Mindfulness

The self you leave behind is only a skin you have outgrown Don't grieve for it. Look to the wet, raw, unfinished self, the one you are becoming. The world, too, sheds its skin: It's easy to lose this tenderly [...]

"Inside each of us there's a river - placid and contained sometimes, but raging and overflowing its banks at others. There's a lot to navigate." -Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel The birds seem to sing more loudly these days. So, [...]

“When you look at a tree in a storm, you see that the top of the tree is very unstable and vulnerable. The wind can break the smaller branches at any time. But when you look down to the trunk [...]

"Mindfulness has two functions. The first is to get in touch with the wonderful and beautiful things all around us. The second is to get in touch with the difficult emotions, like anger, fear, pain and sorrow inside and around [...]

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing, one below the other, one easier to hear, the other lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard yet always present. When all the other things seem lively and read, [...]

"I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle. "Then what is afraid of me comes and lives [...]

"A practice of gratitude is not about dismissing sadness, anger, fear, or confusion. Rather, it offers us the opportunity to see that we often experience multiple feelings at once; to welcome joy into the same places where we hold grief; [...]

“Once in a while we stopped sprinting and just stared at what there was all around us... the tender next minute waiting for us to emerge.” -Brian Doyle

"If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath." -Amit Ray Soon after reading the first mindfulness post and making the transition to his home office, my husband told me he started [...]

“When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence [...]

"We can think our way out of feeling fear, but the price tag is that disconnection from ourselves leads to disconnection from those we love. When we turn away from fear we turn away from the deep and precious parts [...]

"Whether we are six or sixty, we can forge a new brain pathway that goes beyond former dead ends... let us join with children to imagine and wonder, to use curiosity as the guide to miracles in plain sight. Let [...]

Yesterday Isabella wrote, "Good and bad are just labels that individuals choose to put on their personal experience." I've been thinking something similar as I walk around town these days, Witherspoon Street in particular. For those of you local to [...]

"Always remember your focus determines your reality" - George Lucas What is worth your focus today and what might you invite to blur into the background?

"The idea of the pilgrimage was to get away from the endless and nameless circumstances of everyday existence, which by degrees build a wall around the mind so that it travels in a constantly narrowing circle." - Richard Jeffries "For [...]

"Mindfulness isn't difficult. We just need to remember to do it." - Sharon Saltzberg With so many ways to practice current moment awareness, which do we choose and how do we remember to do it regularly? Some people make it [...]

"Mindfulness isn't difficult. We just need to remember to do it." - Sharon Saltzberg With so many ways to practice current moment awareness, which do we choose and how do we remember to do it regularly? Some people make it [...]

Around the holidays, Isabella went on silent meditation retreat (something she thinks all of us should do, if she hasn't yet told you so - or bribed you into it, LOL). On retreat, meals were simple and served only twice [...]

"I met a tiny frail nun once, in Australia, while walking along a harbor, and we got to talking, and she said no one defeats cancer, cancer is a dance partner you don't want and don't like, but you have [...]

From Brian Doyle's essay "On Not 'Beating' Cancer" "I know a boy with brain cancer. He's 16 years old. He isn't battling his cancer. It's no something to defeat. He is enduring it with the most energy and creativity and [...]

"There is a great and awful lesson there, something that speaks powerfully of human character and possibility. For all that we speak, as a culture and a people, of victory and defeat, of good and evil, of hero and coward, [...]

"The words we use about cancers and wars matter more than we know" -Brian Doyle*** In the early months after Isabella's diagnosis, she grappled with what sorts of conversations to have with her self and this cancer that felt both [...]

I spent the first 10 minutes of my day in "legs up the wall" pose, hands clasped behind my head, experiencing gravity... the Earth's weighty pull on my body. Mostly I noticed the tightness in my chest muscles. Perhaps I've [...]

MINDFULNESS "I can scroll and worry indoors, or I can step outside and remember how it feels to be part of something larger, something timeless, a world that reaches beyond me and includes me too." - Margaret Renkl, opinion writer [...]

If Isabella had a small library of books that had informed her spiritual path, I'm pretty sure A New Earth would be in it. I have her copy on my bookshelf. It sat there for several years before I was [...]