Assess: New Year's Revolutions

original art by Kate Kroska

Musing…  

I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung.  - Rabindranath Tagore

This is the time of year that we resolve to change something in our life, and by week 3, we realize we’re unable to sustain our resolution. Our old habits pull us back into that well-worn rut. Revolution: revolving around that orbit (path) again, and again, and again.

I say we choose THIS definition: “ a radical, complete and fundamental change; overthrowing one system and substituting with another”. We’ve seen plenty of this in our world recently. What is the change YOU wish to become in 2012?

Kate’s Turn: 

I rather like this perspective on change: throwing something off that just doesn’t fit anymore, rather than putting effort into making myself change. Perhaps deep beneath our conditioned self lies a creative, powerful being, waiting to be freed from restriction, fear and sabotage to express its unique gift to the world. Of course, I believe this!  So as I look forward in 2012, I ponder what it is I wish to leave behind, what outdated, ineffective system do I wish to overthrow. This is about letting the false layers fall away to reveal the truth of who we are. So as I imagine reviewing my year at the end of 2012, I am satisfied and delighted with all the expressions of creativity I risked – in my art, my work, my life, and I am so proud of all the times I looked fear in the face and said “What do I have to lose?  I’m betting on the love/fire in my heart!”

I, along with Oriah Mountain Dreamer, offer you this New Year’s Wish:

“ . . .. that we live our deepest Soul's desire not by intending

                             to change who we are but by intending to be who we are." 

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Get Fired Up: 

Allow Steve Jobs to inspire you to go for that radical and fundamental change you desire:

"Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
       - Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement address, June 12, 2005 

Assess: Lift Off

Musing…

“There are a lot of unemployed angels out there”, my friend Jasmine advised me when I was highway driving at night in a downpour of rain. She was sitting in the passenger seat, calmly offering an antidote to my discomfort at the wheel. Jasmine, who herself had been in a car accident that totaled her car a year before, and whose left foot will never be the same as a result, speaking with certainty about that which has no certainty. After I took her home, I drove back the same route uttering “angelride” like a mantra, like a newfound religion, asking at least one angel to ride along.  

Charise’s Turn:

Let’s go one step further. Rumi says,

“You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?”

It’s a new year, time to spread my own wings. I have two directions in my professional life – dance/yoga/movement and writing/consulting/coaching. My mind for several years has not been able to put the two together in any coherent fashion. Where do they meet? They spring from two different sources -- a masters in dance/movement therapy and a masters in social work. I’ve often thought that one dilutes the other, even when I know that one has to inform the other. I separate them all the time, especially when someone asks me what I do, choosing to highlight a single endeavor. My plan for 2012 is to wear these two directions like a pair of wings. This is more than an image, this is a desire, a call to action, and is already taking effect in redesigning my website. 

Get Fired Up:

Remember your wings and how you are meant to fly!

If not now...when?

Rest: Is Re-membering

Musing….
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

--Albert Camus

Winter is the season of rest – for the earth, for hibernating animals, for humans as well. Nature teaches us to slow down, be quiet, and invites us to enter a stillness as of softly falling snow and a silent star-studded sky.  Allowing yourself to go to that deeply profound area of calm within you fosters a remembrance of who you are at your deepest core.  Pulling inward, like curling up in front of a fireplace, gives you a reprieve from the fragmenting of busy lives in order to re-member your deepest, truest self.

Kate’s Turn:
Summer and autumn are high-energy seasons; much is produced and harvested. In the creative cycle, this is an exciting time, full of activity and production. And it can also leave us exhausted and depleted at times. Having moved almost 4 months ago, I am gladly enjoying the winter’s rest. I’ve dedicated twilight as a meditation time to enter this stillness,  to gradually release outward activity for inward nurturance of who I am…..values, passions, longings that direct my living. I re-member that my expression of creativity in watercolors feeds my spirit, and so I must factor that in now that I am more settled. In this winter’s depth of silence, I can connect to that innate creative wellspring within me.

Get Fired Up:
Give yourself presents (presence) this season in re-membering your lovely self…Blessings!

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing. . .
     — Galway Kinnell from the poem Saint Francis and the Sow in Three Books

Rest: Is Constructive

Musing…

If rest were about stopping, or quitting, or being passive, I would have left this post blank to demonstrate this. Instead, let’s entertain the idea that rest is active. Rest is active because life has a fullness of presence within you no matter what you are doing, or not doing.  

