Oh, this MOON, piercing the black night sky and sweetening the pastel hues of the morning. It’s the hunter’s moon, I’ve also seen the full moon called the traveller’s moon. It’s magical. It feels true to me… I’ve been looking for sustenance, open to what this season uniquely reveals. I’ve been covering miles, soaking in […]
We’ve been practicing paying attention. We’re increasingly aware when we do that all things are connected. We can use this practice to better understand (and improve) the way we relate to people, all people.
So, you broke up with your partner, quit your job, moved out of the house, went on vacation, stopped hanging out with that “toxic” friend, started meditating and/or made any other big decision to try to better your life experience and, low and behold, you’re still miserable.
Those habits, negative thought patterns
Now what?
1. Well, first thing, you could consider is a celebration! You’re not alone anymore! Your higher consciousness, the one that looks over you, the one that whispers words of wisdom, the one that loves and protects and encourages you, is now here with you. You may recognize it as your intuition, the voice or reason or truth. With your help and with practice, it can and will guide you. So, celebrate! Do whatever you like to do to celebrate: bake a cake, have a party, take a day off to play, sing in the shower, have a dance party in your living room, get dressed up and buy yourself flowers – celebrate and welcome your insight, give it the real red carpet treatment!
2. Next, cultivate your new relationship. Start by spending quality time together: the wise, patient and loving you with the cranky, tired, doubtful you. Treat that less sophisticated part of you gently, like you would a newborn or a stray. Offer treats, speak softly and lovingly. Be patient, be kind. You could even have a little script prepared for when this self shows up. Try something like: “ Hello again (doubt, anger, shame) , I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to get to know you better. Could I sit beside you or walk with you for a while?”
3. Start noticing when you feel great, or good, or even, not so bad. When you do, pause, ask all 5 senses to pipe in and tell you more. To help stay focused, write it down. Be patient and persistent with this. Usually we are more attuned to some senses than others. In this practice, ask each sense: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch to seek out, notice, and report at least two things. Let your attention be fully immersed in this awareness of the senses. Enjoy.
4. Create rituals and establish routines around what nourishes you (refer to step 3 above if you need some ideas.) This doesn’t mean that you can’t ever sleep late or eat out. It does means that when you do, your system trusts that you will get it back. Theses rituals and routines assure that you have some reserves, some contingency for the unexpected. The truth is you are a divine spirit with a brilliant mind that is housed in a human body. And, that body is quite fragile, it has limits. You’re only every going to be so tall, only going to live for so many years, only every going to be able to stay awake for so long, go without food or water for so long, etc… I know this one can be kind of confusing, especially when we see what phenomenal influence it seems we can have on our health and longevity, our speed, and our tolerance for excess or deprivation, and for that matter, even our height! I have had several students report that they have gained inches with regular yoga practice! However, there are still limits in this lifetime, they have gained inches, not feet in height. The more willing we are to accept hat the body has needs and limits as well as phenomenal power and potential, the more consistently we will be able to build on our strengths, rather than having to expend all of the time and energy it takes to recover from mistakes.
5. Make space for creativity, rest, tantrums and other unexpected guests. No one’s very pleasant when they’re in a rush so slow down. Practice being unscheduled. During this unscheduled time, ask yourself how you’d most like to spend your unscheduled hour/day/week. Do whatever you can manage, save other ideas on a list for another time. Invite ideas, questions, friends and nature to share space with you.
Repeat these steps until you notice that you are both enjoying your own company and others until the path seems to be unfolding with more ease before you. Then, keep going…
I turned 44 last weekend. I have to say, I love getting older. And so far, the 40s are my favorite decade yet!
Birthdays are such powerful days.
As someone who has experienced infertility knows, a viable pregnancy itself is a miracle. A live birth is another. Surviving childhood is something we take for granted now but was not guaranteed even just a couple of generations ago.
The memories that birthdays evoke and the expectations that arise with them can be startling! They can put us so surely in our experience. They can also pull us away.
