Postcards from the Prairie

Winter is a time of depth diving, of burrowing in to rest and restore oneself.  It is a season when I am often alone, isolated by the weather and the scarcity of sun light, but I am never really alone.

 

 

I trust you are enjoying the sights and gifts of the season: moments of warmth, playful bursts of energy, daring leaps and landings.

Be well. Be love.  xo

For the Horses **HeartFull Living Self Care Adventure**

I promise to be brief ... especially as I seem to dwell in a realm below the surface of words and thinky thoughts these past few months years. 

There is so much chatter out there, I find myself retreating back into full on hermit mode in an effort to hear my heart speak.  What is important here? Where do I want to place my energy?  My attention? How can I keep clear the lines of communication between heart, mind and intuition? 

Simplicity, devotion and play. I return again and again to these three conceptions. The first two guided me through 2017, an unexpectedly hard year.  I feel my life shifting with  inquiry, discovery, and growth sending forth gentle tendrils of inspiration to lure me out of my cave and back into my world. The gesture which embodies all these qualities, for me, is Play. 

This year as part of my HeartFull Living experiment, I want to explore how self care, self inquiry and creative play allow us to embrace ourselves, our lives with great joy and with whole heartedness. As Brené Brown says, "Our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness." 

Vulnerability for me means sharing my practice with others. 

I think our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/brene_brown_5530

I think our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/brene_brown_553088

Beginning February 14 and running through March 2, I will offer weekly (Monday through Friday) emails to subscribers sharing my current process of self care as an expression of HeartFull living. This practice centers upon my art journal as a place for inquiry, devotion, play, and inspiration.  My hope is to inspire you to craft a practice of self care unique to your desires, talents and interests. Setting for myself the challenge to connect in a public way will certainly help me to stretch and grow in unexpected ways; sharing my experience I hope will be a catalyst for expansive living and loving in others.




As with previous HeartFull Living offerings, subscription fees will be donated to Heartland Equine Therapeutic Riding Academy (HETRA), a nonprofit organization where I have volunteered for the past three years.  Specifically, all monies collected will go to the care of the therapy horses. Working with these horses has been a master class in HeartFull living and this is my way of thanking them for all that they do. (For more information on this year's campaign and the horse I am supporting, Red, visit my InnerGlow site)

Thank you for the amazing support! HeartFull Living 2018 is closed for this session.  

Play is not frivolous.  It is about trying things on, shaking things up, cultivating fresh insights and welcoming learning through the process. It is light and open. It is the epitome of HeartFull Living.  

This is not a class or a how-to or must-do. This will be simple emails where I share my process, my images and experiences, questions and thoughts with you to inspire your process.  You do not have to keep a journal or do any specific practice. Rather, I would hope you would find your way to what lights up your heart and your imagination and allow that to guide you towards the journey that fulfills your heart and world. Let's be empty of expectations and judgements and come with an open mind, and an eager heart ready for spaciousness, play and connection. 

The things that make up a life

I love how inspiration will find its way in when I least expect it. I marvel at how I can be wiped out, dried out, seemingly emptied out and then (when my guard is down or more accurately when I have stopped the seeking, the efforting) unexpectedly something wonderful and magical pops up before my tired eyes.

Or should I say my ears?  Preparing for a holiday fair, I was in a beading frenzy making bracelets to sell.  I was wondering about the sanity of having said Yes to this event as overwhelm was taxing my energy reserves. Keine Lust as they would say auf Deutsch.  One soothing balm for me is the voice of On Being podcast host, Krista Tippett.  To the archives I went!

When you are seeking inspiration, who do you turn to?  I listened to several shows that immediately filled my tank:  Ellen Langer and The Science of Mindlessness and Mindfulness; Atul Gawande, What Matters in the End; and James Martin, Finding God in All Things. But what really rocked my world inside and out was illustrator/writer Maira Kalman's interview: The Normal, Daily Things We Fall in Love With. 

Obviously, I was beading for a very, very long time ...

But Kalman's conversation on how our lives are comprised of all these moments of wonderment and worry, joy and angst, sorrow and delight and how she embraces it all in her art and her writing ... it just sung to me.  Her work evokes a deep curiosity and appreciation for all of the details that make up one's world, one's life. That she loves and celebrates dogs in much of her work was a huge hook for me. ("They are constant reminders that life reveals the best of itself when we live fully in the moment and extend our unconditional love. And it is very true that the most tender, uncomplicated, most generous part of our being blossoms without any effort when it comes to the love of a dog.”)  But this!



