Two Books: Mindfulness and Children

By admin on April 7, 2010

I am working with a partner on the curriculum for the Children’s Community School– a progressive preschool opening in West Philadelphia that will integrate mindfulness practice. It is an exciting venture. As a part of this, I am researching books to share with our parent and teacher community. In today’s newsletter for the school, I shared the two below and thought it worth posting here as well:

Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deep Self-Understanding Can Help you Raise Children who Thrive
by Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell

This book is co authored by a child psychiatrist and and early childhood expert. It weaves together findings from neurobiology with attachment research in order to explore how the brain itself is built by the relationships we have and form. It focuses on parental exploration of childhood relationships and provides ideas for ways to enable our children to form secure attachments with us.

Calm and Compassionate Children: A Handbook
by Susan Usha Dermond

A simple and nonthreatening book, by a long time educator and school administrator with a commitment to educating the whole child, this is a quick and light read. It’s tenet is creating a heart centered framework for our children. It explores practical and easy ways to create this sort of framework by looking at celebrations, rituals, routines; time in nature; the power of story; the role of pets and play; music, movement, touch; silence; environment and relationships. Each chapter ends with simple and practical ways to explore the chapter’s theme.

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Community, Parenting, Emotions

By admin on March 19, 2010

I am rereading Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island. In it he writes ” One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a questions we are afraid to ask.”  In community, it is easy to do this. In relationship, it is easy to do this. As parents, it is also easy to do this.

Having recently moved to a new city, I have had my habits shaken up. Living before in the midst of routine and habit, comfortable in relationships I had cultivated over time, I realize now, I had become complacent to some of my own habits, to some of the answers I lived in. Starting over here, now, nearly a year ago, I find that I have settled into this life. And with the overwhelm of newness settling, I note that there are many answers that are insufficient in my life.

Said more positively: In this space, I am noting a vast potential for growth. A friend used to often say to me, “the instinct is never wrong. But one can live it out in ways that are helpful or hurtful, supportive or not.”  This wisdom feels appropriate to me within this reflection. I am a very structured person: meeting deadlines, following through with what I promise. Yet, I have noticed that when under stress, exactly this “answer” to the question of how to show up to others and our commitments to them, makes me inflexible, intolerant, and impatient with others who don’t do the same.

In this new community, I have seen this so clearly. I am also reading Parenting from the Inside Out by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., and early childhood expert Mary Hartzell. In it they discuss the importance of acknowledging our children’s emotions. They share a story about a child bringing a jar of bugs into the house after collecting them. The parent can either freak out and say “get the bugs out of here before they get out” or he/she can acknowledge the excitement the child has about his/her collection and then say something like: let’s take them outside where they are happiest.

Though this idea is not new, reading it again last night reminded me of the importance of this in all of our relationships. And this practice of acknowledging one another’s emotional experiences, becomes a practice that holds us accountable to answering questions anew each day. Yesterday my son and another child played together at our house while I chatted with the little girl’s mother. As the time grew longer, my son got somewhat hyper and kept comig to me to nurse. I got frustrated because I couldn’t talk and because he was being very pushy with the other child. Later, I realized that I was not acknowledging his emotions. He felt ignored and perhaps a little unclear about how to relate to this other child who is new in his life.  He was communicating his need to have us all do something together, and possibly his need for support.

In parenting circles, the insufficient answer is sometimes apology for our children; yet, often, we only need to tune in to them and support them as they figure out how to negotiate a new environment. The previous week, when another new child was over, I organized an activity at our kitchen table for the children. They were able to work in their own ways on this project, I was able to communicate with the other parent, and we were also able to connect to what the boys were doing.

These stories are relevant to non-parents: how often do we not tune into the emotions of our partners, friends, family members? And how often does this result in discord?

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Devotion: Response to New York Times book review

By admin on March 14, 2010

I just finished Dani Shapiro’s new memoir Devotion a few weeks ago. I was very moved by the book. It was my first introduction to Shapiro’s writing, and I was impressed with the way she articulated her experience in a brief space. I found her writing strong and her searching earnest, her reporting honest.

