The Healing Nature of a Single Leaf

Yesterday I experienced a lot of ickiness, frustration and discomfort, stemming from a number of things: maggots in my compost bin (eeeek!), vomit on the dog bedding I'd just washed (ugh!!), a recurring, unresolvable argument with my child, the burning awareness of friends unable or unwilling to see others' pain, and a hard look at myself after being confronted with an old pattern.

And then today, on my solo walk home after taking my kids to school, a lone leaf twirled silently, slowly to the ground in front of me. The moment struck me with such incomprehensible awe that tears filled my eyes. I then noticed a trillion leaves fluttering, rustling in the soft, fall breeze. They seemed to beckon, "Look up! See the beauty all around you, right here, right now." And once again, just like that, peace...

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It's okay to not be okay

Another morning of too early waking body tossing and turning mi nd tunneling back and forth through question-and-answer attempts... mothering midlife mediocrity misunderstanding missed opportunity misogyny and more more more What's individual? What's collective? What's mine? What's yours? What do I want? What is possible? What next? How? I try to work it all out in my mind, and I arrive nowhere. So (unlike most days during the pandemic) I get up, and ...

Naming and Feeling and LIVING

This morning I feel grateful. Grateful for the arts organization staffer who took time to be ever so thoughtful in her response to my email inquiry. Grateful for friends who are vulnerable with me and allow me to be the same. Grateful for lawmakers who truly care about people and our earth. Grateful for a husband who gets it done and still takes the time to reach out for my hand. Grateful for a kid who is independent and flexible and wows me often, while being a typical kid, too. Grateful for sisters and sisters-in-law who bear witness. Grateful for parents who are showing they can stretch themselves in retirement and continue to grow. Grateful for a kid who stretches me daily and is teaching me how to be more fully present. Grateful for a new spiritual home that is already more than I ever imagined one could be. Grateful for women I encounter regularly who are courageous, strong, funny and wicked smart. Grateful for the freedom to sit here at my computer and wri...

"Principles of Yoga Don't Discriminate" - Matthew Sanford

Photo Credit: FiberArtGirl I had the privilege of attending an on-line yoga seminar with Matthew Sanford yesterday, thanks to Yoga Alliance (and to my teacher, Julie Rosier , who told me about him years ago). He's been practicing and teaching yoga for 30 years from a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down since an accident at the age of 13. He said many brilliant things that I tried to capture. One that stuck with me is t his: "Principles of yoga don't discriminate. Yoga poses do." He went on to explain that everyone has a different outer body, but the inner, subtle body, where you feel yoga, where you experience being alive, does not discriminate. Thus, my job as a teacher is to guide people to experience the subtle body, not just do poses. It's what I hope I've been accomplishing these past 15 years. My trainer, Esther Myers (d. 2004), conveyed this same, powerful concept through three principals of finding the ground, feeling the breath, ...

This Ground, This Breath

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