sooth anxiety
Talk back to your harsh self talk… ” Be kind to me” Exercise and eat well… gut health improves mood and resilience Have good friends connect with nature write out your thoughts and fears and hopes Do guided imagery… where are you favorite places.. bring them to you and include all your sense, for example –the wind on your skin, the smell of flowers.. sing and create Learn and respect your own rhythms… a pace that feels good for you Develop your spiritual muscles through the regular rituals of your...
read moreSuccess
It can be sad to think of our mortality and yet it is a worthy teacher. Endings and death are a challenging and sometimes confounding part of life. But we are here to live through it all and learn from it all. Knowing we have limited time can help us make more thoughtful choices. Knowing we have limited time can encourage us to hold our moments, our world, our life experiences as precious. Knowing we have limited time can help us refine our notion of success. If you imagine the end of your life what will you be most proud of? What will fill...
read morewild web of relationships
Relationships are the foundation of our lives and far more rich and complex than we might know. With the aim of wholeness healing and full aliveness, the more we nurture and attune to relationships the better. The old western thought that we are fundamentally individuals on our own and ruled by our own volition alone is naive and untrue. Within our bodies are intricate relationships sustaining us. On the inside, our gut bacteria work to keep us well. On the outside the food we eat either nourishes or harms these bugs that help us. Recently, a...
read moreauthenticity
Be yourself. If you are not sure of your qualities, strengths and weaknesses, ask your best friends. How would they describe you? One kind of suffering we can let go of is the pain of trying to twist our selves into images, roles or expectations that are not in keeping with who we truly are. Although we have to adapt to situations and others in social roles, we are larger than our roles. People who are true to their values and their gifts are stronger and more centered than people who are focused on outside evaluations of them. Be yourself,...
read moreFire
How does fire fuel your life? In our women’s group,through art and writing and shareing we explored the fire in our lives from the sun, to light, and roaring wildfires. Where is our passion, how do we fan a healthy flame, when is the heat of anger a good and empowering force, how is fire warming and when is it dangerous? What do we need to burn away? What to we need to reignite? Many in room felt cold and in need of a lighting a flame. We shared the answers to the above questions and by the end we were warmed by one another and the...
read moreSimple truth
Live by simple truths. Be who you are…if you need clarification, ask those who know and love you to describe you. Live pursuing meaning rather cheap thrills. Joy accompanies meaning. Be with good people… we all rug off on one another. Live close to nature– in how you eat and time you spend. Natural light, beauty and awe renew and replenish body, mind and soul. Nurture relationships–with people as well as animals, a place, and, if you are intentionally on a spiritual journey, with dreams and the unseen. You will be...
read morecheap thrills
Cheap thrills do not boost happiness in the long run. Cheap thrills tend to have a hangover affect. For most people the candy bar, extraneous shopping and other hedonistic temporary pleasures, although fine in moderation, can drain us rather enhance our joy. True Joy arises from a life lived with care… care for others, for ourselves, for the world. Joy arises from a life lived in time with our values. What do you value. What is your purpose here? Answer these questions and you are one the way towards greater meaning, less cheapening and...
read moreMeaning leads to fullfillment
One of my favorite documentaries from PBS is Happy. I recommend it. This is not as simple as it may sound. There are themes that emerge. Money doesn’t do it, although minimal food and shelter allow people to be less distracted by trying to survive. Status, education and good looks dont do it either. Rather, values, soulfullness and connection, intrinsic rewards are the seeds of happiness.No one is happy all the time. We live within cycles of loss and gain and fallow times. But the foundation of a fulfilling life is meaning. The...
read moredraw upside down
Although brain function is more complex than what I suggest here, there is an emphasis on the left hemisphere of the brain in our culture. Nurture what we call the right brain … we are too in the logical linear brain and our experience of this magnificent world is limited by tuning out the visual spacial intuitive half of our brain. Draw upside down, put away devices, listen to instrumental music, walk, and sit in silence. Practise gently quieting internal...
read moreDive into solitude and dark
There’s not enough darkness in our lives. Not enough space for quiet, silence gestation, contemplation, or the digesting of suffering. We have frequently come to think of darkness as a place of evil or misery but another kind of darkness is full of potential, of mystery and the unknown. This sacred darkness is a place of incubation like the great universe surrounding us. Darkness is a place of creation. Inevitably, darkness reveals its other kind of light. It’s taken so long, many years but now I know the way of the underworld, the...
read more
