Category: body

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.

Grounding–yin or yang?

Exploring and deepening my connection to the earth has been a big part of my journey over the years.

I’ve always felt grounded. People have commented on my solidity, my steadiness, my ease with the physical world. Partners have found my presence stabilizing and gravitated toward me for this. Clients, too.

And I have always felt relatively steady under stress.

I get stressed like anyone else, but it doesn’t usually unground me in the same way—I don’t get flighty, distracted, or visibly anxious. I tend to just buckle down and take care of business, perhaps clenching my teeth a bit or tightening up my jaw and shoulders…

My feet are very wide and ground into the earth. I go barefoot a lot in all seasons but winter.

I love the feeling of my feet and my hands in the earth.

I’ve always been more in touch with the physicality of living—with wood and stone, food and drink, paper and pencil—than with feeling energy or stepping out of my body. I haven’t wanted to. I like being in earth in my body. I feel real.

Nonetheless, I seem to have been invited to a next round of grounding exploration, to a deepening of my embodied presence.

And I’m trying to understand how it relates to my inner experience of already feeling grounded.

I’m wondering if there are two types of feeling grounded—a more yin and a more yang grounding.

If I think of it this way, then what I am cultivating is yin grounding.

I know how to be steady, solid, and stable in my doing and support of others. What I don’t know how to do very well is to release, sink, surrender, drop into the ground, and just be.

For the first time in 30+ years, I was drawn last year to engage in some vocal coaching, in order to access more of my voice, in particular, the more earthy qualities.

As I explore what it means to bring more grounded presence to my voice, I find it is the yin ground that is missing. I can’t open the low part of my range without relaxing and releasing. The vocal folds need to, literally, be more relaxed to vibrate more slowly and access the lower tones!

My body has also let me know, through a series of aches, pains, and minor ailments, that I need to learn to find yin ground in my pelvis as well. I am learning to sink, to drop down, to release held tension in the exercises my PT gives me and in the holistic pelvic care I have recently embarked on. It seems I need to learn more about presence here, too, in order to release pelvic tension and realign my pelvis and keep my pelvic floor healthy, flexible, and resilient.

Unfortunately, I can’t make yin ground happen. Heaven knows, I’ve tried!!

And it seems my yang ground
can’t create yin ground.

So, I practice.

Exhaling to release held tension in pelvis, pelvic floor, hips, throat, shoulders, voice…

Dropping my awareness into pelvis, legs, feet, fully supported by the earth, so that I can release the tensions that hold my pelvis and vocal folds in a certain configuration.

Consciously relaxing my jaw and my pelvic floor at the same time. (Bodymind psychotherapist Susan Aposhyan says there is a vital connection between pelvic floor and mouth—they are the two ends of the alimentary canal. Explore moving your lips and/or jaw gently open and closed and see if you can feel your pelvic floor, including your genitals and anus, respond.)

Squatting, lying, resting on the earth, surrendering my body to her holding.

Creating soulcollage cards with images to accompany and guide my bodysoul transforming (like those in this post).

Receiving massage, bodywork, and coaching.

And in all my practice, letting it be simple, a return, a non-efforting, a non-striving, a letting be and letting go.

This is the yin ground
I am learning to cultivate.

I’m struck with how both the voice work and my holistic pelvic care refer to presence. Cultivating yin ground enhances my vocal presence and my pelvic presence, both of which make me more complete and whole, more present as a human being.

Do you see a difference between yin and yang grounding in your life?

What is your relationship with your vocal and pelvic presence?

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?

with roots, we rise

magnificent trees, their root structure spreading
horizontally twice their height.

icebergs, 90% of their mass underwater.

deep sleep, providing the substrate for your body
to integrate, heal, and grow.

real, nourishing food, feeding your cells, cre
ating your bodies, emotions, and thoughts.

movement, pumping blood and air,
forming flesh and bone.

inner practice, deepening your connection
to your whole bodysoul.

These are the roots you need
to rise up and live your life.

Winter is the time to nourish your roots:

Listen to a grounding meditation to deepen your inner roots.

Try my Parsnip-Burdock Breakfast Bowl to feed your belly roots.

Join me at Wild Church!

Practicing Gratefulness

I taught a class on practicing gratitude just before Thanksgiving.

We explored how we can’t just assume an “attitude of gratitude,” but we can practice to be present, to open our heart, mind, and body to more gratefulness.

When we brainstormed how gratefulness / gratitude feels, there were so many ways we experience it on the inside. We feel connected, warm, loving, kind, happy, open, excited, tingly, uplifted, grounded, centered, accepting, positive, and more… 

What about you? How does gratefulness sense and feel to you?

These are all aspects of Who we truly are.

Of course we would want to be in touch with them! We can think about them as aspects of our Essence.

Your Essence is something that never goes away. It is an essential part of you, not changed by mood or anything that happens to you. It feels like home, like our birthright.

When we feel in touch with this, we can relax.

We know all will be well.

We make better decisions.

We trust life.

We talked about a lot of different ways to practice opening to gratefulness—from gratitude journals to thanking those who help you, from saying grace at meals to practicing random acts of kindness… The  one I’m going to try on in the New Year is a Gratitude Jar!

