Category: personality

healing

I’ve been going through some stress-related health issues lately that have prompted me to slow down, to take on less, to listen, to ask for support, in short, to re-prioritize my life and look carefully at how I really want to be living “this one wild and precious life.” (from Mary Oliver’s Summer Day).

One aspect of this is related to the noface collage I did last Fall, an aspect of which I am exploring again here. I realize as I walk this healing path, that I don’t know, really, who I will be on the other side. I have ideas that I will be happier or freer or more able to listen to my body…but really, I don’t know who will emerge.

Like the many different faces of woman Susan Seddon Boulet’s paintings portray in this collage, I want to be open to whoever I am becoming. Maybe my sense of self doesn’t need to be static. Maybe, at any moment, I could embody any of these different faces—and others that I could never dream of.

Maybe my true face is like the yellow circle—full and empty, containing all things and nothing, radiant with potential and connected to all of life.

I want to dance this path with integrity and openness to who is emerging, not needing to know all the facets of who I am becoming.

How are you living your “one wild and precious life?” What parts of you are emerging? Do you feel open to not knowing exactly who you are becoming?

life practices: autumn equinox

My intention is to blog once a season about Life Practices in order to share what I am practicing in my life, and to suggest opportunities to join me, as well as ideas to use in your own practice.
Autumn Equinox occurs midway between the longest day of the year, at Summer Solstice, and the longest night of the year, at Winter Solstice. It is called an Equinox from the Latin “equal” and “night” because (as on the Spring Equinox) the night and day are the same length. In 2011, the Autumn Equinox happens at 9:04 am on September 23rd.

Autumn Equinox reminds us not only to be grateful for the long Summer days of bright light and warmth that nourished our bodies, souls, and earth, but also to orient consciously to the changing season and the growing darkness. We’re headed into a darker, quieter, more internal time as we move toward the Winter Solstice. We can take a lesson from the leaves on the trees that will soon blaze with their last, vivid colors and then start to let go and fall to the ground. They know how to surrender to the changing of the seasons—and they do so with such splendor and beauty!

As this new season begins and we head into the changing colors and falling leaves, into a time of growing darkness, what changes do you need to surrender into? The Summer of expansion, abundance, and blossoming is coming to an end. What quieter, calmer, more inward rhythm is calling to you? Can you hear it and heed its call? Can you allow yourself to change colors and fall like the leaves, if necessary, all the way to the ground? What wisdom is there for you? You may want to write in a journal, or try a short ritual alone or with friends. A ritual could include:
• Lighting a candle of yellow, gold, or autumn colors;
• Sitting in silence and reflecting on your harvest from the Summer and what you are being called to surrender as we move into the growing dark;
• Nourishing yourself with bread, apple cider or other seasonal juice, and any local, freshly harvested food;
• Naming or making a list of all the things you are grateful for (your harvest);
• Sitting quietly and breathing into the support, nourishment, and care you have received that will help you make this next transition with ease and grace;
• Saying thank you and blowing out the candle.

After the Autumn Equinox, the days slowly become shorter and shorter, until at Winter Solstice, we’ll be back to the longest night. May you welcome and find grace in this changing of the seasons.

Movement. Dave and I had the opportunity to participate in a 4-day Labor Day Weekend workshop about developing awareness of the wisdom of the body. It was such a gift to have this time to not be working, managing a home, even interacting with other parts of my life, and to just focus on listening and responding and learning with my body’s energy, flow, and rhythms. I’ve added embodiment practice into my daily morningtime as a way to include this new awareness more in the rest of my day. I had a pretty profound experience of letting go of self- and body-images during the workshop, which you can read about in my noface blogpost. What is your relationship with your body like? Are you aware of your body’s sensations? Do they bring you information? How do you listen?

Collage. It’s nice to feel the inspiration to collage again! I find it to be such a fun and joyful way to make meaning out of my life. Coming back from the movement workshop and finding the images to express what was largely a nonverbal experience helped me to process and understand what I had experienced. And then, as part of the opening of a year-long course in contentment, another collage wanted to be born, exploring my experience of contentment, which I am calling “serenity” for now. What ways do you have to make meaning, to allow yourself to explore deeply, underneath the words?

