Practical and encouraging support as you renew your outlook on life in 2018. Expectation- and pressure-free, step-by-step advice that you can use at will (or not!) to refresh and revitalize yourself, step outside the box and into the life of your dreams!

Global Groove Life (GGL) shares our personal fair trade favorites - the top 10 stocking stuffers to satisfy everyone’s unique needs on your list this year.

Conscious consumerism allows us to flex our spending power and shift humanity towards a more just and flourishing global society. Transform Black Friday and create a sustainable world with your gifts!

As the wheel of the year continues to roll on, we in the northern hemisphere are nesting and preparing for the darker months. Time to go within, connect with ancestors, and prepare for the coming of a new year. All of these things are much easier to do in a safe and sacred container. In this article Global Groove Life shares how you can incorporate ancient wisdom and herbal healing into your life via the use of incense to create a space of sacredness for yourself and your loved ones.

Sanctuary of Scents

Creating your dream home is totally possible! It’s important to keep in mind your style preferences and how you want to feel in your space. Energetics are just as important as visual aesthetics!

You can maintain your home sanctuary with traditional techniques - like burning incense to keep things just the way you like them. Stay true to your values and enjoy a more peaceful ambiance with all natural herbal incense. Global Groove Life (GGL) has a curated collection of hand crafted Tibetan and Nepalese incense for you to choose from to help you create a clean, conscious vibe in your home or office.

Home For The Holy Days

The months of October and September are noted as being special times of the year around the world. These are times when there is less separation between worlds than usual and when spirit communication is easier to perceive. Many groups celebrate holy days during this time of the year.

All Hallow’s Eve, for example, is the night when the dead can supposedly return to walk the Earth once more. Dia de los Meurtos is a celebration honoring those who have passed on and their return to this world. Samhain is a Pagan Sabbat (holy day) marking the end of the harvest and entrance into the dark time of year. It is a time to honor those who came before us and is recognized as the day when the veil between the worlds is the thinnest.

Across cultures these days are honored with a combination of group celebration and personal ritual. Purification and cleansing are important parts of both collective ceremony and individual practice. Smudging with the smoke of sacred herbs is a powerful way to purify yourself and your space. Sage is commonly used as a smudge or incense for cleansing and protection.

Space For The Sacred

Many cultures have a custom of ritual purification. Smoke from sacred herbs like sage and resins like frankincense cleanses impurities and removes negative energy - both from people and from spaces like your meditation room.

Including incense on your altar is a wonderful aesthetic addition and is also very practical. The incense can be used to purify the space and as a devotional offering to your ancestors and any deities you honor. In several traditions, smoke is believed to carry prayers up to the Divine!

Certain scents are particularly well known and celebrated for their spiritual purity and uplifting abilities. Frankincense releases powerful positive energy and creates space for spiritual growth, wisdom, and meditation. Another popular incense for your spiritual altar is sandalwood. Sandalwood has a rich scent that invites spiritual awareness, development of psychic abilities, and deep meditation.

What scents create a feeling of comfort and purity for you? Share in the comments and remember to order your favorites from GGL!

 

 

Amara Evans is a vibrational healer, collective consciousness-raiser, and devotee of the Goddess. She loves to connect with her global community through writing and speaking about important topics like the environment, spirituality, and fair trade.

Embrace a boho chic style that expresses your unique tastes and inspirations. You can live the life you love while you’re globe-trotting and when you’re enjoying the comforts of home by incorporating vibrant decor into your space!

La Vie Boheme

Stereotypes about the bohemian lifestyle abound. Writer Sarah Thornton reminds us that “Parisians originally adopted the term, associated with nomadic Gypsies, to describe artists and writers who stayed up all night and ignored the pressures of the industrial world.”

The best thing about this style? There is no “box” to stay inside of! Each bohemian space is an individual expression - as unique as the free spirits who are drawn to this type of aesthetic. You can choose to dabble with a pop of bright color or jump in fully, filling every nook and cranny with eclectic treasures.

Whether you’re redesigning your whole house or are searching for a few of the perfect accent pieces, Global Groove Life has you covered with an abundance of fair trade goods in the Home Style section of our website.

More Is More

When it comes to boho decor more is more! That means more rich textiles, more tribal accents, and more patterns can weave together to create a cozy vibe in your nest. So have fun and let your imagination soar! Experiment with introducing different combinations of hues and prints into your living space.

