Monthly Archives: February 2018

Ice

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It is a beautiful, blue, clear-skyed Sunday morning. It snowed several inches last night. My husband and I are going for a run, and I am pulling to do the “big loop.” Because it has been months. Because I am feeling it. And because with the snow topping everything, it will feel magical-mystical to be in the woods.

On the trail, there is so much beauty. And so much ice. I have already fallen once before getting out of our own driveway. It had not occurred to me that the trail will be a skating rink beneath a couple of inches of light, fluffy, easily moved past, snow, that will result in my footing being non-existent. But once I am in, I am in. Besides, I think, it can’t possibly be like this the whole way around. Oh, yes it can. As a matter of fact, each time I imagine I will get a reprieve, it only seems to get icier; at times so slick that it is near to impossible for me to move forward without falling. I stop counting how many times I have hit the ice-covered trail.

At some point I walk, which helps some, but not nearly as much as you would think, or more to the point, that I had hoped for. Even though I am crawling along, I am still wiping out. My husband has pressed on. I have thoughts that he may need to be coming back only to find my body shattered against some snow-covered rock. Mostly though, I am so frustrated. This is so not the vibe I thought I was going to be partaking in.

As uncomfortable as this is, I count on this. I need this. I need to be reminded over and over again that life is not supposed to line up with my version of how things should go. No matter how lofty my plans. And the natural world, with her complete lack of interest in bending to my will, keeps me honest, humble, and in my place.

With our need to control, with our need to technologize everything, with our growing fears and lack of tolerance for what is wild, free, natural, and beyond the scope of man, what will be big enough to remind us over and over again that we are not the most powerful force in the Universe? What will we have done to ourselves when we have eradicated everything except what we ourselves, in our limited vision, have created?

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Where You Come From

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I am taking a class with a woman who knows about the body and its original wisdom in a way I have never experienced before. And while the focus of the class is on movement that is organic, integrated, and effortless, I often find myself carried away with the metaphors around how she languages the body.

Recently, as we were working with a particular range of movement, she said; “In any movement, you can only come from where you come from.” Obvious on one level in terms of what the body is capable of doing. And at the same time, it reads like a set of instructions for how to live in both mind and body. For instance, to her words, “you can only come from where you come from, I added and where you come from in any given movement is created and guided by your habits, your skill set, your intentions, your quality of mind, your past…” And on and on it goes. Where we move from today is based on everything that has come before.

We are an accumulation of all the movements of the past. Equally, there is so much more to come, which in turn will be based on what has come before. It’s a loop that keeps circling and circling. And so, if we want our current movement to come from a place of greater integrity and ease, it requires awareness, adjustments, and the permission to move in new and different ways. This could mean a change in how or what you eat. It could mean interacting with yourself or others differently. It could mean shifting how you think about yourself or what you believe is possible. Movement in this way can come from anyplace, and be in the service of anything.

Where you move from in any given moment is always a choice, and the choice is always yours, and yours alone to make. And so, even though where you are coming from is based on where you are which is based on where you came from, there is always a point in the circle to make the choice to begin anew. It’s like the old saying; “If you keep doing what you have always done, you are going to get what you always got.” But when we learn to do other than what we have always done, we are guaranteed to get something new.

Right now, where in the endless loop of your movement through life is there a place to disrupt the conditioning of what came before in the service of creating a brand new way of moving, and therefore where it is that you ultimately come from?

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Don’t You Dare…

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I was at a family gathering last Saturday, and because it was the day before the Super Bowl, and because there were Tom Brady fans in the group, the conversation easily turned to this man and what he has accomplished, and continues to accomplish; despite the odds, his age, the naysayers, or the consternation experienced by those on the other side of him. At some point, someone in the group said, through a thinly veiled layer of contempt, that Tom Brady had gone off the rails believing himself to be immortal. As the person speaking continued with this line of reasoning, a subtext began to form and reveal itself. That being, that it won’t be long before Tom Brady gets his well deserved comeuppance, henceforth bringing him back to where he belongs; on the same level with the rest of us.

I pointed out that I do not believe that immortality is what he is after, but instead the fullest expression of what he is capable of. And that, yes, he is challenging the status quo and ideas around aging that wrongly decide ahead of time what a person will live like; even before they have lived it.

While in that moment I said what I needed to say, this individual’s response continued to rattle around in my mind, bothering me long after the conversation was over. Something inside of me felt so disturbed that I was unable to drop it. Then, in a glorious moment of revelation, what was bothering me revealed itself under the banner of; Don’t You Dare!

Don’t you dare be extraordinary. Don’t you dare go for the impossible. Don’t you dare challenge my view of reality. Don’t you dare show me up. Don’t you dare do anything that makes me uncomfortable. And don’t you dare make me come up against what I have not dared to do in my own life.

Why do we do this to one another? What are we so afraid of and so angry about that we would be glad when someone got their “just deserves,” bringing them back down to the level of mediocrity?

I’ll tell you why. We are threatened by what it reflects back to us about what we are and are not doing in our own lives. Otherwise, we would only want to see another person be as magnificent as they can be because it would remind us of what is inside of us as well. We would understand that when one person achieves greatness, when one person breaks the limitations of the status quo, when one person dares to reach for their own possibility, we are all lifted up and carried along to higher places.

Too many of us have forgotten this. Too many of us choose instead to attack, mock, or denigrate what is different, outside of the norm, out of the box, outstanding, and daring, in another. Too many of us sit on the sidelines content to watch greatness while we look for opportunities to tear it to shreds; using our precious life force to annihilate what is truly unique and amazing in another for no other reason than because we have not shown up for our own lives; finding it preferable to project our own failings onto the greatness of another.

Can you imagine a world where we support the very best in one another? I can. And I will tell you that I for one sure could use, and could have used my entire growing up, that level of support and protection for my own budding magnificence. And that each and every time I was on the receiving end of Don’t You Dare, it cut me to the core, took me down a peg, and made it that much harder to get back up and do what I came here to do.

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The Earth. The Sky. The Wind.

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It is a Wednesday morning and I am taking a yoga class. Over the course of an hour and a half, the teacher repeats over and over; Give your body to the earth. Give your heart to the sky. Give your mind to the wind. I am swept up and carried away on this mantra. It feels as though all the instructions I need to live a grounded, fulfilling, and extraordinary life are contained in these three simple phrases.

Give your body to the earth. Can I remember to release into the support of the Mother when my head would tell me to keep pushing forward on my own? Can I remember that like the earth, this body moves in phases, is renewed in cyclic and circular ways, and is the very essence of Life itself?

Give your heart to the sky. Can I remember to look up and open up when life presses in with its diminishing pressures? Can I remember that despite the constraints of being human, there is a vast spirit contained within that is as brilliant and expansive as the sky itself?

Give your mind to the wind. Can I turn over the endless stream of thoughts to the recognition that they come and go like the wind itself; sometimes forceful, sometimes gentle, and sometimes not there at all? Can I let my mind rest in my very own breath, even when, and especially if, it is demanding that I react to all the wrong things?

Steady on the earth. Open to the sky. Free on the wind. Prescriptions for living.

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