Laughter Yoga! I am now a Certified Laughter Yoga Leader! 🙂 HaHaHa!! Laughter Yoga is a practice to invite more joy, play, and wellbeing into your life. Because of the deep pranayamic breathing exercises, this form of practice is also called Laughter Yoga, but it does not include any physical asanas and can be practiced by people of all ages who are willing to be a little bit silly. It was started in 1995 by Dr. Kataria, a family physician in India, and is now widely practiced in over 65 countries around the world. Medical research supports its physical and emotional health-giving effects.

I took this practice on to go against my type One identification with being overly serious, responsible, disciplined–someone who rarely has time to play or have fun…It’s been a really important part of my path of becoming more whole as a person. I’m still a serious, responsible person, but I’m playfully serious—and seriously playful! I’m much easier to be around and don’t get as stuck when I’m feeling stressed. And I enjoy my life a whole lot more! How do you embrace the fun, silly, playful part of yourself? Next time you have a good clean laugh, notice how good you feel–body, heart, and mind.

Read more information about my teacher, Jody Ross, in Minnesota, and find a Laughter Club near you. I will be leading an introductory session at Unity Unitarian Church on November 16th, and hope to get a regular Wednesday evening Laughter Club going in 2012.

Poetry. I’ll leave you with a poem that is speaking to me about this turning of the year into Fall. It is an excerpt from Directions by Billy Collins from The Art of Drowning.

The best time is late afternoon
when the sun strobes through
the columns of trees as you are hiking up,
and when you find an agreeable rock
to sit on, you will be able to see
the light pouring down into the woods
and breaking into the shapes and tones
of things and you will hear nothing
but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy
falling of a cone or nut through the trees,
and if this is your day you might even
spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese
driving overhead toward some destination.
 
But it is hard to speak of these things
how the voices of light enter the body
and begin to recite their stories
how the earth holds us painfully against
its breast made of humus and brambles
how we who will soon be gone regard
the entities that continue to return
greener than ever, spring water flowing
through a meadow and the shadows of clouds
passing over the hills and the ground
where we stand in the tremble of thought
taking the vast outside into ourselves.

Autumn Laughter Blessings, Katy

contentment–serenity

I’m participating in a year-long journey of inviting contentment into my life. As part of our first practice, we were asked to find a word or phrase that fits us best for “contentment.” Jan gave us a bunch of synonyms and invited us to find explore.

I tried on a lot of words for contentment and finally landed on serenity. It’s actually really cool because this is the Virtue, or quality of awakened heart, for my Enneagram type, type One.

The dictionary definition includes “unruffled, tranquil, dignified, unclouded, bright, and fair” from the Latin: serenus meaning “bright, clear.” I really like the combination of tranquil with bright and clear. It seems to capture the lightness with the groundedness I feel when I am content.

Then I looked up the Enneagram explanation of serenity and found it really fits some of the other words I was considering like acceptance, ease, well-being, yielding, love of the truth. In Riso and Hudson’s Understanding the Enneagram (p. 63-64), the Virtue of Serenity is described as the state of accepting reality exactly as it is, being open and receptive to self and other and connected to others, trusting the moment, comfortable with self—body and feelings, relaxed, allowing the energies of life to move through without resisting or controlling, without effort or striving, flowing, calm, and balanced. YES! I am looking forward to welcoming this into my life over the next year!

noface

i arrive at the 4-day bodymind workshop with a lot of tension in my neck-throat-jaw-head. i don’t think it is more than normal in my life, but in the last month or so, i have become much more aware of the tension i live with and take to be a part of me.

i experience the tension as a push—like i’m over-pushing, over-efforting, over-striving to live each moment of my life fully and well. as i’ve become more aware of it, it feels like i engage way too many muscles to do things. i find myself leaning forward to work on the computer when i could be resting with my back supported. i tighten my jaw as part of concentrating or making a point. i hold onto facial expressions, not allowing them to organically fade. i push a lot of energy into my head, causing my neck to tighten and my head to ache…it often feels like the energy is trapped and pushing in and through my neck-throat-jaw-head without releasing.

our first embodiment practice is about relaxing the face. perfect! that’s what i’ve been working with! so, as i open my jaw wide, allowing the breath and sound to move in and out at its own pace, i practice yielding the push, letting it go, softening, releasing. soft face, soft breath, soft chest, soft, alive core and pelvis. and breath, breath, breath…my face begins to sink into itself, yielding to its softer, more fluid self. noface.

