The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  I believe heart breaking world events are calling for care, compassion and understanding.  I am grateful to share a practice that can help to foster these life-affirming qualities.  Today’s class centered around our goodness and listening deeply from that place. We can do the inner and outer work of peace making.

We heard William Stafford’s poem, Being a Person.   You can learn about this remarkable poet by reading Steve Paul’s LitHub essay, On the Enduring Memory of One of America’s Greatest Contemporary Poets.  Steve’s been working on William Stafford’s biography.  In the essay he observes:

Looking back on his life, as I’ve been doing in recent years, unearths not only a wealth of poetic charms but a sense that Stafford projected a moral force that can be useful if not essential today. His work threaded through concerns about the environment, race relations, politics, history, spirituality, and the depths and limitations of the human heart.  . . . 

In life as in his poetry he rejected loud conflict and social and political aggression. Let’s be reasonable and gentle with each other. Let’s greet the world with awe and an impish sense of humor. Let’s be honest with one another.

Stafford reveled in imagery from the natural world. Streams, rocks, trees, and prairie winds make recurring appearances as touchstones, inspiration, solid and fluid realities that guide our way. Contemplating the influence of those who love or hurt, Stafford offers solace in the stillness and hidden force of nature: “What the river says, that is what I say.”

To read Stafford today is to appreciate the richness and diversity of modern and contemporary poetry and to understand how he managed to make human connections, as if that were the absolute mission of his work. 

Stafford died at his Oregon home on August 28, 1993. The morning of his death he had written a poem containing the lines, “‘You don’t have to / prove anything,’ my mother said. ‘Just be ready / for what God sends.'” I find today’s poem and the testimony of William Stafford’s life to be helpful inspirations for navigating today’s troubled waters.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We immersed ourselves in the contemplation of the wild salmon’s journey from their freshwater birthing waters out into to the vast ocean waters. They return pushing against tides and currents back to their birthing waters to spawn new life and then die.  They are nourished and in return nourish hundreds of other species along the way.  Their bodies’ nutrients are taken up by trees.  The out-breath of trees becomes the in-breath of many other creatures including us.  This web of inter-being is at the heart of our mindfulness practice.  May we all realize our inter-being and be moved to compassionate action in the world.

We were inspired by Alexandra Morton’s TEDx Seattle talk, What Humans Can Learn from the Wisdom of Salmon. Alexandra shares some of her moving experiences of studying whales, dolphins and salmon. She describes the inter-relationships between salmon and their greater habitat, including humans and more than humans.  In 1980  she witnessed wild salmon migratory returns were crashing. She began studying their immune systems and discovered a virus transmitted by the farm raised Atlantic salmon.  She and her team of researchers learned that by sampling the salmon along their migratory route back out into the Pacific ocean they could learn about the condition of ocean waters.  Alexandra’s story is an inspirational call to care and to act to protect the lives of our more than human kin.

We heard from poet Jane Hirshfield’s On Being interview, The Fullness of Things.  The fullness she refers to relates to the Buddhist perspective of accepting the suffering and perfection in life.  The practice is a journey of feeling life’s joys and sorrows.  She hopes that everyone’s journey includes a moment when “they stood in the world, undone by awe and radiance, and the small self vanishes, and you understand the world as immense and yours, and not yours. . . . The great gate to abundance is simply to feel yourself able to be porous, to be open to whatever is put in the bowl that is yours to hold with your 10 fingers and 54 bones. And that is abundance.”

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  The natural world’s seasonal turning inspired us to find a deeper aspiration for meditation practice and for a way of being in the world.  A deeper aspiration may help us to establish a kind, calm presence, like sunlight on a forest. It may be an appreciative awareness. A forgiving awareness. A caring, kind or loving awareness.  We begin by nourishing ourselves with the breath.  We feel sensations in the body.  We draw on Earth’s support.  Breath, body and Earth can help us to feel our entanglement with the world.

We heard John Muir speak of our interdependence with all beings.  In his book, Mountain Thoughts, he seems to presage Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on inter-being.  We have the sun and the rivers, the trees and flowers inside of us.  The bird song and wind song, the song of rocks in the heart of the mountains are our own songs of love.  You can read a bit more of his Mountain Thoughts at the Sierra Club web-site.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We continued exploring the practice of conscious witnessing.  We witness with the intention of feeling the sensations that arise in the body in response to what we see.  We stay with this direct experience without thinking about what we feel.  This is a profound way of being present and open to the mystery of life unfolding.  In this way we open to an intelligence that is vaster than our own.  In this opening we can be with life’s joys and sorrows.

Today’s practice was inspired by Ayya Santacitti’s talk, Resonance:  Engaging Creativity Beyond the Intellect.  Ayya is a Buddhist nun in the Theravada tradition.  In her talk Ayya explores witnessing on a personal, collective and global level.  She believes that we can bring different energy to life: Compassion.  Interest.  Kindness.  Willingness.  We resonate with the bodily sensations that arise while witnessing.  In this way we can open to a vaster intelligence and with creativity beyond intellect.

