A breath for these tough times

Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.

Also, apologies to anyone whose comments disappeared from the next to last post while we were fixing a website mess! I read them and appreciated them!

Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques

I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.

Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.

I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️

November of ritual and the luminous path

What I am thinking about when I am thinking about ritual

It is the season of fall into winter here where I am. The cold times aren’t here quite yet, in sunny southern New Mexico, but they are coming. You can feel it.

This morning I sat on the porch with a small cup of damiana tea and admired the morning light glancing on the fields, and in the shimmering glow of gold-tinged cottonwood trees, moving like music, pulsing in space.

I set out a small bowl of chocolate-covered cherries to accompany or contrast with the medicinal bittersweet of damiana-infused hot water, and thought about ritual and said thank you.

Thank you

I said thank you to my cup, and the potter who made the cup (Sarah), and to a new-old friend (also a Sarah) who is also currently feeling a strong pull towards damiana.

And to the fields, and to dance, and to the small and large miracles, and to hope, may it stick around for a while.

Yes. Are you listening, sweet friend? I missed you, hope. I am glad you are back.

Hope, you are invited to stay and party with us, or at least keep us company. Please do.

A knowing nod

The combination of chocolate and cherries was not exactly the right form of what I was craving, but it felt like a knowing nod in the direction of the qualities within the wish:

Sweetness
Intention
Ritual
Pleasure

And something about the comforting comforts of right-sized, small-but-mighty, and of course the magic of a beautiful container, or the superpower of the right tool for the job. The vessel is part of the experience.

Pre-breakfast of champions

My wish about a pre-breakfast of champions is a wish about ritual, about infusing the infusion, and ultimately infusing everything with intention and care.

It is about beauty in small moments, and about pauses.

Realistically, soon it will be too cold for morning porch pre-breakfast but right now the view is so good.

Realistically / fleeting

Each year I think I will just get braver over and time and add on layers, but if we’re being realistic, the cold will win on that one, so:

Yes, this is also a wish about more-and-compound joy and pleasure for right now because this time is so fleeting.

That’s part of being alive too, letting the sun-kissed moments come and go.

Tiny shifts is part of the practice

Noticing: I don’t know that I like the taste of damiana. I don’t dislike it either.

Maybe we can say that it tastes medicinal to me, and also medicinal feels important and compelling right now.

Bring on the bitter and the bracing, in the right amounts.

Balancing the elements

I like to have something small and sweet to accompany my tea or coffee or morning warming beverage, but would much rather have chocolate covered orange peel than the cherries so let’s focus on making that?

Or something else, possibly something I don’t even yet know about, maybe that’s the answer. We will keep experimenting. I have some ideas and the basic elements are already in place.

Then elements are in place.

The doctor is in / the elements are in

The elements are in (place).

The elements are all gathered here, and I continue to explore the Known Knowns, and expand what is knowable and known, and of course, all this while staying receptive to the idea that any of these elements can change.

I like vessels.

I like how ritual is a vessel.

And how it is both the container and the contained, in the same way that a river is both the banks of the river and the rushing water, both the boundaries and the contents at the same time.

Alive / Okay I will tell you

Sometimes when I do morning yoga / bobcat stretching / tiger time, I think of the word CONTACT.

I touch my heart and say: CONTACT.

Breathing into all the connection points where a part of my body is making CONTACT with floor, and feeling how my heart wants to make contact with me. Fixating, in a good way, on contact.

Thomas said: Tell me something that is alive for you at this time, that you are holding space and attention for just because and no outside reasons….

Okay. I will tell you. I can do that. Sometimes I think I can do that, and sometimes I can’t, but today I can.

Missing

For the past three mornings I have made damiana tea and then sat on the porch drinking tea and contemplating the chill in the air, and thinking about how Winter Is Coming, and mainly just missing Michael, my beloved friend who died.

I want to talk to him about this tea. I want to talk to him about this mug. I want to talk to him about absolutely everything.

Rose, for example, but maybe cardamom and maybe wild mesquite

Later on that afternoon, I wanted to make an invigorating cacao beverage, or some kind of spiced hot chocolate something or other, something with a bit of a kick to it.

The saucepan still held the damiana leaves so I let them steep with the cacao, then added rose powder and a chai rose syrup I made the other day, and served it with frothed oat milk in my favorite glass. It was delicious and also it was missing something.

That is a familiar feeling too, that sensation of missing something. Missing, something.

Like waking from a dream and trying to write a note to myself and knowing, as I write it, that it won’t make sense.

