women of wild wisdom

Do not kill the instinct of the body for the glory of the pose.  - Vanda Scaravelli

It's not unusual for my clients to express some fear that it's too late for them.  That they are too old to find their calling, to follow a passion or even to change old behaviours.  I get it - I'm certailnly not a stranger to that place. 

A confession: I, the dedicated yoga student and teacher, took a week intensive with Jill Miller in January 2011 in California. My dad had just died in Dec 2010, so I spent every savasana of this intensive with a face wet with silent tears. Then I came home from California and dropped my yoga practice cold. For a full year. I have no idea why. It doesn't really matter. I did the occasional downward dog here and there, but I did not once roll out my mat . Not once did I do an intentional yoga practice. I thought maybe it was over. I thought maybe I would never do yoga again.

And then early this month, Feb 2012,  I just got up one day, dug my mat out of the closet, rolled it out and started to play with poses. I have no idea why. It doesn't really matter.  I've been having so much fun. I've lost some poses - I used to be able to just pop up into headstand - not now. That's OK. I feel like I needed that space to come back to my mat in a fresh way. I've given up muscling through poses and I'm working with them from instinct instead of force.

My role model is Vanda Scaravelli and her concept of allegrezza. She came to yoga in her mid 40s and practiced for the next 50 years. I am 45 - I realize I've only just begun. I can't wait to see what the next 50 years bring. 

The daughter of artistic Italian parents, wife of a professor of philosophy, and an accomplished pianist, Vanda Scaravelli was accustomed throughout her life to meeting creative artists, intellectuals, and literati. The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti came to stay at the Scaravelli's villa overlooking Florence every year. When Scaravelli's husband died suddenly after World War II, she soon began spending summers with her children at a chalet in Switzerland, where she hosted Krishnamurti during his lectures there. B. K. S. Iyengar would come every morning to teach him yoga; he introduced Scaravelli, then in her 40s, to the ancient discipline, and "a new life came into my body." Thus began her ongoing exploration of what she called allegrezza, "the intelligent heart." - Phil Catalfo

Allegrezza. I wrote the word on a big sheet of paper and hung it in my office. What a gorgeous word. What a gorgeous idea. What a gorgeous example Vanda is. 

Vanda's wild wisdom from her beautiful book Awakening the Spine:

There is no beauty without love and there is no love without beauty.

What is beauty? Are love and beauty interconnected? Does beauty derive from love? Or does love derive from beauty?

You will discover the amazing transformation in a person when she is loved, she blossoms, becoming more beautiful each day.

When we love what we are doing there is beauty in it and even the more insignificant work becomes attractive.

Love has no barriers, it is like a pool spring, pouring water endlessly. And it is perhaps this absence of limitation that gives wings to fly.

Beauty is the absence of a definite determined action, the freedom from slavery to an already formed ideal that drives us in a particular direction eliminates all other possibilities to wander among the many adventurous, and sometimes dangerous, roads. Beauty gives also the pleasure to uncover and the luxury to lose.

Watch Vanda's beauty at 85 - "flowers blossom in spring, and then they blossom again in autumn".

It's never too late.

5 seconds to a better marriage

I learned this simple practice from Dr. John Gottman.  It is simple, but not necessarily easy. Many of my clients find it surprising when they do it. They are surprised at how they've negelected such a simple thing, surprised at how long 5 seconds really is, surprised at what happens when they really commit and do it.

This is it: commit to having a (minimum) 5 second kiss with your partner. Everyday. And count the 5 seconds fairly - you know, like you used to do for hide-and-seek. 1, 1000, 2, 1000 etc. Or set the timer on your phone if you are the geeky type. After a few practice sessions you'll get a feel for how long it is and you won't have to count anymore - which will allow you to be more present in the experience.

Even your response to the idea of doing this practice can be revealing.

The exclusive focus on verbal communication as the path to strengthen relationships has left big huge gaps and has hung many relationships out to dry. Communication skills alone will not save a relationship. There is a deeper connection that needs to be nourished. That's what this practice is for.

I'd love to hear from you if you try it - let me know how it goes. If you're already doing this and more - I'm guessing your relationship is already pretty damn fantastic.

when love washes over you

I love this story from Roseanne Cash about a particular moment when her father is asking her to sing with him during his last performance at Carnegie Hall. She refuses his repeated requests. And then he turns and walks away.."The look of his back struck me....and it filled me with so much love..."

You must listen to her describe it. Her voice truly captures the emotion of having love wash over you. Whether it's suddenly glimpsing your partner across the room or peeking in on your niece and nephew as they sleep or seeing your father's back in that certain way (for me, it was always my dad's hands that did it) - that sweet tenderness of the moment of pure love, of wordlessly inhabiting the fullness of love - those moments are what's real in this world.

And listen to the love in his voice when he brings Roseanne on stage to sing with him.

(Thanks to Heather Plett for sharing this.)

forgiveness is not a charade

We are so afraid of the shadow emotions in our culture - anger, sadness, grief, fear - that the message is always about how to hurry up and make it go away.  Don't be mad or sad for too long, please, you are making me uncomfortable.  Can you get over it already, thankyouverymuch?

Don't do it.

Don't get over it.

Enough skating on the surface of things.

Get messy - get into it instead of over it.

If you truly want to forgive someone - you need to feel your anger, feel the hurt, feel the betrayal. Otherwise your forgiveness is a joke, an act, a spiritual put-on of holier-than-thou with nothing whole about it. It's a denial. If there is no hurt, there is no need to forgive. If you have "let-go" of your anger, then the call for forgiveness is gone.

True forgiveness doesn't happen when I let go of my anger. It happens because I am angry. Forgiveness is the action that allows me to experience my anger - to be in my anger and and in my love at the same time - to hold the paradox of being hurt by someone we trust. 

To forgive without anger is like thinking commitment means "I will do this as long as it feels good."  No, commitment says "There will be moments when I don't want to do this, and yet I will." Committment is what carries us through the times that don't feel so good.

Likewise, forgiveness is what carries us through the hurt of betrayal. We forgive because we love, forgiveness says, "I am in great pain right now and yet I love you." or "I am in great pain right now and yet I see your humanity."  And because we can be in that place of mixed emotions, we will be able to journey through the pain. Forgiveness is that journey. It is not a point of arrival. I do not forgive once and it is over.  I am in a process of forgiving.

If you are here: "I don't know if I can ever forgive, I still feel so angry/hurt/betrayed."

Good.  Dance with your anger and hurt. And dance some more. And see if somewhere in the dance you find yourself feeling the rhythm of forgiveness.

And then just keep feeling your way through.  xox

a love-lift for my website

Can I get a hallelujah!?!   Hail to the muses - my new site design is here. I hope it's a place where you can rest your eyes and your soul.  I hope it feels less like a big box store and more like a hammam. I hope you visit often.

And I am thrilled that this site features the work of women in design.

The magician behind the curtain is Elan at Ninjamatics.  I loved her from the get go and was so happy to find someone who knew the platform I wanted to use (Squarespace) and was a Canadian girl from the prairies (like me).

The font in the banner is Alana by Laura Worthington, one of very few women in the world of type design. Elan and I picked it out almost a year ago and it went on to become one of the top typefaces of 2011. Yay, Laura!

My writing teacher, model and inspiration is the wonderwoman of wordsmithing, Kelly Diels.

And also thanks to Sarah J. Bray for her guidance in walking the website labyrinth.

Now that this is ready, I am excited to get on with sharing and connecting and unveiling and doing my part to rediscover the love at the heart of it all.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. 

Rumi