living poetry

for several years now in late december or early january, i choose one word to guide my being through the new year (click here and scroll down to see previous years' words). this practice has really helped me refine my dreams and intentions. i love to look back during this week between christmas and new years day and see how the soul of the word manifested throughout my life and year.

for the past week or so i've been thinking about which word i want to choose for 2016.  i chose an intention word for my upcoming yoga teacher training (trust), but that felt very focused on my yoga goals as compared to my whole life.  so i kept searching.

one of the things i like to do to help narrow it down is look and listen for a word that is in heavy rotation in my current vocabulary and conversations.  there are a few right now:  wonder, precision, frontier, practice, poetry...

poetry was the word that kept lighting up in neon when it fluttered through my brain or escaped my lips.  still, it felt quite mysterious and undefined to be a guiding word (unless i was to become a full time poet).  then i ran across this string of words by poet and mystic rumi, let yourself become living poetry.

so it shall be words of the year for me.

for me, living poetry is:

• having a structure, the components and some guidelines for how to lay life out on the page...inspiration, imagination, rhythm, precision, choice, selection, refinement, commitment
• being able to throw all of that out the window and just live from my soul in the messy moment
• seeing beauty in the ordinary
• seeing opportunity for exploration and empathy in the un-beautiful
• using words in provocative and inquiring ways to open understanding and connection
• storytelling embodied in words, paint, dance, work, image, play, clothing, food, yoga, home, relationship
• truth, spoken plainly and kindly
• reading more poetry, discovering new poets, writing more
• staying open to the twist, to changing beat, to unfinished words put aside to rest, to acceptance, to rejection, to editing, to uncrumpling those pages littering the floor and having another look
• exploring the human heart and how it shows up in the world at any given moment

a happy, poetic year to you loves.

the art of attention

i experience a lot of resistance.  it's that complex but often oversimplified phenomena that looks something like this: i want/need to ______; but i'm going to do everything else that is possible to do on this good green earth of ours and in this good green head of mine to avoid ______.  resistance pops up for me on a pretty regular basis.  i have resistance to doing my work.  i have resistance to exercising and eating nourishing food.  i have resistance to personal accounting and records-keeping. i have resistance to housekeeping.  sometimes i have resistance to taking a shower.

i even experience resistance with activities i love:  yoga, creating, writing, walking with my dogs, cooking, gardening, spending time with friends.  some days it feels like i am resistant to life.  

i have done a good deal of work in the past year becoming more aware of when i am experiencing resistance.  more work is needed to increase my understanding and to start breaking through it in meaningful ways.  this year my friend and master yoga teacher cyndi lee will be helping me address my resistance to yoga through discussions that we will publish in a collaborative series of blog posts.  

i wanted my word for 2015 to reflect my movement through resistance, to be a little anchor for me during this year. what is the opposite of resistance?  how would the antidote to resistance be described in one word?  i went through discipline (too rigid), practice (all i could hear was my mom nagging me to sit down at the piano and do my scales), action (made me want to take a nap), focus (feels like a work word), many renditions of "go with the flow" like fluidity, water, river (these began feeling way too loose than what i'm looking for).  by the way, if you are interested in a peek into my own special brand of resistance, the one i employ hundreds of time throughout the day, reread this paragraph.  it just happens to be overthinking.

sunday at 2:30am, i lay awake with an unusual touch of insomnia.  i wanted to read but didn't want to turn the light on and really didn't want to leave the warm bed.  so i grabbed my kindle. you guys, i even have resistance to my kindle.  good books that are stored on there have been neglected.  i've since abandoned my trial period of electronic reading and returned to the paper book, but i admit that it comes in handy at times like this.  

i turned on my device and navigated my way to the last bookmark i placed back in april:  chapter sixteen of karen maezen miller's hand wash cold.  chapter sixteen is about consistently showing up every day to do the work of our lives, attending to the details and maintenance of our ordinary lives.  

it is about attention.

hello word.

hello 2015.

"attention is the most concrete expression of love.

what we pay attention to thrives.

what we do not pay attention to withers and dies.

what will you pay attention to today?"

-karen maezen miller, hand wash cold: care instructions for an ordinary life

one word

a lovely word, a token for a thousand more:  a l i v e n e s s.

i was pretty pleased with myself because i thought i made up this word (this is not unusual for me, the making up of my own words).  the word enters my mind now and then when i work to describe a moment or feeling, bright and shiny and safe and vibrating.  and even though it felt a bit silly using a concocted word, it also felt very very right.

alas, it's a real word, official, in the dictionary and all.  who knew?  and its definition is almost precisely how i was using it.  it's my spirit word for twenty-fourteen.

a l i v e n e s s of spirit:  present, aware, mindful, recognition, conscious, connection, bodhi, sentience, enlightenment, adventure, diversity, equanimity, daring, creating and loving art and story.

a l i v e n e s s of body:  movement, breath, groundedness, yoga, ease, lightness, being rested, energy, fingers in paint and glue, feet on forest floor and in pacific tidepools, clean and beautiful food.

a l i v e n e s s of mind:  intuition, knowledge, discernment, curiosity, reading, attention, experience, writing and hearing stories, focus, learning learning learning.

these are the things that make me come alive.  i'm ready to have/do/live more of them.

i painted a wee reminder of my word on a wood block and it's hanging right next to my bathroom mirror.

do you have a word for the year?  i'd love to hear it.  whenever i read/hear someone's word, i whisper it aloud and envision them being/having/experiencing it.  i love the idea of a million little whispered words floating through space like tiny white downy baby bird feathers.

word of the year (take two)

i think 2013 may be a double-word year.  i chose happy the first week in january.  happy is a good word.  a good goal.  thing is, it comes with quite a few expectations.  so even though things have been mostly positive around here, i've found myself feeling less than adequate on those days when i'm not rocking the happy.

i'm participating in a year-long self-portrait group, 52 of you.  each week brings a new self-portrait challenge.  during week two, the assignment was "mantra".  so many words floated through my mind and heart (surprisingly, not one of them was happy).  the word soul kept reappearing and softly vibrating, while standing alone or within lines of poetry.

so there you have it:  the word is soul.  the question, "is {whatever} in alignment with what i know in my soul to be true and beautiful?"

it's good to have something deep and meaningful with happy as a backup.  :)

my word for 2013

what that means for me today:

• to be energetic and clean in my body and mind
• to be in real relationships, with honest connections and shared values and much laughter
• to have fingers covered in paint, dirt and/or olive oil several times a week
• peace and safety
• yoga and walks in the woods
• to be more delighted with our world, to shift from this persistent disappointment in humankind
• to learn many many new things