Michael and I used to text every day, often about culinary experiments (he had been a chef), and I know we could have a fun back and forth on this particular experiment, dreaming up flavor combinations and surprising ingredients to add…

The little but not little things

It’s the little but not little things like this, like not being able to talk this through with him that is so hard.

Yes. It’s not little because this is very hard. I miss my friend so much. It hurts so much, the not-in-contact, the lack of contact.

I mean obviously I still can and do talk through this with him in spirit, and I absolutely do, but/and/also: it is not the same.

Because what I am craving is unknowable, and what I am craving is his laughter, and what I am craving is the contact, and being surprised by joy.

Maybe: cinnamon bark

Sometimes when I think about Michael and wonder what he would suggest in this situation, I can feel him so strongly. For example, I can feel teasing me, gently, about how I am a flavor maximalist…

Or I just feel him.

Right now I feel him indicating that whatever I might come up with intuitively will probably be better than any suggestion he or someone else would make so I should just trust myself (but also I think he would try cinnamon bark).

So maybe I will start there. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, and what matters is the dialogue, the vessel, the time-taking, the listening, the play.

The luminous pathway

After I cried more about missing Michael, I set up my kitchen space for yoga, and took an online class so that I could let my brain turn off and move my body through its paces.

Here was my clue from yoga class: “When you breathe in, your heart is ensconced by the lungs like under a pile of blankets, when you breathe out, your heart is revealed.”

And here was my other clue: ““The pathway is luminous because you are attending to it, feel the luminous path through your side body as you stretch…”

Thank you, Cary. Thank you, body. Thank you, technology. Thank you, waking up early.

The conditions were favorable

The conditions were favorable.

I was in the right place, which is to say that I am where I am, and sometimes it hurts and sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is medicinal, and sometimes all of these at once.

My heart was snuggled, my heart was revealed, the path was and is luminous, and porch tea helped, as it always does.

Talking to my friend from inside my heart helped, as it always or often does. Contact.

Mapping the many trails

This weekend I went to Tucson, for reasons, as a way or form of [okay, let us simply attend to the luminous path and see what happens].

And what happened was that Sarah and I went to a high-magic courtyard and breathed in herbs.

We talked about damiana, and talked about Michael, and cried, and hugged, and cried more, and laughed, and cried more. I learned that while I am busy missing Michael, many people from his life also know about me and think fondly of me. This had not occurred to me.

And what happened was dancing and sharing extraordinary moments with other dancers, and now I miss people I didn’t even know about before this weekend, how astonishing and life-affirming is that.

The luminous path of And What Happened Was

And what happened was that the courtyard encounter lead to a conversation about vessels that lead to a conversation about ritual.

And what happened was that thinking about ritual and vessels lead to remembering that once upon a time, before the great sadness, I used to enjoy morning hot beverage on my porch looking at the light.

And what happened was that when I arrived back home, Dominic happened to be just down the road from me and came over and I made mullein tea…

And that is how I remembered I happened to have a jar of damiana leaves on a shelf…

”Seen from the perspective of your helical heart…”

From heart perspective, I see:

The luminous path, and the luminosity that comes from attending to it.

The favorable conditions.

The way that ritual can hold space for grief, and for joy, and for story, and for the various pieces coming together and reconfiguring. Ritual as a vessel. And using a vessel as a ritual, or in the ritual, or to enhance the ritual.

Containing and being contained.

I am trying to spend time with the clues and with the damiana leaves and with the tea. With the shifting of the seasons, and the November wishes, and all of this.

Some November wishes

To be honest, I thought today I was going to be writing about Hard Reset November, which is one of my big wishes at the moment, also related to ritual and clue-following and contact.

And I thought I was going to be writing about practices and rituals related specifically to boundary issues, which is another theme for me right now.

And maybe about how all this relates or interacts with existing within fascism and terror and truly devastating times, because oh boy here we are.

But for whatever reason, and I am sure the reasons are good, I wish to focus on morning light, on porch time. I wish to hone in on medicinal practices that are grounded in pleasure and in noticing…

And maybe this itself is a container for the bigger November wishes, banks for the river to flow between.

What else supports November wishes?

Clearing off and cleaning / gleaming the kitchen table.

The practice of Fall Gleaming generally, a variant on spring cleaning, different energy, but same-same.

Releasing. Saying the most fun word: Futtitinni!

Yes, what if we practice being extremely Sicilian, and letting it go, with a dramatic hand gesture. Just keep saying it, and maybe something will let go. It might, right?

