Sometimes I teach a class and sometimes that very class teaches me. Well, actually, that’s pretty much always how it rolls. And lately, with my colleagues out of town, I’ve been on a prolonged roll.

Fairy tales…ancient wisdom. Strange that two of these stories dropped in my lap at once: The Handless Maiden and Vasa Lisa. Lucky enough to receive these two stories by listening intently. Usually I learn best physically doing as I observe, kinesthetic supported by visual.

GPS is trendy awesome. Tap a screen, eerie voice calls the shots, arrive at destination. I’m always clear about where the GPS journey begins but I’ve only a vague idea of the territory I traverse leading to the destination.

The moment I read this quote, it launched an arrow straight to my heart. I knew it to be truth. I longed for it to be my truth. Yet I had done enough excavating, enough rooting around in the depths to know that longing for something is not the same as owning it. And kindness had just never been my default under stress.

Every so often my writing is completely inspired by something read in Lion’s Roar magazine whose sub-title is “Buddhist wisdom to awaken your heart and mind.” It nearly always keeps that monthly promise, delivering a golden nugget, sometimes a sizeable rock.

Broad perspective and a long life: double whammy needed for revelation of often astounding patterns. Our physical body is so uber-familiar, so basic, so much a seamless part of our 24/7 experience. Understandable how we can be blind to the obvious: fascia and bones, muscles and ligaments, breath and being self-organizing over the decades. This below surface domain fascinates me---in myself and in you. And this year has brought me full circle on one of these patterns.

I opened email this morning and this excerpt from a James Broughton poem that I love---Having Come This Far---just leaped off the screen into my heart. I love when that happens. An invitation to seize the moment, sit right down, feel deeply and write.

I had a pedestal teacher for ten years. Not that she put herself up on one. I did. Somehow I’d arrived well into middle age without ever listening in rapt attention at someone’s feet. Learning by absorption. Direct shamanic transmission. Which is the only way I can describe how I learned 5Rhythms from Gabrielle Roth. She had no curriculum or lesson plans or any plan at all. She simply exuded and I assimilated.

Except for suffering long heat spells, I adore summer. I suppose even a hot streak has its upside, creating hibernation energy reminiscent of deep winter. And it sure forges conversational bridges with random strangers...people really bond over weather extremes. I can commiserate with the best of them. But more than anything, I love the way summer pulls me out of my cozy nest of the school year.

Gauging from your response to “no feeling is final”, many are afloat in the boat of despair. Certainly a comfort to know we’re not alone, yet I’m in need of more than commiseration. Among the many replies was one from my friend Carrie who shared an essay that went beyond misery loves company. Martin Shaw is a mythologist, author, storyteller and general wise guy. His musings lifted me considerably. Highly recommended reading. What follows is inspired by his cogent thoughts.

Have you ever looked at your To Do list and not wanted to do? At all? Those who know me well recognize this as pretty weird and completely atypical. I’ve been blessed/cursed with an energy surplus my whole life. In moments like this, I feel myself yearning for this curse. Instead I am experiencing this pervasive flat-line feeling. An eerie quietness of being sprinkled with moments of resistance. Resistance to what? Sinking into judgment that this quietness is just a cover for lazy, uninspired, bored.

January 2005: trapped in a corner office of my own creation.  Boxed into medical space, clear manifestation of a mid-life professional with thirty plus years of clinical experience, beaucoup continuing education and rock steady community standing.  I swiveled my ergonomic chair away from the wide world windows and, once again, escaped into a ragged scrap of butcher paper covering one wall.  A vast scribbled triangle, three angles pointing me out of the box, a fantasy world I was primed to eventually inhabit: physical therapy, yoga, 5Rhythms dance.  I had no friggin’ idea how-where-when, but I was super-clear on why.  Whenever I practiced any one of these three triangle points, the other two were perpetually leaking in.

Delivering health care. It’s what I do. What I’ve done my entire adult life. This calling has morphed and evolved in such a way that some, as they survey my working field, would not call it health care. I beg to differ. Through this morph and evolution I‘ve been challenged, bent sideways, shaped, pushed, grown….and ultimately divinely supported and nourished. Today I’m writing about three ways women can be pro-active about their health. Not excluding you men readers, read on.

I have this way early childhood memory of a circular creation defining months of the year: December at 11 o’clock, April at 2, June at 5, September at 8 o’clock. No idea at all how this landed in my consciousness, but I was always uber-aware of the orbiting passage of seasons. Years later this sensibility has only deepened.

Thank the good lord ninety percent of folks coming for physical therapy in my current practice are garden variety. Because atypical requires deeper investigation and the prognosis is more dicey, less definitive. We don’t imagine our own pain might follow a predictable human pattern. We’re pretty convinced we’re weird or special. And we are. But luckily most of us are garden variety, presenting with constant or come & go discomfort in hip or low back, shoulder or neck, knee or foot. Maybe jaw, elbow, wrist, hand. Perhaps with accompanying headache or sensation that radiates into arm or leg.

I remember my father stretched out on that burnt orange 60’s couch, my well-worn algebra text in his sturdy hands. Each time I kneeled on the floor by him, he knew precisely where to embark, how to lead without giving away too much, when to halt and let me stumble around on my own. Our relationship was far from easy, but I could always count on his teaching skill. Little did I know that what I was really learning was just that. Teaching, a calling that has manifested in different forms throughout my life.

There’s something about a road trip, evocative of sweet youth, spontaneous wildness, touching what’s tucked away inside, a place that begs exposure. Something about the open road, potential around each bend, brings me alive in a way different than other experience. The way we arrived at road-tripping the southwest for ten days was so random, and grew out of spending time at our favorite Sedona locale last Fall.

Some years pass, marked by a birthday, and just to recall where I was on that day a year ago requires a deep dig. Even pulling up remarkable events that came to pass during the previous year can be baffling. Know what I mean? It’s not exactly same-old, same-old but youth bulges with sizable change: kindergarten becomes first grade, size 10 becomes size 14, marriage happens, degrees are earned, babies arrive, first jobs become second ones. And then, to a relative extent, maybe we settle in and appreciate more subtle evolution: a book leaves a mark, a trip opens new worlds, a practice opens internal doorways, a friendship goes deep. Not that the inevitable shifts in the big stuff---birth, illness, death, relationship---go away.

September 2015…travelling in Italy, overwhelmed with the beauty and having some come-to-Jesus moments with my scoliosis. In the midst of our time, so far from home and community, I learn that Harbin Hot Springs---my deepest spirit home---is consumed in wildfire. So much heartache, so many gut-wrenching tears. This loss created a distinct hole in my heart.

I don’t like to visit doctors. Not big on routine exams. Surely they’ll find something if they start looking. I generally go when I’m in need. And I’ve been in need this year. After surgery, aftermath, radiation, I was referred to Maxine Barish-Wreden, a holistic/integrative practitioner, someone I already knew from my connections with Sutter.