Hari Om

Today, we shift from contemplative thought to working in some active practice of breathwork. Bringing the work we are doing to open ourselves to the teaching of Love Everybody begins in the body. It is from this place that we grasp onto narratives that may inform our resistance to loving ourselves, which, of course, justifies our belief that we cannot possibly love everybody. To untie those knots, we need to be able to be with the stories that block us and to work through them.

Many of those stories contain shame and guilt around our bodies. This is a massive barrier to the joy of the body. To be in a body is an opportunity for joy! We must open ourselves to joy if we wish to engage fully with love.

So we breathe. And we breathe. And we breathe. Today we work with two pranayama practices, breathing practices from the Vedic traditions. Kapalabhati and Brhamari Pranayam.

This is a good short video from Bharti Yoga on the most fundemental aspects of Kapalbhati and Bhramari Pranayam. This video only shows the technique, and does not go into the rich history and inherent connections of this and other pranayama practices to the cultures which developed them, and I highly encourage anyone interested in this practice to begin to study and learn about these practices and their roots in communal health.

Enjoy these practices!

Our poem today is from William Carlos Williams, and for me, it personifies the personal that having a body can offer.

Danse Russe William Carlos Williams If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,— if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: “I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!” If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,— Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

To dance with your joy is genius, indeed, Mr. Williams.

We also spend another moment with bell hooks Appalachian Elegy 23.

Appalachian Elegy 23 bell hooks bring Buddha to rest home in Kentucky hills that outside each window a light may shine not a guilt teaching tradition be balanced know loving kindness end suffering rejoice in the oneness of life then let go carry nothing on your back travel empty as you climb steep mountain paths

Read it and read it and read it aloud. Thank you bell hooks. thank you thank you thank you.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Hari Om

Sometimes we find ourselves feeling the quick comeuppance of old feelings, emotions, and wounds emerging. Usually, this is not as surprising in it’s reality as it feels in the moment because these things are often slowly building up over time. Often, it is a result of bypassing feelings and uncomfortable situations under the guise of thinking that is what it is to ‘let it go’. Letting it go is not a bypass. We must first acknowledge the feeling, sit with it for a moment, and accommodate what is being given to us, and release our attachment to continuing to think the thoughts that hold us to the feeling. This is far different from bypassing.

Luckily for us, the old things will always come back. Always. And when they do, we have another chance to step into the place of presence with a slew of new tools we have been practicing in our daily mindfulness work! Use them.

Go to the breath.

Go to the body.

Ask the feelings questions of curiosity not defensive dismissiveness.

Listen to what you hear.

Act accordingly.

This is how we understand that understanding itself is a name of love. It is what love requires of me most in the moments I feel misunderstood.

Today we sit with bell hooks Appalachian Elegy 23, once again. We are going to work with this poem for the rest of the week, I believe.

Appalachian Elegy 23 bell hooks bring Buddha to rest home in Kentucky hills that outside each window a light may shine not a guilt teaching tradition be balanced know loving kindness end suffering rejoice in the oneness of life then let go carry nothing on your back travel empty as you climb steep mountain paths

Find the teaching today that you were not present for yesterday.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Hari Om

Some days, the breath is the central focus; some days, it is what brings us to our central focus. Today, the breath is at the forefront of the practice. This helps us to get our conscious awareness directly to the center of our body, and from this place, we are centered. It has a physical space within our body. Moving our awareness out of our head and into our body is the essence of mindful practice. The thing to remember here: THIS IS A PRACTICE. It requires a bit of doing, no matter how elementary you feel the work may be. Take the time to take a few breaths, being truly present, and you will see the shift in each moment of your awareness. See if you can find three breaths in succession without wandering into a thought. It is simple, but not easy.

ON NEARUDA'S DEATH Allen Ginsberg Some breath breathes out Adonais & Canto General Some breath breathes out Bombs and dog barks Some breath breathes silent over green snow mountains Some breath breathes not at all 25 Sept 1973

The breath is what connects us to one another. Thank you Allen Ginsberg. OM.

We revisit bell hooks profound work, Appalachian Elegy, specifically number 23.

Appalachian Elegy 23. bell hooks bring Buddha to rest home in Kentucky hills that outside each window a light may shine not a guilt teaching tradition be balanced know loving kindness end suffering rejoice in the oneness of life then let go carry nothing on your back travel empty as you climb steep mountain paths

I am really enjoying revisiting this poem each day this week. There is a lot offered within.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Hari Om

“My anger about this…

I was frustrated and angry.

