No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.
–Amelia Earhart
In the beginning of November I am usually busy cutting and folding and taping tiny messages to fit into small envelopes that I hand out in yoga classes the last week of the month. There are 31 messages; one for each day in December. Some are quotes about kindness and gratitude and others are invitations to kind acts. The envelopes take a lot of time but I love creating them. I haven’t tired of it over the years. I enjoy creating a fresh take on what to include in the envelopes, I cherish the time I spend with those who agree to help and I love, love, love handing them out.
This year will be different. I won’t be handing out envelopes but I still hope, as a community, we will use the month of December as a way to spread kindness. This week I will create the prompts that I will send out each day in December to be shared on this blog so that each one of us can ‘throw out roots in all directions’ and see what new trees spring forth in 2021.
Send me any suggestions through the blog or email me directly.
When I was in my twenties I lived in Toronto. I used to drive to work just outside of the city. One sunny morning during my commute, I had my window open and I was singing away when all of a sudden traffic came to a screeching halt. I couldnât see what had happened up ahead but soon after I watched emergency vehicle after emergency vehicle race by. For the next two hours, traffic remained at a dead stop.
I didnât have a cell phone at the time so I stressed out for most of the two hours worrying about what I would say to my boss for being soooo late. What made things worse is that even when we started moving again, traffic simply crawled with everyone looking at whatever the hold up was. I recall being so annoyed and thinking, âDoesnât everyone else have somewhere they need to be?â
Finally, two fairly smashed up cars that were pulled off to the side came into view. There was debris all over the road even though it looked like it had been hosed down. I wondered if anyone had been hurt. It is sometimes hard to know with a car crash.
Thatâs when I noticed, what I thought was, a twisted fender. The sun was shining off of it and it made it hard to tell what part of the car had been torn off with it. As I drove up closer, I was just like all the other rubber-neckers looking at the scene. I couldnât turn my gaze away until I realized that the twisted fender wasnât a fender at all. It was what had once been a motorcycle. There was no longer any doubt in my mind if someone had been hurt.
I know I drove very, very carefully that day and for many days and weeks after that. I felt grateful for everything. I was determined to get crap done. I was crossing stuff off my to-do lists like crazy. Eventually though, I returned to feeling more like an invincible twenty-something who had all the time in the world and who once again became irritated with traffic, who passed when I maybe shouldnât have and who enjoyed speeding when traffic opened up.
Donât we all have a version of this shake-awake moment when we vow to take care of business in a way we know we are capable of but then promptly go back to sleep with loosely held promises of âsomedayâ, âmaybe whenâ and âI want toâ? Arenât we all, right now, living in a shake-awake series of moments? (Isnât every moment potentially our last anyway?)
What if…each time you put on a mask or took one off, or have the realization, âthat wonât be happening this year,â that you reaffirm your commitment to doing the one thing that you know in your heart you must. What if we all used Covid to catapult us into being completely alive inside the life we might be half living.
Like the song linked below reminds usâŚâ..we are here for a good time. Not a long time…â
I’m not sure where I first heard the phrase, ‘Take a Seat in the Pose’. I often think of this in my yoga practice to encourage my mind to stay with my body. It is a reminder not to run away when the going gets tough or when the activity of my mind is more appealing than what I am doing in the moment. It is an applicable reminder to regular living too. We are so quick to want to move along to the next thing.
In the poem, ‘What the Living Do’, Marie Howe expresses this beautifully,
“We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kissâwe want more and more and then more of it.“
But what about simply choosing to take a seat right where we are and watch the life that lives there. Explore this idea through your own experiences this week.
Happy Thanksgiving!!! I hope that whatever you have been up to this weekend, it has brought you deep joy and a connection with yourself, others and this incredible season.
In this post, I share a gratitude practice and a recipe. Both are simple and delicious.
Gratitude Practice
Each night before bedtime at my house we do, what has come to be known as, ‘thankful’. It started when my daughter was learning to speak and she loved to tell us (anything) but also what she was grateful for. Some nights she would surprise us by saying things that were entirely her own and wise like when she was a toddler she once said she was grateful for “clean water to drink”. She often was also a beautiful example for us of how to naturally live in the moment, like saying she was thankful for what we ate for dinner, being tickled (two minutes before) and warm blankets.
Our ‘thankful’ practice has changed over the years while also remaining a valuable way to connect and reflect on the beautiful aspects of life that live inside every single day. It helps my husband and I through difficult moments in our parenting and in our marriage. My daughter likes that we gather as a family before going to bed. (I just asked her.) I like it for a similar reason; it allows each of us to feel heard and to connect before we fall asleep. It has become a ritual that we do most nights even if we are travelling so that a little bit of home is with us no matter where we are. Even on nights when bedtime feels like the last thing to do on a long list or on nights when one or more of us is grumpy and doesn’t want to do it…it is a small step back toward each other and toward a recognition that there is so much to be thankful for.
