Category: awakening

living fully!

“For what makes you come alive can keep you alive,
whether you are paid well for it or not.”
~ The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo, p. 399

I’m just back from my last training session to become a Full Voice Coach!

What a rich and beautiful time, being with others so fully committed to bringing more wholeness, aliveness, and freedom into the world!!

On the journey of learning to live my life more fully, I’ve found I needed to repeatedly inquire into what was keeping me from living fully.

Why don’t I give myself more time to play, to rest, to get outside, to hang out with friends, to dance, to sing? Even though I love these things?

Your list may be different from mine, but I bet you have things that make your life feel more rich and full of meaning that you don’t prioritize either. What are yours?

Barbara McAfee, our fearless leader, models what living fully can look like. She fills her life with things that make her come alive, and, in brilliantly following her passions, has created a life in which she can earn her living doing them!

At the end of our final training session on Wednesday morning, we were talking about our time together—about what really worked and what we might have missed in our process of becoming Full Voice Coaches. We got to talking about more and more goodness we could add in on top of what was already SO well sequenced. Knowing they didn’t want to make the training longer, I mentioned that I’d never participated in a training where we had the whole afternoon off every day!

I was really struck by Barbara’s response.

She passionately talked about how necessary it was to have a break—to integrate, to walk outside, to rest, to connect with our fellow trainees and our aliveness, to live a FULL life, even when training…

I am freshly re-committing myself to this.

How can I choose to live my life fully RIGHT NOW?

Even though I have to cram a lot of hours in this week to make up for being at the training… Even though there is ALWAYS more to do…

How about you?

Even in the midst of the busy holiday season. How can you live your life more fully?

Here’s one fun way—it’s 4.5 minutes and worth every single one (and you get extra credit if you can identify the 5 Elements of the Full Voice Approach!).

Keep your eyes open—I’m going to be offering Full Voice Coaching, individual sessions and groups in the New Year!

If you want to a practical and experiential way to explore how you can live more fully, you might want to consider a session. We start with making sound as a way in, and the aliveness, freedom, and wholeness you find there tends to trickle into your whole life! (And you don’t have to be a singer, but singers will benefit, too!)

p.s. You might be wondering what’s with the dwarves… They live in a boulevard garden in a nearby neighborhood, and I think they look like they are living their lives fully! They are talking, smoking, healing, playing instruments, walking, hanging out, foraging, resting, welcoming, boating. 🙂

the time of interim

Autumn Equinox, Saturday the 22nd at 8:54 pm CT.

We are in a time of interim.

Between Summer and Fall.

Summer’s waning light. Fall’s bright, crisp color not yet arriving.

You are in this time of interim
where everything seems withheld.*

I am here again. This time with learning how to listen more deeply with my body as I continue to learn the lessons pneumonia brought this summer.

Dave and I are here, too, with our planned move to Port Townsend, Washington next year, and all the things to take care of, understand, and prepare for.

Clients and friends are here.

  • Finding a new way to be living with alcoholism.
  • Recommitting to a path of practice when busy life keeps overwhelming.
  • Searching for a way to break up old patterns that just keep pulling back to “happy” oblivion.


The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.

This is a difficult place to be.

Our bodysouls know there is another way, and yet “the way forward is still concealed.”

In each moment, we must choose, without seeing the way forward, to stay devotedly, steadfastly turned toward our new life.

We must drop deeper than egomind, into an alive body and heart, connecting to the intelligence of life living in / through / as us.

Even though the old has not yet died away and the egomind will constantly try to pull us back into our old ways, we choose to practice presence–to come back to the Truth of this moment.

There are so many paths for getting under the chattering monkey mind and for cultivating presence: meditation, conscious movement, Course in Miracles, the Diamond Approach, the Work of Byron Katie, The Embodied Presence Process, Circlework, women’s work, the Enneagram, voice work, yoga, zikr, mantra, dance, prayer–to only name a few that have graced my path!

It’s all about coming into Presence NOW, under the mind chatter, to whatever needs to be experienced in the moment–often revealed quite unexpectedly in body and/or heart.

“We soften our focus, remain alert, and drop deep into ourselves.” (Anne Hillman in Awakening the Energies of Love, p. 295)

We make a conscious choice to shift our attention.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

Can we let the coming of Fall–of beautiful and then falling leaves, nature’s interim–support us in not knowing how?

Can we simply do our practices and face forward toward the unknown newness we yearn for in our bodysouls and trust the process?

Can we faithfully endure so that our hearts are prepared for our “arrival in the new dawn”?

How are you abiding in your interim?

What is supporting you?

* Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from John O’Donohue’s blessing For the Interim Time, from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings.

there always, something sings

“…in the muck, in the scum of things, there always, something sings.”

