Hello Fellow Body-Mind-Hearts –

For quite awhile now I have been pondering what it means to be resilient and how we can cultivate resiliency in our lives?

The most common idea of resilience is the ability to bounce back from difficulties; the ability to recover quickly and return back to ‘homeostasis’. I find this definition limiting and not fully accurate.

First, there isn’t really such a thing as homeostasis in life… we are constantly moving and shifting… riding the waves of life. Our nervous system is designed for this… to activate and motivate and also to settle and rest and one is not necessarily better than the other. We need both to function optimally. So there is no perfect middle ground of evenness.

The evenness we so desperately seek through our practices of body, mind and heart comes from the ability to ride the waves and not be tossed over board. To go high and low and not get stuck either. To have a larger capacity to hold the terror and the beauty that is life. To have a big enough container to embrace the complexity of life. It is NOT about never having challenges or wild rides of ecstasy and difficulty…that would pretty much equate to not being alive. 

I believe that life’s assignment is to squeeze us and give us opportunity after opportunity to grow our container and cultivate our plumpness and wholeness. So how to we grow our container and build our ability to hold the complexity of life rather than get squashed flat? How do we stay bigger than life and its challenges?

We cultivate resources and learn tools that allow us to meet and greet the difficulties as well as the joys we encounter… both can be challenging in their own unique ways. These resources and tools are ways that we find and reclaim our wholeness, our innate wisdom and the larger vision of ourselves and life. They can be practices that we do to come back to the here and now, they can be places that remind us of our true place in the world and they can even be people who are able to be with our pain and joy without having to fix or change us.

A few of my personal resources are… walking in the woods and by the water, lying or sitting down and feeling my body in contact with the ground, videoing messaging with my friend Beth, putting my hand on my heart and feeling my heart beat, dancing and taking time on retreat. I invite you to discover yours and USE them.

This is part of what I offer in my Resiliency Sessions and what I want everyone to recover for themselves.

May you reclaim your resilience and find your widest capacity of body-mind-heart to hold the wildness of life. 

Thank you for sharing this journey with me…it is an honor to walk with you. 

Practice Prompts:

• Make a list of your resources…the practices, places and people who honestly and truly bring you back to your sense of wholeness and presence in the here and now.  Refer to this list when things feels out of whack and you sense that you are getting squeezed beyond your capacity.  Pick one or two to do in that moment and see what shifts for you.
• Join me on retreat this month…November 15 -17 at Breitenbush Hot Springs, OR.
• Whenever you feel overwhelmed take moment to feel your body in contact with support…drop and sense yourself in the here and now of ground for a few minutes. Then from here not how you meet the next moment.
• Book a Resiliency Session and we will work together to support your nervous system to build its capacity for life’s wild waves and identify and learn more resourcing practices.

Upcoming Practice Opportunities:

• Continuum Inquiry Playshop…Monday, November 11, 7-9pm
• Full Moon Mandala Practice…Thursday, November 14, 7-8:30pm
• Yoga Nidra Practice…Sunday, November 24, 5:30-7pm
• Harvesting the Heart Breitenbush Retreat…Nov 15 -17

Inspirational Wisdom:

The Heart Moving

Scratch your left ear with your right foot by all means

But show me how your heart moves

Stand on your head til the cows come home
Or show me a thousand different points of view
Flip flop and drop back
Another 108 sun salutes just like that,
But I’d rather know if you can meet every edge in your body with kindness
If you have the courage to uncover and tolerate the truth about yourself
And lift your neighbor across fields of muddy waters
Bending over backwards to offer out whatever you have left.

The absolute gift of breath flowing with consummate ease through every joint
The moment to moment knowledge of how each beautiful step initiates, transfers and completes
Gliding quietly and smoothly, transition after transition
The quiet grace of the wild cat
Each dawn awakening fresh and vibrant
And the night, not a collapse in a heap, but a presence to the wonderful art of resting
Liquid pouring onto the earth
Facing the end with a breathing centre
And be held with great love

And turn and wonder, “My beloved, how does kindness move here?”

~ Neal Goshal