Tag Archive | Mindful Life Program

Adaptability

Aug31
Top to bottom in this great little silicone baggie, two jalapeño Tam peppers dancing with two Chimayos, resting on two Blot sweet peppers, with the first ripe Aji Crystal hot peppers on the bottom. I’m devising a strategy to get my fermented hot sauce accomplished even though all the peppers are not ripening at the same time, as I had ignorantly assumed they would! Why would they go against their nature just to meet my expectations? I’ll just ferment the peppers in batches as they ripen, and then mix them all together for the sauce. It’s comforting to go with the flow. I’m grateful for adaptability.

I’m grateful the little dog exercises caution at the rim, just like the catahoulas all did when they were puppies. I suppose eventually she’ll trot right up to the edge to look over, but for now she just leans her nose out as far as it will go without getting her feet too close. She’s adapting so well to her new life here that I sometimes wonder if she remembers her old life. And I often wish I knew more about it.

I tried to adapt to the inhaler medication, but it was producing some uncomfortable effects including paradoxically more difficulty breathing. Also, it didn’t substantially raise my oxygen saturation. This reading is from this morning about four hours before my next dose was due. In town a thousand feet lower a couple hours later the reading was 96. This afternoon it hovered around 90. It’s a mystery to me, but I’ve quit the drug and committed to alternative techniques to improve my oxygen. Also, a portable concentrator is due to arrive tomorrow. I’ll adapt to having a small plastic tube stuck in my nose for some hours each day and/or night. A little bit more oxygen is better than none at all.

Shameless self-promotion: I’ll be teaching the MLP Foundations Course again starting in October, sharing immeasurably valuable mindfulness skills with people looking to reduce mental and emotional suffering, increase genuine happiness and contentment, and improve their overall quality of life. Email me if you’re interested in learning more about this transformative course.

And while I’m shamelessly promoting myself, let me also joyfully promote Hillery, who has a big weekend coming up. Tomorrow, an interview on KVNF (90.9, 89.1 and elsewhere on the south end of the FM dial locally, or kvnf.org worldwide), then performances Friday and Saturday at the Blue Sage in Paonia and the Creamery in Hotchkiss respectively. Give yourself a sweet treat by going to hear this up and coming Indi-pop star!

Resurrection

Apr17
Male and female evening grosbeaks and house finches flocking together rested in the top of the birch tree the other morning.

It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter, did I mention that before? I had a lot of recovering to do from the drawn-out demise of Stellar, which was physically and emotionally grueling; and actually quite a bit of settling into a new normal without some of my closest friends who also died over the past two summers, from Ojo to Auntie to Michael and more. This spring does feel a bit like a resurrection for me, and what better day to acknowledge that than Easter Sunday?

Looming larger these days in the back of my mind is how will Topaz receive a new addition to the household? I am pretty much ready for a dog!

I pulled out the new husband-camera which has also lain dormant all winter, and realized I had no idea how to use it, so I also pulled out the manual and spent some hours today figuring out all the knobs and buttons — most of the bells and whistles will have to wait for another day. I haven’t even attached the ‘good’ lens yet but still got some pretty pictures. The two nights of deep freeze last week did not destroy all chance of apricots this year, at least up on this mesa. The tree was loaded with buds, and while most of them had just opened before the freeze and are now toast, it seems that many unopened buds survived and are blooming in this next round of balmy weather. I hope that the valley orchards fared as well.

It was this Mourning Cloak who arrived yesterday that inspired me to bring out the big camera and get ready to wallow in my favorite pastime again. Last year, the ‘good’ lens lost its auto-focus and would have cost a lot to repair. So I dove in headfirst and sprung for a camera upgrade and two new lenses. It helped a lot that I could trade in the old husband and all his lenses at B&H Photo, my go-to AV store in NYC. They offer great help over the phone, and reliable goods and shipping.
While I waited for the butterfly to come in range of my seat on the bench, I missed a bumblebee but got a mediocre snap of a honeybee. There were just a few other small native bees buzzing around; maybe because it was windy, and is still kind of cold at night… or maybe because there are fewer bees even than last year. The loss of the almond tree last year has cut their spring smorgasbord sadly in half.
Not many native pollinators seem to care for forsythia, but this western yellow-jacket was enjoying having it all to itself.

