Beloved friends,
I was once told that a study showed that people who were prayed for while hospitalized healed more quickly – but only if they knew that they were being prayed for. I wish, of course, to point to that study so that this is not simply hearsay; however, when I think of when I was told this, time gets strange. Time seems to get soupier the more of it you live through, doesn't it? I was told this while studying reiki. When did I study reiki? Long enough ago that it is not in my email; I must have called on the phone to register, or mailed a check. I know that James and I attended the program with a friend whose child was a toddler, and ah here we go: that toddler is a grown person who has left home. So I was told this a couple of decades ago. I do not have enough details to find a decades-old study based on a few words like "prayer" or "hospital".
I know who told me about this study. I trust them. I know they told me in good faith, and it does align with my sense of the science on mind-body healing, so I am going to accept this as true and invite you to consider doing so for the moment: a study showed that people who were prayed for while in deep healing states did indeed mend more rapidly – but only if they knew that they were being prayed for. What this says is tremendously beautiful: that prayer does indeed work; but perhaps not quite in the way we've been imagining.
Inspired by this knowledge, when I hang a prayer flag for someone on my altar, I usually send them a photograph of it. When I light the altar candle before classes and linger over the prayer lines, singing, reading, I try to let people see it happen – after the Zoom is underway, after people have begun to arrive for class, to let the knowledge of my prayersong practice become normal, steady. Then, when someone asks me to hang a prayer flag, they know what they are asking: that I will stand there, that I will sing, that I will light my candle, that I will weave the notes that mean my love into the song that is the body of the universe.
The miracle of the healing, though, takes place inside the person being prayed for. Isn't that incredible? Their knowledge of the seeds I am planting with my ritual, song, and love somehow blossoms into healing. We have a beautiful word which explains this, a favorite learned in my years working in hospitals: pyschoneuroimmunology, meaning: the way our emotions affecting our brains affects our immune systems. And our science has shown this repeatedly, strongly: belonging matters. Feeling cared for matters. It matters so deeply that it can change our capacity to heal, light a fire in us that makes us well.
This is also why I sweep the temple, iron the handkerchiefs, and find ways to casually mention that I have done so. Like my songs, my sweeping and ironing say: "I care for you. You are loved." In taking precious moments of my human existence to make this corner beautiful, this cotton smooth against your face, I am tapping into the capacity for magic within you that requires caring action for blossom. When you know I have done this, every time you grab a smooth, crisp hankie, you hear: "I am loved." Goodness, how exquisite it is that the magic takes place within because between us. That is not a typo: I mean to say: that the healing takes place within because between us.
I could buy a little robot and set it in the temple and let it clean the floor. I could pay someone else to iron the linens, or I could let them be wrinkled. Doing so would empty my own days, though, of the love that fills me in this purposeful action. I'm working hard on that right now: purposeful action. I'll spend Friday afternoon cooking for a family I've never met who are in a tough moment; I signed up for their meal train after a friend shared it, and after checking that this was welcome. I donated to a GoFundMe for someone I spent a few hours with, and spread the word carefully that they were in need. I brought bone broth and mandarins to a friend who had an accident. Cut a big basket of lilac blossoms and gifted them to everyone I met along a set of errands one afternoon. This sweetens my days. It eases the pain of the world, just a little. It gives me hope, and that inspires me to more action.
I thought a good bit about whether to share that list of my actions. Would it sound like self-congratulation? Would it sound pathetically insufficient? Would the beauty and solace I find in these gestures dissipate for me if I let them be seen? I decided to carry on, a gesture of trust in all of us. I certainly haven't saved the world with these things. What I'm doing is what I hear from many of you: taking my heartache about the wider events of our world and pouring it into doing good locally. I am hearing much of this from many people and it inspires me. I hope it inspires you, too.
Someone in my local ommunity posted in one of the social media groups that knit us closer; she was seeking both book donations and the locations of little free libraries. With this she restocked 72 little free libraries in our 10,000 person town. Like the prayers, like the sweeping and ironing, her efforts did good beyond their good. They lifted my heart and inspired me, and now perhaps they will do so for you. Someone in our spiritual community gathered books for a local organization that tries to bring books into a part of their city that has a shortage; she posted in her local Buy Nothing to gather the books and plans to gather neighbors to sort them. I am hearing folks organizing in the schools, in their food banks, doing more volunteering.