In her New York Times Book Review entitled “Middle of the Journey” Judith Newman had a different take on Shapiro’s new memoir, which chronicles her two year search for own spiritual family and belief system:

… after a while her anhedonia becomes less understandable and more exasperating. Alone in her house with her espresso machine and her “bottles of gourmet vinegar, bee pollen, truffle oil,” she reflects, “I’ve been having trouble maintaining a sense of solitude.” And while she goes on to explain what she means (“the kind of silence inside of which one can transact some private business with the fewest obstacles, in Thoreau’s words”), one finds oneself thinking, perhaps ungenerously, that this pondering is a luxury of the privileged. The searching seems to bring Shapiro nothing but more tsoris. “At times I was convinced that I had made a huge mistake, delving this intensely into spiritual matters. Was I becoming one of those earnest, humorless people?” (My marginal note, I confess: “Yes.”)

And then, too she concludes the review by writing:

By the end of “Devotion,” Shapiro does conclude that while she believes we are all connected in some way, she will always have doubt about God. That’s fine, and honest. But I couldn’t help wishing that two years of spiritual searching would bring her out of her funk; that perhaps I could lead her to the Congregation of Cher, where instead of everyone chanting “Amen,” they’d shout: Snap out of it!

This review hit me strongly. At first I stepped back and thought, ‘okay, Newman has a point.’ Yet, reading the review a day after attending a workshop with meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg , I found myself thinking about my experience of the book and Newman’s in light of the conversation and discussion the day before at the workshop.

In the review Newman refers to the four Brahma Viharas of Buddism– loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equinimity. Having just listened to Sharon share her perspective on these, I brought that experience to the reading of the review. Let me say more. It may be perfectly true what Newman says, about Devotion coming from a privilleged position. From a particular perspective, the suffering of someone in Shapiro’s position may not measure up to that of someone living in the slums in Calcutta.  But, I believe that that is missing the point.

In Sharon’s workshop, she shared her definitions of the Brahma Viharas which are virtues for expanding our perspectives/minds– definitions that I will paraphrase here to try to articulate my point. Loving kindness acknowledges our connection to one another; compassion takes seriously that we all suffer, sympathetic joy rejoices when others are happy, and equanimity is the wisdom that comes from understanding there are things we cannot change. Sharon referred to equanimity as the spaciousness we bring to compassion that insures that it is not all about us. If we seek to live from these values and to look through them,  then the process of moving through our experience(s) is always valuable. And the art that we create &  the stories that we tell become a way to share with one another something about our shared humanity– our joy, our suffering. (Though admittedly, art can, like anything, serve us to move forward or not, though I tend to think that Shapiro’s memoir is of the supportive nature).

After the workshop yesterday with Sharon, I was part of a discussion around how the Buddha left his wife and 2 day old child to go on his search. One woman at the table began to tell how Thich Nhat Hahn tells the story that Buddha’s wife blessed him to go as she saw it as his path. The other woman shared the story of the Buddha returning to his family and knowing that his wife would be angry, and therefore telling his followers to let her be so towards him. (She later also becomes a nun). The first woman was thrown off by this story, saying she wanted to sit with Buddha’s leaving again in light of this. For me this second story made me more comfortable, felt more true. If Buddha is to be an inspiration to me, he must be both human and respectful of the human experience. What woman, no matter how sure of her husband’s path, would not have anger about him leaving her with a two day old? The anger would need to be expressed as part of the process of her own growth.

I would not put faith in a story that left out the truth of living our path(s)–the messy, unattractive, raw emotions that can rise with the moving towards our fullest potentials. We can be called forth to a different life,  but it is never so simple as merely jumping into it. Changing our ways, and moving into our true selves creates turbulence, anger, and any multitude of emotions (including as well the ‘positive’ ones– such as joy, pleasure, etc.). If these are not given space, then how can we call the movement enlightened? I left the dinner conversation feeling grateful for the story which humanized and made more real to me the people in a story that is meant to lead those who choice to follow it to a higher way of being.

This seems related to the struggle that Newman has with Shapiro’s book. Is Shapiro’s sharing less valuable because she is stuck ? Or because she is privileged? I appreciate the kick in the butt sort of tone of Newman’s review. We all need that– and certainly the sharing of a story sets us up for unexpected feedback that may indeed simply be what we need to move on. But the story, in its honesty, strikes me as potentially more meaningful than one that tries to gloss over the real life details of trying to move forward and through the mundane and ordinary rhythm of living.