~ Michelle Isaac from her song Something Sings

I spent July 15th – 20th in the hospital in Ithaca, New York.

A monthlong on-again, off-again headcold was brewing into pneumonia unbeknownst to me, and the pleurisy that abruptly awakened me at 5:30 am on Sunday the 15th was so painful and gripping my left upper chest and back that I feared I was having a heart attack. Various complications, including fevers spiking daily, kept me in the hospital longer than usual for pneumonia…

After the initial fear for my life–not a heart attack, not a clot on my lung, and later, not MRSA…, I found myself settling into an amazing experience of holy refuge and practical, hands-on love everywhere–through the ongoing expressions of support, care, blessing, and prayer from facebook when I posted to my friends that I was in need, and through the daily, attuned attention and ministrations of the nurses, aides, and doctors on 4 North, where I was convalescing.

the singing

I felt so much gratitude and appreciation for all the care I was receiving. Even in the depth of pain on every breath, even in the fear of the unknown, even in the sadness of this happening–without any effort on my part, love brimmed over like a waterfall from my heart, flowing over me and over others.

Why not see the good in everyone and be kind? I was feeling so supported, so I kept letting people know how much I appreciated their kindness. This created a beautiful reciprocity of kindness meeting kindness.

After many meals, I spontaneously wrote a thank you note on the slip of paper that had my order on it. Each day, I got a menu to choose from for the next day, and on the back was the typical “My Plate” diagram from the US government about healthy meal proportions. One day, I wrote a note and drew an arrow to the “My Plate” and said I wasn’t able to fulfill my need for vegetables at breakfast. Within a half an hour of taking my tray, someone from the kitchen came up and asked me what I’d like and from then on, I had a salad with every breakfast! Kindness meets kindness.

I was able to truly receive the care offered to me–-all the little things that the nursing staff did as a matter of course to care for me, and all the things I asked for. I let them care for me in ways that in the past I would have apologized for. I would have maybe not even asked for fear of being needy. But by asking, I got to receive their care and love.

Food is healing! As I ate my very simple, mostly protein- and veggie-based meals, I felt their life-giving power. How chewing made the vitality of the food accessible to my body. How eating slowly and reverently helped me receive the bounty of each bite. How I never felt like I had to be a “clean-plate clubber” and eat it all, so I could listen to what was the perfect amount in the moment for my healing.

The view of the lake. I was so lucky to get a room that had a view of the lake and to be in the bed by the window so I could see it! As soon as I could, I asked my care team to turn my bed so that, instead of the TV, I had a view of Lake Cayuga. The “leaping greenly spirit of trees and the blue true dream of sky” along with the water saved me (e.e. cummings)! I could feel their life force blessing and healing me. It was so odd–they said no-one had ever asked for this before!

Grief. Yes, grief is part of the gift, too. Since I was sick in my lungs, I realized grief might be a component. In addition to grieving being so sick, and missing not only my family gathered for the wedding, but also the concert I was supposed to sing and all my friends I was going to see that week in the Hudson River Valley, I found a well of grief that still needed to be felt about losing my brother in 2016. I let myself grieve his loss–that we could not save him, that he was so unhappy, that this was how turned out. The tears, the deep feelings helped me release another layer of this painful loss.

People, relationships, connections matter more than work! Joy matters! Singing! Laughter! Time for pleasure! Work is not the most important thing to prioritize in the day. This was so evident while I was lying around healing, receiving all the love from facebook friends, from the Unit, from my family and friends. It’s the heart-full connections that were healing. I barely touched the book I had with me that was related to work. I instinctively reached for the connection… 

Asking sincere questions creates real connection. I loved learning about the lives of my caregivers–the nurses, aides, and Brendalee, who was in charge of the meals and kept coming to check in with me.

I found out Brendalee keeps chickens, pigs, and rabbits for her grandchildren so they will have a chance to have animals in their lives. In her home, there’s a basket by the door and everyone puts their cell phone in when they enter in order to have a chance at real contact. Her love of cooking is passed along to her 4 yro granddaughter through cooking together in the kitchen and through her service at the hospital. What a gift to feel the heart connection of so many common values and desire to be of service under our very different exteriors. We both felt filled by this connection.