Yes, yes: may these tender times send us reaching for one another in love, in goodwill, to make magic and give support where we can. To protect and care for one another. May it be so.
Resources
Dahlia Podcasting: The Teaching On Devotion
My beloved friend, colleague, and brother-on-the-path Jivana Heyman is the founder and head of the Accessible Yoga School training programs. We met in teacher training in 1995 and graduated 30 years ago this month. He invited me to be a guest on his podcast in honor of the occasion. Honestly, y'all, I don't listen to podcasts and did not plan at all for this; every word was spontaneously spoken from the heart. This is a chance to hear me reflect upon my experience as a teacher, my decision to declare myself a minister, cultural appropriation and yoga, leadership, and reclaiming meditation as a natural human capacity in conversation with a wise and respected peer.
The episode is an hour; 30 minutes is the interview with me. The next 30 focus on Jivana reflecting in conversation with another friend on his own experience with Integral Yoga, an organization we loved and served for decades which has been struggling mightily with the history of sexual abuse of his followers by the founder, Swami Satchidananda. Sadly, the national organization has not met this moment well at all, and both Jivana and I have stepped away.
In Song
Monday James and I went to our first concert here: 250 people in a converted barn listening to folk music, the kind to which you are invited to sing along. MaMuse caught my eye with their viral song We Shall Be Known a few years ago. They, or perhaps I should say we since we all sang – closed last night with I Believe in the Power of Kindness. Are you singing these days, friend? With friends, badly, around a campfire, or at a kirtan, or at a concert, or belting it out in your car or your kitchen? It helps.
Soaking
Hot springs have been dear places of pilgrimage and healing for humans for as long as there have been humans; they are among my favorite natural wonders: mineral-dense waters gushing from the Earth. James and I visit them a couple times a year. The closest I've come to experiencing them at home is with a bath salt that I am astonished to find myself recommending to you, because I strongly dislike their marketing style. Flewd's soaking products, however, are incredible. They include magnesium, like epsom salts, and other things, like Dead Sea salts – and then more; it's aiming for transdermal nutrient delivery – you soak in it, you soak it up. There are several formulas targeted for different effect. The Ache Eraser is a big favorite at my house. There is no financial incentive for me to share this with you; I'm simply finding it both comforting and useful just now and wish to share the resource.
The Mystery of Light
You know that famous experiment which led us to the understanding that light is both a particle and a wave? That... sounds iffy, doesn't it? Well, there's a new interpretation of that study as not particles and waves but light and dark modes of quantum particles and it sounds pretty exciting! The article has excessive ads; I warmly suggest reading it with 12ft.i0 to strip the ads off. The study notes in its abstract, "Here, we show that in quantum optics, classical interference emerges from collective bright and dark states of light, i.e., particular cases of two-mode binomial states, which are entangled superpositions of multimode photon-number states. This makes it possible to explain wave interference using the particle description of light and the superposition principle for linear systems only." Watching the process of our collective knowledge evolve is ever a joy.
All Phases of Beauty
Why yes, the flowers in this week's lead photo are dead. We have a practice in our home of keeping cut flowers for as long as we can stand, of loving them not only in their brightest blossom, but in their death and decay. Our farmshare comes with tulips in springtime; one week they in James' study, the next they go in the parlor which contains my desk. The purple tulips are two weeks old, the yellow ones three. They just keeping getting more, differently beautiful in their dying. This helps, too.
Resistance
Taking to the Streets: June 14
A huge coalition of groups has announced June 14 as the NO KINGS Day of Nationwide Defiance. The president is planning a massive, horrifically expensive military parade that day on his birthday. Lots of ways to step up and gather in joy and defiance in service of good.
Taking to the Trees
My heart and prayers are with the young person sitting 80 feet up in a tree a couple hours from my home to protect the forest from logging. May we all be inspired to protect the life of the Earth. Seattle Times.
Feeding the teacher:
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