What is equally interesting to me is this: Eat Pray Love, which became and remained a bestseller, came from an equally privileged perspective. Taking a year to eat, to pray, and to love is certainly not something we can all do. Yet this book sky rocketed in sells. What makes the difference? One book swings towards the pain body and the other towards pleasure. Yet are they that different? Does the success of one over the other not say something about our culture and what we are most comfortable with?

The spiritual path, though designed as a practice of integrating tools to lessen our suffering, is not about becoming happy, per se. I think there is this way that we believe that if we practice our practice (art, yoga, dance, prayer, etc) we will somehow avoid suffering, ascend to some place where we can avoid pain, confusion, or death. Yesterday, Sharon referred to this as well. In response to someone’s question about what to do in meditation in relation to chronic pain, she said to ask “what am I adding to this moment that is superimposed and not here.” She went on to explain that it is often the first hint of approaching pain that makes us spin into panic and run away from it. I think that exactly this, is the question to ask of Shapiro: what are you adding to your pain? And I think her book is an open window into her experience of trying to sort this out.I believe Sharon said it like this “one of  the sorrowful messages of our society  is the belief that ‘if I had it together, I wouldn’t suffer.’

We rarely get the privilege of watching one another work through these questions. We move in and out of conversation and rarely touch the heart and soul of one another. We stay on the surface and guard our sorrow, our pain and sometimes, as well, our joy and happiness.

We all require someone to say, ‘hey, snap out of it– let’s get going,’ but I also think we’d be better off if we were more comfortable with acknowledging that we all suffer. Why get so caught up in who has more right to suffer or whether or not we believe that someone else has it too good to suffer. If we could just meet where we are there’d be more space for figuring out how to let go of the sense that we are all alone.

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Birthday Surrender

By admin on March 11, 2010

My birthday is 15 days away. I appreciate the opportunity to reflect each year as my birthday draws near. This year, I feel as though I am tumbling into the imprints of a year of particularly big events to reflect upon. Since my last birthday, I have quit my full time job, starting freelancing again, become a full time care provider for my toddler, moved to Philadelphia, & started founding a school. My grandfather has also moved to an assisted living and a family friend, diagnosed with cancer in November, passed away four months later– only a couple of weeks ago. June was my mother’s age, her daughter mine, and that daughter’s son nearly my own son’s age.

Any of us can make a list of the external events that have marked the passage of time– that list can be ongoing and eternal, depending on how many details and moments we wish to catalog. Filled with delightful moments of awakening and joy like watching my son’s excitement about knowing that the rounded red diamond shaped fruit with small black spots is called a strawberry (pronounced with 4 and 1/2 syllables); moments of intense insight like acknowledging  that the hollow at the pit of my throat when I hang up with one particular person is because she actually sees me and I miss her;  any number of huge life events (death of a loved one, moving, illness);  mundane instances  like the fullness of the first swallow of each morning’s pot of cream earl grey tea with milk.

The details matter. And yet, too, it is the spirit and energy behind them & inside of them that holds them and threads them to one another. And it is that bond between these things that I feel today–right now in this parenthetical pausing. It is like stepping outside and feeling the rain coming –it’s an undeniable awareness that something is happening as a result of pressure and circumstance preceding that moment. It is a particular and absolutely powerful instance of presence connecting the past and the future right here, right now.

When I move deeply into that presence right now, I see a tightness releasing. Like suddenly, at 33, all of the many moments leading to this one have come together. They have been pressed hard into one another and they are about to unfurl– to spread back out. In college I studied the Diamond Sutra through dance with one of my still beloved teachers. The essence of the movement I experienced in that study comes back to me here– translated via the commentary of Thich Nhat Hahn: “this is a rose; this is not a rose; this is a rose.” It is the returning to something we have forgotten and now know anew.

Rilke, speaking to the creative life and the writing of a poem in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge says it this way:

“Only when they [memories/experiences] have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves– only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their  midst and goes forth from them”

Does this make any sense? It is deeply profound. And yet instantly lost. I am here now, and then I fall into the sense of despair that is always right there waiting to take us deeply down into dark. And I alternatively reach high up towards some sort of spinning ride of pleasure. It is difficult for me to sit with the quiet, with the peace that I am beginning to sense is really real. On a cellular spiritual level, I am beginning to sense what the Sutra and Rilke refer to. What is different now from 12, 15 years ago, when I discovered these things, and believed in them is this: the joy and the loss between then and now.

