seasons – Page 7 – Nourishing Wholeness

Grounding In the Earth

ow that spring is finally coming to Minnesota, I am finding myself going barefoot outside as much as I can. Not only is this physically healthy, for the earthing energy received, I love the feeling of my physical body connecting to the earth.

Mother earth is literally and metaphorically the ground of our Feminine nature. Matter comes from the same root as “mater” or “mother.” Like a mother with a child, not only does the earth physically support and hold us through the atmosphere that is made of just the right nutrients for us to breathe and through the gravitational pull that holds us closely to her, she also provides food to nourish us from the perfect combination of nutrients in the soil, sun, and water found on our planet. In fact, did you know that our bodies are composed of many of the same elements as the earth’s crust?

Two-thirds of the earth’s crust and the body is made up of water.
The most abundant element in the body and in the earth’s crust is Oxygen, and
There are similar levels of Hydrogen and Calcium, as well as many other elements in common.

No wonder I feel deeply connected and nourished going barefoot!

We can deepen our connection to this source of nourishment, support, and holding by engaging in a practice I call Grounding in the Earth.

Try on this Grounding practice and learn how to bring it into your everyday life.

decluttering to make way

click.

yes, i’m sure.

no, i don’t want the weekly email.

not the sales emails.

not the blog.

please unsubscribe me.

yes, i’m sure.

“just streamlining. thank you for your work.”

it’s incredible to me how difficult this process is.

i am decluttering my inbox. i am decluttering my mind.
i am making space to integrate my life.

what is it that makes me think i need to get all these emails? i have subscriptions to many online experts—on health, wellness, spirituality, business, living your best life, self-care, sexuality, women’s work…phew. it makes me tired just typing it out here.

and yet, i’ve had a really hard time letting them go.

why? it all comes down to thinking i don’t know enough…

it’s my type One personality, always trying to do a good job and get things right…
and this information age in which we are supposed to know everything, be experts in our field, leaving no stone unturned…
and my upbringing with two smart parents, who were always keeping up on the world, on science, on important things, my mom even a tenured ceramics engineering professor…
and even my dearly beloved husband who has a Five mind that awes me in its ability to know and remember stuff.

Keep reading about what i learned from this process…

becoming you

The teenager on the way to school, in a bright pink sweatshirt (something a boy never would have worn when I was growing up). The man in a down vest and work clothes crossing the street to his work truck. Me, walk-running down the neighborhood sidewalk, taking in the morning.

We are all becoming.

The sun rising a bit earlier each day as spring becomes more and more apparent. The birds chirping, singing, and chatting and with different birdsong than in winter. The earth greening again—buds, shoots, sprouts coming forth.

All in its natural order, in its natural becoming.

I like to think of this life force energy as the “optimizing thrust of Being” (from AH Almaas’s Diamond Approach Work).

Nature is and becomes who she is naturally. Seasons follow one after the next. Plants and animals respond in kind to grow, blossom, hunker down, and hibernate.

Becoming is part of the natural cycle—
it happens without effort or conscious planning in nature.

We are part of nature, too. Our brains are hardwired to do certain things naturally—and the most basic hardwiring is to SURVIVE! Keep Reading This Post!

New Year’s Ease

This year I spent about three weeks really focused on learning from the past year and getting clear about how I want to live into this New Year.

I’m so grateful for this practice…there were many years I didn’t feel like I could take the time—or that it would make any difference if I did. I didn’t feel I could consciously influence the way my life would play out over time. I knew the value of practicing to change something in myself, but I felt at the whim of life’s unfolding events all too often…

As I reviewed, visioned, and felt into myself, over and over, a yearning in my soul arose—balance, ease, abundance, balance, openness, ease…

Ease, Work / Life Balance

I WANT this! And I’m struck with the fact that I only found out how much I want it by taking those 3+ weeks to settle in, to look at 2015, at all that I accomplished (or didn’t) and all that I had felt during the year…

As I was writing this post at my favorite local cafe, a friend I run into 1-2/month there stopped by to say hi, and as I showed him this New Year’s collage and talked about my theme for the year, he had an insight and spoke these simple and profound words:
Keep Reading!

The Coming of Light

The Coming of Light by Mark Strand
Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

The New Year is almost here—it’s almost unbelievable how quickly 2015 has passed…

Even this late it happens…

even when my attention is firmly fixed on closing up 2015
even when I am relaxing and enjoying the holy-days with friends and family
even when I am reviewing and thinking and envisioning how I want to live in 2016
even when friendships fall away unexpectedly
even this late…

the coming of love, the coming of light…
Keep Reading!

Precious, Fleeting

Precious, fleeting…

Sara Avant Stover introduced this phrase in the last retreat this summer of Reversing Our “Curse,” her course on aligning with psycho-spiritual and feminine hormonal rhythms. She learned it from one of her teachers, Ty Powers.

And I’ve been living with it ever since.

Precious, fleeting…

As a woman, who, (quite astonishingly!), entered her 50s a few years ago, I am facing the fact of getting older. It’s happening to me! I never thought it would.

