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I am in class, on the dance floor. Stacey, the teacher, begins to weave her magic and invites us to, “Move from the breath.” I instantly breath more deeply. How simple yet powerful is the reminder to breath.

I move.

And, I move.

And, as I move from the breath my movement deepens, my body opens, a simple joy makes itself known.

The breath carries me into the wave: a wave of rhythm, a wave of pleasure, a wave of release, a wave of not knowing…

My body begins to feel like liquid – liquid breath, liquid love, liquid life – and then I soften, open and receive. I receive everything I need to keep moving, for as long as the Spirit moves me.

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It isn’t always so simple…or at least I tell myself that is so. But if I’ve learned one thing from dancing the 5Rhythms, it is to always come back to the breath.

When life feels hard, come back to the breath.

When I don’t know anything at all, come back to the breath.

When I’m scared shitless, come back to the breath.

When I’m ungrounded, spinning, and caught in one of those circles of drama, come back to the breath.

When I’m joyously alive and feeling on top of the world, come back to the breath.

When I hate what is happening, come back to the breath.

When I’m flowing, come back to the breath.

When I am mad as hell, come back to the breath.

When I have no idea what to do next, come back to the breath.

Whenever, whatever, wherever, whomever, however… come back to the breath.

I’ve found breathing is a supremely sensuous experience.

I am breathing.

I am moving.

I am dancing.

I am alive…and for this, I am grateful.

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Photo by bloody marty mix on Flickr | Some rights reserved

5Rhythms is the work of Gabrielle Roth.

Hamoa Beach, Hana, Maui

“Let your eyes remain empty of interpretation and the seeing will occur in silence.” – Mooji

When the eyes caress, just as a lover takes in the one being loved, an immediacy is known.

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I had a very personal and profound experience a few months ago about seeing, really seeing. And, hearing too. This experience took place in Hana, at Hamoa Beach.

I wrote about for an upcoming book, but this experience wanted to be shared sooner. I couldn’t think of a better place to share it than on Teresa Deak‘s new site, Given to Gratitude. So I have.

I’d love for you to click on over to Teresa’s site and read these words, “So Much is Given“.

I’d love to know what you feel…

There is nothing to ‘get’, yet so much to receive.
Life gives willingly when we open our arms
rather than grasping with our hands.

Simple abundance is present in each breath.
Allow it to enfold you and trust it is enough,
For all is given from a dark well of Knowing.

Dine on its splendor and savor its radiance.
Soak up its succulence and open your Heart to its nourishment.
Quench your thirst knowing there is always more to fill your bones.

It may not be what you think you want
And it is exactly what you are thirsting for…
Always enough. Always enough.

Heart of Midlothian by Niffty on Flickr

image attribution

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Each day of December, I am being  moved to post by Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:
Today is Day 28 Stationery. When you touch the paper, your heart melts. The ink flows from the pen. What was your stationery find of the year?

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I do love nice stationery, but this morning I don’t feel compelled to write on this. What I am compelled to do is celebrate and thank. This comes from two things: Gwen Bell’s post on How to Write Non-Digital Thank You Notes and my post from yesterday about social web moments and women connecting.

After I wrote yesterday’s post where I shared about the wonderful connections with women I have made during this year, I felt an urge to celebrate as many of these women in today’s post by thanking as many as I can for the gifts they’ve given me by sharing their personal experiences so vulnerably and beautifully. These women have also shared by coming to my blog, reading and leaving a thank you note to me in the form of a comment – something that lifted me and encouraged me to write with more courage and vulnerability myself.

This is my digital thank you note to you beautiful women. This is my celebration of you!

