Wiry Fankle One – Getting Ready For Kripalu

I love creating retreats.

I’m already thinking about the circle of women and how we will come in the first night looking tired and wan and how on the last day (whether the weekend or the week) we will look ten years younger.

I’m not kidding.

How on the first night we will be a tad tentative but soon, usually within an hour, we will be unfurling into trusting ourselves and each other, into gently-settling-letting go-softening-dropping in energy, into the miracle of a retreat.

I’m already seeing their faces, some tired, a few sad, a lot stressed, one or two a bit detached as in “Who is this woman and what could she possibly offer me?”, most eager and hungry to bereinspired.

I imagine our faces as we have aha’s; our concentration as we talk in small groups or work on our mess making art journals; the sound of our voices as we roar and the beauty of our bodies as we stretch and move…

the incandescence when we understand with our bodies and our open hearts what self-kindness really is

I’m already there.

I hope you will be, too!

And if not, I’ll be offering a one day Virtual Retreat on April 25th – not sure of the subject yet!

Wiry Fankle Two – More on Slum Dogs

My dear friend Howard Schiffer founded Vitamin Angels which goes into desperately poor places all over the world and gives vitamins and other essential micronutrients primarily to infants and children under five.

That means, for a buck, Howard saves a child from blindness.

A buck.

One. Dollar.

Howard visits the slums north of Mumbai several times a year, helping to adminster vitamin A and deworming medicine, and meeting with the people who live there and are doing all sorts of wildly creative things to make life better.

On this trip, the people were talking about Slumdog Millionaire:

When I arrived, people in India were really upset about Slumdog Millionaire, but I saw it as an opportunity.  For many, the Indian economic miracle is finally putting a new face on the country, but ‘Slumdog’ shined a bright a light on those still largely excluded from the Indian economy.”

I love you Howard!

Wiry Fankle Three – Being in Your Own Hula Hoop

Over at the Comfort Cafe, we’ve been talking about how challenging it is to be happy when someone you love is unhappy.

How challenging it is to not get all twitter-patted when your kid is struggling with a big project.

How easy it is to be swamped with sadness and lose your mo-jo when your sweetheart is going through a sticky, painful disappointment.

How you can lose days to wondering how a friend’s medical test will turn out.

What came up for me as I listened to these conversations was what my therapist says to me about twenty times a session -

Get back in your own Hula-hoop.”

As is get back in your own feelings and in your own body and notice what’s happening there.

Feel that. Be with that. Acknowledge that.

Take care of your own stuff.

Then see what you can offer without assuming you know what the other person is going through.

One reason we tend to worry about other people and fuss over them and let our thoughts be over there with them and our energy over there in them is…

It’s easier than dealing with what’s going on inside ourselves.

You know how to be of real service to those we love?

Deal with our own stuff with incredible tenderness and respect.

Bring our energy home and be there, in our feelings, in our bodies.

Love them from there.

Offer help from there.

Trust they can handle it from there.

You might like my Mood Changer: Calling Your Energy Home for help with this.

I know, easier said than done and it is possible.

I did it when my dad was dying.

I did it after my friend jumped off a roof and died in the gutter.

I did it when my sweetheart was suffering.

I do it all the time when Lilly is doing her painful teenage growing thing.

And if there is one thing I know, is if I can do it, you can, too.