Yoga on Duck Pond

By Jeffrey Morrison - Focusing Oriented Therapist: These are the days of darkness. A time of year when it is wet, cold and dark. These are times of darkness in our world, something felt in our bodies that creeps into our consciousness regardless of intention. While culture shakes and climate rattles we can find ourselves checking out or becoming overwhelmed. For those of us in the healing professions it is a double dose, facing our own vulnerability while being open to and av...ailable for those we care for. What’s a person to do? How do we maintain perspective, keep hope alive, and carry on a positive attitude for those around us? Here is my suggestion: It starts with a Pause. It is so simple and yet revolutionary. When I pause, I stop the ongoing flow of thoughts, feelings and actions that sweep through my day. I make this one very simple intentional turn toward myself and ask inside, How am I? Then I wait for a moment, and listen. I stop and listen, be curious, How am I in there? What am I needing or wanting right now? Then I wait, as if in meditation, and allow space to form from which something new will emerge. Even if you think nothing will show up, wait, it will: that’s just how it works. From this pregnant space, we have options. New possibilities present themselves. I can linger there inside myself and sense more deeply into my felt sense. I can just notice thoughts going by or I can say, Hello to something wanting my attention and listen to it. To pause, is to mindfully turn toward our present moment implicit knowing, the place where the new and creative originate. It is where we find new doorways to experience that lead us out of the dark, out of old ways. Is this it? you might ask. No, but it is a doorway to something more, fresh and new. Is that not the path we seek oh fellow traveler, to shift our perspective from the gloom and dread to finding the light inside the darkness? Pausing is a practice and takes time to make a habit of. It takes practicing! Start here, with a pause, and open the door to the little moments that bring real and lasting change. Below you will find some resources to help you on your way. The Pause Movement shows how teaching people to Pause brings real change in the world. See more

The Wisdom of Not Knowing Sometimes your life changes in an instant: you fall off a ladder, you get sick, you lose someone you love, or a veil is lifted from your life and for the first time you can see... the truth about something you had wished were different. The world you had built to make yourself comfortable is disappearing and you are feeling very uncomfortable and full of so many new questions and feelings. There is a faint feeling of gratitude because you think it could have been worse... and you have practiced being grateful for your life. But the thoughts and feelings are intense and they are very difficult to contain, they sometimes want to blame in anger or collapse in sadness, scream out in despair, and then there is love again. An uncomfortable mix of feelings, emotions, and questions.... You are in need of a sanctuary, a place where you are held, a kind and containing energy, so you can find your breath again, the one that guides you with wisdom from this moment to the next, in very small steps, from moment to moment, because it becomes clear that you really don’t know, and that the wisdom of your journey reveals itself in each moment of not knowing. written by Gisela Stromeyer photo by Susan Shaftan Perrin

from Pathwork Lecture 236: Courage The elements of courage are the ability and willingness to experience pain or disappointment and learn from it and use it as a threshold. That is courage. It is courage to risk all rather than stand still and have the safety of a little back door open, never venturing forth completely into a new situation. That is courage. To love is courage because the loved one may not always respond according to your desires and self-will.... To give is courage because the petty heart in its negativity still believes that when you give you will lose and no one will give you anything in return It is courage to risk finding out that your negative beliefs may not be true. It takes even more courage to not be discouraged. You feel courage in all of your body, as you feel love in all of your body, for courage is an essential part of love. Every cell and every pore vibrates and resonates with every divine attitude that you can possibly allow to express itself through your mind, your will, your soul and so through your entire body.

learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward...for strength, transformation...peace! quoted to me in a letter from a friend who is in prison

Native American Prayer: on a bulletin board at a hike I took in Vermont Oh Great spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the world. Hear me! I am small and weak; I need your strength and wisdom.... Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so I may understand the things you have taught my people. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother. But to fight my greatest enemy - myself. Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So when life fades, as the fading sunset, My spirit may come to you without shame. See more

Lakota Prayer Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery Teach me how to trust my heart,... my mind, my intuition, my inner knowing, the senses of my body, the blessings of my spirit. Teach me to trust these things so that I may enter my Sacred Space and love beyond my fear, and thus Walk in Balance with the passing of each glorious Sun. According to the Native People, the sacred Space is the space between exhalation and inhalation. To Walk in Balance is to have heaven (spirituality) and Earth (physicality) in Harmony

Observing the magnolia tree in front of my house reminds me after the winter, a time of blossoming. Photo by Rubi Rose Visuals

Go In and In by Danna Faulds Go in and in. Be the space between two cells,... the vast, resounding silence in which spirit dwells. Be sugar dissolving on the tongue of life. Dive in and in, as deep as you can dive. Be infinite, ecstatic truth. Be love conceived and born in union. Be exactly what you seek, the Beloved, singing Yes, tasting Yes, embracing Yes, until there is only essence; the All of Everything expressing through you as you. Go in and in and turn away from nothing that you find. Photo by Rubi Rose Visuals