Category: The Feminine

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!

Are you self-full?

Woman in Center: Russian Painting, Artist unknown

At an Enneagram presentation a year or so ago, a question came up about being selfish.

Selfish is such a buzzword–especially for those of us who grew up as women in this culture, over the age of 30 or so…

We were taught that to be selfish–to be concerned about ourselves–was wrong. Our presence was valued when we were selfless–when our concern was for others.

Of course, this has not been true for most men. Men who focus on themselves and who talk about their accomplishments are most often seen as successful and strong.

Well, this woman shared a distinction she had heard, which I have been considering and sharing with my clients ever since.

Instead of worrying about what it means to be selfish, let’s consider being self-full.

Self-full. We can’t be self-full when we are being self-less!

We can’t develop the fullness of our voice and presence if we feel it’s wrong to be concerned with ourselves. (Thank us, women of the #metoo movement, for daring to share our voices.)

All the heroines and heros of our time have modeled being
self-full, not self-less.

They knew what they valued and loved. They knew what they needed–and they acted on it for themselves and for their greater communities.

We have to fill our own wells so we have water to share with others. This creates a self that is full, that over-brims with the water of life for all. This is being self-full, not self-less, or selfish!

 From this place, we meet the world with greater presence, which means we are more able to show up with what’s needed in the moment: more grace, strength, ease, equanimity, joy, power, love, etc.

My primary Enneagram teacher, Russ Hudson, once responded to a question from one of the Christian students about presence by saying “Whose Presence do you think it is, anyway?”

How do you fill your well
to be self-full?

What does self-less look like
in your life?

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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Bowing Practice

I’ve been practicing bowing recently.

When I was researching possible publishers for the book I’m working on, I stumbled upon a book called Bowing by Dahn Yoga Education. I was intrigued and ordered it.

When it came, I devoured it in one sitting and started practicing!

It’s a simple practice, bowing.

Just like the tulips in the photo, that rise in the spring, bloom radiantly, and then release their form to the earth to build up energy for their next blossoming in the following year, bowing is a metaphor for being willing to let go, and then re-form and rise again…when it’s time.

Hands at my heart, I feel myself here, human, woman, being, connecting earth and heaven.

Prayers reach to heaven, draw down into my earthly body, mix the light and dark, the active and still, the blossoming and the release of this form.

And then the downward trajectory, bodysoul (body-heart-mind-soul) returning to the earth with reverence and humility, a sacred return.

How surely gravity’s law, / strong as an ocean current, / takes hold of even the strongest thing /
and pulls it toward the heart of the world. (Rilke in II, 16.)

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, growing from the earth, returning to the earth. Head bowed, touching the earth, hands open to receive.

If we surrendered / to earth’s intelligence /
we could rise up rooted, like trees. (Rilke in II, 16.)

Surrendering this moment through the physicality of the bow. My body embodying it so that my heart and mind can learn this gesture as well.

…to fall, / patiently to trust our heaviness. / Even a bird has to do that /
before he can fly. (Rilke in II, 16.)

Returning to standing, following the same pathway, with a subtly changed orientation of the heart. Bringing the humble, solid, ever-supportive and accepting presence of earth up into my humanness, connecting heaven and earth.

 How does practicing the bow feel to you?

Free Heart

May a woman’s heart be a vast open field
upon which wild horses can run.
~ Tibetan Buddhist saying

My New Year’s theme for 2017 is Free Heart.

While i knew clearly that this was my path for 2017, i needed time to understand more and to live into it before writing about it. In collaging this theme and then journalling, i have discovered some gems:

I am the One whose heart smiles and can meet and hold and include all things.

I am the One whose body dissolves into ease and bliss, and whose mind opens to accept and know all truths–even those different from mine.

I am the One whose smile breaks into blossom with the freedom in her heart.

I am the One whose life is a blessing.

I am the One who flies above all heartbreak knowing there is always deeper truth than suffering.

I am the One who sings and sings and sings for the tremendous beauty and truth and preciousness of life.

I the One whose unruly and wild heart serves the truth in all beings.

As we are practicing presence this week in my free 5-Day Online Practice Presence for Life Journey, i am reminded that the only way any of this is possible is when i am present.

My heart does not smile or feel wild and free, or able to to feel and also rise above heartbreak when i am not present.

This past weekend, i got to attend The Holy Ideas Workshop with Russ Hudson here in Minnesota. While the material is breathtaking and Russ’s teaching is exquisite, i had a hard time because of a difficult situation i’ve been managing for the past year or so.