i feel as if my yielding face has no familiar contours, no familiar holding patterns. noface erases the structures that i know to be me. i am sinking into a deeper and softer sense of self.

with this melting comes a clearer awareness of my core of aliveness and life energy. this experience of me is deeper, pulsating, flowing, softer. yielding to noface directs my attention to the circulation of life in my body. life coming in and life going out, with or without my conscious awareness or participation.

i practice yielding to noface all four days—in the workshop and out of it. i have no idea what my face looks like and i don’t care. i have no self-image worth defending right now. inner critic thoughts arise about what’s wrong with my experience. i return to noface.

dropping the thoughts and sinking into noface puts me in contact with life moving me, and the thoughts lose their power. i am here, yielding, melting, sensing, feeling, responding to and with life.

the quieter you become, the more you are able to hear – rumi

life practices: summer solstice

My intention is to blog once a season about Life Practices in order to share what I am practicing in my life, and to suggest opportunities to join me, as well as ideas to use in your own practice.

Summer Solstice was June 21st!
I had hoped to facilitate a Summer Solstice celebration this year at my Unitarian Church (Unity in St. Paul), but instead we needed to make a trip to visit Dave’s aging mom in Massachusetts. Carol Leborveau, a friend, lead a very simple ritual to welcome the first signs of the light at 4:30 am in the morning (!) in my absence. Only a few brave souls attended, but it was rich and meaningful.

The Summer Solstice reminds us to notice and celebrate the full return of the light. The daylight hours have been growing since Winter Solstice, each day becoming slightly longer until the Spring Equinox in March, when the day and night were equal in length. This full-on light invites us out of the house, into the warmth, into its embrace. The seeds that slowly prepared themselves in the mysterious darkness within the earth and within our souls are ready to bear gifts in the fullness of the light. We are invited into a season of fertility, abundance, vitality, and blossoming.

What is calling you into blossom? As the poet Mary Oliver invites in her poem The Summer Day, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” You may want to write in a journal or create a ritual to explore this invitation. How can you embody the gifts that have been growing in you? Does anything need to be released in order to allow these gifts to manifest? A short ritual could include:
• In the brightness of the day
• Write each “blossoming” or release on a small piece of paper
• Light a candle and say a blessing or intention
• Read one “blossoming” or release at a time, and then burn it in the flame, allowing it to be transformed into whatever form it will take in your life.

Remember that as this day came to an end, the days are now very slowly becoming shorter, until at Autumn Equinox, the day and night will be balanced, and by Winter Solstice, we’ll be back to the longest night. Savor and revel in the bounty of this Summer season and the gift of “your one, wild, and precious life.” Next year, I hope to celebrate the Summer Solstice continuing the ritual Carol started at Unity Church Unitarian.

If you’re interested in creating a meaningful ceremony to mark some passage in your life, read more about my work as an Interfaith Minister below.

Reverending! I feel so happy to be an Interfaith Minister! I just married a couple on Saturday, July 2nd at Irvine Park in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was a perfectly beautiful day in an old part of St. Paul. I get so much joy out of marrying people! The process of helping them to find the right words to express their love and their vision for their relationship is so inspiring and meaningful! And then to consecrate the relationship they are aspiring to with family and friends…You can tell I’m enjoying myself in this photo—the music for the recessional accidentally started playing at the beginning of the ceremony! 

I’m also going to be the Worship Leader at Unity Unitarian Church on Sunday, July 10th. I’ve lead worship a few times now and really enjoy it! The title of my sermon is With One Smile, inspired by a poem by e.e. cummings and the journey I’ve been exploring lately of allowing more gratefulness and joy into my life. I wrote about and collaged about this the theme in a previous blog post. You can read e.e. cumming’s poem in the poetry section below and one of Mary Oliver’s poems, also a pivotal part of this service, in the delight blog post mentioned above.

Here’s a brief description of the service theme: Sometimes opening to suffering is what awakens us to joy—the heart is cracked open to the depth and breadth of life. Another way to awaken to joy is to cultivate the soil in which it grows and is nourished—and we can begin at any time with one smile! Katy Taylor and Worship Associate Jeanne Barker-Nunn take delight in playfully exploring the art of savoring and welcoming all of life.

I’ll also be talking about a new practice in my life—Laughter Yoga. I’m getting trained to be a Laughter Yoga Leader, so you’ll hear more about that soon. But in the meantime, check out local Laughter Clubs near you, and if you’re in Minnesota, this is my teacher, Jody Ross’s site.

Be in touch if you’d like me to facilitate any Interfaith Ministry services, rituals, celebrations, worship services, and more!

Music. I have been enjoying sharing music at my Unitarian Church here in St. Paul—a few weeks ago, I sang a few of Hildegard von Bingen’s luxurious and mysterious chants as part of a service exploring the virtue of Wisdom.

If you don’t know about Hildegard, a 12th century feminist, prophet, mystic, healer, teacher, and abbess, google her! The group that I think performs her music most authentically is Sequentia—see the “Hildegard von Bingen Project.” You can listen to some samples on Amazon if you like. I was blessed to have the chance to study with this group at a Summer music workshop years ago, and have enjoyed continuing to sing Hildegard’s music.

I’ll be opening the St. Paul Classic Bike Tour on September 11th at 8:00 am with 15 minutes of Hildegard’s music this year. The organizer wanted to mark September 11th in a peaceful, prayerful manner, and Hildegard’s music is being billed as “Hymns of Hope.” Hope to see you there! Dave and I may be riding after I get done singing—it would be a great way to celebrate our anniversary!

I have recorded a few of Hildegard’s chants on a number of my albums, with Welcome Brigid being the most recent album available on my site.

Have you tried listening to different music lately? It’s easy to get stuck in one genre that we really like, but listening to a wide range actually stimulates us and helps us to get out of stuck personality patterns. If you don’t normally listen to medieval chant or if you’re used to plainsong, try Hildegard’s music; if you listen already, try something completely different. Notice how it affects you—not in terms of “good” or “bad, but the sensations, the feelings, the thoughts that arise. How can you nourish yourself with music?

The Enneagram is my favorite tool for understanding how my personality operates. It’s an amazing psycho-spiritual tool for really seeing through who we think we are to who we really are, to our Essential Self or True Nature. Check out more about the Enneagram on our site.

Dave and I recently started calling our business “Winged Heart” (see collage below). We really love the idea that the Enneagram along with other practices that we are involved in is about opening the heart to greater freedom and joy. The heart is the “pulsating core of our aliveness,” “the center of our being,” as Br. David Steindl-Rast writes in his book Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer. Dave’s and my work, both personal and public, is about freeing the heart to be touched, to open, to feel all things—to be wholeheartedly alive!

We are taking a break from teaching this Summer, but we’re looking forward to teaching again in the Fall—see our upcoming schedule which includes a workshop to help us in our psycho-spiritual growth (5 week series, Oct-Nov), a presentation with a new take on the origin of the Core Emotions of the Centers (mid-Nov—date TBA), and a Couple’s Retreat (early Dec).

We’re always both available for consultations with the Enneagram, both individual or couples. We’re also certified to offer the Prepare & Enrich Inventories, which we have customized to include the Enneagram and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) for premarital or marriage enrichment.
Collage. I wrote last season that I was too busy to make time for collage—and it’s still true! I am working on gathering images right now for a piece to explore an old wound from when I was teenager. I usually find that exploring an issue visually engages my process in a deeper way. New insights open when I’m not just analyzing the issue with my mind, but exploring what images attract me, how they want to be placed together, and what the final gestalt is. I’m looking forward to continuing this collage process.

In addition to engaging in collage as a psycho-spiritual practice, I offer workshops, consultations, and collage artwork. You can see more collages on my site and this blog.

What kind of nonlinear right-brain practices do you engage in? Do you make time for them in your life? How do you feel when you do?

Poetry. As you know, one my favorite practices is that of welcoming poetry into my life, whether I learn it by heart, or just read it. If you love poetry, too, you can sign up for my sporadic Poetry/Prayer List. And here’s the e.e. cumming’s poem that’s an integral part of my life and my July 10th Service.

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

Summer Blessings on your life practice/practice of life, Katy

Delight in the New Year!

Delight, light, play, fun, happiness, laughter, wonder, presence, love, joy, freedom, excitement, stimulation, engagement, fullness, compassion…lightening up, taking it all in, embracing it, balancing it, smiling.