So, in no particular order at all, here’s to you beautiful women. I celebrate you and your voices of vulnerability and truth!:

Julie Jordan Scott: Passionately Creating

Jeanne Hewell-Chambers: The Barefoot Heart

Karen Caterson: Square Peg People

Kathy Loh: Full Moon Path

Lena West: Xyno Media

Amy Oscar: Story, Spirit, Seed

Emma James: Pleasure Notes

Kelly Diels: Cleavage

Gwen Bell: Big Love in a Small World

Mynde Mayfield: m Squared

Bindu Wiles: The Awakened Life

Marjory Mejia: Sacred Flow

Lindsey Mead: A Design So Vast

Alana Sheeren: Whole Self Coach

Floreta: The Solitary Panda

RandiBuckley: Randi Buckley Coaching

Carrie Bouler: Different World

Dian Reid: Authentic Realities

Olive & Hope

Chris Zydel: Creative Juices Arts

Lisa Lauffer: Deep Waters Coaching

Alicia McLucas: Life Coach

Kate T.W.: Amusing Fire

Mary Liepold: Peace X Peace

Kate Moller: Team Northrup

Danielle Vieth: Team Northrup

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If you feel compelled, take a moment to check out these beautiful women and the work they do in the world. It is an honor and pleasure to know each of you. I look forward to our deepening friendship in this coming new decade.

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image Welcome New Light by alicepopkorn
cc license

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Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:  Day 25 Gift. What’s a gift you gave yourself this year that has kept on giving?

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The moment you expect something in return, love dies. ~ Ryuho Okawa

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I love this question, because it guides me back to that which, when remembered, is already giving and is always giving. It is the source of all giving. When we give from this place, we wish nothing in return. It is here that love can flourish.

Remembrance. My soul is always calling me back to remembrance. It is the siren song, the wake-up call of the soul. It compels me, if I’m quiet and listening with my whole body, to remember the love in my heart. It guides me back to the heart, to the innermost heart, back to remembrance of love for the Beloved.

This remembrance of life is the natural spring of gratitude, which flows ceaselessly and endlessly.

This remembrance reminds me to be kind and compassionate to myself, to do no harm to this being, and in so doing, the awareness to be kind and compassionate to others, to do no harm to others, also grows and flourishes.

This remembrance floods all things with love, even those thoughts and beliefs that feel void of love.

Today, on the day of Christmas and gift-giving, when many of us around the world remember Christ, remembrance guides me to remember Christ consciousness (or Buddha, Cosmic, Higher consciousness), the inner heart of being in all of life that radiates qualities of compassion, truthfulness, humility and forgiveness towards all.

The simplicity of remembrance cannot be overstated. It is simple. When rembrance calls you, go with it. Let it carry you back. If the desire is true to remember, remembrance will find you and usher you home.

There are many things to be grateful “for” but, as I ripen with the seasons of life, the many reasons blend into a sacred mystery. And, most deeply, I realize that living gratefully is its own blessing. ~ Michael Mahoney

Thanksgiving is such a beautiful holiday. It seems as though it brings out something profoundly human in us – the ability, and opportunity, to reflect on our lives and realize what we have been blessed with. I know in my own life, though, many times it has been much easier to be grateful when things are going well, when it feels like Life has my back.

This past Thursday on Thanksgiving, I was reflecting on what and who is no longer in my life – my late-husband, who died almost 15 years ago; my mother, who died last year; my grandparents who have all passed on; and many other things too personal to mention here. I used to lament these losses. I couldn’t quite separate out my grief from the victim story. As I became more aware of how this lamentation was holding me back from being fully engaged with life, I began to see that grief, if allowed to flow unimpeded, is a naturally intelligent process – one that will bring you out the other side if you learn to trust, and allow, its unpredictable flow.

To move past the victim story, I had to see all that I had been given, for the time I had been granted. I had to see that things come and things go; that people come and people go. The times of suffering in my life came when I attempted to hang on to what was no longer here.

Learning to trust in the mystery of grief is no different than learning to trust in the good times that come just as unpredictably. It’s all unpredictable – that’s the mystery that is at the core of this beautiful blessing that is life. Life ripens us, if we allow ourselves to feast on the entire banquet it serves.