Adorning your space with bright colors and rounded shapes can create a haven of comfort and style. Strands of bright pompoms bring a curtain of juicy color and delightful texture to any room. Bohemian living entices us to expect the unexpected and expand our style horizons.

Mix & Match

Do you love the rich color palettes of indigenous embroidery from one part of the world and the standout patterns that create an entirely different look and feel? Great! Mixing and matching - or even clashing - are all celebrated when you choose to go with a boho decor. So go ahead, expand your sense of style.

Add one of our patterned yoga ball covers to any room and invite friends and family to find comfort in new ways when they come over for a visit. GGL has plenty of multi-tonal yoga ball cover choices that will keep you feelin groovy in your home. Your living room can be a happily full reflection of your internal joy and excitement.

Feeling inspired to recreate your living space as a plush boho wonderland? Check out these bold patterned cushion covers. There are so many ways to display your well-traveled, interesting, and ethically sound aesthetics with your home style choices!

“‘Style’ is an expression of individualism mixed with charisma,” John Fairchild. GGL encourages you to be bold, be expressive, be you!

 

 

Did you know that yoga balls are sold by their height - 55cm, 65cm, 75cm etc.?
How can you easily measure a ball's size? We'll show you in this video as well as demonstrating how to get the snug fit we're all looking for.

Fitting instructions:

Use the pre-cut string provided with your ball cover.  The string should wrap around the circumference (the middle of the ball) snugly without any extra length for a correct fit.

To double check you have purchased the right size:

Our strings are cut to 68” for a 55cm ball, 80” for a 65cm ball and 92” for a 75cm ball.

Now place the full circular piece of fabric at the top of your ball. This is the end WITHOUT the plug.

Wrap the cover around the ball gathering loose fabric towards the zip and then start closing the zip while continuing to smooth out loose folds of fabric towards the zip. When you get close to closing the zip completely, you may have some room to inflate your ball a little more for the most snug fit possible.­­

Once your ball is all dressed up, it’s show time!  We, here at Global Groove Life, love seeing how great your new ball cover looks in your space, so post a photo of your new look on Instagram and tag us @GlobalGrooveLife  ---Can’t wait to see you there!

Thank you for supporting Fair Trade with your purchase!

*Hand Wash*Line Dry*    

Sustainability is a priority to most people in conscious circles so it makes perfect sense to support the expansion of your consciousness with practices and products that also support our planet and all our relations. Global Groove Life (GGL) is happy to share deeper insights with you about the materials we choose to use in our products - in this case our meditation cushions.

 

A Seat Above

Let’s face it, if you aren’t comfortable then your meditation practice will not be as focused or as beneficial for you. We’re often shown unrealistic images of people meditating in magazines and online. People are portrayed sitting in lotus or half-lotus position on the ground which is not a comfortable position for the body to be in for extended periods of time.

If you’re naturally very limber or have been practicing yoga for years then maybe these positions will work for you but for most folks these poses can feel uncomfortable or challenging. It’s much better for many bodies to sit with the hips elevated above the knees. Enter the zafu - a traditional seat used for meditation and more. The filler inside these cushions is a perfect combination of strong and malleable to support you in sitting for as long as you’d like to.

Organic, Roasted… Buckwheat

Nope, we’re not talking about coffee! The words organic and roasted are describing the buckwheat filler used in our meditation cushions! This buckwheat is grown without the use of pesticides - yay! - because it is a naturally pest-free crop. Not only is the buckwheat used in GGL’s zafus pesticide-free, it’s also synergistic to its environment. It actually enhances the soil it’s grown in!

After it’s harvested the hulls are roasted which cleans them and ensures the integrity of the husk. This allows for your meditation cushion to maintain its shape for much longer than hulls that have been processed by washing versus roasting - which means your zafu will support your meditation practice for a long time.

Sustainable Tree-sources

Global Groove Life is committed to bringing you high quality products that are sustainably sourced. The zafus we sell are no exception to these standards. Both the buckwheat hulls and kapok fiber used as filler for them are pesticide-free.

Kapok fiber is a durable and mold-resistant material, making it perfect for long term use. It’s a more sustainable filler option that cotton. Did you know that 25% of all pesticides used in the world are used on the cotton crop? Kapok is one of the few sustainable rainforest crops in the world.

