Category: The Feminine

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!

Mindful Tea

This cup of tea
In my two hands
Mindfulness held completely
My mind and body dwell
In the very here and now.

This is a gatha—a mindfulness verse by the Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. He has written many verses about daily, ordinary life, all of which are calls to be mindful, to be present in the life we are living.

I’ve always loved tea in its myriad forms! I drink it black—straight up, flavored, or with heavy cream; green—from genmaicha to plain to green mango (a favorite); white or oolong—both plain or with flavors; and all the many flavor profiles and subtleties of herbal teas (sweet, clarifying, floral, rich, fresh, spicy, malty, grassy, fruity…).

I bought my first tea pot and cups when I was in Vienna on a study-abroad program in college, I inherited some of my grandmother’s lovely collection (see yellow flower cup below), and the rest is history!! I seem to keep collecting… 🙂

nana's tea cup-2

There is something so satisfying about making tea and pouring it out of a beautiful pot into a beautiful tea cup. This beauty is a call to presence, just like the mindfulness verse above.

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?

frostbitten zinnias

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…

Your Body–Refuge? or Refugee?

Take a moment right now and sense your body.

When you sense your body, what arises?

Perhaps it’s “I feel fat.”
Or “Ugh—feeling gross.”
Or “I don’t sense anything.”
Or “Ouch, that hurts.”

What’s your version?

Most often, the women I work with sense their body and judge her. (Yes, if you’re a woman, your body is a “she”! Please make the appropriate substitutions if you’re a man.)

She is never quite right—too fat, too thin, not fit, not comfortable, not satisfied, too hungry, craving unhealthy food…she is just plain wrong.

How do you think your body feels with all this judgment?

Here’s a hint: When you feel judged, how do you feel? Hurt. Sad. Angry. Confused. (And probably more…)

Your body is you. She is intimately intertwined with your soul, part of what I call your bodysoul. When you judge her, you are judging you.

Would you judge your girlfriends this way? Probably not.

Imagine living with an intimate partner—your body is about as intimate as it gets!—and all you ever hear is about how messed up you are, over and over again.

Would you feel good, happy, resilient, vital? Your body doesn’t either.

In fact, in these conditions of persecution, she is kind of like a refugee. She can’t really leave very easily, but she can check out. Perhaps you don’t sense or feel very much because she’s in hiding. Or perhaps she’s trying to escape, on hyper-alert, running on stress, but unable to go anywhere, causing you to feel anxious, upset, frazzled…

If she’s checked out or on high alert, she won’t be comfortable, and she won’t be able to focus, find well-being, make nourishing choices, or make changes easily.

Just like your friend, she doesn’t want to be shamed or coerced into change. She wants to be accepted as she is. Loved as she is. Understood as she is. Then, perhaps, she could easily make nourishing choices, or consider making some changes for her well being.

What would it take to welcome her home?

Imagine your body as a place of grounding, grace, and gratitude. Imagine feeling her support, her love, her exquisite attunement to your needs. YES! This is possible.

What if you could find refuge in your body instead of forcing her to be a refugee? Sense that in your bodysoul.

breathing in…breathing out…

In the last month of our SomaYoga Teacher Training we are studying the final Yama of Aparigraha, Non- Possessiveness. (The Yamas are the basis of Yoga’s code of ethics, the compass by which yogis and yoginis practice and live.)

This past week, we were practicing with breathing in life on the inbreath and letting life go of it on the outbreath. It has been a good week for me to practice this as I hurt my lower back/sacrum carrying too much weight a few weeks ago and this past week was especially difficult.

  • Breathing in, I breathe in pain. Breathing out, I breathe out release.
  • Breathing in, I breathe in aching. Breathing out, I breathe out letting go.
  • In, ouch. Out, release.
  • In, tightness. Out, letting go.

Did this make the pain go away? NO! But I find when I can get curious about each moment, my experience is actually changing, dynamic. I’m not in continual pain if my mind can let go of thinking about the pain (or fear or…)!

That’s what I’m inviting on the “breathing out,” the mind letting go. It’s not always easy. I find I have had a story going—my back hurts and it’s not getting better and I’m afraid… When I’m not mindfully meeting the moment, that story wins. When I am, however, I find that not all moments are full of pain.

  • Some are full of gratitude for the sun and breeze on the river birch leaves outside the window.
  • Some are full of amazement at the red cardinal visiting the garden.
  • Some are full of luxurious, sensual melting of my body in the hot sun.
  • Some are full of sweet moments of contact with my husband.

And with each moment, I practice taking it in fully and then releasing it and letting it go. I’m learning that even these so-called “good” feelings need to be released to make way for the next moment.

In this way, Deborah Adele explains, in her lovely book The Yamas and Niyamas, we make way for the next experience. There is an openness and a freedom in this. When we’re not caught in assumptions, beliefs, and stories—the next moment could be anything!

When I cling to my story of being in constant pain and not healing, I am not able to really savor the river birch leaves outside my window, which the standing desk I cobbled together to give my back relief, faces. Releasing the pain on the outbreath for just a moment gives me the chance to breathe in something else—something beautiful that fills me with gratitude! (And I’m willing to bet gratitude has a healing effect on the body that fear does not…)

I can see how this practice could really support me when I’m in other hard places—breathe it in and then breathe out the story, the stuckness, the tension. Breathe in a new moment and experience that!

