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.

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. ❤️

Scary times to be a person

I am in beautiful, creative, vibrant, peaceful, playful, Portland, Oregon, a place of much whimsy and good-heartedness and care, and also we have national guard troops here pepper spraying protestors, and there is a lot of contrast there.

It is both absurd and terrifying at the same time.

There are people I know in crisis and I am worried about them. I am worried about my beloved trans friends. I am worried for the safety of so many people, and for all of us.

And I am lighting candles for SANCTUARY, SAFETY, MIRACLES, SURPRISE EASE, things shifting and changing for the good. With some strong Return To Sender spells.

A little hex, a protest spell, Return To Sender

May the fascists be hexed with so much clarity (this is my best hex).

May they be delivered so much exquisite clarity that they have a dark night of the soul over it, over and over, seeing themselves revealed in this mirror of clarity until they have no choice but to either do better as humans or perish.

This is my protest spell, and it is not enough, but a breath for something better, this situation speedily solving itself, and for safety for everyone in harm’s way.

Sanctuary and entry

Sanctuary for the sanctuary city. Brutal clarity for the people doing harm. May their machinations be undone and thwarted over and over, gracefully when possible, or not.

And now we turn inward, to the right here right now of it all. Recentering.

Which itself is another small form of protest. Staying intentional.

The intimacy of intimacy

Last week I wrote about heart wishes, and knocking at the door of my own heart through listening to it knocking back to me, a call-and-response living breathing knock-knock joke of exquisite self-treasuring.

Here I am. Here we are.

And I didn’t state this explicitly but all of the wishes I have been wishing were and are wishes about intimacy.

Intimacy in the sense of presence, listening, being embodied, staying close to my own heart, being intimate and vulnerable with myself, and creating safety around that experience. What beautiful wishes.

Predictably, you know how this goes

And in the predictable way that we wish a wish and then either immediately are confronted with the opposite of our wish, for contrast…

Or in the predictable way that we can wish a wish and then run at top speed in the opposite direction of our wishes…

Or both, realistically, often it’s both…

You know where this is going.

I wished for intimacy with my own heart, and then went knocking on a bunch of other doors that were not my own heart.

Looking for love (intimacy) in all the wrong places

Yup. Looking for love (intimacy) in all the wrong places.

And, equally predictably, I was disappointed in what I found or didn’t find at those doors.

It happens.

It goes like that

I was craving intimacy and got the opposite of intimacy.

In fact, I got the kind of lonely that is made worse by being in physical proximity to someone who doesn’t know how to share closeness, or who can only offer closeness in a way that feels like distance.

It sucked, in a way that was entirely predictable, because I forgot to stay with my own heart and let myself open inwards instead of outwards, and entirely forgot about being a well-boundaried beam of love.

So, yes, it goes like that. We wish a wish and then we learn about its opposite.

The contrast and the ongoing practice of discernment are where the learning happens, and then keeps happening.

What do we add and what do we subtract

What do we add and what do we subtract in these situations, as we meet them, and ourselves, with patience.

Because this is a known phenomenon and it happens, and it hurts and also nothing is wrong.

We add: COMPASSION. GRACE. PRESENCE. SWEETNESS.

We add softness and softening.

Adding softness

I was taking yoga class with a very young man who had the energy of a golden retriever puppy (“Let’s gooooooo!”), and I was not expecting anything profound, just to do a bunch of arm balances.

But then he asked, “Can you meet this challenging moment with some softness?”

And I nearly laughed, because what could be more profound than that…

Can we add softness to meet a challenge?

Can we soften when challenged?

I don’t know! But I love this question. A good question for intimacy and matters of the heart and the right now.

Returning to practice

And then I went to yoga class with the doom metal yoga person, and the theme of that class was about how you just need to keep returning to the practices that help instead of being mad about how long it’s been.

I needed to hear this.

Mainly because it seems like I have been entering this new year by making one mistake and misstep after another, to the point that I already have all my corn chip regrets for next year ready to be cast into the river.

It was Rosh Hashana, and then I entered the year with a bunch of whoops that wasn’t what I wanted at all, and can I meet this challenging moment with some softness too?

Context

Context is also something we can add in these challenging moments.

For example, I am being hard on myself about having forgotten to tend to my poor sweet heart after wishing for intimacy and tenderness.

And yet let’s look at the context, including but not limited to:

• It is the anniversary of my mother’s death
• My father is going through a mental health crisis and it is is terrifying and I feel even more helpless than usual
• Monday was the anniversary of a meaningful to me day that was all about deep, intentional intimacy with a human whose heart I loved, and now we barely even talk to each other
• Right, the fascism
• So many people I know either breaking down hard or on the verge of breakdown or mid-crisis, or circling around crisis, and I want help for everyone, and stability for everyone, and there is not much I can do other than breathe and check in…
• I am about to head home to my life of quiet in the wildnerness which is very beautiful and meaningful and what I need (sanctuary space for me), but is also a hug-less dance-less life, and I am panicking about that and thinking about how it could be changed and what that would involve…

Reset restart reconfigure

Yes, let us name the context, and make room for the contrast.

