc8ZbVcdHpg&feature=youtu.be]

Uncategorized

Daily Horoscope by Jen Pastiloff: Professional Horoscope Maker-Upper.

December 19, 2011

I am writing horoscopes that come from deep within the well of my imagination.

In case you missed this one the other day.

A horoscope for you today by Jen Pastiloff, professional horoscope maker:

Although at first, this feeling of utter Delight & Joy make catch you unawares.

But, after a brief glance in the mirror, where you will do a double take to make sure it is really you, the following hard fact will be accepted……You will no longer care what Others think about You.

You will step outside and sing out loud and perhaps do a little jig on the sidewalk in your pajamas.

And although you may sing horribly and dance even worse and your pajamas may be on inside out, you will do so with such utter freedom and grace that the world will clap and praise you.
And you won’t even notice. Just as you won’t notice the one person that rolls their eyes at you.

You will come to the revelation that your father was right when he told you ” The only opinion that matters is your own.”
You will march to the beat of your own iPhone.
You will be free.

Guest Posts, Little Seal

Closing the Exit Door. Guest Post by Emily Rapp.

November 20, 2011

The following guest post is by my favorite writer and dear friend, Emily Rapp. Many of you know her already because I talk about her endlessly. Some of you may even follow her own blog Little Seal. Emily is a great source of inspiration and love for me. I urge you to take the time and read her words. Also, my Manifestation t-shirts are an effort to raise money for Tay Sachs, as well as Prader Willi Research. It is my greatest honor to introduce you, Dear Manifesters, to the brilliant and gorgeous Emily Rapp.

Closing the Exit Door by Emily Rapp

When I first learned that my son, Ronan, would die before he turned four years old of a rare, progressive neurological disease called Tay-Sachs, I felt too sad to live. I thought I cannot stay awake.

I thought I want to die.

All of the self-destructive coping mechanisms I had relied on in the past – binge drinking, starving, extreme exercise, overworking, impulse shopping – were no longer any use to me. There was no place to go where I did not feel pain. There was no method of transformation available to me, which is another way of saying that there was no exit door. For several months grief became my life, and for the rest of my life grief will be a major player in it.

How do people survive a world when every step forward feels like dropping through a trap door? Some people don’t.

In 1944 my grandfather, a man from whom I inherited my red hair and many other traits (I’m told), shot himself with a rifle in a hot barn. Nobody knows the full story; nobody knows why. Was it depression, addiction, or a combination of these? Did the same fate await me, the recipient of at least some of his genetics? He was a unique man in a unique position in a unique period of time: an Irish Catholic father of two who, if he had asked for help for his depression or addiction or other problem, would have had limited resources. Depending on what he needed he may have been judged harshly by his conservative rural community, maybe even been outcast. The fact that my grandfather took his life makes me much more likely (if you believe in statistics) to do the same. I understood this in the first thunderous days after Ronan’s diagnosis, and I was afraid.

I understood the deepest shadow side of myself.

But when I looked at my fear straight on, a strategy I learned, in part, from yoga, I found something I hadn’t expected – not an exit, but an entrance.

When I looked into the fire of my grief and despair, and then sat down in it, then got familiar with it (tasting, touching, breathing, smelling, eating it) I found a new coping mechanism – my vocation as a writer – to be the only one that offered any assistance, any help at all. I couldn’t have been more surprised. Up to that point, most of my life as a writer consisted of procrastination, spurts of inspiration, cross country trips to residencies where I spent the bulk of my time “getting settled in my new environment,” racing to meet deadlines, and hours and hours logged at coffee shops in Austin, Texas and Provincetown, Massachusetts, and then West L.A., staring at a painfully white screen and longing to write while simultaneously wishing I’d already written whatever it is I was attempting to write. Not anymore. Writing became (and perhaps it always was) a compulsion, a necessary ritual fueled by a desire as strong as wanting that next drink, that next award, that next expensive sweater, that next (and even lower) number on the bathroom scale, only instead of tearing my world down to its most destructive components, it made my world huge, massive, much bigger than I ever thought it could be. I wrote a book about my son to keep me in the world, and I’m still doing it. Writing closed that particular exit door. It kept me in the room of my life.