 Oh my.

Okay, first thing ... I totally know my mother is smiling down upon me, nodding her head in agreement over utter wonderfulness of this all.  I have no doubt if my mother was still alive, she would have read about Maira Kalman and then clipped the article to pass on to me.  

I also know that my mother's closet was HER artwork, her opus, her masterpiece.  I understand now why cleaning that closet after her passing was such a monumental task ... and I weep right now with the realization of all that it meant to her and in turn all it means to me as the one who stood witness to its message.

I look around my home and I see how I am my mother's daughter.  I see the same love of things ... which is really a preservation of memories, a cherishing of events and experiences and a celebration of richness IN living.  The objects we hold on to and cherish speak to who we are and how we love; they bear witness to our hearts and our dreams, our hopes and our aspirations. My mother's closet was filled with shoes and clothes lovingly lined up and organized. She would joke that for a girl who grew up with one pair of shoes, she did pretty well for herself. It wasn't just that she loved nice clothes after a childhood of lack; she didn't merely survive the conditions of her upbringing ... she thrived. And she thrived because she was determined to do so. 

My mother never went to college but a university professor once told me "Your mother is the most educated person in this room."  And it was true. She read voraciously.  She learned through books and lectures and listening to others. She returned to work in her fifties so she could use her money to travel.  And did she travel! Stashed away in boxes in her closet were the many postcards and brochures collected on her numerous trips abroad.  I also found the letters and cards from the many friends she made while traveling - friendships she maintained over the years and across the sea.  I even found tucked away in a dresser drawer the application to renew her passport. It broke my heart to consider her filling it out, hopeful for one last adventure.

My mother was insatiable in her quest for the perfect shade of lipstick.  My entire life I have been fascinated by the variety of colors and creativity in the naming of those many tubes of coral and pink hues. She was always put together, clothing, jewelry, makeup and shoe wear flawlessly coordinated. I think it spoke to her sense of self sufficiency and her pride in a life lived fully and with no real regrets.

As I sit with all these memories I find myself considering what - or how - will I be remembered? How am I honoring my life?  I've pulled out my sketchbook and once again filling it with images of the things I love, the small things from my day, my life that spark immense joy and love within me.  If I know anything, it is that the details will end up being the most treasured pieces of my life and in turn it is in through details that I will be remembered.   The stories we create from the details of our lives, that is where the magic and the artistry can be found.

I think of my mother and I remember her morning ritual of a cup of instant coffee (Sanka, thank you) in a china tea cup always ALWAYS with a saucer and a a Stella D'Oro brand Breakfast Treat.  Elegance and practicality. I think of her crossword puzzles (which I now do every morning, but never could I aspire to the Times puzzle which she completed ... in pen of course ...) and I am grateful she taught me to be so fiercely myself, to love with no excuses, to follow my curiosity and sense of wonderment and to always, always bring home a souvenir from my journeys.

Once again, I feel the warmth of my mother's love and her encouragement reaching out to support me.  I do what fills me with love - my art and my teaching and my home life are all one and the same -  but I also know my mother loves all that I do.  She is smiling ... and so am I.

Vital Self Care

 "We are matter, kindred with ocean and tree and sky. We are flesh and blood and bone. To sink into that is a relief, a homecoming." (Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living)

There is a common blessing offered at the end of a yoga practice: with hands together at the level of the heart, drop the chin to the chest, and bow in remembrance that the greatest teacher of them all, is the teacher within.  This gesture is a reminder that the wisdom gained through our hearts -through the challenges of living and loving - offer the deepest lessons and opportunities for self growth. 

Often the more subtle messages from the heart are translated through the body. We are familiar with the ways stress is transferred to tight neck or shoulders, or how anxiety often manifests in stomach distress or a sense of constricted breathing.  Through yoga practice - specifically the practice of postures or asanas - I have felt the sudden and intense release of physical/emotional traumas stored for years in my body.  Once, while dropping my head back into a back bending posture, I was suddenly gripped by a crying spasm shocking both myself and classmates stretched out upon their sticky mats.  My body was releasing a charge of intense fear, anger and loss lodged in the muscles and tissues of the upper spine as a result of a broken neck I sustained 8 years prior to that moment. I wasn't aware I had been holding on to all those repressed emotions until that moment of release.  But afterwards I felt my being shift into a new spaciousness and ease. 

