Mindfulness & Leadership Coach
Each Sunday I post the willPower & grace® Word of the Week on my facebook page. This week the word is Balance. Here is the original post:
My friend Jen asked me to write more about this. So I’m going to try to share more deeply what I mean, and what I’m learning about Balance. Continue reading “Balance is a relationship.”
Sometimes I feel so bound by the things I want to say that I end up saying nothing. I don’t know where to begin, or how to lay out the words to create the story picture I want to share. I feel stuck.
So I am learning the value of being willing to not know. It’s about a willingness to begin, and to figure it out along the way (the doing is the finding out). It gets me moving.
Let me try to say it another way. Continue reading “Be willing to not know.”
And what if living your life is like making a soup? And each experience, each burst of laughter or sudden broken heart is just another ingredient. A little spice, a dash of seasoning. You toss it all into the pot, stir it up.
Wait.
Taste the soup. Continue reading “Taste the soup.”
Lawyers are on my mind and in my heart today. I was in law school when a light-bulb went off for me about praying. I went to a Jesuit university, though I’m not Catholic and wasn’t raised in church. Praying wasn’t part of my regular life. But working as an extern for a Federal District Court judge, I read a lot of motions. I often came upon this phrase: prayer for relief.
And I realized: Oh! To pray means to ask. Continue reading “Prayer for relief.”
On the inside you’re still that child. Under all the layers of life and work, of love and relationships, of broken hearts and blind ambition, you still hold the wonder and innocence that you were born with. When you feel relaxed and safe, when something delights you or captures your attention in a particular way, that child-self comes closer to the surface. It peeks out from behind your grown-up eyes. It shines. Continue reading “On the inside.”
Life is like a sacred stir-fry filled with experience and emotion. You reach in with your spoon, take a bite. Sometimes it’s everything you like (love, laughter, and chocolate!). Sometimes it’s everything you don’t (betrayal, disappointment, and eggplant). In one spoonful you might get both bitter and sweet.
You always go back for more. Continue reading “The sacred stir-fry.”
I lead a Savor Meditation every week, and it’s awesome. We explore a different theme each time, and the whole practice is about dropping in and noticing how it feels, what it tastes like, where in the body it rests and stirs.
If you’re in San Francisco, you’re welcome to join us. But I know you might not be able to come in person, and I still wanted to share this work with you. So I made this: Continue reading “Listen to the deep inside.”
I’ve been spending time at the Botanical Garden. It is Spring and so things are blooming. Also, the Botanical Garden reminds me of someone I care about very much. Some years ago, before Parkinson’s, we spent an afternoon walking through the garden and he told me all about the plants.
There are some very fascinating plants there: the aptly-called monkey hand plant, all the feathery and colorful protea from South Africa, and the unusual grass tree from Australia. There is the century plant that blooms once every ten years, and then dies. Continue reading “There’s room for you here.”
My last fieldnote was about loving the body you have, because it changes a bit every day. Sometimes, it changes a lot all at once.
I just finished reading Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence. It is the story of Matthew Sanford. He is a yoga teacher, a husband and father. He is also paralyzed from the chest down. When he was 13, he was in car accident that killed his dad and sister. He was asleep in the back seat of the car and woke up days later in the hospital. His body suffered massive trauma, including damage to his spinal cord. Continue reading “Moving towards living.”
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.”