I try to imagine myself, years from now, without my son, and I try to envision what I want that life to look like: chaotic, filled with dogs and children and books and good food and cheap wine and brilliant friends and travel and hours of contemplative thinking time. Space. Room. Joy. Light. A life of the mind; a state of the heart.

Some may believe this is heartless or cruel, to fast-forward to my life without Ronan, to try and manifest a vision of this happiness, but without this future-directed act of manifestation, an activity I’ve learned much about from Jen’s yoga classes and from her presence in my life, I couldn’t imagine and I couldn’t write, and if I couldn’t write I couldn’t live. Without the hint of this promise, we look to our lives and see only ways out, doors to the outside, an overabundance of possible exits.

Yoga teaches us that we are both limited and enhanced by our desires, and the energy behind them can serve you – through breath, meditation, mindfulness. Sitting in a room with other people, moving and making shapes with the body is a kind of magic, but it’s also a kind of meditation, manifestation, a kind of necessary work that can last throughout your life and also help you live it.

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I hope you will all consider buying a t-shirt or spreading the word about them in an effort to raise money for research and to help with any costs Ronan many need.

Order one here. https://www.jenniferpastiloff.com/PayPal.html

Manifesting Your Life,

One Laugh at a Time,

Jen (JenPastiloff on Twitter)

Delight, Guest Posts, Inspiration

Shedding. Guest Post by Actress & Writer Sabrina Lloyd.

November 15, 2011

I am so excited by this post. In the title, I wrote simply of Sabrina Lloyd that she is an actress and writer. Ha! This woman, Dear Manifesters, is truly one of the most interesting people I have come across in my life. I first met her in Italy last summer at my annual Italy Manifestation Yoga retreat. A dear friend, Alimi Ballard, who had co-starred on the tv show Numbers with her, sent her an article I had written. She liked what she read and signed up for my Italy yoga retreat on the spot. (I liked this about her.) The retreat was in Tuscany and she lived in Rome so it just a train ride away. Immediately I fell in love with her. Dear Manifesters, when I think of people I want to model my life after, I think of Sabrina Lloyd. She is present and passionate. She is fiercely devoted to her family. She is a yogi, through and through, returning to her mat again and again over a period of 20 years. She is talented in a way that transcends definition. Give her a camera or a pen or a stage and you will be in awe. So, low and behold, when she agreed to do a guest post, I was over the moon. I can’t be with her in Rome right now, but I can share a little piece of her with you. It is my greatest pleasure to introduce you to one of my favorite human beings: Sabrina Lloyd. Enjoy her.

Sabrina and I having our morning coffee on the roof at Ebbio during my yoga retreat

Shedding : A Manifestation in process

by Sabrina Llyod

Ten years ago, I lay down on my bed in my tiny NYC apartment and prayed for the world to open itself up to me.

My entire childhood I wanted to be an actress and have been very fortunate to find success in that field. But what I thought would bring me happiness, what I had been hoping would make me solid—define me—simply swirled around me like mist, holding me in, and I was still unknown to myself.

So I prayed daily for everything to expand.

My prayers were answered in the form of a beautiful boy who has taken me from all I’ve ever known and is giving me the entire world as my backyard as we roam this spinning sphere for his work with the United Nations. Each stop has been a shedding, a loosening of my ideas and concepts, formed from my culture, as to how I define myself, how to define myself, why I need to define myself.

I am currently studying literary theory with the University of London. At the beginning of the course you must choose five schools of criticism to go deep within. One path available is that of Feminist Critique. I made the assumption that I would not find that of interest and planned to focus more on language and deconstruction, Marx, Freud.

However, each student must at least have a general knowledge of every school so into the shallows of feminist theory I waded, and into the deep of it I now passionately swim.

One of the main ideas behind it is that of gendering. How we become, through our culture—how we become defined—by the norms, ideas of what it means to be ‘feminine’ (or ‘masculine’). How ‘female’ is our biological beginning, but how ‘woman’ is carved out, molded, forced upon us in literature, art, advertising, etc. In linking this idea with deconstruction you start to see how all our preconceptions of how we live, how we look at our world, our place in it are really just constructions in themselves.

Take love, for instance.

What did it look like before words gave it its ideal? Romance and passion, destiny, soul mates are all literary, cultural constructions. I am not saying love is not real, but the labels we put on what something should look like, how something is defined, perhaps should be looked through instead.

