I want to be like the maples, letting go so easily of their leaves in the slightest autumn breeze, surrendering every piece of themselves they no longer need, and embracing bareness like a new suit they can simply step into. But I’m more like the beech trees, which cling to the husks of their leaves…
And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain. And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at…
Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. And I fold them in prayer, and they draw from the heavens light. by St Francis of Assisi interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky A few days ago I was sitting and practicing with a sadness I felt around how…
Sing, my tongue; sing, my hand; sing, my feet; my knee, my loins, my whole body. Indeed I am His choir. by St. Thomas Aquinas When I rest in body awareness, I allow the field of experience which is my body to speak to me. I hold the intention to listen with gentleness. This…
Wake up. Day calls you to your life: your duty. Tear your body from the black night and the shadows that covered it, this body for which light waited on tiptoe at dawn. Stand up, affirm the straight, simple will to be perfect, unbent purity. Touch the temple of your body. Is it hot? Cold?…
Throw the doors wide open and step into the enormous palace inside of you. Breathe. Breathe into every space. Feel every sensation. The joyful warmth of shared love and the vast emptiness that sometimes echoes around our hearts. The excited clarity of inspired thought as well as that clustered maze inside our heads. That deep…
Within the body you are wearing, now inside the bones and beating in the heart, lives the one you have been searching for so long. But you must stop running away and shake hands, the meeting doesn’t happen without your presence . . . your participation. The same one waiting for you there is moving…
Don’t go outside your house to see the 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 beautyInside the body and out of it,Before gardens and after gardens. by Kabir I was immediately…
Our body is a wonderfully complex machine. We have the ability to move in so many different directions allowing a vast array of shapes, movements and postures without having to think about doing it. In specific movement classes such as yoga and pilates, we find that neural pathways need to connect automatically for these movements…