More recently an illness brought about sensations of immense discomfort to my right lower back and hip. Gentle yoga postures brought about the only relief.  Returning to my asana practice after a long lapse, I could feel the neglect of my body through crazy tight muscles and restricted movement.  The simplest of poses elicited moans and groans of pleasure finding its way through stagnation and pain. My body quickly showed me the results of my neglect, but that was not the full story.  For a good month or so I would lie down on my mat to practice, shifting into a seemingly gentle posture, and then a tsunami of tears would rush through me.   Day after day this happened.  A part of me would be off to the side, witnessing this curious event.  This again? More tears?  

Baffled, I nonetheless continued with my practice.  Obviously something was ready and needing to be released.  What I gradually understood was that grief - gathered over the years, starting 10 years ago with the passing of my father -  had been steadily stored away in my body. And what's more, the unexpressed or acknowledged emotions were most likely the source of my body opening to an illness that would provoke me into facing these energies of loss, sadness, fear and regret.  

We can see the body as a burden (a perspective deeply entrenched in certain spiritual traditions) or we can forge a relationship with it rooted in the belief that we are, as Martha Beck has shared,  "Spirit awake to itself in Matter." The body as teacher, guide, best friend supporting a full and engaged  - an embodied - relationship to life and living.

"... the real practice is living your life as if it really mattered from moment to moment. The real practice is life itself." (Jon Kabat-Zinn in Becoming Wise)

This is the work I am immersed in; this is the work I love to share.  As part of my healing and embodied living - my daily prayer in heart, bones and soul - I work with yoga practices and teachings and yoga therapy which is rooted in the belief that we are already whole and our body is always moving towards healing and a re-membered wholeness. Or as Matthew Sanford shares " Your body, for as long as it possibly can, will be faithful to living. That's what it does." (Matthew Sanford in  Becoming Wise) 

There are so many simple practices and tools to support a nurturing relationship with one's body and in turn, an empowered sense of health and wellness.  Yoga, meditation, breathing practices are where I began but I have also found being in nature and creativity are core elements of my self care practice. More recently, I have found working with certified pure, therapeutic grade essential oils have augmented and bolstered all these practices. The oils have supported physical and emotional wellness in ways I am still surprised and delighted to uncover.  The greatest gift is how they fortify a sensitivity to intuition, allowing me to receive the guidance from my inner teacher who knows me to be already whole.  

The oils - gifts from the Nature  - magnify and quickly reconnect me to a wealth of inner resources. While the oils work on a physical level, I interested in how their aromatic qualities impact us emotionally through a direct connection to the limbic region of the brain. This means I can use the aromatic properties essential oils to impact and manage mood and motivation. Total wellness for me encompasses both physical and emotional health and in fact, the two are linked. When mood, stress, and emotions are acknowledged and addressed, the overall impact is vitality, resilience and an ability to manage the difficulties life presents whether it be physical, emotional or energetic. 

Right now many of us are suffering from dis-ease: the dis-ease of overwhelm, over-stimulation, over-scheduling and over-exposure to name a few. Conversely, there is dis-connection: with the natural world, community and our own selves. It can seem daunting to even begin to unravel all the confusion and dis-comforts and dis-ease. But I can tell you it is vital not only for one's well-being, but for the well-being of our world. Self care is is a revolutionary act in the sense that knowing we must tend to our total wellness, we are inspired to extend that care out into all of our relationships which includes how we interact with this planet, our home and source for life and health.

If what I shared rings true for you, I would love to connect. I will be offering limited spots for working with me to develop a self care practice that draws upon all these elements: yoga,mindfulness, creativity, self reflection, emotional wellness, and essential oils. Leave me a message with a way to contact you and we can schedule a free 45 minute consultation (via Skype or phone) to explore the possibilities of working together (discounted pricing as I beta test my ideas) and in that session receive some ideas on how you might begin a potent and personalize self care routine.

Practice Me/ Practice You ♥

Practice ... it is what I return to again and again.  As I age, I find myself gathering more and more practices around me - meditation, yoga, art making, prayers, writing.  What is obvious to me now is how life IS my practice in the sense that a commitment to  maintaining alert presence, wakefulness, non-attachment and responsiveness (versus reactivity) demands daily  - indeed minute by minute - attention, effort and commitment. 

Recognizing this truth for myself has been a source of immense liberation. Rather than believing I "ought to have it right by now" I can relax into the vastness of my self, my life, as a work-in-progress.  There is great freedom and possibility in the notion that I am ever and always evolving, growing, changing.  The important distinction is intentional growth versus hapzhard growth. I can let life shape me, but that is a passive experience.  If I am choosing to enter into the conversation of living (as David Whyte describes it) I  am also choosing to be an active agent in this process of growth and unfolding.  And that seems to me to be the more exciting and rewarding option. 

