Still soaking in four days of utter quiet yoga retreat, Orr Hot Springs. I knew the teacher and one other participant, a rare escapade cloaked in anonymity. There was absence of polite engagement, lack of demand for my time, zero obligatory social updates. I came and went as I pleased, unbound as it were. Introvert that I am---the one who has learned how to be out in the world---totally honored, supported by gentle asana guidance and balm of hot water. And I was surprised by what arose from silence, emptiness, spaciousness.

Collaging. I love this art form. Quiet hypnosis rifling through images, listening for what calls, what evokes visceral, sometimes repulsive, response. The visual inspiring magic. I don’t fancy myself a visual artist, but I revel in reframing someone else’s creativity. Sometimes I turn to this form because something specific needs expression. More often than not, it’s a form of guidance, almost tarot-like, a reading of juxtapositions. Post-reflection or interpretation is often surprising. Such was the one up top

My heart is raw this morning: tender scared clear confused raging depressed hoping against hope. A hard time reconciling the beauty of these children with current reality of the world. How can peace such as this be possible? And how can we go on if it’s not? I simply just do not know and that has to be OK.

Perspective: the capacity to view things in true relation or relative importance. There are moments that naturally instill a broad perspective and year-end is traditional for the long view. I’m not big on resolution, but I’m an ardent fan of perspective.

Sometimes we’re in practice magic. A realization lands and, in the space of one moment,  everything appears different than it was, fresh, brimming with truth.  Like there was then but now it is now.  Like recognizing someone you haven’t seen in ages, someone who has always been there, but just not visible.  I had one of those moments on the dance floor November 20. 

A regular visitor to my home hobbled in on one of those awkward walking boots this week. I had no idea she’d been struggling with foot and ankle pain for six months. She recounted a familiar sad saga. Slow onset; chiropractic visits to no avail.

In all ways big and small, I’m noticing the dynamic duo of willingness and curiosity as key hallmarks for a life that thrives. Evidence is plastered all over my work experiences. When a new patient arrives full of questions with an eagerness to co-create…this is such a predictor of favorable outcome.

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.