Washing the breakfast dishes, I watched her walking slowly along the edge of the pond, pausing to crouch down to look closely at small plants and creatures. She began throwing stones into the water, one at a time. Bending, picking up a stone, standing, tossing, and watching. I imagined her watching the ripples spread outward and disappear before she bent down to pick up the next stone. She stood for a long time, throwing one rock and then another before meandering to the other side of the pond.

By lunchtime she seemed lighter and happier, by the end of the day she was back in her rhythm and the next day she went happily to school.

Do you know that feeling of being out of rhythm with yourself?

Can you feel it and sense it in the people you love?

Feeling out-of-rhythm is an important signal from your brilliant bodymind that something needs to be attended to.

Responding to this out-of-rhythm feeling can often keep you from getting sick and will help you come back into your creative power and delight.

Being in your rhythms is more than a nice thought or a catchy metaphor– it is a fundamental reality of life.

We live in a rhythmic universe. We live in a rhythmic universe in which there is constant motion. From the tiniest sub-atomic particles in your chair to the cells in your belly and your brain and your bone marrow there is rhythmic motion. From the respiratory cycles of the trees and daffodils to the spiraling of galaxies, there is in all of life rhythmic motion.

Although we may look at certain things- like the desk and walls and floor- and think they are unchanging and motionless, modern physics tells us something very different. Everything is in motion and everything is moving in rhythmic patterns.

Fritjof Capra, physicist, tells us: “Modern physics pictures matter not at all as passive and inert but as being in continual dancing and vibrating motion whose rhythmic patterns are determined by the molecular atomic and nuclear structures. This is also the way the Eastern Mystics see the material world. They all emphasize that the universe has to be grasped dynamically as it moves, vibrates and dances; that nature is not in a static but a dynamic equilibrium….

In physics we recognize the dynamic nature of the universe not only when we go to small dimensions – to the world of subatoms and nuclei – but also when we turn to the world of stars and galaxies.”

We live in a rhythmic universe. You are a vital part of this rhythmic universe. Along with the vibrating subatomic particles and the spinning planets, you and I and all of us are participating in a splendid rhythmic pattern –in each moment we are dancing in the rhythms of life. And the rhythms of life are dancing in us and all around us.

In our modern culture, living as we do much more apart from the natural world than our ancestors did, it is easy to lose touch with our connection to natural rhythms, even to delude ourselves that we are not affected by the rhythms of life.

Holistic Physician Deepak Chopra reminds us “Our biological rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos, music embedded deep within us to which we dance, even when we can’t name the tune.”

We are all playing our parts in this symphony of the cosmos,

interacting in universal patterns:

Rising up, sinking down,

Expanding, contracting,

Swirling, humming, vibrating,

Beginning, ending,

Attracting and breaking apart.

Flowers open, birds migrate, seasons change, day follows night follows day, your organs function, all in alignment with the great rhythmic patterns of life.

Mickey Hart, Grateful Dead drummer claimed, “Life is about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood, we are a rhythm machine, that’s what we are.”

We live and we love and we thrive by the rhythms of life.

And when we feel disconnected from the rhythms of life we suffer.

We feel less happy, our health diminishes, individually and as community we suffer when we feel out of rhythm.

What makes you feel out-of-sync?

What helps you reclaim your connection to the rhythms of life?

Yikes. It has been a scary, frustrating, infuriating, embarrassing, and, at times intriguing and fascinating process …

I am working with it on lots of levels (a bit of conventional medicine, lots of natural healing, herbs, inner work and energy practices, exploring the mythic, spiritual aspects, being kinder to myself, deepening and honing my self-care…) and I am getting better.  This bacteria is on its way out of my cells, my system and my energy field.

I would love to hear from people who have had chronic lyme disease and have gotten well.

Have you, or has anyone you know, been diagnosed with chronic Lyme and recovered? Please email me! I am beginning to compile stories of healing from Lyme and would love to talk to you. Your story of healing could be a wonderful inspiration to thousands of others who are struggling with this confusing and frightening disease.

Many thanks!

Here’s Chodron’s full quote:
“People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That’s not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn’t understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you’re given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.”

I believe we are here to learn to love more and more fully.

Over and over, you are invited to love yourself more deeply and kindly, just as you are, in all your human-ness. As your heart opens to yourself, you can allow that love to radiate out into the world.

Sensing in my body, I realize that whenever I close my heart in reaction to someone  else, I am actually closing it to myself. And only when I open it to myself can I really open my heart to the world.

