Monthly Archives: June 2016

It’s time to wake up

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“And there is a place where we one day will delve, where there’s no more walking on eggshells.”   – Alice Phoebe Lou Berlin Blues Song

This morning I got out of bed and knew that I absolutely was not able to do a thing until I was able to really listen to the birds sing. I needed to just lay there for a bit and be still. I knew that I needed to wait and really not only hear from my head but feel from my heart, what the day had in store for me. It is not always something that I normally think about when rising to meet the day, but hey… not a bad way to process the shift between waking and sleeping.

The process between waking and sleeping. This is something that I have been exploring deeply and something that my entire body has been engaging in in a variety of ways without my mind or thoughts even contributing anything really needed or worthwhile. My mind, over the past few years has gotten much better at stepping aside and allowing for the body to do the walking and the talking. My body has now taken a lead role in this formerly highly directed life path. My body is not telling me what not to do so much but what is needed, desired and wanted for a more fluid and healthy way of moving through my day.

What I mean by this is that I realize that my body will simply not oblige if I have it any other way. You know the story, you sit for too long and your feet start to tingle and you move for too long and your feet start to ache and you sleep for too long and you get to depressed and you stay awake at night and you begin to digress.

It is a natural cycle that we have built within us and we often forget that we in fact have little control. It is the energy within us that will bring us to the balance that we need and that we want, what we know to be true.

I was sleeping for a long time and I was not listening to my inner workings. I was instead allowing the outside world to lead my moves along. I looked to friends and looked to mentors and I looked to others who were doing, great things and asked them what they thought.

Would they help me carry on?

Yet, it was not really the best avenue, nor was it really the best path. For they had no idea how my own body would react. Would I cry or would I laugh when a new challenge was presented?    I was left alone to listen, I had to make the decision.

I finally figured out that it was in fact, the only wisdom,  I held within myself and that was kept within my heart. It was this tiny sound. And it was this little part, of me that I knew to be there. It was the part I knew so well. It was the little voice within me that was always afraid to yell. It was the little voice within that would often not say much. It was that voice that made me do all the things in which I knew I would excel.

However, it is time, to get it out and let it now be heard. It is not about success or failure it is about the way that we unlearn.

So this morning I will share the poet and I will share the dancer too. I have no instruction in either discipline. I have only the audience and the witness that is you. I am not the kind of woman that will need a laugh or a clap. Just do me a favor and please be your self proudly, stand up and speak out back.

** Special thanks and gratitude to George Polimenakos and Kamelia Ivanova for introducing me to the angelic and authentic voice of Alice Phoebe Lou who inspired me to move this morning.

6/14/16

Ebb and Flow

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Ebb and Flow

In these last weeks of spring, I feel a sharp shift occurring and notice a great alertness begin to take hold of my senses. Is it because I am beginning to relax into and realize that the full cycle of life has begun again? It is now on the upswing moving into the rich harvest time. Anyone else feel it?

Are we a little less irritable because the light is filling our days for a little longer? Are we a little more centered because the ground is beginning to soak in water allowing it to regenerate its soil? Are we, ourselves, beginning to feel regenerated as well?

It seems as if we are like the earth itself. We are just about to give way to something new – we have not thought possible since the last cycle of Spring rolled on through. Is it going to be the kind of Season that we had hoped it would be? Is it going to be the kind of Season we expected? All the questions laid under a layer of dormancy, during the winter months. They laid in waiting for this time when they could really truly and fully come to the surface of the ground once again.

If we think about our own personal cycles like the cycles of the landscape, it may be easier to understand why we are constantly moving in ebbs and flows. Why does it seem that some days are better than others? We are fond of labeling the day with a preconceived notion of whether it was a good or bad day. Whether the people, the places and the things in our lives played a part in making our lives better or worse.

We often look to and rely upon these preconceived notions of joy and struggle to measure how we are doing along our way. We look to the joy to tell us that we are doing really well and we look at the struggle to tell us that where we are not doing well. Yet if we go to the ocean we are not labeling the tide as good and bad tide as it moves in and out, away and back to shore. It is simply ebbing and flowing. This is what we do too.

It is more apparent though in some people than others. Their ebb and their flow is rather dramatic and you can see vast differences between the back and forth motions in their lives. Again many inadvertently define it as highs and lows and others will call it the ups and downs. You may have even heard it as going with the flow or having a block. All of this is simply just the ebb and the flow – as above as below.

In this time of late Spring, early Summer, we will find that the seasons will show us beautifully how to maintain the balance between these ebbs and flows. There is always a fine balance between the two and you will not ever be in one without the other close behind your next steps. It is something that will be inevitable and it is something that we can choose to resist or simply accept and engage with in our own daily practice. How does the ebb complement the flow and how will the flow complement the ebb. There are many ways that this can be explained but the best way is to just think about it and decide for yourself. Are you even sure you know the difference between the two motions and how they play out in your own life? Are you aware of this cycle when it occurs? Are you putting labels or definition on the cycle as most of us do? Are you having a productive day or a day in rest are you having a day of alone time or a day of social gatherings? Are you giving yourself time for your home life or work life or an inner retreat? Are you out in the world getting ready to meet? It is not too difficult to see the cycle when you give it a peak. Just step back and observe and try not to seek. You will see that in a few short days you might begin to see, patterns of your own that resemble patterns of the sea.

You may not have a reason and you may not need one to, but try this out and see if it works for you. Give it a whirl and watch how you speak. It may come out in rhymes or it may come out in a way that you wouldn’t expect. It may come out in scientific text. The cycle applies to all that we are and it speaks to the way that we have come so far, to be at this point and to be here and now. We have lived within the cycle for centuries now.

It is not the way that we view our relationships and it is not the way that we often express our feelings and it is not the way that we are often comfortable revealing. But it is the way that we involuntarily move and it is the way that we will continue to prove that with each step that we take and with each step that we make, we will find the that the next will balance out it to equate the way that we are and the way that we will be. It is not really science it is simply the workings of energy.

6/10/16