Verbal Flow Archives

In Love

What do I do with the griefs and disappointments of my life and with the exuberant joys and blessings? Do I simply ignore one for the other, focus on pain over joy or vice versa, pretend pain has not occurred? I understand that joy is simply not the same as happiness, and that one who lives ecstatic with wonder, with a joyful and jubilant heart is one who has experienced and held grief and disappointment with the same tender hand that they've held their happiest moments. So what if I could allow all the bees of my life's experience to return, like nectar brought to the hive of my heart, to be churned--every moment of pain and every moment of ease and excitement-- into abundant golden honey?

The “Monthless” Period

I stopped making resolutions a few years ago, which started partly as an act of defeat and partly as an act toward freedom--these things don't work, I told myself, and besides I want to cultivate the ability to be at peace with who and where I am in this circle of life. As I've learned more and have given more consideration to why (perhaps it is that New Year's resolutions often don't work for people in general), I've gained some insight that has helped me to reframe my perspective on resolution-making.

Living With Purpose: A Quiet Welcome to the New Year

This winter, I've been meditating on what is dead within me and what is possibly dormant. I don't have a list of ways I'll start new in 2018 quite yet because I am not quite sure of what potential is "warming" within me. I am thinking on this quote from the Quaker writer and teacher Rufus Jones: "I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place." I know that as I commit to certain parts of my life--practicing yoga, understanding this business, teaching both the 200 hour and advanced teacher trainings--that I am endeavoring back into that exactly--the "quiet processes and small circles" that do indeed hold all that is vital and transforming.

In The End, Hope

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work; you don't give up.~Anne Lamott

A Life of Wholeness

I'd like to quote one of the wisest writers of our times, even knowing that his quote may overshadow everything else I write after, for it alone says all there is to say. Parker Palmer wrote in A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey to an Undivided Life, "Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life."

Tripping Over Joy

Make a list of the times when your day is quiet--truly quiet. Is there even one? I read recently that an acoustic ecologist named Gordon Hempton has spent the last 30-odd years compiling what he calls “The List of the Last Great Quiet Places.” It consists of places with at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted quiet during daylight hours. In the whole of the United States, there were only 12.

Thresholds

I think these are the threshold moments--when we cross into a territory where everything that seemed so important on one side is suddenly changed and extracted down to the essential. This can happen in the momentous places that still us--finding out someone we love is dying. But it can also happen in the face of daily, seasonal or life changes when we make a choice to go beneath the surface of all our external stimuli so that we can cross into the new thresholds with integrity and grace.

Savoring Abundance

It is summer, the season that seems to me most fleeting and ephemeral. Perhaps it is because I love it so much—the warmth, the long days, the abundant vegetables and fruits just begging to be eaten raw in all their glorious rich colors. I…

A Little Summer Remedy

I began reading about and practicing Ayurveda before I ever touched a yoga mat. It was my poor eating habits and total lack of self-care that led me to a book in Four Seasons book store some 23 years ago, that I discovered as a young under-grad…