Black Zen And The Weekly Wellness

We hope everyone has been well and pushing through this crazy time in a thoughtful and peaceful way. Over the last few months, we’ve had quite a few partnerships with businesses and schools looking to introduce guided meditation in a virtual way, to help students and adults alike cope with this new environment. In an effort to continue this work and really stay true to our mission of bringing meditation to the masses, something has to give. The need right now is working with our partners to further our mission of making meditation accessible and relatable to those who are struggling in this new environment and we're creating the time and capacity to answer this call by putting an indefinite hold on the podcast. While this decision was made reluctantly, please know that it was carefully considered. As you know from our past breaks, we will always leave you with resources. To help you build during this time, we've compiled our best 10 topics and recapped them in this episode. These are all the episodes most l

We can't even begin to describe how your girls have been affected by recent events. We've been in Minneapolis for some time and the feeling in this city is fraught with anger, frustration and ultimately a heavy heart. The murder of George Floyd has confronted us with the important question of how do we, as peaceful meditators, manage our rage and handle all of the other emotions that we experience living in a world that too often doesn't make sense, while also holding on to our core values of compassion and love in all things? For us, that means utilizing meditation to help fortify our resolve for the work ahead. It means providing our community with a safe space to process grief and to continue building a community that is mentally and emotionally equipped to do what needs to be done to create change. In light of this, we're providing free, community guided meditation for anyone who needs it. Sign-up is available on our website - blackzen.co. To our community members protesting in the streets, we are dona

This is definitely one to get your pen ready for taking notes! The more we looked at how to start viewing food as medicine, the more information we found. In our final episode of this month's topic, we provide you with the Cliff's Notes version ;) We highlight the every day foods we can incorporate into our diet that not only help prevent sickness and disease, but can also heal certain ailments over time. Listen in now to find out the obvious (and surprisingly, not so obvious) things we can eat that significantly improve our health and well being...

Now that we have a handle on some of the great foods we should be incorporating into our diet, we decided to use this week to find out which foods to avoid to ensure we’re living our best life. We also uncovered some surprising things about junk food that even we were shocked to find out! Food is so integral to our bodies, our mood and our health, so it only makes sense that being more aware of what we eat can have a profound effect on our day to day experience…

Last week we discussed the 4 happy hormones that keep our spirits up and our lives feeling healthy and full. We’re following that up this week with the low cost, easy access foods we can incorporate into our daily meals to help keep all those good vibes going! This is also the episode where your Black Zen team may have cracked under the pressure of shelter-in-place. In this episode we’re definitely at our silliest, but always serious about making sure that our community begins incorporating some feel good foods into our diet. Tune in for laughs, good vibes and to unravel the conversation that covered everything from oats and almonds to grits and a good malbec…

Last month Jas and I talked about creating your own personal wellness and meditation retreats and we hope you’ve been able to implement that in your home, especially now! One of the most direct actions we can take post-retreat is to start becoming more intentional about our food choices. This may seem like a small thing, but the foods we eat affect our energy and moods a lot more than we think. We now have the time to cook at home as we stay in place, so tune in to find out about the 4 happy hormones you need to know about so you can start cooking up some happiness in your home...

With all this extra time on our hands, your girls were digging through the archives to find things that would help us all navigate this "new normal". This week's podcast includes 3 of the most important clips we found relevant to creating a home retreat, whether that's watching what we consume in our newly found free time, tips to building that meditation practice or what we've been personally putting into place, trying to make lemonade out of lemons. As a reminder, for the rest of March (you have one day left!) we will be sending this month's guided meditation to everyone who needs it and without subscription. Message us at info@blackzen.co to get your home retreat in gear. There is LITERALLY no time like the present...

With all that's going on in the world right now with the corona virus outbreak, it's definitely putting all of our inner-peace skills to the test! In this week's podcast, we take a detour from our regularly scheduled program to address what's happening in our nation and the world around us. We talk about how we as meditators can meet this challenge and come out peaceful and whole on the other side. Listen in now to get a free perk and to find out how to create the boundaries necessary to guard your peace and joy amidst these uncertain times...

