my body home

i’m playing around these days with pastels. i signed up for the creative every day challenge, which isn’t so hard, if you consider all the ways we are creative during a day, but i wanted to push my envelope and try new ways. pastels are new. they’re fun, but i am still learning how to use them and what they’re good for…

i created this one while recovering at the journey inn on the theme of home and how a bit part of what i am learning in my life is how to allow my body to be my home. to do this has meant allowing compassion, loving kindness for myself. not judging my body, but listening to her, valuing and appreciating her.

how is your body your home?

what do you do to create home in your body?

how do you define home?

practice makes perfect?

i was encouraged to consider what my motto was in the Certified Vision Board Counselor course i’m taking and i found that this has been the motto of my life…but what does perfect mean?

in the past, practicing was mostly about fixing myself. i wasn’t good enough—i needed to practice to get better. i still do that, but i’m not defining my perfection based on outer ideals as much. i still want to improve, to be a better person, to gain and refine skills, but it’s more of a sense of perfection being wholeness.

i want to be a whole person and there are areas in my life that are in need of healing. in those areas, i practice to uncover the wholeness, the completeness, the perfection that is there, waiting to be revealed, inhabited, learned…it’s not based on someone else’s perfect body or skills, but on my life, my body, my innate perfection, allowing that to be uncovered, to arise, to unfold as Katy.

integrity = the state or quality of being that is complete (and unbroken). practice makes whole, practice uncovers integrity.

so, here’s my collage that explored this theme–the top border got a bit cut off because my printer isn’t quite wide enough…

i’m working on another collage now that is the turn-around for this motto: practice loving kindness. i’ll post it, too, once it’s done.

i’d be interested in what you are practicing…and what perfect means to you…

how do you play?

i’m reminded again of the need for play in my life. i get so serious and intent on working my practice, doing a good job at what i take on, that i forget the nourishment of and need for play and downtime.

my collages are definitely one form of play, and dancing…

how do you play?

i’d love to compile a list of suggestions! it sounds funny, but i’m so used to not-playing that i need to find a vocabulary for what play means, a list of things to look at and choose from when i can’t think of a thing except my list of things to do…

thanks for your exploration! i’ll post what i learn on facebook here, too…

walking the labyrinth for Haiti

my friend Rae posted on her blog this great idea to intentionally walk our prayers for the people of Haiti, in addition to giving what financial aid we can. she is calling on labyrinth walkers to join forces this weekend. we’re going on Diamond Approach retreat this weekend and if the labyrinth at the retreat center can be walked through the snow, i’m going to do that.

here’s a photo of the small labyrinth garden i started late this past summer, inspired by my friend steve carlson. i walked it most mornings until the snow fell. i look forward to seeing how it grows in this summer.

basket of well-being

hi friends,

just starting to learn how to blog! i’m a little bit sick today–it came in overnight and i was very grateful that i work from home today so i could take it easy. lots of fluids and slow moving.

anyway, i thought on this first post, i’d comment on the image on the top of my blog–it’s part of one of my collages, one that i’m trying to grow into, called Basket of Well-Being. my web guys on my site www.katytaylor.com had the smart idea to use it this way.

one of my practices has been to be in touch with more well-being in my life. i tend to get really into fixing, doing, getting things done–some of which are really fun and compelling. the basket of well-being is about knowing this in me, in my body, in my heart, not having to go anywhere, do anything, make anything better…just coming back to myself in the moment and knowing/feeling/living my well-being there.

welcome! join me in sensing into your basket of well-being as you read this post. and i’d love to hear what your basket of well-being is like!