Charise’s Turn:

Have you heard of constructive rest? This is a technique I learned in the early 1980s as part of my education for a master’s degree in dance/movement therapy. What we did is lie on the floor with our feet planted and knees bent and arms crossed over each other at our chests, even allowing the knees to rest against each other so that the least amount of effort was employed to support the body (described further in Human Movement Potential by Lulu Sweigard, PhD). 

Our instructor, Andre Bernard, led us through a visualization of being a suit of clothes, allowing for more slackness of muscles and emptying of holding patterns. This was a way of coming to neutral, of inhibiting habits of tension. He told us that stress is necessary in life, that a stress free body is a dead body, that eliminating stress is not a goal, that greater ease in the body and more efficiency of movement can be accomplished with constructive rest.  

Get Fired Up:

Get on the floor!  Place the soles of your feet onto the surface you are lying on so that your knees are bent, and allow your arms to drape across your chest or at your sides. Close your eyes and follow your breathing, rest.

Do it again another day. Get on the floor! 

Rest: The Gift of Idleness

Musing…  
Shakespeare said “Intervals of idleness are essential to creative work.”  The Idler (UK magazine) proposes that idleness has little in common with laziness; rather, it’s more about the notion of contemplative productivity with the minimum of fuss (philosophy of Gavin Pretor-Pinney, co-founder of The Idler magazine). ALL the rest of nature does this during the winter season – why don’t we?

Kate’s Turn:  I’ve been anything BUT idle recently. In fact, I feel constantly pressured by so much to do in such little time; I’m still unpacking boxes, still looking for work, still developing a coaching practice, still shopping for winter clothing, etc. But instinctively, the decreasing amount of daylight and decreasing temperatures lead me to pull inward and rest. I feel like just watching the leaves fall, like basking in the yellow glow of the sunny maple leaves, like staring at the bonfire flames.  I’m trusting that all these outcomes will be generated in due time, if only I take the necessary time to sit within my core essence and be in sync with all of nature by slowing down to a point of minimum fuss. 

Following these examples of nature, I’ve introduced a new meditation into my routine at twilight.  While quieting my outer self during the fading light, I’m connecting to a new depth within myself-that stillpoint of core essence, Source Energy, from which all of my life flows. Resting in this place is a nurturing activity for future creative expression.

Get Fired Up:  
As we enter a busy time of year in outward activity, how will you honor your internal well of creativity with your presence?  
Listen and respond as idleness beckons……….

Rest: Sitting with Change

Musing…

“Don't go outside your house to see flowers.

My friend, don't bother with that excursion.

Inside your body there are flowers.

One flower has a thousand petals.

That will do for a place to sit.

Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty

inside the body and out of it,

before gardens and after gardens. “

-- Kabir

Charise’s Turn: My twenty three year old daughter was just promoted to a management position in her company which requires her to relocate from her hometown to Boston. After the flurry of activity to get packed, make arrangements for moving, visit with family and friends, the day to leave arrives. Departing for this major life change consists of sitting in the car, sitting in the airport, sitting in the plane. Sitting allows for a break from busyness, from doingness, to rest in the place between places, neither there nor here. This rest is rich with all the life she’s lived so far and all the life ahead of her.

It is while sitting together just in front of the security line at the airport that she puts her arms around me and says, “I feel sad to be leaving”.  This isn’t about second thoughts, or wanting to turn back or stop moving forward. This is about the absolute insistence of growth.

Get Fired Up:

Within you is the imperative for growth and creativity -- wherever you go and when you are at rest or between places, goals, destinations, certainties. 

Sit with your self, with who you are, as you are.

Routine/Ritual: Practice, Practice, Practice

Musing…
”Ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert-in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn't address why some people don't seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”
      -- from the book This Is Your Brain On Music, The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin

Kate’s Turn:

I LOVE this fact!  It promises me results if I show up with perseverance. Of course, one needs to choose the areas you want proficiency in to invest those hours of practice. I have experience of this in many areas of my life: cooking, learning Spanish, sailing and other sports, my professional work, etc.  And most recently, learning watercolor painting. And currently, tap dancing!!! Even in the 2^nd lesson, I improved to my great delight. 

There is another practice that could be implied here: doing something daily to support your creative energies. During my morning walk, I ground myself, and remind myself of my expansive and creative nature. This daily reminder creates myself anew.  It is a time to reflect on how I create my life each moment, in my thoughts and in my actions. Am I practicing for the results I wish to achieve?

Get Fired Up:

Review all the things you’ve become accomplished at, simply through practice. 

Reflect on this question:  What am I creating for my life?

Have you heard about the guy who asked the taxi driver “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”  The taxi driver replied, “PRACTICE!”