Day 3

Feeling better and better, to say that it feels like stinging nettles is what comes instinctually, however Im not really sure what a stinging nettle really is and I may have made it up from Harry Potter? Regardless, things are on the mends which makes me smile! Taking this as a sign for the future that when I feel my skin tingle that my immune system is low and I best get my rest on. I hope I dont have to blog about a day 4, lets lay this pup to rest-goodnight shingles

Day 2

Today is our big equinox celebration at the labyrinth, and as much as I would like to help everyone who is running around getting things set up I'm inside, watching movies. After sleeping just a few hours last night and getting up every 5 hours to take more medicine I thought I would be in the mood for napping today, but no... I find it almost midnight and I'm still awake. The itchy and burny feeling has begun, and even thought I felt pretty good today I took an Aleve. I'm ready for this to be over with...

Happy Fall ya'll

Day 1

After about a week of feeling like someone has been stabbing me in the back and the prickly pain running down my arm and the lovely rash that developed on the left side of my chest and back it was decided to have Dr Jim come to the house and check it out. Who gets shingles? This girl does-apparently those 25 mosquito bites that left scars that I had as a kid were actually chicken pox. So this is my journey because I won't be doing a thing for the next few days until these horse pills are gone. Yes the horse pills I have to take 5 times a day... so far, so good... lots of water, and lots of snacks including fudge stripe cookies.

Honorably Creative

You walk in, and the pews are wooden, the walls are wooden, the floor a non noteworthy color, there is a large bench at the front of the room with a chair... Your mind tells you that you are in a safe space. You are being judged and charged right off the bat except here there are no little baskets passed around. You have been directed in written for to this room, you're not sure whether to feel safe or on edge. After a few hours you are asked to join a group of people at the front of the room... your heart beat accelerates as you say your last name...

"Williams"

They look and you're not listed... You show the paperwork to them, they say you are in the wrong space. I'm sorry if they write you a letter and tell you to go to the blue room and you have the options of blue or red one would pick the blue right? <Just checking in case I was taught wrong and blue was actually red>

Where do I go? We don't know... 

Alright off to the office where the 'secretary' sits <note "secret-ary" as she was both>

"Ohh you're supposed to be in the red room"

"Ok wheres that?"

Across the breezeway, in the glass doors, around your ass, up the elevator and in the secret mystery room on the right...

Half way there I ask directions again... Aha! I find it, a bit more cozy, call it the Methodist church vs the Presbyterian if you will.

Ohh you were not here and the discussion has already happened. Have a nice day.

NO! NO! and No! I'm livid.... I have travels 6 hours to get here, took 2 days off of work THIS is not okay. 

What is this anger that I am feeling... and what do I do with it? 

Wash it away first, a a few tears well up in my eyes, I let them go. Now that is done so time to study up, feel the 2nd and 3rd chakras, find your will power and get creative.

"I'm going to need a note that I am here today please, and no is not an appropriate answer, and you can bet I will be back for this is not over."

They shifted the energetics over towards me, I am tossing it back

How do you deflect your energy from manipulation? When you know without a shadow of a doubt that you have been hoodwinked, what do you do? How do you honorably find that creativity and the will to enact it. 

"Who is a man that does not make his world a better place"

Finding Your Beat

Recently we hosted a drum circle at Odinstone Labyrinth for the Full Blue Moon of August 2012. The morning of the event a yoga guru who taught me a lot about going with the flow of life passed into a new life of his own. As I was saddened by the loss, it brought up emotions of others that I have lost both physically and emotionally over this past year. As I waited for the full moon to rise her shiny cheeks up over the tree tops I struggled with finding my beat, it seemed like every knock on my drum was completely off of everyone else. Considering my friend and guru had first introduced me to drumming and I knew he would be drumming somewhere on this particular full moon, I asked to do a set in his honour. The emcee let me say a few words about my dear friend and then he asked me to set the beat for the circle...

Oh my, I have no beat, I've been battling this in my head for the last hour... what do I do?

You feel it...

Just as I would have been instructed by the guru himself, I found a few terrible notes and then found that beat. As that beat led me, I let my mind wonder, and it was apparent that this is a metaphor of life. When you're not sure where to go, what to do, or what note to hit... just go with your instincts-the beat will come. You may misstep once in a 'blue moon' but the beat will come granted you let it. You are your own obstacle. You are that rock in the steam that your prana will flow past if you flow with grace.

Love Letters

I recently found a box filled with love letters, love letters between my grandma and grandpa. They were married and within a week he was shipped off to boot camp in VA, then to Germany for the Korean War. The letters are amazing, the love that they shared via handwritten letters is beautiful.

"I sure do miss you darling..." he would write.

As this world of internet and social media overtakes all of our lives (seeing that I am "blogging"-a term surely foreign to my grandparents) I hope that we all take time to send a handwritten letter every now and then. If anything keep a handwritten journal, something that is tangible and can be held by generations that will prosper after we are long gone. I hope that one day someone will read my journal and laugh, snicker, and cry as the spells I cast in ink are brought to life, just as I have with those of my elders past.

Community

What builds community? What makes you feel as though you are a part of something? When was that moment of realization?

A Testimonial:

"I felt secure and safe, a feeling-in that particular time of my life-was exactly what I needed. I thought I was being hard and independent, that I could do anything. At the end of the day I felt the most at ease on my yoga mat, even with the unknown staring me down, I knew that I had support in the earth, my mat neighbors, and my yoga community. The best part... my yoga mat neighbors didn't even know the amount of support they were supplying (a testament that even if you feel tired and don't want to, for some odd reason, go to yoga class-your mat neighbors may need you there) Those "mat neighbors" will always be a part of my kula, they lent support during a very transformational time in my life.

So thank you to all of those unknown mat neighbors for sharing your energy."

Sending love to my kula... Who are your gurus?

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