Let yourself breathe and trust.
It is only by a courageous letting go that the heart
becomes free. This is called the wisdom of insecurity.
~ Jack Kornfield in The Art of Forgiveness, p. 160

I was able to be there and practice by breathing and trusting.

As i breathed and held myself in compassion for the hard time i was having, i also consciously felt the support of the floor, the chair, my body, the teachings, the whole community gathered together. This helped me to also trust and to free my heart from time to time to be touched by these wonderful teachings.

My path this last year is really inviting me into the wisdom of insecurity, as a place from which to be free instead of a place to fear.

It’s hard. My body, heart, and mind all want to grab on, to find secure ground–to know what will happen, when, and how…

And yet, when i am able to return to the groundlessness and re-member my wild and free heart, i am home.

Spring is Coming

Spring is coming, is calling, is COMING!

Seeds, long held in the cozy dark, nutrient-rich soil, are beginning to push up through the darkness toward the light. Winter’s hold is not so tight.

The light is growing, is coming, is calling—don’t go back to sleep.

Feel your longing to wake up, deep down on the inside, like nature, longing to reach for the light.

Stay with the longing. Let it touch you. Let it move you into action. Let it keep you awake.

Breathe in the light all around you, in through all your pores, into your body—belly, heart, mind. Let is infuse and gently awaken and enliven you. Turn toward the light.

Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere is officially marked on Monday, March 20th at 5:28 am Central Time, but we’ve been feeling its coming for some time now…

The last remnants of winter—the dark, the cold, the cuddled-up-in-bed parts—are holding pieces you need to release to be ready for Spring.

It could be anger, a hurt, an unrealized dream, a wish for life to be other than it is…Accepting that this, whatever it is, is still with you creates space for it to soften its grip and make way for the new energy of Spring, for a new beginning, a new seed to poke its way up through the dark underground into the light.

A Getting Ready Ritual

This ritual can support you in releasing what’s needed for Spring to arrive in your life. Enjoy it on the Equinox or before to prepare yourself for a new beginning any time.

  • Create intentional space for 20-30 minutes.
    • Turn off electronics, close the door, settle in for some undisturbed quiet time.
    • You might want your journal nearby.
    • You might want to light a candle or mark this time in some way.
  • In a comfortable seated position, breathe in earth energy through your feet, up through your legs, into your lower belly. Imagine, visualize, or physically sense this.
    • Breathe out and name whatever arises that you would like to release. As you exhale, soften, and simply let it be here with you.
    • Breathing in grounded, stable earth energy, and breathing out your desire to let this go, feeling and sensing whatever it is.
    • Inhaling earth energy up, then exhaling and naming what you would like to release, no forcing, no pushing away, no resisting.
  • Once you’ve accepted and allowed the feelings and sensations of what you’d like to release to be acknowledged, you’re ready to let them go.
  • Breathing earth energy in, let it go, carrying all you have released back down through your legs and feet into the earth, where it will be transformed.
    • Repeat this a few times.
  • When you are ready, begin your inhale the same way, but bring your breath all the way up to your heart.
    • On the exhale, if there is anything else arising in your heart that needs to be let go, name and release that.
    • Breathe this way a few times.
  • When you are ready, the same breath comes all the way up to the crown of your head.
    • And you release on your exhale, all the way down to the earth, naming anything else that arises, softening, softening, softening…
  • When you have run out of things to name, on your next earth inhale, as you breathe all the way up to the crown, name what you long for, what you are ready to move into, what you intend for yourself this spring.
    • Soften and let it all go, into the hands of life, returning it to the earth.
    • Continue breathing this way until you have named all that you long to bring into your world, all that you long to become this Spring.
  • Place your hands on your heart and make some gesture of gratitude.
  • Blow out the candle and/or close this intentional time in some way.

What is Spring inviting to grow in you?
What are you releasing to make space for this new growth?

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Essential Self-Care

a few years ago, i was talking with a girlfriend about what to do when we’re stressed–anxious, overwhelmed, rushing…how to help ourselves come back to ground. she mentioned going to a spa and spending the weekend pampering herself.

at the time, i wasn’t so sure. first of all, the word “pampering” just doesn’t sit well with me. when i look up the definition of “pamper,” i find:

  • from Merriam Webster: “to treat with extreme or excessive care and attention”
  • and the first thing Google pops up is: “indulge with every attention, comfort, and kindness; spoil.”

the self-care i’m thinking about isn’t extreme or excessive, and it’s not about indulging or spoiling. it’s self-care. it’s mindful tending to these absolutely amazing bodies we are given to grace this world in!

