(Re)opening to Joy 🍓

I recently found a big, juicy heart-shaped strawberry in a box of strawberries as I was making breakfast (see proof below ). I LOVE strawberries and instantly was filled with excitement over receiving this unexpected gift wrapped in red and green. As I held the strawberry in my palm, I was transported back to childhood memories going strawberry picking in the fields during the summer. I remembered the smell of strawberries in the air, the thrill of searching for and discovering them under the leaves, and the absolute pleasure of eating as many of them as I could. I made the strawberry heart the crowning addition of my breakfast creation and savored every bite.

Delighting in this strawberry filled me with so much joy. After 1+ years filled with challenges which have tested (and continue to test) us all, it felt like an invitation from life to (re)open to joy. To just be alive in the moment. To open to the pleasure of the senses. To find simple delights everywhere - the taste of a favorite food, a hug from a loved one, the light during golden hour.

Danna Faulds writes: “All you ever longed for is before you in this moment if you dare draw in a breath and whisper “yes”.”

It will take time to heal and recover individually and collectively, and it’s important to be gentle with ourselves and create space for all the emotions that need to be felt. We can go slow as we figure out how to re-engage with each other in-person and co-create new ways of relating and working together. Opening to joy and life’s simple delights can be a helpful companion along the way.

Given our evolutionary pull to focus on the negative, it takes intention to cultivate joy in our life. We can practice turning our attention to what’s good even amidst the challenges and actively engage in activities that spark joy in us. We can also actively open to joy and savor joyful moments when we’re in the middle of them.

What brings you joy? What does joy feel like in your body, mind, and heart when it arises?

In joy,

Sarah-Marie

🚶Getting out of your head

I have a tendency to get stuck in my head when I’m busy, stressed, and spend lots of time starring at a computer screen. I obsessively think about some problem to solve, get lost in elaborate stories about this and that, judge myself and others, worry about the future, … I'm mentally overstimulated and disconnected from my body. Everything feels urgent and time seems to be never enough. Maybe you can relate?
 
During a recent stressful period, getting my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine brought me straight back into my body, into the present moment. My entire body felt achy and alive. It felt like an intense field of changing sensations – aching, warmth, throbbing, stabbing, tingling, … - which drew my attention.

I remembered a quote by Pema Chödron: “This very body that we have, that’s sitting here right now, with its aches and its pleasures, is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.”

I took my achy body to a virtual somatics lab during which we practiced tuning in with our body’s intelligence. Slowing down and doing different somatic practices, I felt fully alive and present amidst the achy sensations and fatigue I was experiencing. My body and mind were in the same place at the same time. Listening inwardly and getting curious, my body told me what my mind hadn't wanted to allow: "Simply rest. Sink into comfort and ease."  
 
The body knows what's needed. The body always lives in the present moment and can bring us back to reality. It can be one of our greatest teachers and guides. I'd trust my body over my thoughts any day. 

Being more aware of our body can enable us to better engage with our family, partner, friends, colleagues, clients, and others. It can help us stay present and centered through moments when we get triggered, challenging conversations, and difficult decisions. It can support us in taking a stand for what we know to be true and better defining our boundaries. 

And yet, it's difficult for many of us to be fully home in our bodies. Trying to control our experience as a survival instinct, we're not fully present to the aliveness that's here. With practice, we can become aware when we're lost in thoughts and turn our attention to what's actually happening inside of us.
 
The following questions have been helpful for me to get out of my head and bring curiosity to my embodied experience: 

What is happening inside me right now?
Can I be with this?
Is there something the body (or a part of the body) is trying to say?

With love,

Sarah-Marie

Start close in - taking a self-compassion break 💗

“We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time… Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being soft and unrepeatable.” - Mark Nepo, from The Book of Awakening

I’ve been spent the past 10 days on a silent meditation retreat (at home!) “ungloving” myself to feel what’s real and alive. To pause, listen inwardly, and be as kind and gentle as possible with whatever called for my attention underneath my protective coverings. With nothing to do but be, there was no shortage of tough stuff to explore (especially in these intense times!). The familiar stories of being deeply flawed, undeserving, unworthy of love and connection until I’m “perfect.”

