There is a sweet and beautiful moment that happens every morning. As you lie in bed, heavy and warm, your heart and lungs gently snuggled against each other, each soft breath and loyal heart beat pressing you from the inside out, you begin to wake up. Your breath shifts so slightly. You become aware of being in bed, of the weight and heat of your body beneath the covers, of how the sheets feel against your skin. Continue reading “Love the body you wake up with.”
Category: happiness
Taste freedom.
We were supposed to meet for dinner, but then I received his text: I have to cancel. I have to wind down the company as our funding got pulled tonight. He is my friend and the company is an extension of his deep belief that there is a better way to do X. He sees this possibility and so for the last four years has poured himself into making it exist in the world.
And now this. A kind of freedom. Continue reading “Taste freedom.”
The doing is the finding out.
Almost four years ago I went to a friend’s wedding, wearing a pink dress and white heels that had little flowers on them. I lived in San Francisco and the wedding was in Menlo Park, and I didn’t have a car. I took MUNI to the CalTrain station at Fourth and King, and because I had some extra time I stopped in the Safeway across the street and picked up some sushi to eat on the train ride down.
I was going to the wedding alone, even though I don’t like going to weddings alone. But, I thought, you never know who you’ll meet at a wedding. As it turned out, I met someone who gave me a ride back to the city, and became a boyfriend for the next 2 years. Continue reading “The doing is the finding out.”
I have the most amazing life.
This is a game I play. It’s like flexibility training for desire and imagination. It cultivates internal resilience, curiosity, and confidence. It releases anxiety and prevents your inner bully from jumping up and smooshing your ideas. It unleashes the power of curiosity and pleasure, so you can taste pure, open possibility. It’s a little intoxicating.
You need the right friend for this. Here’s how it works: Continue reading “I have the most amazing life.”
Life wants to live through you.
Write what wants to be written. When the words are knocking at the door, let them in and write them down. There is a story that wants to be told, and it’s whispering to you, so you are the one to release it onto the page, to free it from its formlessness. You don’t have to show anyone if you don’t want to. The value is in writing the words. Moreover, the act of writing changes the writer, and it may be that impulse that is seeking you out. Continue reading “Life wants to live through you.”
Fieldnotes and clues.
Today I feel overwhelmed with desire, happiness, and a sense of yearning. I remember my yoga and meditation training, and I try to simply soften and open to it. I relax the muscles in my face and belly and feel my breath slow deepen. I try to feel everything: the sun on my neck, the weight and texture of my sweater, that spark and flutter and reach in my heart. Continue reading “Fieldnotes and clues.”
Stealth meditation experiment.
It’s January, and each day feels fresh and new. There’s a relief that comes with releasing the prior year, of shrugging off the accumulated weight of everything that happened (and didn’t happen), the people who came and left, the emotional residue that builds up one day at a time. Today I still have that clean-slate feeling. I have a renewed curiosity for Life and what I might do with it while I’m here. This is the time to open to possibility, and to try things in a new way: what I eat, how I move, when I wake up, and the like.
The great thing about starting something now is that you get to say, “I’ve been doing this all year,” and even though Continue reading “Stealth meditation experiment.”
About Transformation.
I am in wine country and it is winter. Brown vines twist up out of the ground, bare of fruit or leaves. They say there is something about the soil here that produces exceptional grapes for wine making. Art upon art: the tending to the plants, the harvest and crush of the fruit. And then the waiting. It takes time for wine to become itself. Continue reading “About Transformation.”
Discover the Obvious.
My cousin was 8 months old when we first met. She was not yet talking, not yet walking. But full of so much personality and expression. Pure love and joy and exploring her life. And I had this thought: You mean everyone started out this way? This small? This utterly new to the world? Continue reading “Discover the Obvious.”
Receive love, unconditionally.
I’m at a place in my life where I can look back at all my prior incarnations and feel so much love and compassion for the person I’ve been. I’ve forgiven her foolishness, and her painful choices. My heart breaks at her confusion and suffering. I go easy on her where she is too hard on herself, and beats herself up and has such profound misunderstandings about what’s going on. She’s doing the best she can. Continue reading “Receive love, unconditionally.”
Kim Nicol 