When I left NY to follow that boy (now a man and my husband), I didn’t know who I would be without the label of ‘actor’ attached to me. I’ve been trying on new labels: Ex-patriot, wife, mother, writer, but each still swirl without landing and the horizon remains hazy; I feel trapped and crouching under definitions.

So everyday I try and stand on my mat and let go of any need to label. To find an identity outside of words, concepts, that beautiful place of peace that yoga gives you when you just flow, and breathe, and are. When I leave the mat, instead of filling my head with constructed chatter that limits all I can be, I try and remain larger.

I can’t always do it.

History is a heavy burden to wear, but every now and then the boundaries that society and I have put upon me fall away and I expand, endlessly, in every direction, undefined and indefinable.

: Sabrina and her daughter in Uganda

If you would like more of this lovely lady, please follow her blog Red Dirt Lattes. Also keep an eye out for her latest film, Hello Lonesone, which received rave reviews from the NY Times.

If you would like to join me in Italy in July for my Manifestation Yoga Retreat to Tuscany please click here and reach out. The retreat will be small and intimate and is filling up fast.

Keep Manifesting Your Life,

One Laugh at a Time,

ManifestYogaJen

Things I Have Lost Along The Way

What Was Lost.

October 2, 2011

Ah, Loss.

My hearing loss to be precise.

Last week I went through a period of depression where I was feeling very very sorry for myself because what I am missing out on must be so much, so spectacular, so profound. So much must be lost on me. I am the lone angel with just one wing.

Then I come back from the Very Dark Place. The VDP.

Things which I have lost: My eating disorder, my keys, my 20’s, my appetite for drama, my desire to be an actress, a wallet once with 400 dollars in tips from waitressing right before Thanksgiving, on my way to buy pies at Polly’s Pies, while it was still Polly’s Pies. My diamond earrings. Things I have not lost but thought I had: my father, the sound of quiet. If I try hard enough I can find these things I thought I lost in corners and caves and unexpected rooms of my life.

What have you truly lost along the way? What have you thought you lost only to wake up and realize that it was with you all along, it’s hand right there, over your heart, where you left it.

What if I am not missing anything at all? What if everything I ever needed is right here even if it sounds a little different to my elephant ears? What if my father is right over there, on a couch in my room right now, smoking his Kools, having a good old laugh at how serious I take my life. What if he’s telling me to ‘Lighten up, you’re not missing much, kiddo’?

Maybe elephants can hear mountains. Maybe each mountain range creates a different sound, a different tone when the wind blows over it. A soundscape as vivid as a landscape, only visible to an elephant’s ears.

I am like an elephant.

I can hear the mountains talking to me. I can hear the sun and the wind, the sky also when no one else can. These phantom sounds have guided me through the plains of my life. I read lips to guide me through the terrain. And when the lips fail me, I have always thought I was lost.

The below video is a 29 year old girl hearing her voice for the first time. Found!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOo3jzkhYA&feature=player_embedded]

The thick jelly roll of noise

Filled with soft syllables and unspoken words

Is all around you if you just

Open the ear in your heart.

Tune the fork which vibrates in your chest

which knows when something is said,

even if it isn’t.

I am the deaf poet.

I hear you.

Clamoring up there in your head

Fighting with your own thoughts who

Use swords and knives and vicious words to win.

Relying on trickery.

Some things will break or be lost.

There will always be a hole

Where the sound of wind passing through

Will be a loud lonely sound

that I alone can hear.

You must fill that hole with memories,

songs your father sang you, people you love,

Your children, favorite songs, photographs.

You must fill it and seal it

With wet sand, bricks, mortar.

And then hang a sign that says

“ No Vacany”.

You’re full up.

I am the deaf poet.

I rely on the train of the invisible,

it’s texture dense, heavy mud.

Your heart has an ear.

My ear has a heart.

I can hear things that you can’t though. I can feel the warrior in yoga, the curl of the back. The opening of the heart. Even if I miss the direction. I can hear the quiet in between the quiet, the arches of eyebrows, the pursing of lips. I can hear the music of unspoken gestures, the tick tock of need, the roaring of lust, the whining of dissatisfaction. I can hear the tree frog sound of anger even though your mouth moving in circles alludes me.

Nothing is lost.

~JP

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The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
~Elizabeth Bishop

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