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The Last Flip of the Perpetual Calendar
(Sabbatical/Sabbatical)
... glorious white space I’ve inhabited this past year. For fifteen months, I’ve read, written, studied, reflected—and I’ve sat in silence for hours on end. But the luxury of this sort of living is coming ...
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July 2010 State-of-the-Household Letter
(Journal/Journal)
... itself nicely, in spite of the contradictory directions I’ve received from numerous health-care professionals (most of whom make me think of Mr. Magoo as they blindly bump around a ridiculously complicated ...
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Twelve Doors is Leaving Home
(Twelve Doors/Twelve Doors)
It’s the last day of June, and I feel like the sabbatical is truly ended. I’ve enjoyed a full fourteen months of freedom to study, learn, and write. And, ta-da, the book is ...
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Where Do Prompts Come From?
(Twelve Doors/Twelve Doors)
... of books I’ve been reading, activities I’ve engaged in, emotions I’ve grappled with, people I’ve adored, disappointments I’ve endured. Life seems like an answer to a whole series of cosmic questions these ...
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Misguided Yogi
(Lessons from the Mat/Lessons from the Mat)
... though appealing to me, has been challenging. I have not been a natural to the asana practice, and I’m not especially strong. And still I’ve taken up the eight-limbed path of ashtanga yoga, believing ...
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Live Life Beyond Words
(Sabbatical/Sabbatical)
... what I’ve been reading? When does understanding descend? It does not feel good. All this advice has my head spinning, my heart pulled in all directions. Is this a message? Does my body know something ...
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Lean in to the Difficulty
(Influences/Influences)
... Try out a new lifestyle and see if it fits, if it works for me at this stage of life. But as I’ve said elsewhere, things haven’t gone the way I planned. That’s an understatement. This year has been ...
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Can You Wiggle Your Toes?
(Journal/Journal)
... all day. In my morning reading today, though, I realized one particular emotion undergirds everything I’ve been feeling about this life event, and that is disappointment. It came to me so ...
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April 2010 Reading
(Influences/Influences)
... a Psychology of Awakening. This is one of the most helpful books I’ve read this year. Welwood’s approach to therapy is infused with Buddhist practice, and it is an approach that works for me right ...
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In This New Space
(Journal/Journal)
... this experience, is there a way you can embrace it, so that when you look back on this time you are actually glad that it happened to you? Well, the questions have been very provocative. I’ve sat ...
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A New Kind of Balance
(Journal/Journal)
... being, and continue to deepen and extend consciousness. A daily practice helps us address our need to fulfill longings for experiencing life fully. And that’s why I’ve been so frustrated. I feel ...
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Devotion to the Practice
(Journal/Journal)
... drawn to her, the gardens, and her work. I am dedicated to learning to be a good yoga teacher and to developing my own deep ashtanga yoga practice. Part of my distress with the foot injury I’ve ...
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Pop
(Journal/Journal)
... ways I am able to teach and share that practice with others. I was even looking forward to returning to work and being able to teach my students what I’ve learned this year about practice. Along with ...
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What is Your Dharma This Year?
(Sabbatical/Sabbatical)
... realized that in the writing I do (which is almost always about me!), I too am looking for patterns of personality and patterns of yearning. In fact, I might say that for years I’ve been a student of ...
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February 2010 Reading
(Influences/Influences)
... course. 2. A Dog Year, by Jon Katz I think this is my fourth Jon Katz book, and I just love him. I’ve been reading the books out of order, and this book tells the story of how he came to take ...
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I Think I'm Depressed
(Influences/Influences)
... You are tired from lack of sleep. You are aging in the normal ways. You are re-adjusting yourself to a new role in life. (I realize I am committing the same error I’ve criticized Katz of; details can ...
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January 2010 Reading
(Influences/Influences)
... to take reading recommendations from casual acquaintances. She has no clue about what I like, of course. Still, I’ve been laid up for a while, and I gave myself permission to do some light reading. ...
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The Last Issue Of Poets & Writers Magazine
(Sabbatical/Sabbatical)
... I with advice on writing. And I have ignored the calls for manuscripts in the back of the magazine for years. Still, I’ve held on to the subscription out of I-don’t-know-what: duty, or guilt, or shame. ...
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Best Laid Plans. . .
(Journal/Journal)
... to what makes me unhappy? (Could this be a destructive conditioned response??) I’ve written about this in other blogs, so I won’t belabor this point YET AGAIN. Still these feelings have been baffling ...
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Hating Writing/Loving to Have Written
(Sabbatical/Sabbatical)
... point toward a distant horizon, is a sure sign that you are supposed to do the thing in the first place. The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be” (115). So I’ve been feeling ...