Nancy Lankston
sometimes the moonlight speaks
showing me my place in things
sometimes the river sings
piercing its love straight through me
sometimes the night wind calls
coaxing me up into the stars
sometimes the raven stares
pulling me deep into the mystery
sometimes the forest hums
reminding me who I am.
~Nancy L
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.
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
“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.”
☾☽
“There is a deep intelligence intrinsic to all of us that we call Shakti: a creative life force pressing through all things. It wants to grow, to become. It is powerful beyond comprehension. It moves the planets; it erupts volcanoes; it allows the butterfly to burst out of the cocoon.
This same Shakti is what awakens you and brings awareness into the frozen, rigid places. It is the longing that presses through you, telling you some of your old ways of being are too small for you, like old clothes that don’t fit anymore.”
~Chameli Ardagh
Awakening Women