What else?

A good boundaries reset.

Staying with the known knowns, reviewing the known knowns. (What is known?)

Asking: what’s true and what’s also true?

Glowing attention and attentiveness towards the questions, following the luminous path of the questions.

The answers will come or they won’t, the clues will be revealed in right timing, I am following the questions, and they are following me.

Talk ritual to me

Yes, I am thinking about how maybe really everything is a grieving/remembrance ritual, and that’s okay because living and remembering go hand and hand.

We’ve been here before but also we’ve never been here before, right? This moment is new.

So that is something I am glowing attention towards.

Something I think about a lot is how no one tells you while you are growing up about how adulthood, whatever that means, is mostly grieving. Like, there is always more and more loss? It keeps compounding.

Soul-alchemy

I talked to Thomas about the tea, and about how when I am making tea I am also talking to Michael about flavor combinations…

He said that it feels like “the dance of a soul-alchemist, rehydrating the dust and bones of the past with the living warm waters of the present”, and that beautiful and poetic thought itself was bracing and reviving and medicinal for me.

Glowing attention towards, as a form of reviving. Everything is alive in some form on the luminous path.

If I’m doing it, then it is a form of ritual

Apparently we are all supposed to somehow muddle through life pretending it is not full of sorrow and memories that hurt?

Except it does not work for me to pretend that all this grief isn’t there, and so I turn everything into ritual.

I make tea for Michael and it is also for me. I introduce a friend to a favorite courtyard. I ask people to tell me about their vessels.

All of this is ritual and also it is all very simple and unfussy, if that makes sense.

The ritual forms itself. If I am doing it, then it is ritual. If I am following it then it is the luminous path.

Welcoming the November wishes

Instead of naming them directly, I am going to let these collected thoughts and clues be the vessel and the cauldron that hold the wishes.

The flowing river, the wishing waters, and the banks of the river, the boundaried container of the flow of wishing.

What is yes, what is a good clue, what are we glowing towards, and how are we taking care of ourselves and the vulnerable practice of allowing ourselves to want?

I want better for our world, and I am going to wish on that too, and make tea, and let the wishes be held in the ritual and let the ritual hold itself. A breath for following whatever comes next.

May it be so, or something even better

Here’s to choosing life and aliveness, and being here, even when it is so fucking hard (and often it is), and to learning about ourselves, and finding some sparks if we can, or staying receptive to future sparks if we can.

I love you, I love that you read my thoughts here, thank you for that. It means a lot to me.

Let’s source some wild joy, some loving clarity, or whatever is needed most, let’s play.

A breath for these tough times

Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.

Also, unrelated to the tough times, weird things are happening on the website, the comments disappeared from last post, the header disappeared, doing what I can to solve the mysteries, gotta do upgrades and updates.

Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques

I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.

Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.

I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️

Accelerating now to reach escape velocity and the gentle art of slowing for a even more gentle landing…

A beautiful Saturday at the vineyard

Many, many years ago I worked part time at a vineyard in Wisconsin.

My mind still holds beautifully glowing memory fragments of these sun-kissed Saturdays. Traipsing among the vines, carrying heavy boxes of grapes, reading bits and pieces of a novel during downtime, showing excited families a good place to pick their grapes. No, I do not stomp the grapes…

This past weekend, my first real weekend back home after a long summer that began with great upheaval escaping the big fire and ended with a joyful dance party among new-found friends and a road trip with a long-lost friend from another time, guess where I landed…

Yes! I found myself at a vineyard, on a perfect sunny fall day.

Something about arriving, something about belonging

It was in New Mexico, not Wisconsin, and I wasn’t there to work, I was there to meet up with my beloved hiking crew and to meet some of their freinds, but something about the sun, the sparkle, the glorious fall everything, sent me back thirty years in time.

Why am I telling you this? I don’t know exactly. Something about arriving, something about belonging, something about a sense of being held by a landscape, something about hope.

And because it feels related to my theme of slowing for a gentle landing, which begins with accelerating to reach escape velocity.

And how there is a balance between the acceleration and the slowing, and it’s a little tricky at first, but then it kind of holds itself. Or at least, I am playing with the idea that it can hold itself, for me.

Arriving (home)

I had some trepidation about arriving home, knowing that much of my area was devastated by the big fire.

I was worried about what I might see, and also about what I might not see. Mainly I was worried about smoke damage to my sweet home, where I left all the windows open, back in June, when I thought I was going away for a weekend and not for months…

There were a few burned trees visible on the opposite side of the road from my place, but, miraculously, the parcel of land I am fortunate to call home was untouched. Thank you, fire fighters, thank you winds, thank you good fortune, thank you.