In this week’s conversation, we continue discussing how to get the most out of your personal meditation or wellness retreat. One of the trickiest parts about taking time out to center yourself and find balance, is that eventually you have to go home, or back to work, or end up right smack dab in the middle of all the problems or circumstances that you thought you’d left behind. How do we keep up the momentum to change after the retreat is over? And how do we find time for wellness given everything that’s going on around us? Most importantly, once we return from our retreat experience, how do we navigate our new self in our old life?…

In this week’s conversation, we discuss the most crucial ingredients you need to craft a thoughtfully planned personal wellness retreat. We take the guess work out of what to prepare, how to find the time off work or from other obligations, and even share tips on how to make sure you get the most out of the time you set aside. Whether you have a few hours, a full weekend or even longer to spare, we share all the details on how to set up the best environment for your personal growth! Tune in now to start planning a retreat designed with your unique needs in mind...

The Black Zen Team has been debating for the last few days about meditation versus wellness retreats and the benefits of each. After numerous discussions about our own personal experiences, we did come to one shared conclusion. Every style of retreat has to have some component that helps us drown out the noise of life to give us the space to find and hear our inner voice. And when we say drown out the noise of life, we’re talking about both the internal chatter within our mind and the external noise we experience every day. This external noise can include things like the sound of traffic, taking in the news, interacting on social media, or even just listening to the conversations around us. The appeal of a retreat is that, by design, it removes us from our daily obligations so that we can get a bird's eye view of our lives, and this month’s Weekly Wellness podcast discussion is focused on building that retreat wherever you are...

Don’t you hate how every romantic comedy stops right at the end of the “meet cute” moments. What happens once we’re finally in relationships and passed the honey moon phase? In our final installment in this month’s series on relationships, we take some humorous and surprising advice from couples who have been together for over 20 years to find out the best ways to make our relationships last the test of time…

When it comes to choosing a partner or determining if the one we're with is right for us, how do we know what to look for? On this episode, the Black Zen team spills some personal tea from past relationships and narrows down a few key things to pay attention to when trying to figure that out. Listen in to find out how your relationship stacks up when we look at a few crucial indicators that let us know we're with a true partner that can stand the test of time...

In part two of this month’s series on relationships, we take a look at the unfortunate side effects of putting your relationship to the test and discuss the 1 subtle thing that could be damaging your relationships over time…

Since February is always associated with love, we thought it was the perfect month to take a deep dive into relationships! In Part I of this topic, we include the 1 key thing to remember about all of your relationships and we humorously break down the most important element that holds every great relationship together…

Now that we know that each of us has power, which is the ability to impact or create change - what do we do with it? How do we know where to focus our power to see the most impactful results in our life? The surprising thing we uncover in this week’s final episode on January’s theme is that usually the thing that needs to change is often not what we think it is! Tune in for the final conversation of this month’s theme to start your year off with power…

To continue the conversation on this month’s theme, we talk about how to double down on the power that you have or how to get it back if you think you’ve lost it in a certain situation in your life. This is the key to navigating this year and actually getting results!...

To continue the conversation on this month’s theme, POWER, we used this week to look closer at what happens when we unknowingly give ours away – whether it’s thinking we’re stuck in a situation, letting other people control our moods, or even worse, believing that we don’t have any. This week is all about how to recognize the power that we do have, and how to use that to create the change we want to see in our life. 2020, let’s go!! Listen now to dive in to part II of this topic…

We're back! Another year, another day, another opportunity for a fresh new start. Speaking of fresh (shout out to the 80's babies!), you may have noticed our new website (blackzen.co) but the most notable shake-up is that our Weekly Wellness editorial is now the Monthly Meditation. We heard you when you said you love our content, but found it hard to incorporate everything all at once. To help alleviate the overload, we’re going to focus on one topic for the month to give you plenty of time to implement the advice. We’ll of course look at the topic from all different angles, but we’re hoping this helps you make all the changes you want to see in your life for this new year! This month we're talking all about POWER. We think it’s a perfect topic to start off the new year. Setting our intention and using power to fuel the follow-through will set the stage for an amazing 2020. Part I starts now…

It's official. Your BZ Team is on its annual December break. As you know we take wellness seriously, so incorporating mindful pauses into our business is not only true to form, but we find it necessary in keeping our content interesting and helpful to you. Last week we mentioned wanting to leave you with a ton of resources to get you through the rest of the holiday season. We also want to help set you up for the year ahead. In addition to 20% off of the BZ Beginner’s Guide to Meditation workbook for the full month of December (use promo code: 2020 at checkout), we've also completed our review of past wellnesses to give you the final top pieces of advice from 2019! Listen in now for the second half of our year-end countdown…