I’ve realized anew how easy it is to forget the truth of who we are – our innate goodness and belonging. It’s truly a tragedy how much time we spend trying to cover up our insecurity and be what we think others want us to be. As Galway Kinnell writes, “sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.”

I always find it helpful to remember our shared humanity: We all have messy lives and carry wounds of not feeling loved, accepted, seen, understood, and safe to varying degrees.

As someone who’s never felt that I fit neatly into any one community, I love this reminder by Sebene Selassie: “Weirdos. Will. Slay. Because not fitting in to any one community is a super power. But only if you choose to fit into yourself first.” (here’s a beautiful example of what that can look like )

Fitting into ourselves first takes self-acceptance and self-compassion. We start close in and bring awareness and kindness to our difficult emotions, experience, and hurt parts. We tend to ourselves first so we can better widen the circles of our compassion outward and support others.

One powerful way to cultivate self-compassion is through the practice of RAIN. It invites us to be with our emotions and actual lived experience with mindfulness and compassion. The acronym RAIN stands for:

1. Recognize: Seeing clearly what's going on and how we are stuck inside an experience;

2. Allow: Creating space to be with the experience just as it is;

3. Investigate: Moving from the story and beliefs to getting in touch with the actual lived experience, with kindness; and

4. Nurture: Offering kindness inwardly.

Here's a ~16 min guided RAIN practice.

I let it RAIN over and over again during the retreat and found more spaciousness, freedom, and a deep sense of love and belonging.

May you always remember your loveliness. And if you don't believe it, I'll believe it for you.

With love,

Sarah-Marie

How can we find our center amidst what is? 🌊

This past week marks the one-year anniversary of all of us plunging into a global pandemic. Last March, I could never have imagined how much life as we knew it would change. Over the past year, we’ve also been invited to grapple with systemic racism, political polarization, climate change, our mental health crisis, and other painful truths of our time. It’s been a year of hard things and then some.

Tossed by the waves of change, we’ve all experienced loss, grief, and pain in one form or another. We may have been feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or frustrated. We may have been paralyzed by the uncertainty of it all and unable to imagine our next steps forward. Or we may have been in denial of the reality and magnitude of the disruptions.

Amidst change and uncertainty, how can we find our center to envision and create a path forward?

Equanimity is a helpful inner resource in these times of continued change and uncertainty. Equanimity is a sense of openness, care, and ease amidst whatever comes and goes. It allows us to stay centered and look beyond judgment and self-interest as we engage with a range of people and situations in our life and work.

Poet William Butler Yeats wrote: “We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”

Equanimity involves clearly seeing what’s going on inside and around us and choosing to respond in a non-reactive way. It’s not indifference, withdrawal, or not caring. It means accepting (rather than resisting) reality so we can live, feel, envision, and create solutions and new ways forward, fully centered in what’s so.

We might say to ourselves: “This moment is like this... And it doesn’t have to be different right now. I can allow what’s here and respond with what’s needed.”

And equanimity also means realizing that despite our best efforts to be of service, we may not be able to care for and support every person and issue we wish to.

We can grow our capacity for equanimity through formal mindfulness practice. We can also cultivate it by focusing on intentions for equanimity throughout the day. Below are a few equanimity phrases that I've used:

May I find peace and ease amidst it all.

May I see the world with clear, calm, and compassionate eyes.

May I offer my care and support, knowing I cannot control others’ pain or the course of life.

May I have the inner resources needed to contribute where I’m needed.

May I be free from unconscious bias and limiting beliefs.

I invite you to find two or three that resonate (or create your own) and call them to mind at different times as you move through the day.

What if we met the coming months with an attitude of equanimity?

With love,

Sarah-Marie