149 Make a Connection Between Becoming Aware And Breathing Suggests Andrea Klunder

Andrea Klunder is a Meditation Facilitator for startup companies & creative individuals. She is the founder of Peace & Play Yoga for kiddos & grownups. Andrea integrates her background in music, theater and creativity to engage her students in a playful experience of peaceful practices, to help them become more mindful in their day-to-day living. Andrea is also Host of The Creative Impostor Podcast, a show all about how to get out of your head and take bold action.  This show is all about dealing with that inner voice which says, “Who do you think you are? You can’t do THAT!”

Contact Info

• Website: www.TheCreativeImposter.com
• Facebook: AndreaKlunder.Creative
• Podcast: The Creative Imposter

Most Influential Person

• Sean Johnson of Wild Lotus Yoga and the Wild Lotus Band

Effect on Emotions

• It's [mindfulness] definitely helped me to not have so many peaks and valleys. I would say my first bout of depression that I ever had in my early thirties, when I closed my first business, a yoga studio which I had for five years, it really helped me to recognize that depression which was showing up for the first time ever in my life and to be able to experience it and move through it rather than getting sucked down into it.

Thoughts on Breathing

• Breathing is so important. When I originally was studying vocal music, we spent a lot of time in music classes learning how to breathe so that we can produce a certain quality of sound. When I stopped studying music, I sort of lost that connection to my breath. Coming back to the yoga and meditation practice, I was able to reconnect to that as the quickest tool to drop into when I find myself in a tricky situation.

Suggested Resources

• Book: How To Train A Wild Elephant by Jan Chozen Bays (It includes 52 exercises, one for each week of the year)
• App: Podcast App (To listen to Podcasts like Mindfulness Mode to help me stay in the mode)

Advice for Newbie

I would say to just resist the urge to get frustrated. I think there's a tendency to feel you're not doing it right or other people are doing it better than you or you're never going to be able to fit it in with all of the other things that you're doing. If you can just acknowledge that right in that moment as you're having the awareness that you feel frustrated, that you've just become more mindful in that moment of having that awareness of frustration. It's sort of like success.