It is  the apology email (many many years later) to Steve, an ex boyfriend, who in his words, I “unceremoniously dumped”  (see his blog post on love and relationship) that arose unsought one morning and was in the form of an email by the time I sat down with a cup of tea on that same day. It is the belated  thank you that I sent the woman whose yoga training I did & resisted often.

It is my grandfather, always an inspiration and a strangely imperfect hero of mine, now in an assisted living with Parkinson’s. When I saw him last, his pants were dirty and all of his extra pants were missing. The blond woman in her pink scrubs and jeans with the nervous laughter came back to his room after searching for ten minutes; she was carrying pants to him where he was waiting on the toilet. They were burgundy pants with an elastic waste wide enough for me to fit into either leg. “They are too big” she said, and bounded in to dress him. They were too short too– and I wondered if his shin bones were cold in the draft from outside as I sat with him, trying to think what to say, and choosing to sit there and breath with him instead. Even then, in that space, there was so much love for this man, and so much sorrow.

All of this stands between then and now– all of this and an unending catalog of other moments, forgotten, not yet retrieved, not yet poetry. All of these things and the sense that I understand now the truth in the fact that there is much we  simply cannot change.  And yet, showing up to those things we cannot change with our hearts open is a must. I watch my uncle show up to his father in a nursing home with anger. I have no way of knowing how I will show up when my father is old, should I have the privilege to know him so long, but I see that closing our hearts in these instances does not serve us– it only destroys us. And though there is much we cannot change, there are choices we have to make. And the freedom from that which we cannot change seems to me to be in the choice to shift what we can, even when that often requires more work than expected or desired.

This is all deeply personal for me, not some theory I am espousing, more a thinking out loud about where I find myself, now on the verge of 33.  A subtle shifting back to something I have always known but have forgotten, and in that, a coming to something new I’ve never known.

I can speak to it in terms of work too. I have worked so hard in my life. I have a lot of energy. Passion. A drive to achieve. A need to work well– to accomplish, to complete. I have vision, and I pay attention to details. Recently, I have noticed that others want to work with me and that sometimes, it is the details they want to give me, and that they want to hold the vision. I have seen how much of my life blood it takes to work this way, or any way. And I have begun to say no to things. THIS is new for me. Saying no. Shifting and striving to invite the space for knowing how to use what I have. Seeing that there is a limit to what I can give and asking for guidance and insight for knowing how to share what I have to share.

Perhaps the place I am in with work is one of not knowing and I have to wait until I forget this or get distracted from my overthinking it and then  return to it with a renewed wisdom. The wisdom and peace that is subtly present in the sadness and joy of my relationships– as granddaughter, daughter, mother, wife, friend, x-friend, new neighbor– are giving me a new faith in what I have sought to know and understand for nearly 15 years as I’ve carried both the Diamond Sutra and Rilke’s collected works around with me everywhere I’ve gone (& I have moved a lot in the last 15 years).

Another line from Rilke, from the 1st Elegy in the Duino Elegies,seems fitting here on the eve of my birthday; I offer it to myself, again, for the millionth time, as a reminder to show up for the hardest practice I know, that of surrender:

“Don’t you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms

into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds

will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.”

“Weisst du’s noch nicht? Wirf aus die Armen die Leere

zu den Raeumen hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht dass die Voegel

die erweiterte Luft Fuelen mit innigerm Flug?

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Being of Service Starts by Asking Why You Serve

By admin on February 13, 2010

In Time’s Essay called Doing Good Badly Nancy Gibbs writes “One’s duty in the face of disaster is not just to be kind but to be sensible.”  Too many volunteers, inspired to help in Haiti, she says, show up unprepared and end up having to be taken care of rather than providing assistance.  What good are as ambassadors of service by  showing up unprepared for the challenges of a natural disaster, with no understanding of the Haitian culture, hoping that we can help without serious guidance and professional support? Reading this editorial triggered my natural soap box of sorts.

The impulse to share that which has transformed and saved us is a precious one, one that we need in our culture. What would be the good of hording, be it ideas, money, resources?  However, as we share and serve, we have to be aware of what motivates us at a very deep level. What complicated interweaving of motivators (both conscious and unconscious) motivate us to try to help or to share or to serve?

