Hello Dear Ones  –

New moon blessings. I am thrilled to share with you that after a 5 year hiatus (due to the 2020 LionsHead Fire and more) I will once again be offering a weekend retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs. On May 16-18, 2025, we will gather for a weekend of nourishing Continuum Inquiry movement and Deep Perceiving sensory practices. We will be held by the sacred land and waters that are our teachers in times of tumult and in celebration.

Note about registration:
* If you wish to share a room with other(s) you know, it is optimal for one person to register you all as a group in the same lodging. Then you would work out the finances amongst you.
**If you are coming alone but wish to be housed with another in our group then please sign up for ‘Shared Occupancy’ rooms when registering.

Learn more and register HERE.

Sometimes I read a fellow embodiment guide’s newsletter and their words are just so perfect. Such is the case this month as I share with you the wisdom of Meg Rinaldi. I simply could not improve on the way she shares these insights, so with her permission, I share them with you here…

“In the midst of all of that is going on in our world, I was sitting in meditation a few days ago and I felt my mother’s presence: she sat beside me and wordlessly extended her left arm around my back to comfort me.

By the time my mother was 12, her father had left the family: she, two sisters and her mother were left to fend for themselves during the Great Depression. World War Two was readying itself in Europe with the rise of facism. By the time she was 27 she was married, had lived through the second world war and had lost one of what would eventually be six children, to an accidental poisoning.

In the last years of her life, in her early 80’s she asked my father to plant a few apple trees on their land. It was an act of faith. I can still see her, walking slowly, around the newly planted trees, fully aware that she wouldn’t live to see them grow into their fruitfulness. And yet in her pragmatic, steady way she said “It doesn’t matter that I won’t see them bloom— someone else will enjoy them.” While facing the end of her life, she chose her response which in this case was to care about leaving a bit of beauty to those she left behind.

She lived through much in her life as I am certain many of you or your ancestors have too. They made it, you made it and here we are in this moment together!

My mother’s recent visit was a reminder that life moves in cycles. There are times of light and times of dark. When we are the ones living through dark, turbulent times, they seem unique to us but they are the natural ebb and flow of life, they are not personal.

But to say it’s “not personal”, lacks compassion for ourselves and for others: it sounds enlightened but not quite.

What makes these times difficult is that they intersect with our personal wounds. Many of these personal wounds lie dormant in our unconscious until they intersect with and are triggered by outer events.
These dark times paradoxically shine a light on where our next level of inner work is calling for attention. It doesn’t negate the importance of what is going on around us, it exposes where we stand in relationship to the unconsciousness and uncertainty prevalent now.

Times of change reveal our habitual responses like nothing else does. So there’s a chance to ask ourselves, what’s happening in my bodymind right now? What am I learning about myself? Where’s my growing edge right now? Our growing edges are not meant to be comfortable!

For those who need rest right now, rest. Take a break from scrolling through social media feeds or taking in too much news. It’s hard right now to discern between what is news and what is disinformation and that’s true across the political spectrum. Take your time to decide how you might re-engage when the time is right. It can be random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty as the saying goes.

In any case, being either heroic or helpless in such moments are natural reactions but they limit us to only two possibilities. To have more options in our emotional repertoire is empowering and necessary. Our reactions are indicators of where we are in relationship to the events around us. They are portals to our healing if we allow them to be.”

May we open to the growing edge of the moment and keep growing

May we gaze with eyes of compassion on others’ journey and edge

May we offer kindness and beauty to the world

May we bring wild blessings and fierce love to all we encounter

Practice Prompts:

• Take a break from all the information coming in through the devices (social media, news, etc.) …give yourself time to be with the natural world and in quietude in order to distill what is true for you on any given day and how much bandwidth you might have for more engagement. Overloading ourselves is not useful and can even be harmful when we have diminished capacity for ourselves and our loved ones.
• Consider renewing or deepening your practices of consciousness. Check in with the ways that you reflect and remember yourself…meditation, contemplation, writing, slow walking, etc. These times are made for us and for these practices.
• Practice ‘random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty’. Offer a smile, an open door, a text of appreciation, a snail mail card of love…for folks you know and for those who may seem strangers but are simply unknown to you.
• 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, embodied movement and sensory perceiving. Please email me or schedule a free 20 minute Exploratory Session.