I have a memory from childhood, maybe I was 5 or 6. I thought that everyone had forgotten my birthday. Then, there was a surprise party. I was confused. It was only a couple of years ago that I was actually convinced that the surprise was the intention all along…
My sister shared another powerful memory with me recently. One of our family’s traditions was that you got to choose your birthday dinner, it could be anything you wanted. Except for her… because it was too hot to cook dumplings in the summertime. She’s the middle child. She usually had to compromise. She’s really good at it.
These days I’ve come to expect that my friends with kids will be busy on the weekends with birthday parties. There are always cakes and presents. I hear about elaborate plans. I’ve seen a fair share of tantrums and tears.
These lives are so precious, so impermanent, so important. Rituals and traditions keep us connected. Except, when they don’t.
A birthday without a mom is a strange thing. And when you live thousands of miles away from where you grew up and the people you’re related to… things are different.
This year there weren’t any presents to unwrap or cake. I have everything that I need, but still couldn’t help missing the ritual…
I wore a golden crown, sat under a golden Happy Birthday sign, blew out a candle in an egg frittata and got to spend the day with 10 of my favorite people: The Golddiggers. As luck would have it, my birthday has fallen over the Klondike Road Relay race weekend for the past couple of years. It’s both the easiest built in celebration you could imagine and also, not really mine.
I got text messages from a few of my siblings, a call from another, and a card from my Dad a few days later (who’s still getting used to doing the things that my Mom used to do.) I have a dear friend who LOVES birthdays and is offering some special attention. Otherwise, it’s up to me to decide who and what and when and how to celebrate the miracle of my birth and my life.
And for each of us… as the Earth returns to the position it was in at the time of our birth… we have the opportunity to reflect on the pathway that has led us back here.
We can remember the people, characters in our story, who were close then and are faraway now… choose to see who is close now and will someday be gone. We can see the trajectory of our potential realized as it guides our course and will continue to do so. We can choose to see the power and profound impermanence of these conditions that we call our life, or not. We might just notice the aches and pains, the wrinkles, gray hairs and disappointment.
That’s not my path.
With each moment passing, our opportunity is waning. Life is here, now.
Its end is getting closer every day… celebrate however you can, whatever you can, whenever you can! Let me know when I can join you. I LOVE to celebrate!
Happy Birthday to me…
You know that feeling when you see the curve ahead and you’re going a little too fast and you know it’s going to be a little wild and so you hold on tight and get ready to straighten her out on the other side?
I think it might be like this every month, every season, every day… ? Maybe I just drive too fast? Maybe travel too much? Maybe it’s not me.
The tension between “me” and “not me” (or at least what’s “not my fault”) has been the glue that holds me to this insight path. Spiritual teachers insist that there is no separation and that suffering springs from the illusion that there is. I find, there’s just as much suffering in the belief that there isn’t! Then, I really am, truly implicated, guilty as my Catholic teachers and preachers always told me I was!
In my efforts to counsel both myself and others through this existential muddle, I’ve been trying to figure how to direct this amazingly prolific and powerful emotion of GUILT for some good.
Guilt -> goal is the formula that I’ve come up with…
For example, feel guilty about consuming something that the body doesn’t really need (or want), realize, the feeling is energy to move you towards your intention and clarify what that is. Begin with the mental framework, in this case, it may be: May I be nourished. May I be satiated.
Practice repeating the phrase that you come up with throughout the day for several days until you have it memorized and it starts to pop up sometimes on its own… look for little moments where your mind might otherwise wander (stop lights, teeth brushing, dish washing, waiting) and insert the phrase here. It will be more effective if you practice reinforcing the intention not ONLY when you’re in the challenging situation.
Reflection on past experience doesn’t seem to be optional. We all do it! All sentient beings do it… chicken TV in our yard proves that! Some do it more consciously, thoughtfully, intentionally. We all do it subconsciously. It is the way that our brain decides what to do next.
If you’re motivated to help… consider that your subconscious (chicken brain) could use some, especially if you’ve had a sense that you’re stuck or moving in the wrong direction! Often the actions we direct towards others are just the things that we need.
Non-harming, reverence, posture, breath, mindfulness of senses, and concentration will steady and buoy our process. I’m both grateful for the ease down the stretch of summer and feeling that rush of the curve just ahead… the season is shifting and the momentum is building. It is time to anchor to the practice.