Kapok trees produce thousands of seed pods each year. The seeds inside these pods are surrounded by the soft yellow fluff that’s been used for centuries as bedding. This silky material is used as part of the filler for Global Groove Life’s zafus to support you in a comfortable and sustainable meditation practice.

GGL’s goals are to provide our customers with well crafted, eco-friendly apparel and items that support you in living a balanced lifestyle, to support the artists who create our goods, and to create a thriving world for everyone! Offering meditation supplies made from materials that are grown without undue harm to the Earth feels good to us - we hope it feels good to you, too!

 

Amara Evans is a vibrational healer, collective consciousness-raiser, writer, and devotee of the Goddess. She loves to connect with her global community through writing and speaking about important topics like the environment, spirituality, and fair trade.

 

The lotus flower is beloved by people around the world. We at Global Groove Life love the lotus so much that we’ve included it in the GGL logo! It represents growth and rising above the muck to bloom and express - the same way that fair trade and fair business rise above the dirty, exploitative practices of traditional business to expand into a better way of interacting with the world and our human family. The GGL lotus is overlaid over a map of the world that we love so much. A perfect fit to represent our intention to uplift the planet!

Purification So Sweet

 Humanity has long revered the lotus as a floral representation of purification. The plant grows up through the mud and reveals the purity of its beautiful essence as it blooms. It shows us how we, too, can share our essential natures as we continue to purify ourselves and push our way beyond the sticky mud of the world.

No Mud No Lotus

 You may have heard this expression shared by Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Monk and world peace advocate Thich Nhat Hanh, “No mud, no lotus.” All humans are born into a world where there is suffering - represented by the mud. And each person incarnated in this world has the potential to become fully enlightened and fully self-aware - represented by a blossoming lotus flower.

 This quote reminds us that even our suffering serves us and helps us to feel gratitude for the entire experience of life. In this way the lotus is also a symbol of transcendence. What a great reminder of this powerful ability we have to overcome and rise above.

#LotusLove Tribe

 Global Groove Life is partnering with Global Party People! We’re a global community that supports respectful co-existence through peace, love, music, dance, and community. We operate on the vibration of love and trust and use art and music to make the world a better place. We believe that a smile is the same in every language. Come dance with us and join our Global Community.

 Do you want to join our Global Tribe? During the month of September GGL is offering you a FREE #LotusLove decal in the color of your choice! Global Party People is offering a FREE music download, too! Just sign up here to join us on our journey and to receive these free gifts!

 Color Therapy

 The #LotusLove decals are available in an assortment of colors - the chakra colors to be exact. So which color - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or violet - are you resonating with today? Or what aspect of your life do you want to reinvigorate?

 Global Groove Life chose to print the stickers in the chakra colors because often folks are attracted to colors which represent different things that are going on in their lives and/or physical bodies. Learn more about each chakra associated color below.

Chakra Power

 Choose red to empower and clear your root chakra, muladhara, which will have you feeling secure and grounded. The orange decal will assist you in balancing your sacral chakra, svadhisthana, so you can freely express yourself. Go with the yellow lotus to heal your solar plexus chakra, manipura, to be confident and feel in control with a healthy sense of self esteem.

 A green lotus decal will assist you in clearing your heart chakra, anahata, and feeling compassion in loving relationships. Choose the light blue sticker to balance your throat chakra, vishuddha, which will support you in expressing yourself openly and freely. A dark blue lotus will help you with your third eye chakra, ajna, the center of intuition. Choose the purple lotus to clear and balance your crown chakra, sahasrara, so you can have a clear view of the world and your connection with it. Even if you’re not aware of what you’d like to work on just let your intuition guide you to choose whatever color lotus decal you’re drawn to.

 Which #LotusLove decal are you most drawn to? Get yours today!

Amara Evans is a vibrational healer, collective consciousness-raiser, and devotee of the Goddess. She loves to connect with her global   community through writing about important topics like the environment, spirituality, and fair trade.

You probably know some families who choose to home-school their children. Home-schooling parents report that they educate their kids at home for many reasons - some of the common ones are: so that children learn important life-skills, so that children enjoy the learning process more, so that the family can spend more time together, and so that the kids have more time to explore their other interests.

