Embodied Joy

Embodied Joy

Yesterday I danced in the kitchen and felt JOY.  Earlier this week, I watched a funny movie and felt JOY moving through me as I belly laughed again and again. Last Saturday I got sweaty hiking up a mountain and felt JOY.  And who could forget the sex that left me breathless with JOY?

I think I’ve had it all wrong about JOY. For years I believed that JOY was an emotion that lives in the heart. If you had asked me what JOY was a month ago, I would have said something about JOY being a loving emotion of the heart. But now I’m beginning to think JOY is a full body emotion. JOY is embodied.

Why are little kids so JOYful? They live in their bodies!  Little kids don’t think their way through life, they jiggle and wiggle and dance through life. Life is a full body experience for little kids. Why are many adults so serious and JOY-less?  I’m guessing it has a lot to do with thinking their way through every experience.  By adulthood, body has become secondary to brain and life loses a lot of its JOY.

When I manage to get out of my head and allow myself to experience life through every sensation in my body, JOY spontaneously bubbles up inside of me. JOY fills me.

Hmm, even the language we use to describe JOY is body centered; we are JOYful = our body is full of JOY. We don’t feel JOY so much as fill with it!

Life is a full body sport. So, now I am on a mission: I want to embody JOY as often as possible. To feel myself fill with JOY every day. My body already knows how to do this. I simply need to get my head out of the way and allow my body to do what comes naturally.

If you pass me on the street next week, I hope I’m wiggling and jiggling with JOY.

Hold to the Truth

Image from Soul Pancake
Image from Soul Pancake

Can you stand at the edge of fear and hold to the truth of who you are?
No matter how big the abyss of fear feels,
it is nothing in comparison to your truth.

When you truly know yourself,  fear is merely a tool
that the Universe uses to get you to pay attention.

Stand strong.

~Robbie Warren,  Otter Woman Standing

Seussing the Donald

seuss-cat-in-the-hat

I do not like this Donald creep
I do not like him, or his veep.

Don loves to carry on and pout
He feeds on hate, he loves to SHOUT

The “nasty woman” that I am
Truly thinks he is a sham

I watch him speak, I want to hurl
Yell keep away from every girl

I do not like this Donald dude
I do not like him, he’s so rude

This guy, he is so lewd and crude
I DO NOT LIKE THIS DONALD DUDE!

Embodied Love

Ripe Peach
Peach by Nancy L

We all have direct access to the totality of spirit; it is breathing us right now.
There is nothing we have to make up or believe in in order to realize our true nature…

Merely watching other people feast at the table will not relieve your hunger.
When you bring teachings into embodied practice,
you eat the fruit, you digest the fruit, and you become the fruit
–that is real spiritual transformation.

~Chameli Ardagh

Eat the fruit, digest the fruit, LOVE the fruit, become the fruit… and transform. 

In the end, Love is key.  Love is what transforms us.

We are the Body of the Goddess

Roar, sacred woman... Roar!
Roar Sacred Woman

“Women’s stories are as powerful, inspiring, and terrifying as the goddess herself.
And in fact, these are the stories of the goddess.
As women, we know her because we are she.
Each woman, no matter how powerless she might feel,
is a cell within her vast form, an embodiment of her essence,
and each woman’s story is a chapter in the
biography of the sacred feminine.”

Jalaja Bonheim

☾☽

Who Speaks for Our Mother?

Bear Canyon
Beautiful Bear Canyon by Nancy L

Every part of Mama Earth is alive and has a spirit; each blade of grass, pine tree, fox, flower, stone and drop of water is infused and flowing with spiritual essence and consciousness. Our Earth is a pulsing, flowing sacred system. And we are completely interwoven and interdependent with every other form of life in this system. All of life is interconnected; the idea that human beings are separate from other life forms is simply an illusion.

Stone Memories

Our human actions have a huge effect on our Earth Mother. The history of human life is physically and energetically imprinted into the elements of Mama Earth. Her elemental structures hold our human stories of war and violence, love and connection, loss and pain; our Mother stores our history within her water, soil and stones. Like a great elemental library, the sacred body of Gaia “remembers” the entire history of life on this planet.

“Human history is a Gaian dream.” 
~Terence McKenna

Although humans may have long forgotten the stories, Mama Earth continues to hold the history of all those who lived here before us. These traumatic imprints were created through human neglect and ignorance, and they can continue to haunt us for generations. When a piece of land holds a story of human aggression, loss, disconnection, trauma or suffering, those energies continue to impact the animals and people who live, work and interact with that place years later.

Healing Mama Earth

Without some form of balancing or clearing process, a traumatic event may continue to negatively impact the land and the people who live on the land years later. Mother Earth can stay ‘stuck’ in a state of imbalance for generations. But each of us can help our mother release old traumas and heal.

Whenever we consciously treat our Earth Mama with the love and respect she deserves, we actually help her restore balance and heal. And we heal our own relationship with this beautiful blue planet in the process.

Carl Sagan once asked, “Who speaks for planet Earth?” I believe it is time for each of us to speak out for Mama Earth.

“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.”
~Rumi

The Tao of Flow

Still Water

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

Since before time and space were,
the Tao is.

It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.

~Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching