Category: practices

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.)

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?

Smile into Spring

Smile.

Yes, right now, just try it on your face.

Notice how you feel right now.

For me it’s instantly softer, more joyous, more at ease. Right. Now.

As we teach in Laughter Yoga, just the simple act of intentional smiling and laughter sparks the feel-good neuro-transmitters in the brain. You immediately feel more connected, happy, and pleasured.

Who doesn’t want more of that?

Spring Equinox is here today,
Tuesday March 20th, 2018
at 11:15 am CT.

Especially in the northern climes, like Minnesota where I live, spring helps us smile again!

On Sunday, I hosted a Tea & Poetry Gathering. Just hearing the spring-themed poems that welcomed “rushing rain,” “wild spring,” “this earth is our heaven,” “buds bursting on the trees,” “the encouragement of light,” the “frolic,” and the invitation to the heart to “rave on” helped my bodysoul “step into spring.”

Spring always invites us to start fresh, to begin again, to welcome the new green life awakening deep within.

Why not use this natural, seasonal impulse to re-fresh and re-source our lives instead of waiting for a crisis to do it for us?

We can re-orient in so many different ways. Today, I offer just a few:

  • Try my new gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free Breakfast Muffins recipe for a simple, healthy start to your day.
  • Try on the Smiling Practice below, that you can do anytime in your day, to choose new, fresh, yummy life!

Smiling Practice

“Sometimes your joy is the source
of your smile, and sometimes your smile
is the source of your joy.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

For more awareness, close your eyes, but this can be done with them open or closed.

Let a smile start on your lips–draw the corners of your lips up toward your ears slowly. Notice how, if you let it, the smile naturally broadens and widens, taking up more of your face. Feel how it resets and refreshes your brain. Take a few breaths here, sensing your body.

Now smile into your heart–start at the center of your chest and imagine the smile spreading out from there, up toward your breasts (or pecs) and all the way to your shoulders, filling your chest with this joyful, easeful energy. Breathe in and out, sensing and feeling.

Now smile into your belly–from your pubic bone, let the smile widen out and up toward your hip bones. Imagine bathing all of your lower belly organs in this goodness and well-being. Breathe, feel, and sense…

Breathe into all three Centers–Belly, Heart, and Head, starting in the center–pubic bone, center of chest, lips–and let the breath spread the smile in each Center, filling you up with yumminess. On the inbreath, breathe the smile into being, on the outbreath, release any efforting. Stay here, smiling, breathing, sensing, and feeling as long as you choose, and then bring this sweet moment of awakening to your true nature back into your day.

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?

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!

New Year, New Light, New Practices!

Remember with me for a moment what it was like for our ancestors, for some of us, even as close as our great-great grandparents…

 

As the Autumn passed, the days grew darker and darker.

After the harvest celebrations and the fields gone fallow, people cozied up together, sharing the warmth and the light of fire as the darkness grew deeper every day. They structured their lives around the light, sleeping when it was dark, up to 12 hours or more per night.

At the peak of darkness, when it seemed like its reign would never lose its grip, the people started to notice that, slowly but surely, the days were beginning to grow lighter again. They ventured out earlier and stayed out later…

The return of the light meant the return of life–of days warming, of plants starting to grow again, of animals mating and giving birth…

 

It’s no wonder that this season, regardless of which

religious celebration you participate in, is all about

waiting for and celebrating the return of the light.

 

This natural seasonal rhythm is built into our genes, passed down through thousands of years of biological, ancestral memory.

 

We celebrate that there is always a new spark of light–birthed right in the middle of the darkest of days. 

 

We celebrate that there is always an end to the depth of darkness.

 

We celebrate that there is always the light that returns again, bringing with it new growth and new life.

 

What new sparks of light within do you want to tend?

 

What new ways is your soul asking you to grow–to

open, to melt, to become more whole in the New Year?

 

Before we can nurture the new light, we have to first get clear on what we want–we must dream, vision, and imagine the life we want to live!

 

That’s what this dark time is meant for.

 

We sleep, we rest, we become more receptive to the life, the light that wants to live through us with practice, introspection, contemplation, meditation, prayer…

 

I have a perfect practice opportunity for you, one
that will support your sacred dreaming and visioning time.

 

Create space in your life through presence practices.

 

Feel more centered, more soulful, more connected.

 

Reconnect with your daily actions and make them into sacred ritual.

 

 

I’d LOVE to practice with you as a sacred beginning

to the New Year of more Light!

making life meaningful

“We are often tired and imbalanced not because we are doing too much, but because we are doing too little of what is most real and meaningful.”
~ Marianne Williamson

 

Moving into the holidays, we do get tired and imbalanced.

 

Most often, we ARE doing too much—

  • Working hard to earn the money we need to not only survive, but to buy gifts for our loved ones,
  • Making time for more connections with those we care about,
  • Decorating and creating a home environment that will help us shift into the mood for the holy-days…

 

And even though all of this is true, what if the problem were not really the “too much,” but the fact that we are not engaging with what is “most real and meaningful”?

 

The poet David Whyte tells a story that illustrates this in his book Crossing the Unknown Sea. He was working for a cause he loved, doing work he was good at, and feeling driven to work hard and make a difference in the world. But he was burned out, exhausted, and feeling disconnected from himself all the time. Reading poetry together, a friend gently commented that he was not exhausted from overwork, but from not living a wholehearted life. In his case, he was ignoring the inner call to step into his vocation as a poet. The harder he worked, even though it was for a good cause, the less time he made for what had meaning to him, what was most real.

 

What is most real and meaningful for you
during the holy-days?

How can you live a more wholehearted life right now?

 

My life and work are about meeting life exactly as it is and finding ways to be more present and mindful right in the midst of it all, in the thick of it.

 

Here are some simple ways you can practice presence in the life you are living right now, so that you can feel more meaning, more enjoyment, and more depth:

 

Another focus of attention to help you feel more meaning and purpose in your life is to mindfully engage with rituals that create a sacred container for your life.

These might be seasonal rituals, like the Holidays—perhaps you attend services, decorate your home, or celebrate the waning and waxing of the light. (If you’re in St. Paul, please join me for a Winter Solstice Celebration on December 21st.)

Or they could be practices you consciously engage with to create a sense of the sacred in each day, like you can find in my free Welcoming the Sacred E-Book.

 

If you’d like to practice in community, I’ve created a free, online 5-day Practice Presence for Life Journey for you! Join me to get on the right foot in the New Year and set yourself up with meaningful practices to help you live a more wholehearted life, every day.

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!