I worked as a volunteer coordinator for a nonprofit organization that brought American groups to provide building assistance (physical and financial) in the slums of Mexico. Many volunteer groups came each week and each group brought the money to finance a home, money they had raised in their home towns. They then worked with a group of Mexican volunteers and community members needing homes to do the construction together–working with a community foreman and a translator. Amazing transformations took place in this work– on all sides– and many people living in slums with no housing at all ended up with cinder block and cement homes. But, over and over again, it was apparent, that my job, and that of a number of other sharing the job,  was to manage and support the groups as they went through intense culture shock, experienced extreme poverty, difficult physical labor, and struggled with the way that their own belief system came up against that of the community they had cometo Mexico to serve (& sometimes to save). “I came to serve and have been served.”

This was where the spiritual transformation happened– in those who saw that they could only be responsible for their own spiritual transformation, though many of the groups came with the notion that they would save the community members they were coming to serve. It is of service to provide funding and labor to construct homes in the slums. But it is important to note, that it requires an infrastructure of support, especially, but not exclusively, when two drastically different cultures meet. (And, as an important side note: anytime two people come together, to some degree, there are two culture meeting. The implication being: we need to consider our motives as service providers no matter who we serve).

Additionally, I have to ask, why do we want to travel around the globe to be of service? There are many good answers to this, ones that are of true service.  But, my point is, we need to have asked these questions and know our answers.

Being of real service starts with knowing why we serve. If we don’t know, we cannot serve. We will be drawn into power struggle and inadvertently or not, we may end up trying to push something onto someone who does not need it. Or we may try to help in our way without any regard for issues of cultural, religious, sensitivities. (Think of the horror stories we all know of missionary outreach gone wrong).

In an article I wrote for the International Journal of Yoga Therapy,  (click here to read original article), I created a list of five guiding questions for Yoga professionals, based on education scholar Sonia Nieto’s principles of creating multicultural learning communities.  I have restructured these here to fit this conversation. In crafting these, I hope to provide broad questions to help structure systems and more specific questions to use in  holding ourselves and our communities accountable to a more equitable, multicultural, spacious, and diverse culture around service.

1. Is this approach enabling the experience to be actively constructed? Or is it being constructed by one side (only the service provider)?
2. Is this approach/setting honoring, giving space to, and building on the experiences that those being served have brought with them? And how does one go about answering this question? Have you enlisted members and experts of the community you wish to serve to advise you and to help you understand how to build this kind of space?

3. Is there space for discussion and sharing about how individuals learn/live and what approaches to learning
serve them best? And have you insured that the necessary support people are involved (translators, therapists, etc)?

4. How is the cultural and historical context in which we are serving playing a role in the process we are engaged in together? (Have you read up on the history of the culture and the situation? Do you understand yourself & your cultural and historical background in relation to that?)

5. What is the social environment of this group or relationship? Of the teachers/leaders/service providers involved? Of
those being served? And what is the culture of the organization? In what ways are these cultures similar and in what ways are they different?

Below are a few  books that are great reads for anyone in any service field or involved in any service project.  By no means exhaustive and a somewhat broad spectrum of perspectives, all of these offer something different to this conversation and to the work of understanding the difference brought to any shared,  structured and controlled space. A number of these relate to teaching environments and others to issue that come up in particular with trauma and/or body centered practices.

Two that I highly recommend and have annotated are:

Guggenbuehl-Craig (1971). Power and the helping professions. Spring Publications: Texas.

This work looks at issues related to power in the helping professions, specifically in the professions of doctor, teacher, social worker, priest, and psychotherapist. The main tenet of the book is to critically examine ways in which individuals working in these, and related, professions may become more aware of how it is that being in these professions creates an inherent hierarchy in which imbalances of power are inevitable.

Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes: Creating multicultural learning communities. Teachers College Press, New York.

Nieto’s book focuses on ways in which learning exists in a social context. She explores multicultural education by pushing the limits of the generic understanding of this term to include radical suggestions for critical pedagogy and transformation of student teacher relationship in the classroom.

Here are some others, many of which offer an academic perspective on more specific issues, or are stories that address issues related to community, power, and transformation:

Adams, M., Bell, L.A., & Griffin, P. (Ed.) (1997). Teaching for diversity and social justice: A sourcebook. New York & London: Routledge.

