Little did we know Wednesday night was our last time at Clara in March. The venue is closed until a tentative re-open April 1. We pause for a while. Breathe. Feel. Wonder. My friend Carrie at the front desk stopped me on my way in that night. Smack dab in mid-life she ushered a friend over the threshold and the experience moved her in fundamental ways. She wanted to know of my recent time with my dad and seemed curious about my perspective from an elder standpoint.

I’ve no memory of the first time, pencil in hand, I parsed letters together to form words on a page. The spell of this magic must have been seductive, potent, a way for my wee voice to be heard in the world. I still have verse written to the tooth fairy and a small collection of other early poetry. I’d give anything for that diary I tossed in a fit of teenage angst, filled with musings from age eight to fifteen. I started journaling around twenty. I have volumes.

Really, who am I to teach a workshop titled Cultivate Being? Me, the living embodiment of all things doing. With the never completed to do list. Whose sure indicator of illness is a reclined posture of nothingness on the sofa. Well, actually, given all that, I’m probably a good person to offer this particular workshop. I was born this way and moved unconsciously through the early years with this drive. What an incredibly mixed blessing. I got a lot done at a significant cost. Slowly awakening to this tendency over time has been humbling.

We all have our personal version of time consumption. The way we habitually utilize energy, how hours of any day fill and empty, how we spend the coinage of our life. Sometimes these patterns are unconscious until something shifts. I wasn’t prepared for an evolution that snuck up on me in January. I just woke up one day and realized it had arrived. There’s always a back-story, right?

Esalen…land of alternate reality…Day 6. By night I nestle in my bunk bed cocoon, synchronous dreaming with the assistants with me in this workshop. By day I soak these bones, revel in beauty, seek alone space, drop into connection, dance my heart out. Daily chapters in the dance dome with fifty souls: witnessing, caring for, playing music for this practice of presence.

Still soaking in four days of utter quiet yoga retreat, Orr Hot Springs. I knew the teacher and one other participant, a rare escapade cloaked in anonymity. There was absence of polite engagement, lack of demand for my time, zero obligatory social updates. I came and went as I pleased, unbound as it were. Introvert that I am---the one who has learned how to be out in the world---totally honored, supported by gentle asana guidance and balm of hot water. And I was surprised by what arose from silence, emptiness, spaciousness.

Collaging. I love this art form. Quiet hypnosis rifling through images, listening for what calls, what evokes visceral, sometimes repulsive, response. The visual inspiring magic. I don’t fancy myself a visual artist, but I revel in reframing someone else’s creativity. Sometimes I turn to this form because something specific needs expression. More often than not, it’s a form of guidance, almost tarot-like, a reading of juxtapositions. Post-reflection or interpretation is often surprising. Such was the one up top

My heart is raw this morning: tender scared clear confused raging depressed hoping against hope. A hard time reconciling the beauty of these children with current reality of the world. How can peace such as this be possible? And how can we go on if it’s not? I simply just do not know and that has to be OK.

Perspective: the capacity to view things in true relation or relative importance. There are moments that naturally instill a broad perspective and year-end is traditional for the long view. I’m not big on resolution, but I’m an ardent fan of perspective.

Sometimes we’re in practice magic. A realization lands and, in the space of one moment,  everything appears different than it was, fresh, brimming with truth.  Like there was then but now it is now.  Like recognizing someone you haven’t seen in ages, someone who has always been there, but just not visible.  I had one of those moments on the dance floor November 20. 

A regular visitor to my home hobbled in on one of those awkward walking boots this week. I had no idea she’d been struggling with foot and ankle pain for six months. She recounted a familiar sad saga. Slow onset; chiropractic visits to no avail.

In all ways big and small, I’m noticing the dynamic duo of willingness and curiosity as key hallmarks for a life that thrives. Evidence is plastered all over my work experiences. When a new patient arrives full of questions with an eagerness to co-create…this is such a predictor of favorable outcome.

Sometimes I teach a class and sometimes that very class teaches me. Well, actually, that’s pretty much always how it rolls. And lately, with my colleagues out of town, I’ve been on a prolonged roll.

Fairy tales…ancient wisdom. Strange that two of these stories dropped in my lap at once: The Handless Maiden and Vasa Lisa. Lucky enough to receive these two stories by listening intently. Usually I learn best physically doing as I observe, kinesthetic supported by visual.

GPS is trendy awesome. Tap a screen, eerie voice calls the shots, arrive at destination. I’m always clear about where the GPS journey begins but I’ve only a vague idea of the territory I traverse leading to the destination.

The moment I read this quote, it launched an arrow straight to my heart. I knew it to be truth. I longed for it to be my truth. Yet I had done enough excavating, enough rooting around in the depths to know that longing for something is not the same as owning it. And kindness had just never been my default under stress.

Every so often my writing is completely inspired by something read in Lion’s Roar magazine whose sub-title is “Buddhist wisdom to awaken your heart and mind.” It nearly always keeps that monthly promise, delivering a golden nugget, sometimes a sizeable rock.

Broad perspective and a long life: double whammy needed for revelation of often astounding patterns. Our physical body is so uber-familiar, so basic, so much a seamless part of our 24/7 experience. Understandable how we can be blind to the obvious: fascia and bones, muscles and ligaments, breath and being self-organizing over the decades. This below surface domain fascinates me---in myself and in you. And this year has brought me full circle on one of these patterns.

I opened email this morning and this excerpt from a James Broughton poem that I love---Having Come This Far---just leaped off the screen into my heart. I love when that happens. An invitation to seize the moment, sit right down, feel deeply and write.

I had a pedestal teacher for ten years. Not that she put herself up on one. I did. Somehow I’d arrived well into middle age without ever listening in rapt attention at someone’s feet. Learning by absorption. Direct shamanic transmission. Which is the only way I can describe how I learned 5Rhythms from Gabrielle Roth. She had no curriculum or lesson plans or any plan at all. She simply exuded and I assimilated.