Spaciousness around everything. Nowhere to go. “Nothing to do or undo, nothing to force, nothing to want, nothing is missing” (Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche). There was so much time for rest. I saw how all the things I love and all the ways I want to live create stuff to do and track and manage–they take up time. I want time in my life–to rest, to connect with friends, to sit with tea and take in beauty, to sing, to pray, to heal, to journal… to be. And NOT just in the hospital! 🙂

Singing gives me life. Even when I was sick, in pain, and had almost no breath from the pneumonia, humming or lightly singing a healing song carried me. The tune and words lifted me, bringing conscious intention for my mind, attuned contact with my heart–whether grief or joy or longing, and holy vibration to my body. Singing accompanied, companioned, and inspired me, surrounded me with the healing life force of my bodysoul. The primary song I sang as I did my “rounds,” (walking around the unit) was originally a birthing song, and I changed some words to birth my healing:

I am trusting my body to carry me through carrying you to me, I am trusting.
My body wide open, the veil lifts, my heart is filled, my mind it empties.
Wide open, I am wide open.
Welcome breath into my lungs, welcome flow into my muscles, welcome joy into my organs, welcome qi into my cells.

Click the link below for the song.
It is meant to be sung as a round.
Listen below for the separate parts I sang to save my life.

I Am Trusting My Body

(A birthing song, learned from Kathar Grant, who learned it at the gathering, Singing Alive. I changed the words to make it a birthing-my-healing song while in the hospital with pneumonia.)

Presence Including

Inhale. Sense of self.

Exhale. Compassion.

~ Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening, p. 198

Inhaling, feeling the back of my heart, my root, my feet, my sense of self.

Exhaling, allowing my heart to soften and open, to include others in a wide, compassionate embrace.

This is one of the conundrums of the spiritual path.

How do I stay connected to an inner, deeper sense of self–to the me that got hidden under the surface-layer facade of acceptability:

  • who got shut down when she was too loud
  • who held her tongue when she wanted to speak her truth
  • who said yes when she meant no
  • who yearned for loving contact with her parents and friends and lovers so desperately that she covered up her own needs and her own inner self to be acceptable and loved, to survive…

How do I do this AND open, mindfully,
safely, curiously to include you–
without losing me?

Because, if contact with my inner self is lost, there is no-one home to be in contact with you.

There are so many practices that can support this beautiful, meaningful work of coming home to ourselves and opening to others. For today, let’s keep it simple and try breathing together.

the heart doesn’t try

I’ve been a practicer all my life…

I’ve always been aware of how much there is to learn, to know, to grow into, to embody.

And I’ve felt that if I just…

  • learn how to listen more openly,
  • or understand the relationship between my inner child and my inner rebel more deeply,
  • or up my game with my exercise,
  • or get better at remembering to ask for what I need in the moment,

… then all will be well.

As if there is some happy ending—and I will finally get there through all my practice.

I’m finding that while it’s true that learning new, skillful ways of using my mind, heart, and body have opened me to more happiness, there is no ultimate happiness out there somewhere, that I can land in, stay in, and own.

I heard Terry Patten speak on a Shift Network interview the other day and he said something that is still unfurling inside me:

“The Heart doesn’t try.
It is what it is.”

“The Heart doesn’t try.”

A friend on facebook said she was looking for a reorientation to her spiritual practice this summer, wanting it to be “easy breezy.” I bet the Heart knows how to do this.

Just be.

Easy.

Let the breeze blow, touch us, affect us.

Feel.

“It is what it is.”

Terry went on further to say something like, as we attune to the Heart, we relax fully into the moment and are OK with what is.

Even in the midst of our practicing, there is a place for rest and relaxation.

For being with what is.

For being OK with what is right here, right now.

This gives us a sense
of wholeness, of beingness,
right in the middle of life.

Any time we are able to simply be, with feeling-sensing-consciousness, we are reaping the benefits of our practice, simply receiving the grace of life.

This Heart knowing comes forward to meet us without our striving, efforting, or interference.

When I redid my logo, I tried to capture this by adding the tag line, practice presence for life.

Let’s remember that in all of our practicing, we need to also make time to drop the effort and be. To allow ourselves to sense and feel and be with life as it is unfolding in and through and as us.

God is now
Where your soul belongs, too.

~ Gunilla Norris

the feast in everything

The heart at rest sees a feast in everything. ~ Hindu Proverb

Do you see the feast in this video?

Cherry blossoms releasing from the tree in the wind.

A flower blessing.

An unexpected shower of beauty.

A fragrant and soft caress.

Or perhaps you experience the other side?

The tree losing its blossoms.

The loss of beauty.

The petals sticking to face, hair, patio furniture…

When the heart is at rest,
the mind, too, can be at rest,
and open our perception
to the truth of what is.

Now you’re probably expecting me to say it’s better to see the lovely things related to the loss of the blossoms, but I’ve had to learn the hard way that

all of it is true.

When we focus on only one side—the “blessing” or the “curse”—we miss the preciousness of the moment.

We miss the fullness of life, right here, right now.

We miss being at rest with what is.

What if we just stopped struggling? 

The rest of the words to that song by Kaitie Ty Warren include: “What if I let it go?” “Can I surrender?”