I was not concerned with ageing in the past. In fact, I enjoyed the woman I was becoming. My 40s felt so expansive and energizing—I even met and courted my husband during this time, and started a new life, moving halfway across the USA to be with him and his two boys!

And now, I am uber-aware of age. Of life. Of most likely not having as much of my life left as has already passed.

Precious, fleeting…

Keep Reading!

hollowing out

Some of you I will hollow out.
I will make you a cave.
I will carve you so deep the stars will shine in your darkness.
You will be a bowl.
You will be the cup in the rock collecting rain.
Read more.

Hollowing out. Becoming a cave.

Being carved deeply. Into a bowl. Into a cup.

Able to collect, to gather, to hold.

This poem, which I posted a few weeks back, keeps arising in my bodysoul.

My mind wonders: What does it mean to be hollowed out?
My heart feels a bit scared of the carving.
My body simply senses—the stripping, the filling…
And my bodysoul?

She knows. She has experienced this over and over again. She understands that this is the lawful unfolding of life. Filling up, overflowing, hollowing out, and filling again…

Keep Reading

letting go

A couple of weeks ago I was having a really HARD time letting go.

We were innsitting for the first time in a year, so I was feeling a bit rusty on all the procedures and protocols necessary to run the Inn.

This new website was supposed to be live, but it wasn’t yet.

And I was under deadline—that’s always creates the most pressure—or my old website would quietly slide into oblivion without a new one to take its place…Ugh.

And it was my birthday, but the restaurant I wanted to eat at was unexpectedly closed and I had no bandwidth to enjoy it even if it had been open…I had been working all day. On. My. Birthday. I couldn’t let go. I had to work, to get the site done. Even on my birthday.

This created the most stressful experience
I have had in a really long time.

I was doing everything right—working hard to get all the myriad details needed to get my site live. And I kept running into roadblocks. Unexpected outcomes. New things to learn. More support to ask for…and support people not as readily available as needed—at the same time that I was managing guests checking in and out, cleaning guest rooms, feeding guests, and trying to have a relationship with myself and my husband…

It all came to a head the night I was planning to make my site live, when the software I was using to build the site became really glitchy.

I was going over the last details to make sure all the pages were really ready, and I found I needed to add a period—one small period.

I opened the page, added the period, updated, and took a look.

And ALL of the paragraph breaks were gone on the whole page! Even in sections that I had not opened! ALL of them!!! My page was one huge chunk of text, unreadable, and certainly not going-live ready…

Over the next hour, I patiently added the spaces back. And each time, while one space would be there, another would disappear. It was a nightmare! It literally took an hour to fix all the mess that adding one period created!!

And then I had to go on to other pages and the same thing kept happening…

I was using all my mindfulness practice tools. Sensing my tense body, noticing my thoughts, feeling my anger and frustration…I even got up and jumped up and down yelling out my anger, shaking, punching, and letting it course through me. Dave held space and witnessed this for me. (Thank you, honey!)

By the time I got to the last page, there were still a few spacing problems, but most of it was OK. It was late and Dave was headed to bed. I told him I had to stay up and finish it. I had to fix this page. It had to be perfect…No matter how tired I was, no matter how tense my body felt, no matter…

And he challenged me on this. This is the beauty of conscious relationship!

Enneagram type One personality, I’m afraid…It serves me well in many ways, but following it in search of the ever-elusive perfection of this page was potentially opening up a huge can of worms, perhaps even another hour of fixing (and jumping up and down)…

My ego personality SCREAMED internally that I HAD to stay up and fix this before making my site live. I couldn’t make it live if it weren’t perfect!!

And instead of listening to this habitual message, I took a deep breath and agreed with Dave. I could live with that imperfect spacing. I could let go of needing the site to be PERFECT before making it live.

I made it live. I did not announce it quite yet, but making it live and imperfect gave me a chance to let go even a little more. I could breathe more deeply. I could get more rest. I could stop filling every moment inbetween guests with computer work.

I. Let. Go.

Of something that felt so familiar, so seductive, so comforting in its own way.

And it created space. Space for me to experience more life, more ease, more joy. More, not less.

It’s like instead of continuing to toil around the outside, I quickly jumped into the center of the collage. (If you click on it, it will expand so you can see the details.) All that perfecting and perfecting wasn’t getting me there, even though I was efforting like crazy. Letting go dropped me there. In that openness. In that bounty. In that ease.

How do we let go?

I have often argued that we can’t do it with the will alone, which is why it can feel a bit crazy-making when someone tells us to just let go…If we could, we would have already! But realizing it would be healthy to let go and actually being able to are totally different things.

I love what my Diamond Approach teacher says about this—we practice so that we can be available to grace. I think it’s grace that allows us to be able to let go, not will.

I have been practicing for many years to open to grace. In this case seeing my perfection pattern over and over again, allowing more imperfection in small ways, feeling the pain of the perfection push, feeling the ego distress of not perfecting something, feeling healthier and happier when I don’t let perfection rule my life…

These years of practice allowed me to be open to the grace that Dave reminded me of in that moment—to relax my ego’s grip and drop the perfection pattern, to let go.