My home too was seemingly fine. It smelled exactly like itself, like my house, like a place of wood and peacefulness. I am so lucky. So lucky and so thankful. What a miracle.

There were no signs of the trauma of the fire, other than some soot on the roof, and some rats built a nest next to my hot water heater but didn’t make it directly into the house. They shall be vanquished. More on this later, but not today.

Remembering and forgetting and re-remembering

The re-entry process is full of tiny rememberings and re-rememberings.

Some parts just land. Like the joy of taking deep breaths on my porch beneath a million stars before bed, or morning bobcat-stretching watching the birds play above the field…

Other parts are more tricky, like remembering what I usually pick up at the supermarket, or where things go, or all the various tiny house routines…

Not to mention the steady rituals and practices that promote mental well-being, and the way my mental well-being can tank fast when I neglect them. Whoops! Now I remember.

Whoops! I did it again. But now I remember!

My teacher Esther always says that forgetting is part of remembering, and I am trying to remember this as well.

Landing takes time. Learning to land takes time. It is okay to forget. Sometimes it is even useful to forget.

I am being returned to beginner’s mind, and this is useful, and the tuition just is.

Accelerating to reach escape velocity

Leaving the northwest was hard and I kept wanting to do fun things for the last time, to soak up all the hugs and dancing and camaraderie before heading back to my life of isolation.

Except there wasn’t time for most of these, because of [I Am Accelerating Now To Reach Escape Velocity for my trip], and this turned out to be useful framing for me.

The phrase is via a dance friend. I sent them a song that the DJ played on my last night at a favorite dance event, and they said: “Thanks! I’ll listen to it later. We’re accelerating now to reach escape velocity to leave for our trip to the Redwoods.”

Yes. Sometimes things are accelerated. Sometimes the acceleration takes some time. And then you have to slow for the gentle landing. It is not always elegant. That’s the place of play.

Landing

A favorite yoga teacher used to have an amazing youtube video about floating forward from downward dog to a standing forward fold, and sadly this video is no longer online, but I probably watched it two hundred times.

It was full of fun drills like having bare feet on a blanket on the floor and just sliding back and forth between the two end points. And by fun, I mean excruciating core work!

This video made me beg for mercy, but I learned so much about edges, and about landing, and using the ground, and about the path between not-graceful-at-all and more-graceful.

And about not rushing that path, because that’s not how the path works.

Not rushing the path, because that’s not how the path works.

That’s not how the path works.

You gotta stay playful, alert, receptive, patient, and hang out in the non-linear.

Like with any process of releasing or becoming, or both.

It’s hard to trust the messy in-between, and yet, much if not most of life is messy in-between.

And that’s not a bad thing. Even there, in the messy in-between, you might find a sun-kissed Saturday, a glowing cottonwood tree shimmering in the breeze, a vineyard, a place that smells exactly like itself.

Ah the old plop-and-flop!

But my favorite part of regularly working on that float-forward jump, which I can still only nail maybe a quarter of the time, was the way it helped me understand that it’s okay to plop and flop on your way to learning the art of a graceful landing.

In fact, the more you know about plopping and flopping, the more intimate knowledge you have of the mechanics of it all. You can be okay with the not-graceful landing, and the graceful landing will come.

Chef John voice: “Give it the ole’ plop-and-flop!”

There is something useful in the inelegant mess of learning about a graceful transition, if that makes sense. It’s a compelling trail for me to follow.

A (more) gentle landing

I have been staying close to the questions of “What is working” and “What might help”, and allowing more time than I think is needed for literally everything, including the massive projects of house-cleaning and laundry.

Another part of landing: I made a promise to myself on the return trip to not forget my goal-wishes that revealed themselves this summer, and to take one step each day towards, however small.

This has forced me to name some really tiny steps, and to get okay with steps being tiny and sometimes symbolic, but they still count as steps. Some days I take multiple steps, and some days I take one tiny step. It all counts.

Carving out sanctuary space through intent and focus

These are scary times and I am trying to stay focused on beauty, the land, my feet on the ground, the practices that sustain me, being a beam of glow powers for myself and the world and the people I love.

I am practicing sanctuary space within, sanctuary space in my home, wishing sanctuary into the world for everyone in harm’s way.

Intending my way towards. Intent, intention, and focus.