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

Albert Schweitzer

The Mindful Life Community daily guidance this morning brought suddenly and vividly to mind the journalism teacher in high school, Dottie Olin, who became a lifelong friend. She inspired me then, and I became editor of the paper. For three decades we stayed in touch, visited when I was in town, and her joie de vivre and boundless joy in life grounded me in unstable times. I was grateful to visit her often during the months I lived in Virginia while my mother was dying, and we became even closer. She continued to inspire and support me well into her 80s. Shortly after my mom died and I moved back home to Colorado, I got a note that she was dying of lung cancer. She said, “It’s nobody’s fault but my own,” as she had smoked all her life. She was at peace because she had lived fully and with so much love. I was devastated to lose her as well as my mom in the same year, 2004. I hadn’t thought about her recently, and love that she came to mind so vibrantly as someone who lighted a fire in me and rekindled it through the years. Just the thought of her this morning lifted my energy and got me outside and moving around in the garden, motivated to make the most of this beautiful spring day, this precious day that will never come again.

Opportunity

Dec2

Opportunity knocked, and I opened the door. I accepted the invitation to create an online Introduction to Mindfulness course for a large group of educators. It will be a cursory overview, a tip of the tip of the iceberg, that may entice people to try meditation and some basic mindfulness practices. My hope is that it will give teachers who opt to take it a glimpse of the possibilities that meditation and mindfulness practice offer to find mental and emotional balance in a complicated and stressful work environment. During this pandemic educators, like health workers, face increasing anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout due to short-staffing, higher workload, traumatized students, and conservative pushback against the science of masks and vaccines.

Mindfulness changed my life. I’m grateful for the opportunity I stumbled upon early in the pandemic to learn simple and effective skills to manage my own anxiety, fear, and depression, and transform my life into one of gratitude and contentment. I’m grateful for a decade of meditation practice, a year of intense mindfulness training, and the opportunity to teach these skills online, helping people explore their own potential for less mental suffering and more genuine happiness. I’m grateful for the decades of adventure I’ve had exploring fun, creative, interesting, and varied ways of making a living; for all the lessons, influences, and conditions that led me to discover my true calling and right livelihood at long last. I’m grateful for opportunities to share the gifts of meditation and mindfulness with this new custom course for Oregon educators; and with anyone who is interested in a more thorough exploration, through the Mindful Life Program’s Foundations Course offered online quarterly, with the next class starting in January.

Mind Training

Nov12

I’m grateful that I found mindfulness practice. The world we inhabit is complex and often confounding. Learning a few simple skills, starting with meditation, has helped me find more joy and contentment in life, and experience less mental and emotional suffering. I still get frustrated, annoyed, jealous, suspicious–just, not so much as I used to, and those afflictive states don’t last as long. I still hurt. In fact, I’m going through a pretty tough time right now, I won’t deny it. Sometimes I feel so empty it aches. But not all the time, and other times I feel profound gratitude just to be alive. To be able to share the skills and benefits of mind training with others, as I did this afternoon, is icing on the cake. Today, among other things and people, I’m grateful for the students in the Mindfulness Foundations Course I’m teaching now, and those I’ve taught before: when they tell me how the lessons and practices have helped them handle a challenging situation, or find more peace of mind or happiness, my heart sings. So even though I’m sad today, a week after Stellar’s death, I’m also happy. I’m grateful for all my teachers through the years, and for my constantly deepening understanding of life’s endless lessons.