the other part that didn’t sit right with me is that self-care needs to be a big deal–a weekend retreat, which is not only expensive, but also a lot of time away. if we think this is the only way we can take care of ourselves, then we won’t pay as much attention to the small, doable ways available to us.

that gets me to the title of this post: essential self-care.

i first heard this distinction from Sara Avant Stover, my feminine spirituality teacher, at her Kripalu retreat that i assisted last October. we have to distinguish between essential self-care–that which will truly nourish our essence, the deepest truth of us–and worldly self-care, for lack of a better word.

don’t get me wrong–Sara emphasized this–there is nothing wrong with so called “worldly” self-care. it can feel good to do a little retail therapy, or get a massage, or go to a spa. and if we practice being present with ourselves as we do these activities, we will receive some real self-care from them.

any time we do things to help our nervous system down-regulate from an overly sympathetic, fight or flight mode, into a parasympathetic, tend and befriend mode, we are giving ourselves self-care. (as long as we don’t overdo it into an overly unbalanced parasympathetic mode!) perhaps we could call this self-soothing.

but if we think of self-care only from the perspective of doing nice things to our body, we might be missing the boat. what about the self-care of our hearts? the self-care of our minds? the self-care of our souls? (all together i call this your bodysoul.)

Sara says: “Self-care is just this: lovingly meeting ourselves exactly where we are and allowing things to be as they are.”
(The Book of SHE, p. 42)


what is essential for me might not be the same for you. in order for my whole bodysoul to feel well-tended, i have a bunch of practices over the day that include things for each part of me–body, heart, mind, and soul.

another thing to learn is to take care of ourselves in an attuned way, to lovingly meet ourselves exactly where we are…while i have a regular plan for my practices, i try to stay open to what i need on each day–maybe a poem, maybe a walk, maybe more embodiment, maybe greens for breakfast, maybe a certain type of meditation or prayer…

checking in with yourself and having a garden of practices to choose from makes all the difference!

how do you discern
between essential and “worldly” self-care?
what is essential self-care for you?

Everyday Love

It’s Valentine’s Day.

How about a focus on real,
everyday Love?


Romantic dinners, heart-shaped gifts, chocolate, sexy lingerie—they are a fun way of expressing Love, but I’m talking about taking steps to choose and create Love in a simple, daily way.

Today, can you remember to:

  • Give yourself the benefit of the doubt?
  • Be friendly and kind when you make a mistake?
  • Not rush?
  • Listen to the needs of your body? (move, rest, eat, use the bathroom…)
  • Listen to your heart, not judging your feelings, but allowing them all and being gentle with yourself?

With others, can you:

  • Be present with yourself as you interact with them? (That way you’ll be more attuned.)
  • Offer your kind attention, even to strangers?
  • Go out of your way to be of service?
  • Put yourself in their shoes before responding?
  • Receive their goodwill?

Everyday Love is a choice, an action, a verb.

Even if you don’t feel Love, take a step to choose it. Start with yourself and move out from there. Let everyone you touch receive your Love.

The world needs you, showing up as you,
which is an expression of Love.
And the world needs us all
choosing Love with each other,
one babystep at a time.

This is the way we can create Everyday Love, every day.

Come practice Everyday Love with me!

  • Body Love: Mindful Movement & Yoga, Tuesdays at noon
  • Body, Mind Love: The Mindful Art of Tea,Wednesday, February 15th
  • Body, Heart Love: The Way of the Happy Woman® Winter Mini-Retreat, Sunday, February 19th
  • Body, Heart, Mind Love: Mindful Self-Care for your Whole Bodysoul, Wednesday, March 15th
  • Body, Heart, Mind Love: Releasing Our Hearts: Working with the Passions and the Virtues of our Enneagram Type, with Dave Hall, Saturday, March 25th

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the dark

dark mother. with child.

young, innocent, the black madonna greets me as i turn the corner from the room i will be teaching in on the way to the dining room.

i stop. breathe her in. her presence a paradox, an invitation.

to drop.

to drop out of ordinary mind. to drop into mystery.

to drop agenda.

to stop.

i surrender myself to you. i surrender myself to become an instrument of love, grace, and healing as you direct my life.*

i surrender to the mystery. to the darkness. to the life that is arising within and around me.

she reminds me of these lessons of winter, of letting go, of not knowing, of dark, mysterious ways.

how do you drop into the mystery?
how do you let go into the not knowing?
what practices support you?

join me Sunday, February 19th for a Women’s Way of the Happy Woman® Winter Mini-Retreat where we can explore together the dark and necessary gifts of the winter.

i’d love to practice with you!

* prayer learned from Caroline Myss’s Entering the Castle

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