Belenky, K.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R., & Tarule, J.T. (1986). Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers

Belknap, R.A. (2002). Sense of self: Voices of separation and connection in women who have experienced abuse. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, Vol. 33 (4), pp. 139-153.

Bornstein, K. (1994). Gender outlaw: On men, women, and the rest of us. New York: Vintage Books.

Cohen, R. (2005). Bad Yoga Pose. In The New York Times Magazine (August 21,2005, Section 6, Column 3, p. 21).

Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Gatens, M. (1999). Power, bodies and difference. In Shildrick, M. & Price, J., p. 227-234, Feminist theory and the body: A reader. New York: Routledge.

Kadi, J. (1996). Thinking Class: Sketches from a cultural worker. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Grost, J.d. (1994). Eating Disorders, female psychology, and developmental disturbances. In Winkler, M. & Cole, L.B. (Ed.), p. 127-144, The good body: Asceticism in contemporary culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Herman, J. (1997). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror. New York: Basic Books.

Hooks, B. (2000). Where we stand: Class matters. New York & London: Routledge.

Howard, G.R. (1999). We cant teach what we don’t know: White teachers, multiracial schools. Teachers College Press, New York.

Kreisler, H. (2001) Psychological Insight and political understanding; The case of trauma and recovery. A conversation with Judith Herman. Retrieved on November 28, 2004 (10:07 am) from http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/herman/herman-con0.html.

Kolk, B.A.v.d (1994). The body keeps score: Memory and the evolving psychobiology of past traumatic stress. Retrieved October 15,2004 from http://www.trauma-pages.com/vanderk4.htm

McIntosh, P. (2002). “White privilege; Unpacking the invisible knapsack.” In Rothenberg, P.S., White privilege: Essential readings on the other side of racism. Worth Publishers, New York, pp.97-102.

Mohanty, C.T. (2004). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press.

More, A. (2000). Teaching and learning: Pedagogy, curriculum, and culture. London, UK: Routledge Falmer.

Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes: Creating multicultural learning communities. Teachers College Press, New York.

Orbach, Susie (1986). Hunger strike: The anorectic’s struggle as a metaphor for our age. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

O’Reilley, M.R. (1998). Radical presence : Teaching as contemplative practice. Boynton/Cook Publishers, Portsmouth, NH.

Pagani, J. (2006). “Church versus spirit” in Shambhala Sun, January 2006, p. 97.

Parmeley, T. (2005). “ Largely graceful: Bodies of substance,” Retreived on 05.07.05 at 3:34 pm from http://www.sallypugh.org/substance04.pdf.

Rothchild, B. (2000). The psychophysiology of trauma and trauma treatment. W.W. Northon & Co., Inc.; New York.

Taylor, M.J. (2005). Risk management: Conscious ahimsa. International Journal of Yoga Therapy, no.14, pp. 87-92.

Thompson, B.W. (1994). A hunger so wide and so deep: A multiracial view of women’s eating problems. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis.

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The tribes we lead

By admin on February 13, 2010

These are the highlights that I loved in this video:

  • Find something worth changing and then assemble and then spread.
  • It only takes 1000 people
  • Leaders are heretics; they can’t abide the status quo and so they organize
  • They (who have been leaders) didn’t do it alone, or with ads, they did it with others; they found a group with a yearning; they didn’t try to create a yearning.
  • To be a leader ask 1. who are you upsetting? (necessary to change the status quo); 2. who are you connecting; 3. who are you leading.
  • YOU DON’T NEED PERMISSION FROM PEOPLE TO LEAD THEM
  • Tell a story; connect a tribe; lead a movement; make a change.

Posted in Leaders, Realizing your Vision | 1 Comment

A Life Should Leave Deep Tracks

By admin on February 10, 2010

Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard — by Kay Ryan

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A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small—
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.

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Peace is every Step

By admin on October 31, 2009

I have a sort of conflicting double nature. As one friend once put it, “you are quite the rule follower for someone who pushes the limits on rules so well.” As I have grown older I have come to see this in myself more clearly. I have come to see that it is the tension between these two instincts that drives me to understand myself and my communities. This tension is the source of my struggle as well as of my success.

