Gorgeouses, I come bearing gifts today! I’ll give you the best one first. Here. TAKE HER!:
This dog, Betty White, is a mud magnet! She loves to get down and dirty. So we bathe her, as the Rascal would say, “a lot a lot of.” It’s obviously great having an entire lake at our disposal for just such a purpose….
The second gift is actually a poem I heard when I got in the car the other day and spontaneously turned on a Deepak Chopra radio show. I guess it was poetry night, but I’m not sure. I was in the car for 5 minutes, just long enough to hear this poem start-to-finish — kismet. The poem’s a little extremely intense, but it speaks to me, so I thought I’d share it with you….
The grapes of my body can only become wine
After the winemaker tramples me.
I surrender my spirit like grapes to his trampling
So my inmost heart can blaze and dance with joy.
Although the grapes go on weeping blood and sobbing,
“I cannot bear any more anguish, any more cruelty,”
The trampler stuffs cotton in his ears: “I am not working in
ignorance.
You can deny me if you want, you have every excuse,
But it is I who am the Master of this Work.
And when through my Passion you reach Perfection,
You will never be done praising my name.”
– Rumi (1207-1273).
I know. Woahhh. Still, it’s hard to get through entire novels these days. So there’s kind of nothing like a good poem from the dark ages to brighten your intellect, at least for a little while, right?
The third gift is a song and an idea mixed into one. I got this idea from the fabulous Kris Carr, and my kids and I are loving it (plus it’s great exercise)! Here goes: Dance to one song every single day. Inevitably, if you dance to one song, you’ll find you want to dance to two, three, etc.. Here’s what we’re dancing to today, one of our faves…. DANCE!
The fourth gift is just a gift I got today. I got to go to an ashtanga yoga conference. I brought the Monkey with me because I love the community so much, and I thought it’d be good for her to absorb some of the culture and positive energy.
While she drew pictures on my notebook, I listened intently to the wise David Robson explain why ON EARTH we do this extreme style of yoga 6 days a week, come hell or high water, children climbing on me or dog pawing my head, cats licking my mat or self-defeating thoughts plaguing my brain. And he talked about issues that really hit home for me — given my recent newsflash.
I think, to borrow his words, I’ve given my negative thoughts about myself and my body “a home” since I gained all this weight, to the point where I haven’t been able to even imagine myself slim again — which is problematic when your doctor gently suggests you better lose weight or else! By practising the very challenging Ashtanga yoga every day, I’m practising recognizing, and hence changing, such (negative) thought patterns.
So, eureka. Gift. I hope that helps you too. Even if you don’t practice yoga, it’s helpful to recognize the thoughts that contribute to what ails us.
When I get on my mat every day, I do in a sense go to battle. Not only against (or alongside) some of the more challenging poses of this practice, but against anxious or self-conscious thoughts that get in the way, attachments, and against time — which might actually be the biggest, most telling battle of all.
Love!
xo Haley-O
