Now

The summer is upon us! Staying cool in hot spots is a skill I will be building this season! Finding a way to my meditation cushion, attempting to strike the balance between the boiling action of these manic months of running, going out, celebrating the sun, and that cool headed calm, deep breathing and peaceful centeredness… finding a way.

Prioritizing wellness is having its moment, don’t you think? I think it’s great, and strange that it’s a media movement. Self-care should be taught in kindergarten. Being well and centered in the self sets the tone for all that follows: your education, relationships, career, success; your ability to know joy.

The work of mediation can be about bringing balance as well. Do your hackles raise whenever they walk into the room? Those hackles are attached to hormones and can throw your system into chaos, affecting your health and well being. Maybe it’s time to talk about it. On the one hand, the conversation will be difficult at first, and where will you find the hope that things can get better? On the other hand, think about the downside of not doing anything, and how that is also a choice against the equilibrium that a healthy body and mind can flourish in.

It’s a lot like carrying a heavy weight. At first, it seems manageable. We tell ourselves it’s not that bad and that other people have it even more worse. This is just our cross to bear. And then we get used to it, and it becomes like a part of us, our story, our body. Dropping the stories and burdens that no longer serve our goals and vision we have for our lives can release a tremendous amount of energy.

Who knows? Maybe you can fly.

Wishing you the best for this sweet sweltering season. Soak up the sun!

Venture

…verb: dare to do something or go somewhere that may be dangerous or unpleasant.

The garden is bursting with activity and buzzing with bees and blossoming in the clear sunlight. Happy May Day! The benefits of growth and change are easy to see, as colors shift and transform almost before my eyes. These days, the urge to rove and roam, express and explore feels linked with the rhythms of the season. Leaving my warm winter nest and poking my head out, like a bud shivering to bloom fills me with excitement and a little trepidation.

The beginning of anything always brings up doubts and questions about my capacity to achieve and surmount my own internal hurdles. Taking the time to wonder, examine and re-write stories about who I am and what I can do is invaluable before setting out. The stories have almost certainly changed over my dormant winter, parts of myself fallen away, tender new shoots springing up in my hair. I reconcile these changes and figure a fresh way forward.

Of course, our relationships have shifted as well. I hope the connections are fresh and free of the debris of neglect, and if not, having a simple chat or an elaborate evaluation can be useful for protecting those relationships that are crucial to our continued smooth sailing toward our destinations. My computer passed away last month and I didn’t clean it enough or otherwise keep up on its maintenance. It was old, yes, or to use the language of the genius bar: obsolete.

I’ve got all kinds of plans for protecting my computer investment this time: regular maintenance, backups, protective covers, all the good things. In a few years it will likely also be obsolete, but I have surrendered to the powers of capitalism, at least where computers are concerned.

It’s a great season to share my book with my friends, celebrate my birthday, play in the garden and begin new projects. I’m choosing this time to dare, to challenge my notions and journey out in the search for bigger dreams and realizing new goals, firing up old ones, going for it! May your adventures be challenging and rewarding for you and your communities in surprising ways.

Begin

Can we find ourselves waking up to the present moment, in a moment like this: fresh Spring air, new buds, birds singing, blades of grass vibrating with the pitch of opening to a green unlike anything you have ever seen? It’s a great time to start a new story, about who we are and why we live the way we do. You know it’s the stories we tell ourselves over and over again that become the mega-hits, the superstars.

It is the decisions that shape our steps along the way. It’s also whatever that place of high energy or intention is for you. What are you working on?

I’m working on my garden, through an agent of growth and Earth (thanks Sookie!) and my writing, and my acting. It’s a liberating and fun creative act, being a character who is so like and unlike me. When stress begins its descent into my bowels, channeling energy into a joyous and pleasurable direction shifts the balance of stress on my health and heals my connection to my center.

It’s the same in my mediation practice. When we come together in an act of hope; in an act of present and future focus, we shift the balance of energy, from dysfunction and dissatisfaction about what happened, to one of construction and regeneration. And a river of energy flows forward. As Julia Cameron in ‘The Artist’s Way’ says, “Life is energy; pure creative energy.”

In the garden we are finding that even the saddest-looking stick plant will shoot up new leaves when given some time, attention and care. Sookie says this one plant that looks like a bunch of twigs sticking out of the ground is actually fixing to bloom big in summer. Hibiscus, she says. We’ll see!

Spring is a season telling us all to begin now. Don’t wait for another time to start flowing with your intentions. It’s a perfect time to say the word, make the change, buy the tools, get it, give it. I haven’t been much of a cheerleader for Spring in the past. I’m much more of an Autumnal type. But in 2019, I gotta say Spring is the thing. Get out there.