I have struggled with this for years in relation to my writing, my yoga teaching, my work: the absolute need for a teacher and the absolute need to evolve beyond a teacher. It reminds me of something a friend once said to me about becoming an adult. She said that she never really felt like a real adult until both of her parents were gone. A comment that haunts me because I sense the truth of it– the inevitability of realizing that in the end we have to do the work– of living in the world, of becoming mature spiritual beings, of leaving the world– alone. Perhaps this is why the power of the parent and of the teacher is so immense over us. It is also the impetus for us as teachers and parents to stay awake and pay attention to how we show up to these callings.

We need teachers as we need parents. And teachers and parents who teach and parent with love, have the capacity to lead us toward our truest and fullest potentials. However, by focusing on our guides too exclusively, we can miss that greatness that is larger than all of the individuals and their teachings– (god, the universe, the Self). We can get caught up in the guide and give our power away. And the results can be heartbreaking. The recent tragedies in Arizona during  a sweat lodge and spiritual retreat, reminded me of this ( See the NY Times article on the deaths at the James Arthur Ray event & see also, Lianne Raymond’s blog post on this as it relates to the collapse of the old paradigm in self help).

Since I moved to a new city recently, I have noted an absence of something for the first time: that is the need to run out and find a Teacher or a Community (capitalizations on purpose). I have many limitations on my time to get to classes or events. Yet, some of the times that I have had the opportunity to try something or go to class, I have watched an old voice rise up to say “you should go, because….” And then, as I listen and hear the ‘shoulds’, I have decided not to go. This does not mark the end of my learning, nor the end of my returning to learn with other teachers. It marks a shift in motivation and awareness. On a more cellular level, I know, now, that it is not someone’s else’s structure I need, not the confirmation to some system, but contact with the world. I need contact with the world as a way of understanding the divine, the “larger than”. And while a teacher in a formalized setting can be this, so can my two year old son, my new neighborhood, an email with my friend, my marriage, the two hours up in the middle of the night with a sick child. Peace, enlightenment, joy, is not waiting out there in some perfect system created by some perfect teacher. As Thich Nhat Hahn writes: “Peace is every step.. it turns the endless path to joy.”

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“It’s all about me” is about you

By admin on October 7, 2009

I’ve been thinking about this site. This is an experiment for me. I find myself fluctuating between feeling invested in this (the building of a blog) and wanting to shut it down. I am not sure I was prepared to watch this practice, like most any other one, be yet another opportunity to watch my own attachments and issues rise up again. What will people think? Why do this if no one is reading it? Why be open if any one is reading it? On and on. Then, I got an email from a friend who just published her book. “Step by Step”, I hear her say as I read her writing about her process writing her book. (Thanks Jill!)

I recall, that as an undergraduate writing minor, I held tightly to the wisdom shared by older “real writers” that the real writers were simply those who kept writing. Ah. Yes. And the real yogis, and dancers, and teachers too, right? They are the ones that just keep doing it. So, I suppose, it is with blogging as well. And so, here I am again, writing.

Which brings me to my next thought. And that is the concern around the idea that this blog might seem to be “all about me.” And then, another sage in my life’s voice comes to me. “It is about you; stop trying to take you out of it” she once said, when I was trying to put together marketing materials for the services I offer as a freelancer. Why are you trying to be generic? Why are you taking you out of this?

And essentially, she is right, to some degree, we have to be part of that which we offer; to be of real service, we have to fully embrace exactly that.

I have spent a long time on a spiral around the role of self; which, I believe, is something we all do. Raised in the south, I had amble oppurunity to internalize the idea that I should serve. And yet, at the same time, I also learned the value of real service through the life I lived and the community I was a part of. Teaseing these apart– the sense of having to serve, and the natural need to be of service– has been a core part of my learning to be of real service in the world. Realizing what I actually have to offer to the world has been key to teasing these apart, which , of course, is a work in progress.

I do believe that we each have gifts and that those gifts are meant to be used. Tapping into them and putting them out into the world is the only way to be of ultimate service. In the Artist Way at Work, Julia Cameron has an exercise in which she suggest that you write down what you were criticized for as a child/youth.  What you’ll find, she suggests, are your strengths.  It’s as though our gifts come out so strong that the world tries to tame us. And we certainly need refinement, all of us. However, most of us tend to loose site of the impulse, the instinct, that drives us when we try to refine it. I spent a long time trying not to be in charge of things, because I was always told that I was too bossy. I learned to be a good listener and many other invaluable things as a result of this, but I also spent a long time coming back to my own innate leadership capacities.(another work in progress).