I suppose it is this ripening that happens through the seasons of life that allows greater trust in the mystery that is life at its core.  Something profoundly beautiful happens when I drop the reasons for being grateful and just live gratitude.

A few years ago, 2005 to be exact, I wrote an article on Giving Gratitude Forward. The article began like this:

If you think gratitude doesn’t have a thing to do with creativity, you’re probably not alone. Many believe gratitude is something we have for what has already happened. Gratitude and appreciation almost always is focused on the past.

Many times we aren’t present, in the moment, to what we are receiving to be grateful for it as it comes. But even more often, we don’t think of, feel, or express gratitude for what is to come in the future. How can we be grateful for what hasn’t even happened yet? Who knows how good (or bad) it really might be? I mean, how can we be grateful for something if we don’t yet know we are happy it has happened. Sounds sort of like a Zen Koan…confusing and confounding…but it’s not.

When you naturally feel and express deep gratitude for all of life and its inherent intelligence and abundance, you are opening your heart and soul to this creative force. You remember you are in the flow of life and touch in again with all that supports you. This flow is there all the time, even when you don’t remember. It is a grateful, open heart that re-opens and re-connects you to this creative flow.

When you start with deep true gratitude for what is, you connect your own creative nature to that of everything around you. Acknowledging that there is a deeper intelligence and that it is at work in every moment, invites in the infinite possibilities inherent in each moment. read more

Over the past five years since I wrote this piece, life has presented some profoundly transformational gifts – my mother’s long, protracted illness and the stark reality of the painful death she experienced; the birth of my new granddaughter on my mother’s birthday, six weeks after Mom passed; the birth of my grandson eight months later; the births of my great-nieces and great-nephew; and a beautiful new relationship in my life. Birth, Death and Re-birth, all rolled up into one beautiful flow of life that has gifted me the opportunity to see my place in the flow of life.

But here is another transformational gift life has presented, and this is a big one: the growing realization that life on Earth as we know it, is in the process of a deep and radical change. It is easy to stay in a place of denial that all will be well, that someone, somewhere, will take care of things, will make things better, will save the day, will save the myriad expressions of nature from becoming extinct, will feed the children, will stop the horrific things being perpetrated upon women, children, the earth, and, yes, men.

Living gratefully for its own sake is humbling, for it is in this living that I know beyond a doubt that I have absolutely no control over all that I thought I had.

Living gratefully is also enlightening, because I know that it is in the chaos of the mystery that transformation can happen. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that we don’t know how things will turn out, either in our own lives, or for all of life here on earth.

Most importantly as I wrote in my article of 2005, living gratefully brings us to awareness of our personal internal creative resource, and communion with, the creativity inherent in life itself. This is key because knowing we, and all other human beings, are naturally creative, in fact wildly creative, can move us from denial into collaborative conscious action, action that comes from the deeper intelligence that is our creativity.

I feel living gratefully for all that we have had, and have been blessed with, is key to realizing that we have to wake up and become conscious with what is unfolding before our eyes, to where things are and to what is wanting to be born. Beyond anything else, for the sake of my children and grandchildren, and for the sake of all children, the earth and all of life, I want us human beings to work it out – to really get it that we have screwed things up, to begin to listen to how we can change our ways and walk in the ways of humility and compassion, and to begin to live the wild creativity that we have been blessed with.

Living gratefully is living with the immediate awareness that all we can ever know and experience is a bigger gift than we can ever understand with our minds.

As I wrote five years back, “Acknowledging that there is a deeper intelligence and that it is at work in every moment, invites in the infinite possibilities inherent in each moment.”

What if we were to look forward to the mystery of the future with vibrantly alive gratitude for whatever comes, knowing that it is this deeper intelligence at work in each moment? We then might recognize a new way of life for human beings, in harmony with the rest of life, that is being offered up. We might then see that the mystery knows something we cannot – until it is time for us to know it.

We might even remember along the way, no matter what life brings, that Life, itself, is the gift.