There are so many ways to open! 🙂

Please join me in the simple 3-minute body practice below to invite more opening–to help release the habitual contraction we hold in our bodies so that we can make space for more gratefulness and be more present.

Gratitude is a Presence Practice.

When we want something, we find a way to get it or work toward it, to practice.

We have to prioritize practicing gratefulness!

  • Not to get it right.
  • Not to reach some ultimate gratitude high.
  • But to be more present, to open our hearts—for ourselves and for the world.

If you want an opportunity to practice with me for a week, join the
free online 5-Day Practice Presence for Life Journey,
starting in January.

Set yourself up with a sacred and mindful start to the New Year!

with each step

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them.” ~ Einstein

Dave and I taught a daylong on the Law of Three, a deeply embedded teaching of the Enneagram, for our Minnesota Enneagram community this past Saturday.

The more I work with this teaching in my own life, the more I experience this truth—

When I’m stuck trying to solve something with my thinking, I don’t solve it by chewing over the same thoughts…

When I’m stuck in my feelings, re-experiencing them over and over again, they do not release…

There’s actually something valuable about that funny and famous cartoon (I paraphrase):

  • Patient: Doctor, when I move my leg like this, it hurts.
  • Doctor: Then don’t move it like that! 🙂

If we’re not running our habitual patterns to find an answer—overthinking, overfeeling, avoiding, denying, repressing, all of which cause us pain—what DO we do?

We apply what the Buddhists call skillful means.

Monday morning after my run, aware of a problem my mind and heart had not solved from the day before, I was practicing one of my favorite walking meditations from Thich Nhat Hanh:

The mind goes in a thousand directions.
The beautiful path is the path of peace.
With each step, a gentle wind blows.
With each step, a flower blooms.

This is an example of using skillful means—

When you’re stuck in your mind or heart, running the same old tapes…

Try coming back to the body.

As I walked this meditation, my senses came alive–with each step:

  • the gentle, cool breeze was blowing and kissing my face,
  • the flowers in yards and boulevards were blooming,
  • the trees were standing solid, tall, rooted, their leaves waving to me as I passed,
  • the sun filtered through the canopy, lighting up all it touched,
  • the moon, moving to half-waning, holding watch in the sky.

And my body came online, her intelligence sparkling, softening, supporting all that was trying to work itself out in my mind and heart.

No big “AHA,” but now, where there wasn’t before, there is space for something new to arise.

It can be this simple.

We can trust the intelligence of the body to support the heart and mind.

What body practices do you have in place to help you open to more spaciousness when you are stuck?

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365 self-care!

Does lying in the backyard together watching the total solar eclipse count?

How about making sure I get some veggies in at every meal?

What about dancing wildly to feel my juicy aliveness?

Yes. It all counts.

 

Self-care is about listening to what your bodysoul (body, heart, mind, soul) really needs in any moment to be truly well.

 

Because of the way we’re programmed (or if we’re in an extreme circumstance of some sort), we can get kinda stuck on one track of self-care.

If my self-care is just about physical body stuff—enough sleep, healthy food, taking my supplements, exercising—it’s not enough.

 

SAY  WHAT?

 

Yes, I stand by it!

Self-care is bigger than just taking care of your body’s self-preservation needs of what I call grounding and nesting!

We also have to consider our need to feel a sense of belonging and place (connecting), and our need to feel pleasure and turn-on (aliveness / radiance).

All three forms of self-care are innate, animal, instinctual needs that operate under the surface all the time.

Especially when we’re stressed, we pay A LOT Of attention to trying to get at least one of these needs met…

 

Which one do you habitually and perhaps subconsciously prioritize? (I focus most on my grounding / nesting needs.)

What are you neglecting? (I’ve had to learn to pay attention to my aliveness / radiance needs.)

I’m writing about this in my book Nourishing the Feminine, and I’ll also be teaching about it at my:

 

Looking forward to supporting you in your self-care needs–in whatever form that takes–classes, retreats, tea, coaching, connecting!

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and there is only the dance

We begin in the name of Allah.
Alleluia, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.
There is no God but God.
Sacred, Holy, Heaven here on earth.

Just four of the many chants/dances we began with our first night of the Dances of Universal Peace retreat with Sufi teacher Maitreya this past weekend.

We sway, bow, pray, sing, open…

Holding hands with our neighbors…

  • stepping into the center, lifting our hands and hearts and minds to the Divine,
  • bowing to each other, to True Nature within, to ourselves,
  • collecting the mercy and grace in our cupped hands and letting it pour down like rain, blessing us head to toe.

Maitreya reminds us over and over that we are already enlightened.

There are obstructions to this light, but it is already within. We dance to remind ourselves, to reconnect to this light within, among, and beyond us.

The rhythm of the simple chants and steps entrains the bodysoul.

Step, bow, turn, spin.

Forward & backward, surrender, change course, turn inward & outward.

 Again. Again. Again. Again.

 

Perfection in the repetition, in the fullness of the unifying rhythms of body, heart, mind, and soul.

This is embodied group spiritual practice, joining hands, hearts, and voices together to weave the fabric of Love.

How do you embody your spiritual practice?

Join me for another, perhaps more accessible-in-daily-life, form of embodied spiritual practice: Healthy High Tea in the garden, in which we mindfully nourish our bodies, hearts, minds, and souls with real food and good company.

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