Live Streaming Practice Opportunities:

• Yoga for Resilience, Mondays, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Body of Insight (no class on Dec 23 & 30)
• All Levels Yoga, Sundays… Dec 15, Jan 19, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Two Dog Yoga
• On Demand Yoga Practices…All Levels… through Two Dog Yoga
• Embodying Presence; Continuum Inquiry and Deep Perceiving Retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs…May 16-18, 2025...REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

Inspirational Wisdom:

Written by Elizabeth Lesser, from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Letters to Love

Dear Love, what would you have me know today?

What I would have you know today are two simple things that, by the way, you already know but you just keep forgetting. The Sufis call spiritual practice “remembrance.” They are right — it’s all about remembering what you forgot and understanding that all the humans forget from time to time. Everyone’s in a trance, and when you remember to wake up you help others break from the trance too. So, here are two stories that may help you remember.

First, remember how your friend Nancy called everyone and everything adorable? How when you were visiting her in Los Angeles, driving on the freeway in fast-moving traffic, a huge truck passed, almost side-swiping the car’s mirror? Remember how Nancy honked and waved at the grim-looking driver and said, in all seriousness, “Look at that adorable guy!” Remember how the driver’s face transformed into a sunburst of a smile when he noticed Nancy energetically waving and smiling, and he honked the obnoxious old-timey truck horn and blew her kisses? Nancy didn’t mean the driver was handsome or cute or even marginally good-looking. She didn’t mean his driving was endearing. What do you think she meant when she called him adorable? I’ll tell you in a minute, but first, remember Nancy a little more. How she called her extra-large breasts adorable, and her husband’s serial failed attempts at sobriety adorable, and the nit-picking insurance adjusters who tramped through her house after the mudslides adorable. Remember the last time you saw her, in 2016, when you and J flew out to be with her after getting the news that a) she had cancer, and b) she would die soon? How you stepped into her mess of a family life, and she told you secrets that compounded the mess tenfold? “Adorable!” she whispered from her bed, shrunken from the cancer, her normally soft and full body all gaunt angles.

Here’s what Nancy meant (and I mean too) by adorable — a·dor·a·ble, adjective: inspiring great affection. Life in all its weirdness and sorrow, and people in all their goodness and idiocy, inspired great affection in Nancy. And therefore, Nancy inspired great affection in those who knew her, especially her 100 best friends. Remember how at her funeral, most of the speakers called themselves Nancy’s best friend? She adored you all, you were all adorable to her. Nancy would like you to know that you too can adore this world! Don’t despair too much over it, she wants to tell you. And don’t just like it every now and then. Adore it! Make your world adorable by your brave adoration. Adore the daunting parts, the annoying parts, the terrifying and heartbreaking parts. The gorgeous parts, the sexy parts, the kind and abundant parts. Like an epic movie, adore the whole storyline. The temporal, the mystical, the gaping void, the eternal light. Let all of it inspire great affection in you. It’s all me. It’s all love. I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I promise. And the more you can adore it, the more you will know it adores you. Once you really know this, then you can go out into the world as my ambassador. Which takes very little skill! It’s a job for everyone. I hire whoever applies! Forgetful fools welcome!

How to do it? Well, here’s the second story. Remember when you first began speaking and teaching? How you were filled with crippling panic and impostor syndrome? Remember that one time, sitting backstage at a conference waiting to speak, jiggling your leg, re-reading your notes, considering just walking out of the hotel, onto the street, blending in with the passersby, giving up this charade that you knew something more than the people in the audience? Remember the Zen monk backstage with you, the one who was to speak after you? What he said to you when he saw how nervous you were? You liked what he said so much, you asked him to write it down for you. 

You still have that slip of paper:
They don’t need you to perform for them so they know how good YOU are.
They need you to love them, so they know how good THEY are.

That guy knew what he was talking about! That’s the job description. They need you to love them, so they know how good they are. Remember this in all the things you do; it works for everything and everyone. With those “other” people from the “other side” of all the five-alarm-fire issues in the world. Put your hand on your chest, breathe, and let the people into your heart, even if for one breath and that’s all. That’s a form of love. Silently repeat the old Zen guy’s lines when you get annoyed at the grumpy checkout lady at the grocery store — love her up, talk to her, see her as a fellow human, struggling and adorable. Do this with your stressed colleagues at work, and your exhausting family members, and your (adorable) husband, kids, grandkids. Love them. Even when it’s hard. Even when they blow it. Even when you blow it. Adore thyself. Give it a whirl! It works.

I love you.