The defining image for 2011 is the one that came to me when I was trying to find a way to defend against an Inner Critic attack for having forgotten my purse on the way to an appointment for which I would need my checkbook. (Dave was with me and he had a check, so all would be well, but my Inner Critic didn’t want to drop it.) I was lying on the table before my myofascial session and nothing was working particularly well, but then I had the image of “jumping” my 1&1/2 year old nephew Zander up into the air and how he could jump and jump and jump and never get tired! And I “jumped” my Inner Critic up over my head in a playful way, smiling, telling her to “lighten up” to not be so serious. And the engagement was totally broken—I was filled with delight and warmth and compassion. I even smile thinking of it now. Since then I’ve been holding this image and it’s really working!

Then during the session, I had described how my left-side pattern had kicked in with something inbetween my shoulder blades going out. Patricia talked about that as the back of the Heart Center. Being with Zander over New Year’s was very heart-opening. I wasn’t working, just being present as much as I could be, with him and the family. And being with Zander was about play, delight, the joy in every moment of life. What a beautiful lesson and break from my oft-times very serious life! So, it’s not surprising to me that on the day before I was to fly home that my Heart Center might decide it had been open enough and it was time to feel more “normal,” more shut down, less impressionable…

Self-compassion is what Patricia found when she checked in energetically. Fits so well with the Katy who thinks she has to be so serious and who was afraid upon her return home that she wouldn’t know how to co-parent well, wouldn’t get what she needed, and so shuts her heart down. Self-compassion—it’s OK not to know how to parent, it’s OK to feel bad because I don’t always know what I need or don’t like the way my haircut looks…it’s OK to feel the hurt, the vulnerability, the sadness. Can my heart stay open to this and not have to close up to defend against it?

Spending so much of the trip on “Zander-time,” our lives were arranged around the living of his life. We got up with him, let him choose what to play and do as much as possible, and joined in. I was very engaged with him, following his energy and his lead, allowing my energy to be big, loud, playful, engaged, full, happy… At times, experiencing this energy, my type patterns wanted to interpret it as being “overwhelmed.” I caught myself in this story and went back to the sensations and feelings and stayed with playing Zander’s life with him. It felt like I was pushing the edges of my self-image—the serious, busy, held-in Katy gets overwhelmed with too much playful fun, too much activity, too much excitement—but what about delighted Katy? She seemed to really enjoy it!

This reminds me of some reading I’ve been doing lately about somatics. In his book Somatics, Thomas Hanna talks about the Red Light and Green Light reflexes. He describes the Red Light reflex as the impulse we have to pull away or withdraw from negative stress. The Green Light reflex, however, is about wanting to move toward something as a response to positive stress. Zander embodies this Green Light reflex a lot, as he invites us all in to join him in his exploration of the delightful, exciting, fun world. The problem comes when we adults use the Green Light reflex to move the body forward into action only in order to get things done, to be responsible in our “adult” world and and forget about moving toward things that delight us! A further problem is that this reflex gets engrained in the body as ongoing back and neck tension that we take for granted and don’t know how to let go of. In Zander, the Green Light comes on, leading him toward delight and joy, then turns off, allowing rest and relaxation; in many of us adults, it’s always on, pushing us not toward delight and joy, but work and responsibility…

At my first church service after returning home, we had the Tolling of the Bells service, in which we remember those that have passed away in the last year—Maureen McKessey, my uncle Harley, and my sweet Teddybear, who I still miss tremendously. And Mary Oliver’s poem Heavy was read and really struck home:

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friends Daniel
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it—
books, bricks, grief—
all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled roses
in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply.

“‘It’s not the weight you carry / but how you carry it— / books, bricks, grief— /
all in the way / you embrace it, balance it, carry it / when you cannot, and would not, / put it down.‘ / So I went practicing.”

I’m practicing. I’ve lived so much of my life with the adult version of the Green Light reflex on, carrying and trying to balance my books, bricks, and grief (although I haven’t acknowledged the grief much, mostly covered it up with a lot of improving, being serious, and doing…) There will always be books, bricks, and grief. How will I embrace them, balance them, carry them? Can I carry them in the way I carried Zander? With love, with delight, with wonder? Can I hold them compassionately, with presence? Can I jump them into the air and lighten up when they threaten to become too heavy for me? Can I take breaks from carrying them and allow myself to rest, to put them down?

The collage at the top of this post is a visual exploration of these questions. In the midst of the books, bricks and grief—(working, teaching, mentoring, learning to co-parent in midlife, doing my spiritual practices, learning to be present, learning to be a good life partner…constantly improving my life and my world and never feeling like I have enough time)—can I still embrace the joy, the breath, the beauty, the fiery life that sparkles, the fulfillment and freedom of awakening, the gratitude for and cherishing of all of it, the joy and delight?! YES!

