Leanne Margaret

The Poetic Portraits Project  Poetry Anthology It was the easiest pitch I've ever made. I was invited to write a short sentence that encapsulates how I feel about ageing. Now I could have gone two ways. Eighteen months prior, I had been diagnosed  with osteoarthritis of one kneecap, and a cyst inside the other one. So on a physical  level, suddenly age was catching up with me for the first time. My dance teaching career was over, and I was still struggling with knee rehab. But rather than  hobbling out a pitch about disintegration,  I focussed on what I perceived to be the meaning of my ailment. For many years, I'd struggled to juggle dance with writing, and the knee diagnosis freed me from that struggle; allowing my writing to take centre stage – finally. So my pitch was simple: I'm just about to peak!  It worked. I got in. Successful applicants were invited to attend a full-day poetry workshop at Yarra Ranges Civic Centre, where we would produce pieces of...

Life still feels fresh and new, as I settle into my new home. Physically, it was an agonising move. I'm still feeling the effects six weeks later. I've had to moderate my energy to a lethargic pace, which isn't easy when I'm excited about a new home and wanting to get everything unboxed and nailed up.  Being high-strung is pretty normal for me, which is why I need dance in my life; but at its extreme, high-strung becomes tendonitis. When it gets bad enough, enough gentle stretching can be aggravating. So for the last week I've been sitting around with a heat pack trying to limit my steps. I went for my first walk in six days today, and my knee was dicey after fifteen minutes. So I'm back in my chair with a heat pack for the rest of the day. This might sound like a delicious Saturday afternoon, but for me it's not easy.  My model of multidimensional consciousness shows us that when basic dimensions of consciousness like the physical and emotional dimensions ...

An excerpt from book The Love of the Universe . Read it slowly, feeling the meaning of each word with each of your senses.  The power isn't in the words, but how you use them; let them settle—opening your mind towards extraordinary sensing.  Remember to practice your new craft, so that it grows stronger. An eg: With eyes closed, practice reaching into a bag of M&Ms, pick one and guess what colour you might have in your hand.  The results might surprise you, but if you are too sceptical, the activation of your left brain will distract from the right hemisphere. So please approach this exercise with an open, relaxed mind.  Page 206: Psychic Development Contemplation Poem  'See with your mind Hear with your mind Feel and touch with mind.  Feel with your hands See with your hands Hear and receive with hands. Hear with your ears Feel with your ears See and imagine with ears. See with your eyes hear with your eyes Feel and perceive with eyes. Listen with your...

The world has grown noisier since Melbourne's long lockdown began. It shouldn't—the roads are generally more quiet. But major railway construction is taking place a few blocks away, diverting traffic up my street; bringing more noise into my world. Another growth opportunity—yay! Sensitivity to noise is one of my more visible anxiety symptoms. It's visible by my posts on social media, by my hands over my ears as loud cars drive by, and by the 'conversations' I've had with my neighbour over their distressed dog. Otherwise, I keep these signs to myself; mostly anyway. Social sensitivity is another. I take on people's stuff too much and allow it to affect my sense of peace. Not as much as I used to—I'm more aware now! But enough that social interactions can sometimes leave me overstimulated or exhausted. So the social isolation of being in lockdown isn't as unpleasant as it could be. And besides—people are pretty passionate at the moment! I'm replen...

For two years, I've been toiling away at my third book — a memoir. I have a long draft that I'm wrangling, shaving, plucking and cutting into a series of hopefully sensible, temporally correct chapters. This isn't my first 'rodeo,' so when I got to chapter thirty-three — and froze — I had a pretty good idea what was going on: I was caught in knots at the mid-point. Events swirled around me, from my own memory — yet I could no longer pin these snakes down onto the page in lines that aligned in time.  So I realised it was time to stop. There's no resisting it. You know what they say: if you have to force it, it's probably s#@t. So the remedy is: acceptance. Go with it. The creative process is a moody beast that must be fed and nourished correctly. It eats brain food, and is picky. One day it likes to eat memoir, swearing it wants to eat memoir every single day. Then suddenly, without warning, the brain wants to eat an episode of Big Bang Theory; or a copy of t...

There's a stereotypical practitioner of the Law of Attraction: hippie types, sitting in lotus pose, visualising their dreams into being. But there's a lot of action in the power of attraction.  First, let's summarise what is meant by the Law of Attraction. You may have read the book or seen the movie The Secret . Although none of the ideas were new, the author of The Secret, Rhonda Byrne, popularised the ideas; so that The Secret became a commonly known piece of work. She taught us that what we think, specifically our beliefs around our own potentials, impact our ability to manifest those potentials. It means that if we think we can't do something, we probably won't be able to do it. It also means that if we can maintain hope and focus, we can create the best chance of bringing our potentials into being. Some of us, including those with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), can find it difficult to maintain a persistent positive attitude. The world is teeming with ...

Majickal Meditation Workshop Chirnside Community Centre 1pm, Monday 26th April, 2021 2-hour workshop, $45. Bookings: 1300 835 235 'Did you know that anyone can meditate? Even if you have a thirty-second attention span. Even if your eyes roll at the thought of sitting for an hour in lotus pose, chanting mysterious words. Even if meditation makes you just want to go to sleep. In fact, you're probably doing it more often than you realise.' -from book, Multidimensional Meditation, by Leanne Margaret Let me show you... Are you too busy to stop and connect to your real needs? Join me, as I guide you through a series of meditations to help bring you home to yourself. You will begin with simple awareness of your body. Then, you will gradually ascend to higher, freer levels of consciousness; step-by-step. These higher levels can assist you with your creative work, as well as helping you to transition into sleep.  Most of all, you will learn how to take some simple mindfulness practi...