I’ll share a Facebook LIVE video practice for the Equinox and in Anchorage will have monthly New Moon practices for the monthly curve. For the daily and weekly curves… I’ll be practicing at noon on Tuesday and Thursdays at the G Street Studio in downtown Anchorage, and, at
If the philosophy is what you want more of… you’re with me!! I’m gearing up to share a new subscription based Sutra study with you soon! You can email me and let me know that you want to be on that list: yogamargi@gmail.com. It’s going to provide such resonance for our curiosity and passion! I can’t wait!!! (But, I’m “patiently” waiting while my site gets ready…)
Such love, till next time!
Margi
The tundra was scratchy and squishy beneath my hands… I could grab onto it in a way that reminded them and me of their strength. The perspective from this platform, just shy of the peak, in this pose, almost able to stand on its own, feels quite impossible to convey… It seems so vast, so strong, so wild, so quiet, so temporary.
Jill told us that many mountains had risen and fallen over time here, and there are ocean artifacts. 🐡🏔 Handstand is an elusive, often frustrating, sometimes painful posture. Even when it is “achieved” by experts, it is short-lived.
I’ve found myself in pursuit of this unicorn 🦄, like so many others, and I’ve been reminded again and again of the body I’m in… with its misshapen sternum, contorted ribs and shoulders, twisted pelvis and scarred lumbar.
Still, even in this body, the one called fat, flat, and cockeyed, the one that has crashed to the floor with a thunderous proclamation of failure more times than I can count, the power and potential of dedicated practice, with vigor, over a long period of time, is not to be underestimated. In fact, it is outlined in the Sutras.
Almost two decades in this complicated relationship with this powerful pose now… we’ve broken up, gotten back together, needed space, and have had great passionate moments together and now it’s family. I turn to it almost every day to help refresh my perspective and, just to check in… Handstand is number 7 in my #10EssentialPostures course and the full lesson is in your inbox if you’re subscribed! 📬 It includes wake up and warm up activities, contraindications, alignment and energetic cues.
The whole course will be available soon if you missed the boat 🛶! Visit link in bio to subscribe and get free downloads in the meantime. ⬆️ The free standing posture may never be one of the cards in my hand… but with walls and doorways, furniture, trees, boulders and yoga friends around, it doesn’t need to be. I have just the right balance of freedom and support, pride and humility.
A wave is approaching… a new training is starting soon. It’s just in time for harvest!
It’s a new moon today… a brand new cycle to infuse with intention. The darkest nights are when the moon is new and really gives us the chance to settle, turn inward, be quiet and reflective.
Stop, sit, stare… and share! The things we see, hear, taste, smell and feel and the stories we tell are the essence of these lives we’re living!
Before we hurl ourselves into this new month we can truly realize the powerful potential of the last if we pause for a moment and ask… what are the impressions that June 2019 made on your senses, your heart, your relationships? Will you share a couple in the comments?
This breakneck speed at which we’re sometimes inclined to move gets me thinking… what are we running from? We’re all going to wind up in the same place… and who really wants to die first?? 😬 I guess really we’re trying to have as many awesome experiences as we can while we’re here. The problem is that sometimes we overwhelm ourselves so that we forget who we are, where we are or why we’re here. (Like when we find ourselves lost in the kitchen… 🙈 or “can’t believe” it’s _____ already!)
I had a conversation with a colleague this weekend who was lamenting about an aspect of their job (that is also a central component of their job.) What they wanted instead, at that moment, was a break from it all, a chance to rest and digest what all they had already taken in that week (month, year.) I was struck by how easy it is for us to forget why we choose what we choose and do what we do.
Practice shifting perspective and it will become more clear.
Look up, to your right, to your left and down at the ground. Notice something pleasing or interesting and smile.
Tell someone about it.
What are you going to make space for this month? What do you want to remember that you learned from the last? What is essential and what is extra?
I’m so grateful for you! I hope we can connect soon.
Summer Solstice practice with yoga therapist, Margi Clifford, in the Land of the Midnight Sun. Learn how to balance the dynamic seasons with an everlasting presence.