How do you embrace, balance, and carry your books, bricks, and grief? How do you practice delight, laughter, and joy? I’d love to hear some ideas! There’s a start in the post I did on play last year, and I’d like to gather together even more ideas here so that when I forget and get caught in my serious and overwhelmed self-image, I can welcome the lighter jumping-in-the-air energy in, too!

life practices: heading into winter

I intend to blog once a season as we head into each season to share what I am practicing in my life, and to suggest opportunities to join me, as well as ideas to use in your own practice.

Winter Solstice Celebration on December 21st!
I facilitate, participate, and sing in this ritual at Unity Unitarian Church every year—if you’re in the area and would like to join us, please do!

Come join this contemplative, family-friendly, participatory, Celtic-inspired ritual to mark the turning of the year as the darkness gives way to the growing light. This year we will also honor the full Wolf Moon and the total lunar eclipse. More information here.

If you’re interested in creating a meaningful ceremony to mark some passage in your life, read more here about my work as an Interfaith Minister.

In your own life, how are you taking in this Advent season of waiting, of going inward? Here is the Call to Worship I gave at our recent Mary service—I offer it as an invitation:

I feel winter calling me inside, welcoming me into its cozy, warm darkness. I just brought in the last of the dark leafy greens from the garden. I’m firing up my crockpot and holding warm cups of tea between my hands. There is a natural inward turning of my attention—towards nourishment, towards warmth—and a slower rhythm is beckoning me.

I usually know myself through my doing. Who will I be if I allow myself to slow down, to listen inwardly, to take in the nourishment of my Being? Who will emerge in the quiet, in the stillness? Who or What is waiting to be born in me?

Music. I have been enjoying sharing music at my Unitarian Church here in St. Paul—a few weeks ago, I was able to sing my Hail Mary during the service on Mary that Rob and I put together, which was a real blessing. Most of my music is about worship, connecting with our own souls, so sharing it as part of a worship service feels very aligned and “right” to me.

Hail Mary is one of the two songs from my album Welcome Brigid that was included on a new compilation CD called Songs of Mary that is produced by Sounds True. The album is stunning—you can find it on my website. Welcome Brigid, the album that my songs come from, is available on my site here.

Are you bringing music into your life now as we move toward the holidays? What music nourishes you? Singing holiday music can help us move into this season with more joy, or perhaps listening to calming, grounding music that invites you to slow down in what can be a very busy time…How are you nourishing yourself with music?

The Enneagram. As you may know, the Enneagram is my favorite tool for understanding how my personality operates. It’s an amazing psycho-spiritual tool for really seeing through who we think we are to who we really are, to our Essential Self or True Nature. You can check out more about the Enneagram on my site if you like.

My husband Dave Hall and I will be offering an Enneagram Workshop for couples, called Cultivating Deeper Contact with the Enneagram at The Journey Inn, a beautiful B&B in Wisconsin March 18-20. We only have room for 5 couples. You can find details here.

Collage. I have been so busy lately that I haven’t made time for as much collage time as I would like. I really find that the practice of collage nourishes me in a special way. It invites me into creative, non-linear time and knowing, into surprising beauty, moments of delight, deep insight and understanding.

Collaging is also a way that I can engage with an inquiry about something that is challenging me in my life, emotionally, spiritually. Writing helps, but collage gives me another way in that is  less logical, less structured. Recently I have been processing my feelings around another person in my life being diagnosed with cancer, this time a brain tumor. I don’t like to think about death—who does? But this year has been full of folks getting ill and death, including my sweet Teddy Bear lhasa apso, so I’ve been needing to keep myself engaged with this topic.

I share with you my collage and blog post about this most recent friend—there are actually a few about death, the unknown, and the preciousness of life on my blog, but this is the most recent one.

You may not know, but my collages were featured in The Vision Board by Joyce Schwarz, and in the 2nd printing, softcover version one of mine is actually featured on the cover! (You can see it peeking out on the right side.)

Movement. In my busyness, I’m not moving enough these days. I sit at my computer all day, then finish my day-job, and sit down again for working on my work. I’m trying to at least get out for a walk, to run errands on foot, and I do run 2-3 times/week, but it’s not enough!