I didn't write a book about meditation because I was perfect at it. In fact most of the material I had been writing wasn't about meditation at all but memoir. However, the memoir material was still too emotionally charged for me to face in a rational way. My nervous system, ravaged by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ( PTSD ), was still wired to react to the slightest aggravation. So as I learned how to rebuild my nervous system from the ground up - using what I knew about human consciousness - the material to structure my first book,  The Love of the Universe , emerged. After I finished writing it I realised that I hadn't included enough practical exercises to generate the shifts in consciousness that I was enjoying myself. Somehow I needed to create a more practical, user-friendly version. Fortunately I had written several guided meditations specifically designed to do the job, enough material to create a second book:  Multidimensional Meditation.  My intent was to sh...

Happy New Year to Readers, Past and Future The beginning of this new decade represents the end of one of the most testing decades of my life. It was also one of the most creative. I was crushed, but like cold pressed oil, out came my life's work. Apparently I do possess some skill with working under pressure after all! To celebrate the positivity I feel entering the new decade, I would like offer my books, The Love of the Universe (published in 2017), or Multidimensional Meditation (published in 2019), for just $0.99. Multidimensional Meditation You've heard of mindfulness, most of us have these days - but did you know that you can experience mindfulness in multiple dimensions? This book is an easy step-by-step guide to making up your own meditations, as well as achieve more life balance. Find out more while it's only 99 cents The Love of the Universe This book forms part of a collective and urgent cry to humanity. It invites readers to connect with a ...

November was the month for an event known among writers as NaNoWriMo, which means National Novel Writing Month. Participants sign up and make a pledge to complete writing 50,000 words in 30 days. Although it's named 'National,' it has become an international competition. Since first noticing the event on Social Media, I had watched it go by me for several rounds. But this year the planets aligned and something different happened. After writing the first 40,000 words of a new manuscript I came to a slow spot. It wasn't writers' block because the rest of the material for the book was sitting right at the edges of my brain just waiting to be written down. I had just lost motivation. So I definitely hadn't consciously planned on participating in NaNoWriMo. I didn't even know how. The repetition of a ritual for a set period of time is something I usually do when I'm making majick. Repetition of an activity reinforces neural pathways that once strengthened...

The Heart Centre Open your heart centre with the fifth video in the Dimensions series of mediations. You are a multidimensional being spanning earthly and spiritual dimensions. This meditation represents the bridge that connects the mindful realms of meditation to the spiritual realms. It's also a beautiful, gentle tool for personal and planetary healing. You can use it on yourself, your pets and other loved ones, and even the planet. The following book excerpt from, Multidimensional Meditation, describes a little of what is meant by Dimension Four. It is often said that love begins with the self. At Dimension Four, our personal energy intermingles with the energies of others, connecting us all. The energy at this level flows inward and outward like our breath.  Energy is balanced at the heart. Meditation at this level connects us to empathy. With empathy it becomes easier to imagine ourselves in another’s place and be more sensitive to their needs. But we can only gi...

The Mental Body Today I'm sharing the fourth video in the Dimensions series of meditations. This is one of the most useful meditations you will ever learn. It generates mindfulness, that sense of presence and inhabitation of yourself in space and time. The Feet & Breathe meditation helps you to clear your mind and calm your emotions, allowing you to focus your human energy in more creative and useful ways. The following excerpt from my book, Multidimensional Meditation, explores how Dimension Three of human consciousness represents our mental body and our training. The mental body can be trained to help us handle stress. It is where we remember things, like multiplication tables and relaxation techniques. When we learn or remember something, we are holding a memory or thought form in our mental body. Meditation at Dimension Three begins when we can first surrender ourselves to the moment. By ‘moment’ I mean the current moment – not the next moment. Mindfulness o...

The Emotional Body Are you in touch with your feelings? Did you know that attuning to your feelings is the first stage of intuitive development? Being in touch with our feelings is part of good emotional regulation. It's also an important first stage of spiritual development. Whether you wish to learn to chill out more, or soar to spiritual heights, this meditation will help you attune to the information that your feelings can provide. Here's an excerpt from my new book, Multidimensional Meditation , available on Amazon . 'Dimension Two is a dynamic and responsive realm containing our personal emotions and feelings. It is part of our personal space, divided from others by the personality and the ego. Like our physical space, our emotional space needs care, attention and sometimes protection. Meditation at Dimension Two considers how we feel at an emotional level. Since Dimension Two is a pre-thinking, stimulus and response energy, it is highly reactive. Emotio...

It was an ironic start to the day of the launch of Multidimensional Meditation . Coffee drinkers will relate to that moment when you flip on the kettle for your morning brew - to find no life in the kettle!  Instead I was doing a 'macca's run' - in pyjamas - on the morning of my launch. I had forgotten there would be a power outage that day and I wasn't impressed! My plans of a calm disposition, tidy hair and an ironed shirt weren't to be. I'm the short one! So, crumpled and frizzy, carrying a box of new books, I marched off to my first author talk. The launch was hosted by Lilydale Library, set among native trees between Lilydale Lake and Box Hill Institute, Lilydale Campus. I do love the area and felt honoured to be presenting my work to the world from such a peaceful and grounding place. Library staff made the whole launch really easy for me. All I had to do was show up with my books. The space was already set-up for me. A long table stretched across...