Blissiple – A Look Into My Childhood

Growing up, the word bliss was spoken a lot.

It may not be your typical childhood remembrance word, but in my household, my parents used it all the time. This phrase stands out: Follow your bliss.

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As I’ve mentioned before and state in my About page, I grew up in a rather unique town and attended a contemplative consciousness-based education school, from Kindergarten to Senior Year of high school. We took an hour for lunch each day, hopefully to encourage eating organic, sitting down and enjoying your meal (not rushing) and if possible, sitting with your family. The language I took was Sanskrit, and every class, even math, was related back to the Self. Interconnectedness was a theme.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to share my history because it is so bizarre.

Of course, this is just skimming the surface of the history and we each have our own story.

In a time where yoga wasn’t trendy and in Middle America where most people have never left their home state (of Iowa), we were often the subject of ridicule and even anger simply because it was different than what people knew. Maybe there’s a reason I’ve landed in liberal small cities like Burlington, VT and Boulder, CO…

My family is Italian-Catholic and inclined by a spiritual drive. Not driven by religion, but rather, driven by feeling good and the commitment to life of wellness and well, bliss.

I had the same subjects you probably did. Except, each morning before classes started and as classes ended in the afternoon, we would meditate and do yoga-asasas. There are thousands of kinds of meditations out there, all of which allow you to dive deep, take time out of your day and essentially, release stress.

Specifically, I practice Transcendental Meditation. I have since I was 5.

My small hometown in Iowa (or known as “Peacetown”) has nothing to do with Iowa – it was just the campus that was bought where the school was built (the other available campus was in Santa Barbara, CA but the Iowa campus was picked. Damn.). That said, everyone (my family included) moved from around the world to bring their children to a happy, wellness-related, conscious school, which created a pretty global small town.

I appreciate my upbringing. I appreciate seeing the deeper levels of life and being exposed to different cultures and ideas from such a young age.

Finally, I appreciate that I’ve always had a tool, that allows me to transcend the inevitable stress in life. Meditation doesn’t eliminate stress from entering your life (it always will), it allows you to sort through it and cut through the noise to find an inner level of peace.

That’s it. Simple. Take time for yourself. Whether it’s a hike, prayer, meditation, yoga, laughter, or a walk on the beach.

Bringing it back to bliss:

Back to bliss. Back to the first line in this story. I recently saw this amazing term coined by Rana Satori Stewart within Rob Brezny’s astrology newsletter:

“Blissipline,” she says, is “the commitment to experiencing a little or a lot of bliss every day; the practice of expanding one’s capacity for bliss and being open to receive it in any moment.” A “blissiplinarian” is “someone who enforces pleasure and invites opportunities for more pleasure,” while a “blissciple” is a person who aspires to master the art of blissipline. I encourage you to be a blissciple…because it will put you in sync with the effervescent invitations the cosmos has scheduled for you.

I love this. My wish for you today is bliss and if you feel so inclined, to be a blissciple.

What does bliss mean to you?