World-schooling is an increasingly popular form of home-schooling where families learn while traveling together. The idea is that most of the education takes place outside of formal lessons. Also called road-schooling, this form of learning taps the wealth of resources found in the environments and cultures of destinations the traveling families visit.

The World Is Your Classroom

It’s not just a saying! Experiential learning is proven to be very effective. Being immersed in an experience opens us up to deeper levels of comprehension. Parents who expand the classroom to encompass more of the world know that they’re providing their young ones with a wider range of experiences and information than the kids might receive if they were living and learning in one place.

The parents believe that these experiences will benefit their children in both the short and long-term. World-schoolers profit from incidental learning - learning without a specific goal or aim in mind. Students gain knowledge about whatever inspires them along their journeys instead of sticking to a pre-determined lesson plan.

Practical Application

Kids feel empowered when they can immediately apply the new lessons they’re learning. They know that what they’re spending their time mastering is valuable and can be used in real life - versus the common refrain of “when am I ever going to use this?” that can be heard echoing through public school hallways.

Students can learn math skills while helping to plan a food budget or coordinate travel times. They’ll likely feel very connected to their history lessons when they’re literally standing in the sites that they’re also reading about. A world classroom provides all sorts of amazing learning opportunities.

Take An “Edventure”

Let’s face it - most children don’t feel excited about sitting at a desk for a majority of the day listening to adults talk at them. Parents know that receiving an education is so important to the future success of their children. World-schooling is a solution that meets kids’ needs for stimulation and activity and parents’ needs for ensuring that their young ones learn valuable skills and information.

“Edventures” are adventures that families embark upon that emphasize both exploration and education. For example a family might visit a park or natural area where they trek and camp but also spend time focusing on learning about ecology of various biomes or on expanding literary skills by reading literature written about the area.

Outside The Box, Into The World

World-schooling is a lifestyle that works for families who are excited to step away from the norm. It emphasizes being present in your surroundings, taking advantage of the learning opportunities that surround you each day, and creating time in your family’s schedule for adventure.

How does your family learn from the world as its classroom? Share some of your most memorable world-schooling experiences (formal or informal) with us in the comments below.

Image Credit: World-schooling family photo from http://worldschooladventures.com/ where you can follow the edventures of an unschooling family.

Amara Evans is a vibrational healer, collective consciousness-raiser, writer, and devotee of the Goddess. She loves to connect with her global community through writing about important topics like the environment, spirituality, and fair trade.

Travel is awesome and a solid meditation practice is one of the most beneficial gifts we can give ourselves - but sometimes the two can feel challenging to do at the same time. That doesn’t have to be the case! Read on for 5 ways you can maintain your practice throughout your trip.

1: Timing Is Everything
A part of maintaining any practice during travel that can feel particularly challenging is timing. Most of us are creatures of habit in our daily lives. We wake up, go to work, interact with loved ones, eat, and explore our other interests at approximately the same times - give or take a little. And we find the perfect time to fit in our daily practice(s).

Moving between time zones, staying in temporary lodging situations with various check in and check out times, local cultures, and transportation timing can combine to create a varied schedule. Shaking things up is a joy of traveling and doesn’t have to interfere with your practice!

Simply make time every day to meditate. You can choose to commit to meditating at the same time each day (of course it’s always best to be compassionate with yourself if you miss a day) - or - commit to an amount of time that you will meditate each day and plan ahead for the coming week.

2: Get Outside
Many of us travel to experience the Earth in new ways. Each place on our planet has its own unique power and beauty. Taking the time to slow down and be present while in nature allows us to connect more deeply with the Earth.

Of course the type of trip you’re on will determine how far into the wilds you’ll go - or not. If you’re trekking in the Himalayas you’ll have access to a different type of nature experience than you will if you’re cafe hopping through Paris. Both can offer amazing outdoor experiences and you’re guaranteed inner growth if you do an outdoor meditation in a city park or on the side of a mountain.

3: Planes, Trains, & Automobiles
Meditation is a wonderful way to replenish ourselves mind, body, and spirit. So it’s a great thing that you can do to recharge your batteries while you’re a passenger on a bus, train, plane, or some other form of transportation.

Let someone else take the wheel for a while so to speak and allow your mind to rest. Meditation is a practice and it’s beneficial to practice in as many circumstances as possible. Meditating while in motion can stimulate deeper stillness within us.