Mindfulness

Aug20

I’m grateful today and every day for having spent the past year in the Mindful Life Program teacher training, and to now be certified to teach mindfulness and meditation, sharing the benefits of skills that have transformed me from an anxious, angry person, into one who dwells largely in gratitude, acceptance, wisdom and contentment. I’m excited to announce that I’ll be teaching the MLP Mindfulness Foundations Course quarterly starting October 1. Please feel free to share this poster and this link to the full course description with anyone you think might be interested in learning how to choose which thoughts to follow and which to ignore, how to respond wisely to emotional triggers rather than react habitually, and much more. Please comment or email me if you would like more information.

Meanwhile, back in the garden… a beautiful harvest. Fewer green beans now, as they’re getting hard to reach, and also I’m letting many pods mature so I’ll have dried beans for winter. The first few tomatoes are beginning to ripen, and to split after the 1.4″ of rain we received in the past two days. How grateful we all are for that! Also in today’s basket, parsley, cherry tomatoes, lettuce leaf basil, and radish seedpods, as well as a handful of fat carrots.

Lettuce leaf basil is my new favorite basil. It’s flourishing in a large pot, and some leaves are literally the size of my whole hand.

With the carrots come carrot tops, and I couldn’t bear to just compost them, having read that they’re edible too. So I made a batch of carrot top pesto with them and some basil, following the note at the bottom of the recipe for an Italian twist.

Two packed cups of trimmed carrot tops, one cup of basil, fresh oregano, a handful of pecans, lemon zest and juice, and more, all zapped down to less than a pint of pesto, which went right into the freezer. I licked the spatula, of course, and the bowl, and it was delicious. Plenty more where that came from! I’m grateful for the garden, for bountiful harvest, for water, for making the most of carrots, for a food processor, for a fridge and freezer, for electricity to power them… Gratitude for any one thing in any given day ripples out to encompass gratitude for so much more.

Sunrise

Jul11
Grateful to wake up to this view from my bed.

Literally (I don’t see enough of them, as a night owl) and metaphorically: sunrise on the next phase of this unpredictable journey through life. I’m grateful for another amazing day of retreat, and for the accomplishment of certification as a mindfulness teacher. So much gratitude!

And always grateful for the big Stardog, and the glory of the garden.

Another Sunset

Jul10

Grateful for another sunset, another fulfilling, exhausting day in fellowship with the kindest, most mindful people I know. Two-thirds through our graduation retreat, twelve hours each day together virtually yet meaningfully, sharing lessons, learnings, creativity, and cultivating heartfelt connection with people across the country and a world away. Grateful for one of the most transformative experiences of my short life, this past Mindful Learning Year. Grateful for another day with dear Stellar still moving pretty well, and another precious day of relative safety here, while fires ravage the land elsewhere and paint the sun orange again.

Awareness of Death

Jun27

I’m grateful today and every day for awareness of death. The mindfulness program I’m getting certified to teach in encourages us to consider three thoughts upon waking each morning:

  1. We have an incredible life with opportunities and leisure that many others do not have.
  2. Life is impermanent – death is certain and the time of death uncertain.
  3. What is meaningful to you now, and at the time of death, what will be important to you? Is it all the things in your life, or is it how you responded to life?

Much of my life has been both hampered and motivated by fear of my own death, which has kept me from doing some things and colored my perceptions of others. Yet it’s also occasionally moved me to make courageous and fulfilling choices, knowing that life is short and I could die any minute. Between the wisdom of age and the Mindful Life Program I now have a healthier relationship with death. The knowledge that I’ll die someday, as will everyone I love, as will we all, death being an ineluctable feature of living, is no longer a motivation solely for big decisions like should I choose this school, should I move from this town, leave this job, should I buy this land, take this trip…. Awareness of death now shapes my values and informs my daily decisions, helping me choose wisely where to place my attention moment to moment.

I’m grateful for the teachers and students who have helped me explore the three thoughts over the past year, and for the delightful mug that was given to me today to remind me with every sip of morning coffee that death can be a friend and ally rather than a foe.