This past year illness and lingering grief challenged me to dig deeper.  Oh, I thrashed around for quite a while.  But when I finally surrendered to it all, when I accepted I felt lost and stranded, then I was ripe for being found. The work of yoga teacher and author Elena Brower has guided and inspired my moving forward. More accurately, her online mentorship program Elevate provided me with the tools and the space to draft my own map home.  Now there is her newest offering Practice You: A Journal which combines all of my favorite tools for self inquiry: creative art play, writing, dialogue and meditation. 

Tarot cards from the Anna K Tarot

In addition to her new book, there is an online offering (a second incarnation of Elevate) to help us squeeze the most out of this already juicy gift. I have worked through the first Elevate mentorship program twice (in 4 months!) and the process was deepened through conversation with a dear friend also in the course. We will be together in this second round ... but what excites me is the invitation to share this work with my yoga students and my Cowgirl. 

Flipping through the pages of  Practice You what is immediate apparent is the versatility of the journal. The prompts and the artwork inspire wildly creative and personal responses. My Girl is not much for traditional journaling (read: not at all!) but the beauty of this work is the invitation to respond in a variety of ways: collage, paint, free flow word play, mindful doodling ... I have yet to explore all the possibilities but I can sense a ripeness for the unexpected to reveal hidden treasures of insight and understanding. 

"i am" page from Practice You

Life with a newly minted teenager has brought to the surface many old and triggersome questions: what does it mean to belong? How do I see myself and my gifts? Who is in charge of my happiness, my sense of self worth? How can I learn to embrace ALL parts of myself to both heal and to honor and understand the complexity that is being a human animal in this crazy wonderful world of ours?  

Just as I am a work-in-progress, so too are my relationships. As my Girl steps into the rocky terrain of teenager, our relationship is changing.  I am grateful to Practice You as a tool to support me supporting her. I don't know if she will engage fully in the process with me, but a copy waits for when she is ready. Meanwhile, I do my work so that I can hold space mindfully and lovingly for those around me to do theirs.

When it seems like Life is throwing up roadblocks, the choice for me has been to lean upon my practice. Illness, pain, emotional challenges, spiritual darkness - each and every time these challenges have visited me, I have felt stranded and abandoned.  Yet when there seems to be no solution in sight, the only option is "keep on keeping on" which for me means: turn to my practice. 

I have a mantra that kicks in whenever I feel lost or aimless: I support my practice and my practice support me. It is my formula for living. I could also say I support my creativity and my creativity supports me. I support my work and my work supports me.  I support Love and Love supports me. Underneath it all are foundational beliefs I have had to extract from the hard rock of inherited attitudes and concepts about myself held for far too long. Here again, my practice(s) have fortified me for this ongoing excavation.  I am excited to discover how Practice You supports and deepens the vital work of Practice Me. For if I want my Girl to understand the full extent of her beauty inside and out, if I want her to explore and express the richness of her talents and gifts, I must do the same.  

pages from my Elevate notebooks

Yoga reminds me that my natural state is Wholeness and Unity; that my experience of living in this human body is a journey of healing through the process of remembering myself already whole and complete. The outcome of this journey is freedom within and connection with Life around me.  

And so, I return each day to practice ... in whatever form it may take ...  it is like a walking stick that steadies me as I make my way forward.  I do the work, but my practice keeps me upright and moving along my path. "This is how I respect myself. These are my practices." (page from Practice You)

my nature journal practice

It seems my life consists of many practices. Or more accurately: living an engaged life IS a practice that encompasses many threads weaving together into a rich, colorful and  abstract pattern that is wildly unique and personal.  Over time the individual elements will shift and change - sometimes it is all I can do to commit to one note - but the beauty of it surfaces when I can stay curious and open to the natural flow. 

This isn't my habit. I like completion. Or perhaps I was trained to view accomplishment as a long list of items carefully and methodically checked off. Complete A and move onto B. But I am learning life is never so tidy and that I am not so much returning (starting over/starting again) as I am circling back around for a deeper dive in. 

It was over a year ago that I began a nature journal inspired by a course I was taking with writer/mythologist Sharon Blackie called  Reclaiming the Wise Woman (the material for that offering is woven into her inspiring book If Women Rose Rooted).  So much of the course material shook me wide awake - how the struggle to feel I belonged was/is rooted in a disconnection from Nature and more specifically from landscape which is my current home. 