Superpower of I am always in the right place

Over the summer I kept noticing how I would miss something I thought was my yes, and then end up at something even more my yes. I AM ALWAYS IN THE RIGHT PLACE.

And sure, sometimes I am not, but even that, and the moment of realizing it, is also a form of always in the right place.

Remembering this is helping me when I get frustrated in my cramped tiny space and with all the projects and fear about the cold winter coming and still no heat in the house, and so on. Things are moving and shifting, and I am always in the right place, I just need to figure out how.

Sometimes this means a reconfiguring and sometimes this means adapting and sometimes it means moving. The right place is always changing, as am I.

CLUES DU JOUR

Each day I try notice the clues and stay receptive and keep practicing.

The practice changes and so do I. What is helping in this moment? What do I crave and what do I need, and how can I be true to this moment right now, the me of right here right now?

How can I stay seasonal?

For example, last night I went to my favorite yoga class and it was a delight, and also I noticed that now is the season of driving home in the dark, which is not yes, and so maybe this class goes on hold (for me) until spring, and I create my own class for me in my kitchen, with practices to practice that will take me from now to then.

Similarly, can I let the old things be old and done? Can I make room for the new to arrive without necessarily knowing what it is?

What is next?

Let’s wish some wishes.

Wishes for the world: Peace, peace, peace. Sanctuary. Miracles. Right Timing. Things shift or change for the better in surprising ways. Solidarity. Empathy. Care. Hope. Faith. Wonder. Good surprises. Perfect simple solutions. Networks of care and mutual support. Some good energy. Be gay do crime!

Wishes for my home: Help and support with the various projects. The right people at the right time. Help figuring out heat for the winter and a fix for my gate and a way to vanquish the rats from beneath the house and from the other structures that ideally does not involve having to feed cats.

Wishes for me: Supportive routines, deep nourishing sleep, focus, self-treasuring, a glorious return of the ambition that I felt good sparks of this summer, community, connection, play, delight, hope. Glowing beautiful boundaries from a place of love and care. Being a beam of light, while staying grounded, steady and clear. Embracing aliveness with all of its rough edges. Working on my landings. Being brave and practicing.

Naming something that doesn’t have a name yet

I am interested in a return to teaching or [verb]-ing, offering? Offering. Some kind of movement class or space that is playful, mindful, curious, alive.

Something like the way I play with being a bobcat each morning and evening on my kitchen floor.

For sure this class or workshop combines things I have learned over my years of learning and teaching, and combines some elements from various forms of things I play with like dance and yoga and Gokhale and Feldenkrais and Franklin method and things that don’t have names…

I am imagining that it also involves some journaling time, some integration time, some imagination time, some forms of play like we used to play with at Rally at my former retreat center…

The time for namestorming will come but I am dropping this wish and related wishes into the wishing cauldron, and hope I can offer a form of this soon for us to play together. Leave a note in the comments if this is something you’d be into!

What helps with accelerating and decelerating

This is what I’m humming on these days.

Presence. Discernment. Self-treasuring. A true desire to take care of myself and want better for myself (and for everyone). A lot of this involves taking more time or allowing more time than I think is needed, and especially building in integration time.

A lot of this involves noticing, which itself asks us to pause and rest and tend to ourselves to be able to hone that skill of noticing.

Noticing

What can we notice about the practice of noticing itself?

Noticing requires breathing room.

But what if we are too hurried to remember about breathing room? What if we are too stressed to pause and notice?

That’s where grace comes in. Gracefully or not, giving ourselves some grace for whatever comes up in the noticing…

Giving grace (to ourselves), can we give this a try

We forget and remember and re-remember. We can do it right now. Let’s re-remember together!

A breath for breathing room, a breath for integrating, a breath for remembering to remember.

A breath for REST & DIGEST. A breath for the next indicated step revealing itself in right timing.

Gracefully or not, we will get there

If it involves a plop, then good job to us for plopping. Whatever works, it all counts.

Giving ourselves grace for the not-graceful moments, and for needing rest.

Getting to escape velocity takes a lot out of us. Re-integration takes time.

Here we are, bravely keeping on keeping on in these shaky times. Proud of us, it’s not easy and we are still here.

May it be so, or something even better

Here’s to choosing life and aliveness, and being here, even when it is so fucking hard (and often it is), and to learning about ourselves, and finding some sparks if we can, or staying receptive to future sparks if we can.

I love you, I love that you read my thoughts here, thank you for that. It means a lot to me.

Let’s source some wild joy, some loving clarity, or whatever is needed most, let’s play.