I wrote about Authentic Movement last time—I’m still doing that and really enjoying opening to new wisdom in my body. You can read about that here if you wish.

Another lovely way to move is the circle dances of Dances of Universal Peace. They are offered every 3rd Sunday at the Friends Meeting House on Grand Ave. in St. Paul. For more information, check out the Meetup listing.

How are you listening to your body’s wisdom? Are you paying attention to tightness, to need for rest or exercise or right amounts of food and drink? Are you allowing your body’s natural movement to inform you, to nourish you? For those of you, like me, who live in northern climes, notice how you tense up in the cold. Can you breathe and relax instead?

Poetry. Another of my favorite practices is that of welcoming poetry into my life. I’m on a few poetry lists that send me poetry into my inbox every day, which I LOVE (Writer’s Almanac and Poetry Chaikhana), and I always have a book of poetry nearby. I also enjoy walking with a poem and reciting it, learning its rhythms and music, eventually learning it by heart.

Here’s a poem for the season by Sister Peronne Marie Thibert, set to music by my friend Elizabeth. If you’d like to get these more regularly, you can sign up for my Poetry List  (when you get to the Contact page, scroll down).

The gate is open
dare we enter
the snow looks heavy, deep,
the woods, dark, deeper still
the Star, we’re told,
is somewhere beyond
on the other side of fear,
of hopelessness
The gate is open
dare we enter
dare believe…

Winter Blessings on your life practice/practice of life, Katy

p.s. If you’re looking for encouragement and inspiration as you move into the New Year, check out my friend Pam’s personal growth email program: Thriving Winter: A Call to Aliveness.

living now

i’ve been so busy recently that i keep finding myself thinking over and over, i don’t have time…for talking to friends, to lie down and take a rest, to try a new recipe, to blog, to sit quietly with my man…but thinking about my life that way doesn’t help me to live in my life now. it’s a story that makes it hard to live now.

right now i can smell the onions i’m caramelizing in the crockpot–that’s a new fun kitchen adventure! right now, i notice my jaw is tight and i am sitting in my cozy nook with a heating pad, surrounded by books and projects and flowers. the christmas cactus has been blooming for about a week now and it’s gorgeous! dusk is falling. i sense myself here, embodied, here, right now. right now there is time. time is now.

and this weekend, being more aware of the moment, of now, i have enjoyed the kitchen bounty–the tomatoes i harvested green from the garden last month are ripening, i just picked the last of the chard out from under the snow, and there’s still lots of kale. i don’t have to do anything more right now. right now i am writing this and that is all i need to pay attention to. my fingers on the keypad, still tension in my jaw, my body settled, supported. here, now. here, now. herenowherenowhwerenowherenow. here now.

so, here’s what’s cooking in the crockpot: carmelized onions (just chop them up and put them in with some butter, salt, and pepper. mine have been cooking about 2.5 hours on high and they are getting there.). and i just threw some of that garden chard in, chopped up to finish cooking wtih the onions. i’m planning to make a tomato tart with the onion/chard on the bottom and slices of fresh tomatos with feta, perhaps cheese on the top. but that’s later. right now, i’m here, typing, munching on cheese curds and crackers.

where are you now? are you here? what is the texture of your here now?

bye now, katy

authentic movement

I’m taking an Authentic Movement class and really loving it. In the first class, we only moved for about 15 minutes. At first, I wasn’t sure. I felt shy, afraid that I would feel nothing, no impulse to move. Afraid that my movement would be boring if I didn’t decide to DO something interesting. But deciding, as I’ve done it in the past, while it can create movement and doing, doesn’t always feel authentic to me…

Authentic. What does this mean? It’s the Virtue of the type Three, Authenticity. True to who I am, to my own inner, core expression. In order to be true to this, I have to allow it to come through. I have to take time to sense it in some way.

Even though I have been engaging in sensing practice and can feel myself interiorly these days, I was afraid that these sensations would not lead to movement. Our teacher Barbara said that was fine. That my job was to be authentic to what my body wanted to express. That could look like lying down and not moving. That could be a small, “boring” movement, or anything at all. No rules, no shoulds, no ways I am supposed to move or not move! YIKES! I’m darn good at doing what I SHOULD do. What do I do with no shoulds?

I decided to take this class to explore more with my body, but I didn’t realize until I took it that it was perfect for this unknown exploration that has been up for the last few months around death and mystery and lack of control…what happens if I’m not in control of my life, of my movement?