The sense of knowing our place is fundamental to developing the rootedness, the grounding, which is necessary to progress down a path of Wise Womanhood. It’s all too easy to get stuck inside our own heads, to live out of our imagination. But the deep, honest, authentic ancestral wisdom we’re looking to reclaim is the wisdom of the land, the wisdom of place, and in order to develop that wisdom we need to get out of our heads and out onto the land.

 - Sharon Blackie, "Becoming Native to Place" from Reclaiming the Wise Woman

Just a mile and a half away from my home is a nature center/park with over 6 miles of trails around a lake.  When we first moved here, I used to take Cowgirl there for mini nature explorations but we never ventured further than a half mile from the parking lot. Wedged in between the interstate and local highway, you can hear the hum of traffic and signs for the truck stop (a large and wonderfully kitschy coffee pot) hover over the distant tree line. For years I considered it too tame and I stewed in my envy of others living in wilder places. 


Thankfully my impatience is yoked to stubbornness (or a stick-to-it-ness) and if there is one thing I KNOW about any practice, it is to show up consistently and with an attitude of open readiness. (Yoga Sutra 1:14 Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break and in all earnestness.  Two out of three ain't bad!) When I first ventures into the park, I saw robins, blue jays, geese, dandelions and clover. Returning day after day, season after season, a wider and more varied world emerged as my senses adjusted. Taking pictures, I return home and research the unfamiliar plants and birds (who are totally familiar!) and then I transfer the information to my journal. 

Slowly, I am learning.  Trees and bushes  challenge me still (other than the most common ones - Cottonwood, Mulberry, Blue  and Black Hill Spruce, Ponderosa Pine, Sycamore, Staghorn Sumac and Dogwood) but my eyes and brain have gathered up quite a few of the native flowers. As I take time to learn the names and the faces of the locals, so I find myself welcomed into a community that reveals itself to me more and more as my willingness to show up earns me the gift of presence. Mine and theirs.

Here is one truth I've uncovered about myself (and which is a personal mantra whenever I find myself retreating into seclusion): my relationship with Nature is the foundation for all my relationships. 


 


Nature Journal on Vimeo

essentials ...

The first half of this year, I had been grappling with the concept of Simplicity and how to translate it into every day living.  A challenge for me as my natural tendency is to spin towards complexity. Even as I try to embrace less, I find ways to make that process, well, intricate.

My antidote to all the ills of modern living - especially energy draining distraction - is camping.  There is no other process that pares life down to the core basics: traveling, eating, sleeping, keeping warm (or cool or dry or shaded), potty matters, and most important of all ...

Clean water.

On our recent camping trip I was the camp water pumper. We were given a simple filtration pump which - while easy to use - was not the speediest process.  Filling pots for cooking, pots for cleaning, and our water bottles meant I was perpetually crouched down by the water's edge pumping and pumping ... and pumping.  (Note: after pumping your little heart out to fill a large water bladder, it would be wise to stay squatted just a wee bit longer in order to screw on that humble but essential cap on lest you knock the whole thing into the lake, thereby requiring the entire blasted procedure be repeated.)  It was refreshing to have one vital task to perform.  And once I took care of that chore, I found it infinitely easier to sit back and enjoy all the adventures happening around me.

The habit to create Home is fascinating to me.  Within minutes of setting up the tent, the area around it took on a feeling of intimacy and comfort.  The few things we brought with us were all that we needed to complete this transformation, motivating me upon return to tackle storage spaces well over due for some decluttering. (Over this past weekend, I spent 3 hours clearing and cleaning out the kitchen pantry - it is a thing of beauty. Now to dive into the basement!) 

I learned about determination from this fellow:

We found him on the trail to the campsite, quite a fair distance from water.  At the time we thought (foolish human thought!) he was lost and so Cowgirl carried him back to the water.  The next evening I noticed him bobbing in the water at the edge of camp, looking to see if anyone or anything was lurking about.  

A few minutes later, I was startled by his presence on the camp trail!  He was more peeved to find me and quickly turned tail, scuttling and sliding back down to the water.  He returned several times and we finally realized the space by the fire pit was his nighttime sleeping spot, so we hurried our evening events.  After all, it was His Home. 

Like turtle, I can carry and create Home wherever I go and it need not be overly elaborate or intensive.  It is more about intention and presence, rooting in and settling down, utilizing and appreciating what is available and honoring those gifts. Unlike my usual habit of working to create simplicity for myself, the way in is through nondoing: tapping into what is truly essential for well-being and opening to that. What follows is a relaxing, receiving  ... and enjoying.