What would happen if we stopped struggling with what life brings us? What if we met it just as it is, felt any pain, and opened to the beauty and blessing, too?

What might change in your life?

Whenever you need a shift, watch that video, sing those words, ask that question, and see what arises… (you can learn the whole, beautiful song, “Surrender,” here.)

return to the most human

Return to the Most Human by May Sarton
Return to the most human,
nothing less will nourish the torn spirit,
the bewildered heart,
the angry mind:
and from the ultimate duress,
pierced with the breath of anguish,
speak of love.

Return, return to the deep sources,
nothing less will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,
to carve into our lives the forms of tenderness
and still that ancient necessary pain preserve.

Return to the most human,
nothing less will teach the angry spirit,
the bewildered heart;
the torn mind,
to accept the whole of its duress,
and pierced with anguish…
at last, act for love.

Winter and Spring,

Lent and Easter,

the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journeys,

the Bodhisattvas, who, once enlightened, choose to stay on earth to accompany us,

the under- and over-world travel of shamans and goddesses throughout time…

This paradox of season and cycle, of rhythmic journey has meaning.

We are again and again invited
to return to the most human—
both in our deep-diving
and in our high-flying.

We go down, we go in, we go through.

We stay. We keep vigil. We are held.

We are shown the way—sometimes
only one step at a time.

The way of being human includes all of this.

Darkness. The torn spirit. The bewildered heart. The angry mind.

Light. The rejoicing spirit. The grateful heart. The blissful mind.

The Unknown-ness. The Mystery. The I-don’t-know-how-ness.

For only in this most human place,

lovingly abiding with our darkness,

can the body be a chalice
connecting earth and heaven,
 so that we can at last arise and act for love.

a thousand ways…

What does it mean to be awake?

An age-old question, for sure.

If things aren’t going wrong in our lives, we sometimes don’t even know that we’re not very awake.

It can be so easy to glide along in the comfortable illusion of awakeness.

  • I’m fine. 
  • I don’t let my partner’s idiosyncrasies bother me.
  • I swallow back my frustration when the children act out.
  • I know how to self-medicate with chocolate, alcohol, TV, sleep, or …

But there is more possible!

What if you felt your irritation rise up, understood its connection to your past, and, instead of swallowing down frustration, responded to your children with attunement, helping them navigate their emotions?

What if you had integrated the connection to your own needs and concerns, instead of inwardly cringing, when your partner does something a little whacky, thus opening up the awareness of her/his precious individual expression?

What if you had energy to savor your life—every drop of it, instead of numbing out to soothe yourself?

That’s what waking up
can open up in you!!

Waking up is not just a experience of the mind. Waking up involves all 3 Centers—Belly/Body, Heart, and Head.

Opening one Center can support the opening of the others. All are intimately intertwined in our awakening.

I recently read Brené Brown’s book Braving the Wildnerness, on what it takes to show up with awakeness in the world, in particular, in this political climate. I LOVED this concept:

Strong Back. Soft Front. Wild Heart.

As we awaken, we develop a strong and flexible spine—representing our will and ability to focus (Body and Head Centers)—instead of a rigidly over-protective back.

When our back is sturdy and flexible enough, instead of hardening or collapsing to protect a weak spine and defend from hurt, our front is open, soft and available to the world (Body and Heart Centers).

And within that soft front blossoms what Brené calls our Wild Heart. The Wild Heart is an awakening heart that is soft, open, and available to life’s beauty, chaos, unpredictability... Not numbed out or stuck in any one feeling, but able to respond to the paradox, feeling deeply and wildly available to life.

As Rumi says, “There are a thousand ways to
kneel and kiss the ground,” a thousand ways—and likely more—to practice waking up.

What are you working on in your life right
now that supports your waking up?

Happy Lenten Valentine’s Day!

I wonder when this happened last–Valentine’s Day falling on the first day of Lent!

The holiday that encourages voluptuous appetites, hedonistic pleasure, and over-the-top expressions of love.

AND the marking of 40 days in the desert wilderness–days of fasting, fastidious moral behavior, and going without.

What a beautiful paradox!!

Both of these extremes express
a yearning of the heart.

A yearning to find our way to our True Home–
to the Awakened Heart.

We can find our way in great pleasure and in great abstinence. Without indulging in either.

Sister Joan Chittister reminds us what Lent is really about:

“Lent is about becoming, doing, and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now.”

“The fullness of life” is Love.

We are invited today–on Lenten Valentine’s Day–to become, do, or change what is necessary to open to more Love.

Maybe that’s through flowers and chocolate and saying “I love you” to yourself and/or another.

Maybe it’s through daily prayer and removing [you name it] from your life.

You get to decide!

What will you practice?