I believe that we all do this. And  because we do this, we have a hard time supporting others not to do this. Meaning that it is not as easy as we think to find support for achieving our highest capacities, and developing our honest and deep talents.

Essentially, we have to move away from ourselves, study ourselves, refine our capacities. But we also have to return to our authentic capacities, and embrace them. If we don’t, we’ll never be able to support anyone else fully, which would be more self serving than coming into our capacities, and using them every day to support our communities.

So whatever you do well, keep doing it! And believe that when you see a need and know how to address it, that you should go for it. That is, at the end of the day, the way everything gets done. Imagine what you could do with your energy and talent if you saw it as something you simply tended to regularly, like grocery shopping or showering. You, like my friend Jill, might have a book in your hand. One step at a time; make it about you, and then let it open up and become so much bigger!

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Three Essentials to Success

By admin on September 28, 2009

Someone asked me recently what three ingredients are essential to realizing a dream or manifesting a project. My first reaction was resistance. Favorites and lists can limit the scope of our capacity, causing us to focus too concentratedly on one thing and miss something else.  And no one thing works for everyone. However, this thought, in and of itself sort of nudged me towards a sense that, as long as I could revise it, I might actually have some fun and gain some insight by trying.

So here goes. Three essential practices to help you realize a dream or vision: Surrender, Trust, and the capacity to listen to (& study) your self, those around you, those doing similar work, and those you don’t agree with. Maybe that last one is more than one, but I am sticking with it none the less.

Surrender enables trust, trust enables you to create space to hear and observe the resources and wisdom around you in everything. So the three are intimately woven together.  Rainer Marie Rilke is one of my favorite poets, and the Duino Elegies is a text I return to again and again. In it, Rilke has a line that speaks to surrender. He writes “don’t you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.”

Do this: lift your arms up and spread them wide, exhale, and let go of all of the “I can’ts”; what’ if’s” and stretch your arms wider. This is the poetic and visual representation of that quality of letting go. If you are holding too tight, there is no space for supportive people or movements to enter the stage and support you. So, number one, let go! And be forewarned, this is not easy. This is a life time work.

Number two: trust your vision, trust yourself, your capacity, and your dream. Establish a practice in your life that utilizes your voice, your talent, your body. Dance, write, draw, sing, do yoga, meditate, walk. This will keep you in touch with that deep well of knowledge and passion that is uniquely yours. If you don’t carve our space for this, you’ll find yourself starting to belief the unlimited other voices and messages you encounter each day — at home, at work, in the media, in your own mental noise. So create a way to bear witness to your deeper self each day and over time, you’ll learn to trust the voice/ the space you find there.

Number three: listen to (& study) yourself, those around you, those doing similar work, and those you don’t agree with. Now dig in. First, understand your own motives completely. Often we move forward with a large vision and imagine that the realization of that vision should be at the expense of our own sustainability. When you look at this more closely, it often relates to a sort of martyr mentality. If you find this, own it and understand it. Realizing your dream should support you. Dreams are often awoken by the presence of a need not being met in our lives. I, for example, needed to get out of a 9-5 desk job because I wanted the freedom to be with my family. This fueled my vision of becoming a consultant and starting some national projects that I now, with a different work structure, have the space to do. Let your needs and desires be an explicit part of your understanding. Check in about this regularly. Know why you are seeking to do what you are doing. Demand clarity of yourself regularly.

And, as you study this, also study what is working in the world in a way you can learn from. What can you read? Who can you talk to? Don’t look for the obvious alone. If you want to start a yoga studio, talk to yoga studio owners– call national owners of well known studios, see if they’ll advise you. Ask the critics in your life (only once you’re feeling strong in your own vision) to tell you explicitly and concretely what their concern is; demand specifics  because they will be more helpful. And then broaden your scope. Let’s stick with the yoga studio; look around: what other community or spiritual organizations around you are functioning well? A church, an afterschool program, a dance studio, an art center. Ask them what they do as well. Ask people motivated by similar needs in their lives (see number two) what they dream of, what they have done. Study every possible angle of your dream.

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