Since the heart is the center for courage as well, by opening your heart you connect with your courage. A deep, flowing heart strength allows you to be more clear and true in words and actions.

And over and over there is, each time, a chance to savor  that sweet, sweet, pleasure that comes from softening the armor of the heart.

Perhaps you would like to notice this for yourself.

Notice with kindness and tenderness. All of us here on the planet now are working on this. None of us are finished.

What situations or thoughts trigger a tightening of your heart?
What are the sensations of that tightening?
How does the heart tightening affect your breath, your attitudes, your happiness and your brain?
What happens when you soften your heart, even a little bit? (No need to do it all at once, you have a lifetime of invitations to explore this.)

As you soften your heart:
What shifts in you?
What new energy or strength or awareness becomes available to you?

When you stop letting  external situations or internal thoughts block you from your heart, you can joyfully access more and more of your full heart power.

Play with this. Enjoy the exploration. Drop me a note and tell me what you notice.

(If you want compassionate support in the process of softening your heart and accessing your true heart power, I am here for you! If you think private coaching with me might be right for you, email me with  Discovery Session in the subject line and I’ll email you to set up a complementary 45 minute Discovery Session to talk about what you want support with and how working with me could help.)

An admirer of Georgia O’ Keefe since first discovering her paintings when I was 14, I was fascinated a few years ago by a video about her life and creative choices. Watching her, in her 80’s, climb quickly up a tall, steep ladder to the flat roof of her adobe house, I thought “This woman was afraid of nothing.” Learning, just weeks later, that this visionary groundbreaker was indeed afraid of many things, that she knew terror as a daily companion, was enormously comforting and inspiring.

Remembering her words bolsters me when I am doing the things that make me want to run and hide, to throw up or to zone out and postpone. Her words, along with body-centered meditation practices, have helped me befriend fear. It does come up for me – as sudden full-on terror, vague anxiety or even just as avoidance, over and over.
Being curious about fear is a interesting daily awareness and- when I’m going to my creative edges and learning and growing- I get lots of chances to practice

So what am I terrified of this week?
Blogging.
Seems a little crazy, especially since as far as I know no one is even reading it yet, and hey, what’s the big deal really, just writing a few words, everyone now has a blog and you do know how to write, but there is a wave of terror that hits me and freezes the flow of words every time I start to sit and write a post for this blog. And after a month, I’m still barely getting my toes wet here.

–Hmmm…How ….Curious. I am really excited about this idea of The Power of Midlife Love. I think it matters and may be important.
–Ahh…Maybe that’s part of the problem, thinking that what I write needs to be important!

Several years ago when I was paid to write a manual for a hospital pain relief clinic, I was excited, had lots of enthusiasm and great material already developed and then I got started and hit a wall.
Tuning in to my self talk I noticed a voice was telling me –This needs to be great. You need to do a great job with this.

–Oops! Says who? Who decides if it’s great? How will I know? What if I finish it and it’s not great? Gosh, maybe its better not to even finish it or to really get started.
–Well, I wonder what thought could be more helpful to me in writing this?
—Hmm… what if I let go of it needing to be great and focus on writing something that is useful- useful to the patients with pain who need this information and who will be using the manual.

That I could do. I knew I could write it in a way that it would be helpful – and I did.
So, for now I’m making a deal with myself about the blog.
I’m going to have fun with it and not expect myself to be good at it yet. I’ll just do it. Two or three times a week, and I’ll follow the suggestions I’ve heard from other bloggers and learn to keep it short and –maybe most importantly and what I’ve just this moment realized — I can give myself room not to be an expert about the power of midlife love but a fascinated explorer.

That I can do. With pleasure.

What aspects of love are we instinctually, culturally and planetarily called to cultivate more fully at midlife?

This is something I am fascinated by and am exploring in my life and on this blog. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments.

 One of the potent powers of midlife love is Expansion of Instinctual Love: when our sense of identification spreads beyond our own self and own loved ones and embraces all the creatures sharing this precious Earth home.

This sense of Love Expanding for the World, is beyond personal love, yet as deeply felt as the most personal loves of all.

In the last few years I have felt and have heard other women express in a variety of ways what I have some to sense as our call to become Clan Mamas of the World.

All children are indeed my children,

All species my kin,

Every bit of this sweet and vulnerable blue green planet is truly my home, to tend and care for and celebrate.

At this time of life, at this time in history, it seems natural and even imperative that we are called to love more fully toward the good of the whole.