So, I chose a corner and found that I needed to sit down. Standing felt too exposed and too active. I sat and sensed. I felt my bubbly, life-force energy and jiggled my body every once in awhile to meet the bubbly pulsations. But I felt very, very still and interior. I lay down, I shifted, rolled a bit…Barbara later said that during this time I looked like a rock, a still mountain, something organic and contained and full. I felt this, too, and I wondered if I would feel more impulse to move. Where would it come from? Would it be related to the bubbly sensations or the groundedness?

I started to notice an impulse to move differently—to reach out an arm strongly. To flow my arms. At one point, I saw a movement of my right arm and took that as an impulse to move it like that. It felt good to move that way. When my ring tapped on the floor during a movement, I liked the sound and felt like making it in rhythm a few times. My movement ended up expanding through my chest and arms, opening up a bit, with more dynamism coming out of the stillness. But I still stayed pretty close to the floor.

Who was moving? I don’t know, but I know I wasn’t “doing” it for show—to be a good dancer, a good mover, balanced, coordinated, whatever. I was sincerely trying to follow my own body’s wisdom about what she wanted to do. That included a lot of still sensing. I was encouraged to notice some impulses that I didn’t know where came from and to follow them.

In the classes I’ve been to since this first one, each time I feel more able to trust myself and the movement that flows through me. It’s a different kind of sensing than I’m used to and it’s very exciting to follow and trust whatever arises—fast, slow, still, flowing, staccato, anything…it is an opening to the unknown within me.

This from our last class as I spent a good amount of time in contact with the wall:

not i
substance flowing melting molding shape-shifting
face wall body arm hand wall
one substance
solid moving receiving meeting holding reciprocating
not i

mystery–life and death

i’ve heard about the cycles of life and death so much that it doesn’t usually mean much to me.yes, things die and things get born and of course they’re related, but  what does this really mean? what does it mean to me?

now it’s spring and new life is coming in. i’m loving all the different greens. i’m thrilled to see plants that i planted coming up again, flowers, life bursting forth from the brown  earth. my sister’s new baby is one year old this week, a niece-in-law is two, new physical movement is coming to life in me, my relationship with dave continues to grow and deepen, and friendships grow richer…

and this spring i’m really aware of the death that’s here too. in the last month, 4 people in my acquaintance-circle dying, 3 more diagnosed with scary diseases, the death of my dear old doggy, my boss’s dog, my singing partner amy’s dog, and my brother gone missing again into his drug habit…the list seems to be never-ending. and it is, isn’t it? there will always be death…and life…

somehow the two are inexplicably tied together. contemplating this brings up a real sense of the unknown, the mystery, and with that a sense of no control. no control of whether these friends live or die, of whether i live or die…touching into the mystery in both the death and the new life. the mystery means letting go of familiar ways of knowing, of understanding, of being–of not knowing what else is here. accepting that i don’t know how life will be or even is.

Osho says: “Look for the mysterious in life. Wherever you look – in the white clouds, in the stars in the night, in the flowers, in a flowing river – wherever you look, look for the mystery. And whenever you find that a mystery is there, meditate on it. Meditation means: dissolve yourself before that mystery, annihilate yourself before that mystery, disperse yourself before that mystery. Be no more, and let the mystery be so total that you are absorbed in it. And suddenly a new door opens, a new perception is achieved.”

the mystery of new life springing from the earth, from humans, from poetry, music, art–i am open to this mystery. this has also been very true for me in my body exploration–i’ve had to let go of what i thought i knew about myself to enter into a deeper knowing, a more intimate listening and sensing. and it has been amazing and wonderful. it’s easier when  the mysterious is full of obvious beauty and wonder… how to be open to the mysteriousness of death, of loss, of grief, of fear? my mind immediately wants to make sense of it in some way, which is why i suppose i’m writing this…

right now, what i know is the preciousness of life. right now as i sit in my sweet cocoon of a room, with the rain and verdant green outside my window, as i email a friend, as i walk in my gardens feeling the earth under my barefeet, as i sing to a dying woman, as i speak with a dear one, as i hold my fiance’s hand…this life we live is such a gift. i’m sure there’s more for me to take in during this time of birth and death, but now, this is what I am most aware of—my gratitude for this moment of this life i am in.

as my unitarian pastors would say at the end of a sermon, “may it be so, blessed be, and amen.”