How to do it…
Verbally share what you are thankful for without resorting to a rote listing of things that is the same each night. That’s it. We make sure that there are at least three fresh things from the day. If you are living on your own, or your significant others aren’t having any part of this, keep a small notebook beside your bed and write a list before you go to sleep. Easy. The benefits are felt in the moment and often during your day as your brain takes notice of little things to use for your thankful list later.
Apple Crisp
So I recently baked my own made-up version of apple crisp that turned out so delicious that I want everyone to make it and eat it and then tell me about it. If you love recipes that are forgiving and freely adaptable this might be the non-recipe for you. Take out a bunch of like ingredients, taste along the way and substitute to your heart’s content.
Ingredient Suggestions: Cooking apples or whatever kind you have, coconut oil and/or butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, oats, flour, pecans or other nuts you like, salt, vanilla and maple syrup.
The Apples: Butter up an 8 x 8 with coconut oil or butter and fill almost to the top with peeled and sliced apples. I used cortland apples so I didn’t have to use anything to absorb excess liquid but if you use juicy apples add ground chia seeds, cornstarch or tapioca. I mixed in cinnamon, a little nutmeg and brown sugar swerve to-taste. Note: Swerve is a sugar replacement I use sometimes…I chose it here because I don’t hold back on the maple syrup in the crumble part and because I like it. I also greased the baking dish with coconut oil but used butter in the crumble.
The Crumble: Equal parts oats, spelt flour (I have also made this with almond flour too) and pecans broken into pieces (I did a cup of each but you might like more crumble), I added cinnamon and a grind or two of sea salt and then I moistened and mixed it all with a splash of vanilla and more than a splash of maple syrup and then diced in some chilled butter. Throw this onto the apples and bake at 375F or 190C for about a half hour or until apples have softened and the crisp part is crisp.
The Eating: How yum is this? Who needs a traditional recipe for apple crisp? We ate ours warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Enjoy đ
Is bravery required to live the best version of your life? What does being brave even mean anyway? Do personal practices that provide insight, like meditation, bring us home to who we really are? And does this allow us to make the brave choices we must make if we want to grow and live our lives with open arms and hearts?
I am part of a writing group and our prompt for this week was to choose a quality and write about it as if it were a person. I chose the word bravery. Here’s what I submitted:
Bravery lives in a house she built herself. Her neighbour, Insight, lives to the East. Fear, is her neighbour to the West.
Braveryâs skin is positively luminous when she speaks to Insight over the fence. Insight is the neighbour who gives the best advice. Bravery basks in her wisdom from the inside out.
When I visit, Bravery is patient with my childish assumptions about Fear. I imagine she flirts with Fear relentlessly. Heâs dangerously attractive, knows what to do about everything and could help her to be taken seriously beyond her property lines. I imagine marriage between them someday as an honourable privilege since he is already a decorated war hero. I imagine him smiling seductively one night after the sun has set, whispering, âHow âbout you feel the fear and do it anyway, baby?â
I am getting to know Bravery a little better all the time though. Sheâs a grownup. I bet she would laugh (a big, beautiful, honest laugh), if she knew what I really thought went on between her and Fear.
The truth is, Bravery doesnât trust Fear when Insight isnât home. She locks the doors and pulls the blinds. Iâve seen it happen.
âFear is a useful neighbour,â she tells me gently one day. âHe warns if there are intruders and other dangers but he sure knows how to suck the joy out of everything with his intimidation tactics.â
âNo, the only flirting Iâve done,â she adds, âis with the idea of taking down my fences on both sides.â
What would it be like to welcome insight into your life and to use fear’s guidance instead of allowing fear to use you? Let me know what you think. Enjoy your week đ
Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back, I suck them from the quenching dark Til they are all, all inside me, Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself Into a universe still young, Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space, The light of all the not yet stars Drifting like a bright mist, And all of us, and everything Already there But unconstrained by form.
And sometime itâs enough To lie down here on earth Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields Of our discarded skulls, Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis, Thinking: whatever left these husks Flew off on bright wings.
Lately I feel like I am turning into a tomato. I am living, breathing and dreaming tomatoes. We have made tomato-everything at our house and still our tomato plants keep producing ripened fruit that requires fairly immediate attention. Yesterday, I had to get rid of some pretty gross tomatoes before I promptly started to make more tomato sauce with the good ones. I was thrown into action.
This ripening-abundance of early fall will also seemly come to a screeching halt after a good frost if we donât pick the partially ripe and unripened fruit left on the plants. Itâs all a choice.
Our minds are just like this.
Experiences can be like the fruits piling up in the bowl. If the ripened fruits are left unobserved we will fail to respond and they will be missed opportunities; they will rot.
Any experienceâŚa brand new one or something so familiar to you that you could do it in your sleep, can be experienced in a fresh way if you are willing to observe and respond: pick the single fruit as itâs ready and eat it off the vine, or pick a bunch of tomatoes at once and make salsa, tomato sauce, gazpacho. You can choose to watch things as they are and then respond this way today and that way tomorrow, dependent upon the depth of your observation. You can choose to live the life thatâs at your door.