We heard from Kiowa elder and writer N. Scott Momaday’s book The Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land.  In an Paris Review essay, We Must Keep the Earth, he reminds readers that:

We humans must revere the earth, for it is our well-being. Always the earth grants us what we need. If we treat the earth with kindness, it will treat us kindly. If we give our belief to the earth, it will believe in us. There is no better blessing than to be believed in.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored how mindfulness practice offers us a way of seeing reality more clearly.  We can develop our faculties of faith, energy, concentration and insight.  Alone and together we can open our hearts and minds to the difficult realities of climate change.  As Mother Earth suffers we suffer.  We can support each other in witnessing and responding with caring and compassion.  Thankfully we have a trail to follow.

Today’s practice is inspired by Ayya Santacitti’s talk, Global Witnessing:  Take In the Planet’s Feedback.  Ayya is a Buddhist nun in the Theravada tradition.  She is founder of the Aloka Earth Room, a practice space in which practitioners consider:  “What is ours to do as we walk the Noble Eightfold Path in these times of eco-social unraveling?”

We ended with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem Because.  This poem is from Rosemerry’s A Hundred Falling Veils site which offers a poem a day.  She also co-hosts Emerging Form podcast on creative process, Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal) and Soul Writers Circle. Rosemerry’s heartening words encourage us to love as if our lives depend on it.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored our inter-relationship with world and considered the sentience of the more than human world.  We reflected on how our bodies are part of the greater Body of our biosphere.  We thought about what it is to live with loving awareness so that we might listen to what Earth is telling us and respond with compassion.

Our guided reflection was inspired by  Ruth King’s book, Mindful of Race.  Ruth is founder of the Mindful of Race Institute.  As a long time meditation teacher Ruth brings mindfulness teaches to help us to cultivate a culture of care.  Her book offers very creative and practical guidance for bringing wisdom teachings to life.  She encourages readers to explore our interdependence with care and compassion. In this reading she invites us to reflect on Mother Earth’s nervous system as being sensitive to our own beating hearts and minds.

We also drew from David Abram’s Emergence Magazine essay, Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet.  David is a naturalist trained in magic.  His eloquence helps to bring awareness to Earth’s aliveness and concern to the more-than human world. David invites us to consider our bodies entangled with the larger Body of our biosphere.  He suggests our intelligence is similar to the sentience of forests, mountains, clouds and waters.  We are part of it all and what we do truly matters.

We heard Anne Hillman’s poem, Awakening the Energies of Love.  The poem, from her collection The Dancing of Animal Woman, is about nurturing a more inclusive kind of love: a love that empowers, transforms and creates new possibilities. It affirms Ruth’s encouragement for us to relinquish our habits of harm and open ourselves to new ways of being.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored the ways we meet life transitions.  Mindfulness can help us to create time and space in which to be with life’s difficult and joyful moments.  We can meet them as an expression of the many of causes and conditions of which we are inextricably entangled.  This space of loving awareness can help us to bring “care and conscious attention” to ourselves and those around us.

This week’s meditation was greatly inspired by the talk Edoardo Eusepi’s gave to Upaya Zen Center’s community: Taking Time to Transition.  Edoardo, formerly a resident monk, shared the transitions he experienced during the life he shared with his long time canine-companion, Hercules.  He shared how the years of Zen training helped him during the difficult transition of Hercules’ illness and death.  I resonate with his encouragement to “take care of yourself, be gentle with yourself and others undergoing a transition.” You can hear Edoardo’s talk at this link to the Upaya Zen Center podcast episode.

We also heard from James Bridle’s book, Ways of Being.  The book is “a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence – plant, animal, human, artificial – and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos.”  This wonderful book encourages us to embrace the more than human world and meet it with the open minded, open hearted curiosity of a beginner. You can hear James discuss their book with Krista Tippett in the On Being interview, The Intelligence Is Singing All Around Us.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We continued exploring life as a sacred journey.  Today our breath was our companion and guide.  We explored oscillating patterns of breathing and movement.  The underwater world of seaweed was a metaphor for how we can remain rooted and also give ourselves over to undulation, flow and a deep sense of allowing – even that which is painful.  In saying yes to life we value and revere the lives we’ve loved and lost.

This week’s meditation was greatly inspired by Valerie Brown’s Kosmos Journal essay, Hope Leans Forward | The Body as Grounded Wisdom,  The essay was reprinted from Valerie’s book, Hope Leans Forward:  Braving Your Way Toward Simplicity, Awakening and Peace. Valerie is a meditation teacher ordained in the order of Thich Nhat Hanh.   She leads an annual pilgrimage to El Camino de Santiago, Spain to celebrate the power of sacred place.  You can find her essays, guided meditations and videos on her web-site. Valerie Brown studied Donna Farhi’s teaching on how to free the breath and the mind.

We also heard insights from meditation and yoga instructor, Donna Farsi. Her Yoga International article How Breath Awareness Will Change Your Life. Donna has been teaching yoga informed movement for over forty years.  She is author of several books including the Breathing Book.  This essay is a beautiful example of her skill in bringing meditation and movement together.  Valerie Brown studied Donna’s teaching on how to free the breath and the mind.

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