Fall is a season for practicing letting go. As we look back at what we’ve grown since the Spring, and consider what we want to bring with us, we also discern when it’s time to let go. For me, it’s a long-held habit, a way of knowing myself that needed to go. What is it for you?

Save

what are you harvesting?

While innsitting here in the country at the beautiful Journey Inn, we had the first frost of the season—every night the last week—each frost flattening the gardens a bit more.

The vibrant red zinnias fading to a rusty orange, the bright green leaves browning and losing their vitality…the cantaloupe wilting so much that the vines are fading into the earth, and the basil completely shrunken and withered.

I mentioned to Dave that I wanted to go pick what I could of what was left, to save the last fruits of the season. We’ve been so busy tending to the guests and the running of the Inn that I hadn’t had time, but the desire was there and each morning when I looked out the kitchen windows at what remained of the garden, it arose freshly within me.

Dave’s response that it wasn’t necessary—that it was surplus and wouldn’t be missed—did not satisfy me.

As I’ve been sitting with it, I realize that harvesting what is ripe feels like a kind of sacred calling to me. Keep Reading…

simplify and savor

Wednesday early morning, as the Autumn Equinox officially marks the beginning of this new season, we, here in Minnesota, have already been grieving, in fits and starts, the end of Summer. We’ve had such extreme temperature shifts this year—from 90s one day to 50s overnight to cloudy and in the low 70s the next…

It’s certainly given us practice letting go of our grasp on Summer!

The Autumn Equinox occurs at 3:22 am CT on Wednesday, September 23rd.

This year, I feel this seasonal rhythm calling me to simplify and savor.

We’ve been visiting my parents in Port Townsend, Washington twice a year as we plan our move out there in 2019. Realizing that we will be moving, feeling the reality of this decision finally sinking in is part of this pull.

The next four years are about getting really clear about what to let go of, how to simplify the load. I find myself looking around me every day with new eyes.

What do I love, what do I want, what is truly important to me
—and what can I let go of?
What is extra, not essential to how I want to live,
to how I need to live?

I intuitively started a fun process! I put a box on the dining room table. As I see things I feel like I can let go of, I put them next to the box. This is a signal to Dave to take a look at the object and see if he has a desire to keep it. If not, in the box it goes! (The boxes will eventually go to Good Will.)

I’ve always loved the “comfortably cluttered” look as long as the objects are all ones I felt connected to. (Dave called the cottage I lived in when he met me my “Hobbit Hole” if that gives you a sense.) I’ve never been into the spare and open look—and we’re nowhere near that—but this feels good! I feel lighter, cleaner, fresher. Simpler.

Spring is often thought of as the season to clean and simplify, but Fall is also a perfect time. I feel as if I am looking back at my life, at the things that I have filled my life with, and assessing my harvest, determining what I need to live the life I want to live, and letting go of things that don’t contribute to that vision.

The other beautiful part of this is that in looking around with new eyes, I am also giving myself a chance to savor what I truly love.

Even if I can’t always remember who gave me something, I can revel in its beauty, in the soft, glowing light that globe tea-light holder gives off, especially on these darkening evenings. I am getting a chance to enjoy my belongings, too—to take in their particular shape and service with deep appreciation as I go through this process of choosing what of my harvest to keep and what to let go of.

Savoring is a way of living your life so that you take in its full nourishment, in all its different forms. You can do it anytime, anywhere when you mindfully engage with any one or a combination of senses.

Give it a try with food to start:

Choose a small piece of fresh fruit that you love.
Sit down and first look at it very carefully, noticing all its particularities of color, shape, texture…
Imagine breathing into your eyes the colors, shape, and texture of the fruit.
Next, bring it to your nose and smell it—see how many adjectives you can find to identify the aroma.
Then touch it slowly and sense its texture and temperature. You might want to close your eyes for a deeper experience.
When you’re ready, place it against your lips and notice those sensations.
Now take a small bite but don’t chew. Roll the bite around in your mouth and notice how it feels and tastes before chewing.
When you’re totally ready, slowly begin to chew and savor that burst of flavor, this amazing, sweet nourishment from the earth.
Try chewing each bite 25 times. This invites your bodysoul to actually receive the many different layers of nourishment instead of just filling your stomach up.

Now let’s try the same process in a simpler form looking at the outdoors or around a room.

Find something your eyes want to look at, and let yourself fully take it in.
How much can you discern?
How many different colors are actually there?
What about textures or patterns?
How is the light landing on this object?
Is there any movement?
Drink all of this in with your eyes, letting it fill your heart and body, your whole bodysoul.
Sense any feelings that arise in response to this mindful slowing down of your attention.
Any when you’re ready, let your focus go, allowing the effects of this contact to linger with you.

This Fall, I will continue this practice of savoring and simplifying, as I look back at the fruits of Summer and what I want to take with me to nourish and support me in Winter.

Which things will I place, with gratitude for their service in the box?
And which will I place in the basket of belonging to keep,
at least for this next season?
How about you?