It was blocking my access to my deeper emotions…”

Thanks for being here today. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of becoming familiar with the complexities of our feelings. It is with the practice of sitting in stillness that we can recognize the more subtle movements already occurring in our body. These stirrings are the underpinnings of our emotional experience and the foundation for how we can accommodate our emotional expressions and find wholeness. We may only be able to hear the loud voice of surface emotions, the ones most practiced at accessing, and not understand the depth to which we feel about any specific thing we are going through.

and then we get to bell hooks today, who reminds us that it is within the experience itself that lies the hurt and healing.

Appalachian Elegy 22 bell hooks sometimes falling rain carries memories of betrayal there in the woods where she was not meant to be too young she believes in her right to be free in her body free from harm believing nature a wilderness she can enter be solaced believing the power that there be sacred place that there can be atonement now she returns with no fear facing the past ready to risk knowing these woods now hold beauty and danger

that there can be atonement now she returns with no fear

Beautiful! Thank you thank you thank you bell hooks!

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Hari Om

I will be very brief in this posting. Today’s practice is one of finding our feelings through our thoughts. Our beliefs are informed greatly by the ways in which we speak and especially by the speech we repeat. When you find yourself telling your pain story over and over and refining your hero’s tale, pay close attention to where you fit into the story, and even closer attention to what you're feeling in your body as you rattle the well-rehearsed details off the tongue. This is a good practice to understand how we form beliefs that we can get stuck in.

Today we also revisit the great bell hooks with their amazing work, Appalachian Elegy.

Appalachian Elegy 21. bell hooks turtle islands everywhere heads poking out bodies embraced in the world before the coming of the white man a sea of calm where turtles rest on lands breathing life outside water that turtles may play fat succulent slow enchanting us with strength to guard and protect a wall of hardness store dreams of a world without humans a wet world everlasting

Thanks for being here. See you soon.

All In Love,

Michael

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Hari Om

Today my brain did not want to congeal. Thoughts wanted to be flighty, light, fluffy as a cloud. Okay, then, let it be! Use your breath to find your needs and desires, and nourish your experience with attentive, kind, and loving awareness. Walt Whitman gave us a great set of guidelines in the preface to his life-long opus, Leaves of Grass. Generally known as What You Shall Do, the piece serves as a wise and strong piece of advice to, well, anyone who is human. That is the gift of poetry, to give us permission to be exactly that; human.

Preface to Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms ​​to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to ​​others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the ​​​people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go ​​freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of ​​​families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine ​all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own ​soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its ​​words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in ​​every motion and joint of your body.

One may begin to see an ancestor to the wonderful Mary Oliver in this permissive missive. “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves,” encouraged Mary Oliver in what is possibly her most well-known poem, Wild Geese.

I remember hearing Mary Oliver herself speak about this wildly famous poem and how she came to write this masterful piece. It was a huge relief to learn that she had written this poem somewhat nonchalantly as an example of how to write an end-stopped line poem. There were not hours upon hours of laboring over the right words and sounds; there was only simply allowing the words to fall out of her mouth the way they came to her, onto the page to serve as a facilitator of understanding. When we are of service, we are often exactly where we need to be to allow for truth to go further.

Finding my way into my body through my breath gives me so much agency in that relationship of what it is to be of service, and to whom. I am practicing being of service to the breath, and allowing everything else to reap the fruits of that labor. It is when we can leave behind our adherence to the past and what we thought we were that we can truly allow what we are now and what we are becoming to be centered in our attention.

Then we get to bell hooks and her amazing Appalachian Elegy magic.

Appalachian Elegy 20. the glory in old barns surpassing time wood gray shadowed black faded colors places where painted signs tell of products no longer in use standing or falling down these structures carry the weight of history work done and undone memories of toil and torment there was bounty here tears for sowing lamentations for the dead all fragments that remain remind us give thanks gather praise

give thanks! gather praise! Yes, ancestor, yes we can do that!

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Hari Om

Today’s sit really honed in on the simple practice of three breaths as a way to begin to bring peace and quietude into our daily activities and relationships. The implications of taking a pause can be huge and long-lasting, helping to guide us into a place of solace within ourselves. I am not going to spend a lot of words on describing this right now, except to say that I have found, for myself, a key to unlock doors I thought were closed, or ones that were closed for so long and hidden so well, I thought they were walls, with the simplest of practices. You can go in for whatever methods you would like, and will no doubt find some really helpful and life-changing results; and still you will be breathing in and out all day, and night, for the rest of your life. So, why not incorporate that into your practice?

It is through the steadfastness of breath that we can become in sync with the movement and cycles of our body. And it is through the body that we open the pathways into emotions, thoughts, fears, loves, joys, sorrows, and everything that a material existence has to offer and teach us! Amazing, really! When we get in touch with our body, we can feel the magic of connection to everything we have ever known, and know that it is all at the center of who we are. We are not the center of the universe, yes, and it is at the center of who we truly are.

At Blackwater Pond Mary Oliver At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?

Life is that beautiful thing, again and again and again and again.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.