Hello Dear Kin –
Last week I had the good fortune to spend an evening with Chris La Tray , who is an energetic and energizing teacher and storyteller. He is the current Poet Laureate of Montana as well as the author of the recently published “Becoming Little Shell; A Landless Indian’s Journey Home”. On this particular evening he was here to discuss Mino-bimaadiziwin — the Anishinaabe word for “the good life.” At its simplest, it is living a life in balance with the world around us. And the questions we were sitting with were…How do we achieve the “good” life? What are our responsibilities to our communities and our relatives — human and more than human? Is it even possible?
Chris spent the evening sharing stories and inviting us back into relationship with the land and animals as instrumental to our very being. Reminding us that no matter what the larger systems might be doing we can make a difference in the way we move through the world and engage with the land and our kin. That we make a conscious choice every day to honor the earth that feeds, clothes and houses us just as she does for the robin and wolf. That a ‘good’ life is not about accumulation of goods but about depth and presence of relationships.
YES…our life and its meaning and goodness is about cultivating meaningful and ongoing relationships, not just with our fellow humans but with all around us. How do we move beyond our socialized attitude that the world around us is simply here for our extraction, production and entertainment? How do we stop pushing ourselves to exhaustion in the name of productivity? How do we reclaim our rightful place among the green ones and the furred and finned ones as a sibling and keeper of life? How do we step up for kin when we are all so tired?
I sit with these questions daily and inevitably a key to the answer is in slowing down and pausing. Coming to our senses…not our intellect but our thrumming senses that allow us to deepen into our relating physical body. Our relating is rooted in showing up with all of us present…in showing up in the immediacy of perception rather than the assumption of concept. This speaks to the importance of slowing down to feel in and through and as our bodies into the moment of contact and exchange. This is a key resistance strategy to the work of the over culture that wants us to be numb and isolated and forgetful.
So I invite you to be a revolutionary and slow dow…Feel the sun on your face, truly Listen to the birdsong, Taste the fresh berry, See the vibrant yellow of the daffodils. Make an offering back of your thanks, your recognition, your love…sing the mountains a song, say a simple prayer, pick up trash, laugh. This practice of relating is what we will explore more deeply in a few weeks time at my retreat Embodied Presence; Continuum Inquiry and Deep Perceiving at Breitenbush Hot Springs, OR. There are still a few spot left and I would love for you to join us.
May we slow down enough to deepen into our ongoing relationship with the world around us
May we find ways to enliven and wake up our senses to truly engage with life
May we make reciprocal offerings of beauty and acknowledgement back to the land and our kin
May we bring wild blessings and fierce love to all we encounter
Practice Prompts:
- Make a simple practice of pausing throughout your day at random times to notice with whom you are in current relationship…the temperature of the air, the feel of cloth, the scent of lilac, the vision of green bursting forth and so much more. Let it in to touch your insides and heart. Deepen into the way the world is reaching out to you. Offer your thanks back to the world in thought or simple actions.
- Explore the practices that enliven your senses. Notice which senses you rely on most and then be curious about how to embrace and embody the other streams and ways of being and knowing. Practice shape shifting.
- Take some time to read the exquisite book, “The Serviceberry”, the most recent offering from the wise woman, Robin Wall Kimmerer.
- I offer one to one sessions, in-person in Bend, Oregon, and virtually all over the world. These sessions are centered on supporting you find nervous system capacity and resiliency through various practices including but not limited to Somatic Experiencing®, Continuum Inquiry, Safe and Sound Protocol and various emboding practices. Please email me or schedule a free 20 minute Exploratory Session.
Practice Opportunities:
- Yoga for Resilience, Mondays, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Body of Insight (no class April 28 & June 16)
- All Levels Yoga, Sundays… May 11, June 22, July 13, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Two Dog Yoga
- On Demand Yoga Practices…All Levels… through Two Dog Yoga
- Embodied Presence; Continuum Inquiry and Deep Perceiving Retreat…May 16-18, 2025, in person at Breitenbush Hot Springs, Oregon
Inspirational Wisdom:
“One of our greatest fears is to eat the wildness of the world. Our mothers intuitively understood something essential: the green is poisonous to civilization. If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us. Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made for us. Our hair will begin to grow long and ragged. Our gait and how we hold our body will change. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes. Our words start to sound strange, nonlinear, emotional. Unpractical. Poetic — Once we have tasted this wilderness, we begin to hunger for a food long denied us, and the more we eat of it the more we will awaken.”