People Who Let Me Be Myself

Jun9

I’m grateful for another Boyz Lunch today, outside on the patio, hummingbirds flitting through, Stellar lying next to John, John’s hand on his head; grateful for these and other friends who accept me just the way I am, and through the years have supported me in my ongoing exploration of how that is, as it changes (like everything does, always, ineluctably); grateful for people who have loved me through my many incarnations in this lifetime; grateful for a safe habitat in which to spread my wings.

Oh, and watch for a bunch of canaries in the Pioneer Days Parade on Saturday! I’m grateful for Ellie, Mary, Suki, Brad, Danielle, Kim, Ana, Kathy, and everyone else who has chipped in energy, time, money, and creativity to create and support the countywide, non-partisan Canary Committee in their efforts to bring attention to the extraordinary drought affecting our particular habitat in Western Colorado, and the dire need to conserve water.

I’m grateful to finally harvest enough lettuce from my garden to feed friends, for Gosar’s sausages (available at Farm Runners), for Cousin Bill’s reminder of how delicious roasted cauliflower is, for Penzey’s Justice that Amy introduced me to, and for the ease of a salad made with canned beans: so simple, so delicious! I’m grateful for another day alive in this body aware of all the sensory pleasures life offers, and for learning the mindfulness skills that enable me to experience each day with gratitude and meaning.

Resilience

Mar14
Four inches of fresh snow this morning was mostly melted by midday. I’m grateful for spring snows, which bring lots of moisture, and very little stress compared to winter snows, knowing there’s no need to shovel or plow because it will melt soon enough. Grateful Stellar was able to walk this morning.

I’m grateful for resilience, his and mine. Stellar slid into another bout of inexplicable diarrhea that started yesterday morning but wasn’t conclusively an issue until after dark, as usual. Why does it always strike them at night?

I’m grateful that I remembered the potty pads I keep for Biko, and remembered my brilliant idea of a sheet path to the door in time to protect the rugs, and had a brand new case of paper towels on hand to line the path for the next run(s). I stayed up late monitoring the situation, then had to get up a few times in the night to let him out and clean up. I’m grateful I had Imodium in the medicine cabinet from the Shitstorm a year ago, grateful I remembered it was there, grateful it seems to have settled things by midday.

I’m grateful I had brown rice in the pantry, and a box of organic chicken broth, so I could fill his tummy and keep him hydrated.

I’m grateful for mindfulness practice every day, but especially today. Under the tender tutelage of Mindful Life Program founders Mark and Laura since last summer, I’ve been learning more about meditation, motivation, and meaning than I have in all my years of casual study and dedicated interest. I’ve begun to fully embody qualities like patience and compassion, which may come easily to some people but have taken me years of practice. I keep my attention trained, for the most part, on what matters, and don’t let my mind drag me off into what ifs or if onlys.

In this way, I was able to remain calm as the gravity of this episode sunk in, recognizing that it’s happened before, we got through it before, and he was just fine (as fine as possible with his bad back end) before; that it was likely it would resolve in a couple of days and we’d go back to our normal, peaceful routine. I was able to accept that this is how it is right now. Further, I had confidence that if all wasn’t well later, and his health took a dark turn, I could handle it. Resilience. So I didn’t fret, I got up when I had to, slept lightly, did what I could do to mitigate mess and cleaned up when necessary, all with unruffled patience and a heart full of unconditional love for my dear companion. I tended and rested through the day, and by evening, all does seem well, neither of us much worse for wear. I’m so grateful that I could hold this unfortunate event in perspective, respond appropriately, and still enjoy many aspects of a quiet, calm snowy Sunday.

While poor Stellar ate gruel, for example, I cooked myself a delicious huevo ranchero, including homemade tortilla, salsa, and hot sauce, and a Bad Dog Ranch happy chicken egg. Resilience allows me to rise to an unfortunate occasion and make the best of what’s left in a day.