Perhaps this is a call as instinctual as the one many of us follow early in life to conceive, bear and mother children. This call to Expansive Love, felt by many of us so strongly at midlife, is to actively love our greater world in this time of need, with passionate commitment, fierce tenderness and joyful appreciation.

As the daughter of parents who deeply honored and respected the natural world– my father wildlife biologist then systems ecologist, my mother  great celebrator of  of nature’s wonder and magic–I was taught, and believed for much of my life, that our cultural attitudes and practices toward our planet would change as soon as enough people understood the interrelatedness of all species and the impact of human actions. Surely, we were convinced, at the first and second and twenty-fifth Earth Days, surely as soon as the knowledge was brought forth people would change their destructive patterns. And yet over my lifetime the destruction of our natural systems has only worsened.

Knowledge alone will not change our way of living on our planet.

Will love be the primary change agent? Will it be a deep, abiding, active, passionate, committed love for the entire world that can change our course and turn us toward a rich, celebratory, sustainable, respectful relationship with nature and all our planetary kin?

Can we at midlife be important givers/bearers/ bringers/emissaries of that love?

Is this expanded and yet deeply personal love perhaps one of our great callings at this time of life?

I believe this expansion of our love to the world is one of the developmental tasks of midlife and an emerging aspect of our evolutionary progress that we at midlife are invited /compelled to bring forth .

Much has been written about the instinctual love of romance, sexuality, conception and childbearing and rearing, all vital for the well-being of individuals and for survival of the species. What is known of this instinctual re-identification toward expanded love at midlife? Perhaps this is just as important for the species and indeed for all life as the earlier instinctive forms of love.

What shifts in us and in the world as so many are feeling this call to behold and treat the whole planet as beloved, as lover, as child?

Day and night questions around this play through my mind and dreaming.

Questions such as:

What does it mean to truly embody this Expanding Love? What is the role now for my mother love in this expanded sense?

How will I live when I consider the waters in Ethiopia as important as the waters flowing by in the stream in my backyard and pumped by well from the deep earth into my kitchen?

I am deeply intrigued by this Instinctual Call to Expanding Love that seems to be a vital part of this stage of life at this time in the world’s history.

What is your experience with this? Do you feel this Instinctual Expanding Love of the World calling you? What terms do you use to describe it? What shape does it form in your imagination?

What is the role now for Expanding Love in this time of your life and at this point in human and planetary history?

Listen to this meditation here.

Musings on a Nest for Your Soul
Earlier this summer a small bird nested on a deck support just outside our family room door. She cradled the nest ingeniously into the post corner using twine, mud, sticks and grass. For two weeks she sat on four eggs, barely moving.

Day after day she sat in instinctual devotion to her unborn babies, rarely leaving for brief times, then returning to sit again perfectly still, her little beak and tail extending over the edge of the nest.
Perfectly still she sat even as we went in and out of the door to hang laundry in the sun, walked by to go to the forest or garden and even as we celebrated noisy, happy, summer meals on the lawn just beyond her.

Still she sat, until this morning the eggs hatched. As if by magic, the tiny hard eggs are gone and four featherless, bony, translucent forms huddle and breathe together, snug in this nest made just for them.

This little bird, doing what she does naturally, inspired me to remember the instinctual need we all have at times to just be….to simply settle in and to rest deeply. Before we can bring forth new ideas, new projects, new ways of being, we often need time for incubation, a time to devote to the deep nest within, so that new life can be nurtured and can, in its time, arise naturally.

This meditation, A Nest for Your Soul, was inspired by this little bird and her instinctual devotion to nurturing her eggs.

Perhaps you might enjoy asking yourself:
What in your life could use some incubation?
What is your natural instinct calling you to do today?
What might come of some deep resting in your soul nest?

      Sensuality of Body

            Transformational Power of Nature 

Welcome! This blog explores the dance of spirit and sensuality, the joys and challenges of life in a body and the process of reclaiming our vital connection with Nature for personal and planetary healing, creativity and evolution.

I usually write from the garden room at Dreaming Forest Farm in the foothills of theOregoncoast range, surrounded by tall trees, flowing stream and wild animals.

But even in a city or suburb, Nature is everywhere, within and all around, speaking always. And when I remember to really listen….Ahhh…! A rich world of sensorial delight, kinship, wisdom, revelation and adventure opens up.

And you …? I would love to hear from you!

Drop me an email or leave a comment by a post and tell me who you are, where in this remarkable world you live and what opens you to  senses, spirit and the energy of nature.

 Lea