Let’s add sweetness and compassion and softness to meet the challenges and the experience of being challenged.

Let’s meet our wishes through learning about the opposite, and meet learning about the opposite through cultivating even more heart-listening. Knock knock, it’s my heart.

And mainly it’s just returning, without wasting time judging this, to doing the things that work and help.

No recriminations, just RESET RESTART, TRY AGAIN, LET’S GO.

Can I be done with the boring stories?

Truly it is such a boring story to be frustrated by repeating the same lessons, so what if I can channel EXCITEMENT for the same lesson.

Like ooh yeah my old buddy I know this mistake and how to maneuver out of it.

Here’s to having been there before. I already have the beta on this climb.

As the golden retreiver in human form yoga teacher would say: Let’s gooooooooo!

Pitter-patter

I went to masked fusion dancing (masks in the sense of kn95 or better, not in the sense of costumes) in Portland, and my dance-crush from long ago was there, and I melted into their arms, and I can only describe it as a sort of rooted floating.

Of the earth and ethereal. Each moment a treasure. Dreamy, dreamy, dreamy, real, real, real.

The song both lasted forever and ended too soon, and eventually we had to let each other go, and they put their hand to their heart.

They put their hand to their heart and glowed at me with their eyes above their mask, and, drumming on their own heart, they said: PITTER PATTER!

And then they disappeared into the night like Cinderella, and I listened to the reverberating in my own beautiful loving heart.

Beating, as in keeping the beat or beating as in taking a beating

Immediately after that, I danced with someone who in some senses knows me intimately and also truly does not know me at all.

And they said, what happened to you, your heart is beating right out of your chest, and I felt like a reverberating brass door knocker echoing through space, because they were not wrong..

Pitter-patter, thump thump thump thump, knock knock knocking. What happened to you babe.

Oh right, gotta reset. Back to my own beautiful loving door. My own space for just-me.

A good volley with the universe

Speaking of wishes that come in their own timing, a few months ago I made a wish about having a good volley with the universe, and lately I have been having many such volleys.

On Sunday, dance friend James took me on a fun walk around Mt Tabor.

We saw some musicians playing, and one of them plays with James in another band so we stopped for a while and chatted and then of course we had to dance, which was wonderful.

Then two women passing by joined in and started salsa dancing, and one of them had a banana shaker in her purse, so she temporarily joined the band!

Superpower of always having a shaker in your bag. You never know.

We kept walking and people kept saying, “ooh you’re the dancers!” and wanting to chat, and we had all the time in the world, so we stopped and chatted with all of them, and I never do this, and it’s really great actually?

Connecting

One of the people who said, “HEY YOU ARE THE DANCERS” was an older man named David who told us that his wife had just died a few weeks ago.

They’d been married for 61 years and he’d been her caretaker, and he told us that now he doesn’t really know what to do with himself, so he just goes to the park. But they used to dance. In fact, they used to jitterbug way back in the day.

He said that if his wife was there, she would have wanted to join in and dance with us, and then James asked if he wanted a hug and he did, and it was a beautiful day of heart-healing and connecting in Portland, sanctuary city of good hearts.

Jamming

In the evening there was more dancing with friends, and more music-making and music-appreciating, and more connecting, in ways that were simple and sweet and didn’t hurt my heart or involve compromising anything.

Just the back and forth of hearts saying oh wow yes I hear you too and thank you for that, a jam session of hearts, every heart getting a good solo in. Good solo time, together.

Adding sweetness, subtracting whatever is unnecessary or extraneous, softening, pulsing, a lot of grace.

I feel so extraordinarily lucky.

Undoing stories to rewrite them

So that’s what is on my mind right now.

Undoing the boring stories of HERE WE GO AGAIN, THE SAME FUCKING MISTAKES.

And softening enough to welcome some new stories about how sometimes I get the opposite of my wish and sometimes I get an unexpected form of my wish, and how it is all very special to experience even if some of it was painful.

I am glad to have been the right dancer in the right time and right place. The right dancer for the job, the right heart-haver for the job.

Softening even more, but not an unboundaried softening

And I am also trying to soften into some thankfulness (not forced, just thoughtful and thankful) for the harder and more challenging learning experiences.

Specifically around this ongoing reminder that a lot of attempts at intimacy that I think could be meaningful do not in fact support my heart or my emotional well-being.

My heart and my softness deserve sanctuary, and they deserve high regard, and they deserve way better boundaries, and this is the practice. Ongoing.

The lesson remains: I need to take more tender care of my heart, and I want to, and I plan to, and sometimes I will fuck up spectacularly, and we reset, restart, reconfigure, and dance again.

(Let’s gooooo! And may it be so.)

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.