Beloved friends,
The final day of nature's year, the winter solstice, falls on a Thursday. On Thursday, December 21, I will be leading a small ritual at the weekly Meditation Gathering. In preparation for this I have prepared some rosemary from the land on which I live: cut, pressed into books that are dear to me and which speak of mystery or spirit or poetry, and now dry and ready to flow onward. If you would like me to send you a sprig of dried rosemary for this ritual, or simply to enjoy on your own, please respond with your mailing address. Dried rosemary has numerous uses: you might burn it for the beautiful scented smoke it makes, steep it in water for making an herbal infusion to drink, drop it into your bath to infuse the bathwater, or use it in preparing food. I have 33 sprigs of rosemary to gift.
My holiday schedule lies below. I look forward to fresh offerings at the turning of the year. There will be another meditation course, and there will be a brand new offering as well! I look forward to sharing these as the details finalize over the next little while. Oh and one more note -- my long-loved Morning Series meets Mondays and Wednesdays from 7-8:15am. Attendance is by subscription, 6 weeks at a time. Cost is $25-20/session, sliding scale. Limited to 5 people to ensure that I am able to sequence the sessions based on what everyone needs that day and be able see you all on my screen. There will be one opening come the new year; drop me a line to discuss!
Resources
Dahlia's Holiday Schedule
The Reading Circle has finished with Wintering and will take a hiatus until the New year. The Meditation Gathering and The Soft Animal Saturday yoga sessions will continue as usual. A special New Year's workshop on the 30th is the next item here!
Energetic Refreshment for the Turning of the Year
The cusp of the new year can be a portal for setting seeds and for blossom, for intention and for connection with sacred experience. This guided meditation session will invite clarification, renewal, and healing. We will turn inward, attending to our own wellbeing, and we will turn outward, offering our loving support to all of life. A loving container with time for discussion if wished. Half of the proceeds from this workshop go to benefit the SF Integral Yoga Institute, which sheltered my tender heart when I was young. December 30th, 12-1:30pm. Registration
Awe to Action
This week I got an email from the Port Townsend Marine Science Center about the successful installation of a 42' long whale skeleton named Gunther on a wharf in town. This spoke of how the gorgeous installation inspires awe and wonder, which are popular as buzzwords right now after recent research on the benefits of these feelings. Dacher Keltner's book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life is a great place to learn more if you wish! I've got a copy on my own reading list waiting for a turn. The email from PTMSC said something simple and powerful: "thousands of people have been touched by the beauty and grace of this extraordinary gray whale. This awe and wonder stimulates curiosity, which leads to knowledge which leads to caring, which leads to action."
Uplift
Reasons to Be Cheerful is a website and newsletter whose motto is "Tonic for tumultuous times". They collect positive news stories, such as this one about how the California Redwoods are rebounding well after wildfires. I rather wish it was a little more like, "reasons for hope", as I believe that cheer feels like a bit of a reach for many people right now, but it is indeed a tonic. Thanks to Rebecca.
New Therapy for PTSD
One of my longtime student-and-friends is doing some deep healing. They are, as folks often do, both working with me and with a therapist. I am excited by the new therapeutic modality they are exploring and finding powerful results with. The Comprehensive Resource Model, or CRM, "was developed over the past decade by Lisa Schwarz, a licensed psychologist in Pennsylvania who has practiced for 30 years. Fusing elements of psychology, spirituality, neurobiology and shamanic "power animals," Schwarz has taught the technique to more than 1,500 therapists around the world, including more than 350 in Scotland, where CRM is being used at rape crisis centers and a private in-patient trauma clinic." Newsweek did a great piece on it. I love both that it is gaining traction, doing good work and that it uses many elements that we have shared together in practice.
Instinctive Meditation in Poetry and Lentils
Last week I was looking for a poem which I thought would be perfect for someone who is working with me. I did not find that poem. I did find another poem, "A Woman Cleaning Lentils", by Zahrad, which is the most wonderful depiction of something I say often: that meditation is a natural process of the human being; it is how we process, integration, learn, and grow. Oh, what is contained in a simple bowl of lentils.
A Woman Cleaning Lentils
A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone.
A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone.
A green one, a black one, a green one, a black. A stone.
A lentil, a lentil, a stone, a lentil, a lentil, a word.
Suddenly a word. A lentil.
A lentil, a word, a word next to another word. A sentence.
A word, a word, a word, a nonsense speech.
Then an old song.
Then an old dream.
A life, another life, a hard life. A lentil. A life.
An easy life. A hard life, Why easy? Why hard?
Lives next to each other. A life. A word. A lentil.
A green one, a black one, a green one, a black one, pain.
A green song, a green lentil, a black one, a stone.
A lentil, a stone, a stone, a lentil.