4: Sacred Spaces
No matter where you are in the world or what size village or city you’re in there will usually be at least one religious space. These buildings contain reservoirs of peaceful energy that are very supportive of prayer and meditation.
Even if you aren’t religious or don’t practice the particular religion of that building you will usually be welcome to enter as long as you’re respecting the local etiquette. You’ll most likely have an interesting cultural experience.

You may even gain entirely new insights and perspective after spending time in meditation in new religious spaces!

5: Public Spaces
Sometimes we become set in certain patterns of behavior. We can get used to meditating alone and in quiet spaces if that’s what we normally do. Being surrounded by the hustle and bustle of a busy airport can allow us to become like a pebble in the bottom of a stream allowing the rush to flow around our point of stillness.

Experiment with meditating in public - have fun with it! Busy places invite us to include the sounds and smells around us into our practice. We can do this either by focusing our awareness on them or by simply noticing our awareness of them and letting them go.

Remember that however you choose to meditate while traveling will be perfect for you - the important part is deciding to practice! With a little dedication you can maintain or even build a fulfilling meditation practice during your journey.

About the author:
Amara Evans is a holistic healer, collective consciousness-raiser, writer, and devotee of the Goddess. She loves to connect with her global community through writing about important topics like the environment, spirituality, and fair trade.

Looking back over my past travel journals always brings me right back to the places I visited and the unique experiences I had there. I’ve had a lifelong love of writing and my journals have been safe spaces to share things that feel deeply personal and to experiment with new styles of writing.

I’ve learned about myself and the world around me, been able to watch my own growth and evolution as a person through the lens of my journals. And I’m not the only one whose life has been enhanced by journaling. Read on to learn about 5 amazing benefits of journaling.

Personal Time

We live in an era of instant communication and high expectations to go, go, go. A journaling practice is a powerful way to disconnect from the wired world and deepen our connections with ourselves. Setting aside a special time to drop in and open up on the pages of a journal is a way of showing self love and self care.

Personal time is so important in maintaining balance. What could be more personal than writing, drawing, making lists, or adding art clippings to a journal? Looking at journal entries is a great way to learn about how we process the events of our lives. We can read our own innate wisdom written on the pages in front of us.

Healing

Each of us have experienced things during our lifetimes that we have needed to heal from. Whether they’re physical issues, emotional or behavioral patterns, family experiences, or have to do with relationships we all go through pain and feelings of disconnection.

Journaling is a non-judgemental outlet where we can release our pasts in order to let go and move forward. A journal can act as a counselor or be used to leverage therapy sessions to get faster and more complete results.

 

Heal and de-stress your life with this Large Om Journal.

Achieving Goals

A regular journaling practice can serve us in a very practical way as a place where we can record our goals, create action steps, keep track of progress, and visually see where we to make changes that will assist us in actualizing our goals. Writing something down signals to our brains that “this is important.”

Writing is a wonderful way to enhance our intelligence. Using a wide range of vocabulary words expands our brain power, inviting more innovation - which enables us to look at things in entirely new ways and to achieve our goals.

Creative Expression

Journaling helps us to find and empower our authentic voices. Through relating our lives outwardly we deepen our understanding of life and the many ways we can share our experiences.

Each blank page is like an empty canvas waiting to be filled with whatever we can imagine - poems scribbled, drawings etched, lists jotted down, quotes remembered. Even when our daily lives are busy committing to 3 to 5 minutes per day of journaling - in whatever form - can get the creative juices flowing.

Express yourself in this Large Lotus Journal.

It’s Easy

There’s no wrong way to journal! The pages won’t judge or even respond and there’s no need to ever show anybody else. It’s free form expression through writing so it will work well with anyone’s needs. Journaling caters to both right-brained and left-brained people.

Journaling is a flexible way to work through any issues we may be going through. Being too wordy or having typos or spelling errors all don’t matter. All that we need to be is willing to take a few moments (or sometimes hours) for ourselves to put pen to paper and voila - we’re journaling!

Global Groove Life has a nice selection of both small and large journals for all our writing needs. Each one of them invokes a sense of peaceful inspiration. The pages of these journals are handmade mulberry paper and the covers are screen printed by hand! If you or someone you know needs a new journal check these out!

 

Amara Evans is a vibrational healer, collective consciousness-raiser, and devotee of the Goddess. She loves to connect with her global   community through writing about important topics like the environment, spirituality, and fair trade.