What are you breathing in? Are you releasing it to make room for something else? Something that you can’t imagine, that might be rich and full and amazing?

I experience this releasing also as the Yin phase of the breath. Exhaling and letting go into the ground, softening, releasing, calming…ready to allow the Yang, active phase of doing to begin, to bring in something new…We need both.

dancing with summer

Summer!

Sun!

Everything greening and growing and blooming and blossoming!

Nature is exclaiming her fullness, her lushness, her LIFE!!!

(Exclamation points seem to be called for here.
My fingers can’t help but type them.)

Sunflower turns its face toward the sun, smiling, drinking in its warmth, its radiance…and shines its beauty, its smile, its full-on radiance into the world.

The Buddha, grounded sitting peacefully, surrounded by lacy green ferns, cool and calm in the midst of heat, of flame, of fiery summertime.

And so is my life. Always a balancing of fire and earth, of flurry and ground, of blossoming and releasing, or accomplishing and resting…

I am here. Supported, surrounded, summoned…to be here.
In this summer.
I am here. Supported, surrounded, summoned…to be here.
In this body.
I am here. Supported, surrounded, summoned…to be here.
In this life.

Where are you? What is your dance of summer summoning forth?

Greetings from a Peony

This.
This amazing peony.
Right here.
Opening, graceful, present.

How can I not look at it?
How can I not stop and drink it in?

Now, it says.
I look.
Yes, this.
I drink it in.
Come again.
I sink, I dive, I am drawn in.

The beauty.
The simplicity.
The “isness.”

This simple peony.
From my garden.
In a vase.
Sitting on my desk.

Inviting me.
To stop.
To savor.
To be.

Now.

And now.

And, forever, now.

compassionate awakening

A friend from my SomaYoga Teacher Training shared this from one of her friends in our online homework forum:

Mindfulness asks us to awaken to life
(not always pleasant or easy)
and self-compassion comes in to help us
cherish ourselves during this awakening.

I’m struck that, with the goal of awakening, we’re often taught to empty ourselves, to clear our minds, to become still, silent, vast, spacious. It’s no wonder that some part of us rebels!

Yes, we need this calming of the mind, this inner quiet and emptiness—but it is not the be all and end all of spiritual enlightenment. [Gasp!]

We also need the cherishing, the compassion, the love of Being.

Our True Nature is both. Our lives need both. To be complete and whole, we need both.

We need to live in the world, without believing all the thoughts of our minds, open to spaciousness and clarity.

And we need to LIVE in the world, with our hearts and bodies alive and brimming with juicy passion, desire, authenticity, strength, love, and, oh, so much more!

This is the real measure of our awakening—living our realization with mindful awareness and compassion. With our True Mind and our True Heart online. With the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine guiding us.

When I live from this place, I know what I want, what I love, and I am sweet and compassionate with myself when I can’t have it, or when I behave less than skillfully. I have practices that support Quiet Mind and non-attachment, and I have practices that grow compassion and love. My practice actually affects my life, making me a more real, authentic, compassionate, contactful, clear, and awake human being.

I must bring my realization off my mat—whether it be yoga, tai chi, meditation, prayer, or any other practice—into my real, lived life.

What practices support you in developing both awakeness and compassion?

What fruits of your practice do you recognize in your lived life?

grounded & growing

Bring it on!!

After a long Winter of inward time, of resting and dreaming, I am READY for the greening, the new life, the new possibilities of Spring!

In my backyard city garden, the lettuce is up, the peas are just beginning to poke their curious heads out of the ground, the chives are gathering together in a clump to stay warm on still chilly nights, and the garlic, having overwintered, is raring to go, shooting upward toward the sun, which will be much less once the trees fully leaf out… I have also planted kale, calendula, and morning glories, all of which can handle some cool nights and even the bit of Spring snow we are getting today!

Spring energy can feel exciting and revivifying, waking up all our senses from a more inward-turned attention. Yet even as I eagerly breathe in Spring’s fresh nourishment, this new energy can also feel overwhelming and challenging to my comfortable (read “habitual”) way of living—my habits, the ways I know myself…

I may need to undertake some Spring cleaning, inside and out. And like the plants emerging from the earth, I must be willing to meet what is in my growth-path, willing to be changed, while at the same time sensing how to stand firm as I emerge into the new light of Spring.

How to do this?

We can remember to turn inward, sitting quietly and breathing into our deep roots of inner contact and ground. We can practice slowing down, listening, receiving our own inner wisdom as a way to ground in ourselves as we meet what is in our path.

In this way, we can emerge into Spring confident that the soul roots we continue to grow will support us as we step out into the newly forming world, trusting that we can lean back to connect with our steady ground as needed to keep our balance.

If our seeds have been sheltered wisely and received true nourishment, they are ready to push up and reach out of the dark, cozy holding of the earth, into the growing light and warming air. Life is opening again, in the world around us and within our souls.

Deeply rooted in ourselves, can we meet whatever we encounter along the way with interest and curiosity?

With a desire to open to and learn
from the unfolding of this fresh, new life?