Likewise, when the frost comes, you can choose to forget you have a garden altogether or you can harvest whatâs left and figure out where to go from there…Why not ripen tomatoes indoors? Or try recipes that call for green tomatoes?
Practices like yoga and meditation cultivate moment-to-moment awareness which in-turn cultivates an embodied life; one that you live as it happens no matter the circumstances of the season or the well-worn paths of cravings and aversions in your mind.
And that…is just a little food for thought đ
Here is a simple tomato salad recipe that is soooo appealing to me right now even though my house has smelled like tomatoes for the last couple of weeks…
Ingredients: About 2 pounds of ripe, roughly cut, mixed variety of tomatoes sea salt and fresh pepper red wine vinegar with a bit of balsamic extra virgin olive oil 1 clove of garlic, pressed or grated 1 fresh red chilli pepper, deseeded and chopped finely fresh oregano and basil leaves
1. Put tomatoes in a colander and sprinkle with sea salt and let excess moisture drip away from the fruit into the sink or bowl beneath for about 15 minutes or so. Discard liquid. The tomatoes won’t taste salty but will be really flavourful. Transfer tomatoes to a serving dish.
2. Make the dressing with one part vinegar to three parts oil and then add salt and pepper to taste, the garlic and chilli. Pour over the tomatoes and garnish with fresh oregano and basil leaves and serve with a rustic bread. Yum.
I was up early so I had time to meditate and to do a few inversions before leaving the house at 5:45 to teach an early morning yoga class.
I am mourning the loss of warm mornings lately and feeling a strong pull to stay under the covers, to wear warm sweaters, socks, and drink tea. We haven’t turned on our furnace so the floors are chilly when I wake up and I have been meditating wearing a shawl again.
This morning though simply felt fresh. It wasn’t cold (a teensy shift in consciousness I was open to upon waking). I was naturally awake at 4AM because my face was cool from the open window. I enjoyed my drive to my class playing music and singing on the way, I welcomed asana practice with the lovely women who joined me today…the practice was also fresh and lively. When I returned home I felt like having a morning shake that was fresh too so this is what I threw in my blender:
1 cup of coconut water 1/4 of an avocado A bunch of fresh strawberries two handfuls of spinach
Enjoy this beautiful day wherever you are and whatever you are doing. Find what is fresh and alive. Be grateful for all of it.
Peace, derived through self-love, is a much misunderstood and underrated brand of activism. This idea has really been on my mind lately; specifically the effects of inner peace in regard to interactions with others and the broader world.
We all must begin with loving ourselves if we want to be part of a bigger peaceful solution. Our strivings are too great otherwise to be kept up with any kind of continuity. When peace is an outside job, it becomes something we do, instead of being something we are. Donât we all eventually burn out from doing? Donât we all thrive and shine bright from being?
Self-development isnât self-indulgent. Self-love isn’t narcissism which is rooted in fear. Starting where you are is the only place anyone can begin.
Listen to the persistent call inside your own heart – that is an act of love. Keep listening. Keep answering. Keep loving yourself as a practice so you ready your heart to love others and the planet. It is the truest way to be part of a lasting peaceful solution for the world. Self-love is the greatest act of love and the only true gift to the world you can ever give; the one gift that allows all others to be authentic. To be peace, you must love yourself.
As poet, Mary Oliver expresses so beautifully, âLove yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.â
This week I started back as a yoga instructor after almost five months of being away from the place I primarily teach. I have returned to a very different landscape compared to the one I left in March when the facility was closed due to Covid19.
I taught each day this week starting with an early 6:15 am class on Monday morning. I went in, masked and feeling uncertain. Class sizes have been significantly reduced with all participants required to reserve the coveted spots. There are check points to pass through at the front door and again at the yoga studio door. Along the way are gleaming floors and freshly disinfected everything, as well as, hand sanitation stations. There is no lounging or loitering encouraged. Your reserved spot is for the designated hour-long class. Everyone is accounted for in the building including staff. Inside the studio, mat orientation is predesignated with stickers. There is new signage, seemingly endless protocol. It all felt very different.
My first couple of classes I was in my head more than my body and still the practice unwound me. Students visibly unwound along with me. My voice was different from my intro compared to final savasana. Bodies in the room looked different from rigid start to ease-filled finish. Likewise, my Monday class was very different from the class I taught on Friday.
Yoga practice works.
This declaration isnât a surprise of course. There is over 5,000 years of history behind yoga asana with stress reduction often sited as a prime benefit. Still, the transformative power of yoga practice this week was so tangible. I felt very lucky to both experience and witness it.
I also had the privilege to be part of the conscious sharing of physical space with others during a time in our history where âsocial distanceâ has become part of our vernacular. My final class for the week in particular brought this sharply into focus. Sharing space with others who also chose to share space with me and other students was the most beautiful gift. We need each other. We are woven together in infinite ways beyond our understanding. We are part of a macrocosm of interconnectedness with our greater environment. Covid19 has pushed us away from each other and yet, in countless ways, brought us so much closer to one another.
Thank you, with all my heart, to my yoga community this week.
