In this episode we celebrate the shift in light and season, and honor the Fall Equinox. We start with a balancing alternate nostril breath practice and then contemplate what we are harvesting in our lives right now.
New Yoga Practice: Coming Home
Sit With: New Moon Meditation
New Yoga Practice: Bhumi, Earth Centered Practice
In this practice, we start by grounding and connecting to Bhumi, the Goddess of Earth. This is a good class if you are physically traveling or have a lot of traveling thoughts. We will connect to the feet and the legs, inviting the attention to center. Filmed at Calala Lodge, my favorite hotel in Cabuya, Costa Rica.
Sit With: Ever-Changing Nature of Ourselves
New Yoga Practice: Vata, Breathing Through Backbends
Sit With: Abundant Full Moon Meditation
Sit With: Persistence
In this episode, we ground in simplicity. Meditation is simple, and yet it takes a practice of persistence. Today we focus the attention at the tip of nose and observe thoughts that take us away from the present moment. It is through persistent practice that we build the muscles of our psyche so we can access more awareness and creativity in our daily lives.
New Yoga Practice: Agni, Fire
Sit With: Inner and Outer Soundscape
New Yoga Practice: Meredith X Costa Rica
Sit With: Paying Attention
In this episode we continue to use Rick Rubin's book The Creative Act: A Way of Being to inquire about our creative life. We start with a simple body scan meditation, followed by a few questions to contemplate.
New Yoga Practice: Meredith X Ormond Beach, FL
Sit With X Creativity
Reclaiming Wide Open Spaces Within
Wild Women Book Club: Starts April 9th!
Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Hunting: When the Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
4 Week Book Club- April 9-30th
Thursday evenings, 6-7 pm (pst)
Join me for 4 weeks as read or reread the 5th chapter of Women Who Run with the Wolves. I recently reread this chapter and have felt greatly inspired to connect and open dialogue with other women. I personally have experienced heartbreak and healing and now flirting with empowerment, and this chapter resonated so deeply. So whether you are currently in a relationship, getting out of a relationship, or single- this book club is for you! All voices and experiences are welcome.
This book club is for anyone that wants to know themselves or their relationship dynamics more intimately. It’s for anyone that wants to connect to an intentional community of compassionate, wild, and wise women. The chapter will be spread out over 4 weeks so we can really SLOW DOWN, go in, and listen. We will explore the life/death/life cycle that inevitably shows up in romantic partnerships and see how it is a path to transformation and empowerment.
“Love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
What you need:
A copy of Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Access to the internet to Zoom into the Book Club
An hour on Thursday nights, 6-7 pm pst
An hour during the week to read, write, and reflect
Schedule:
Week 1: April 9th- Welcoming the Skeleton Woman
The first week we will virtually circle and be introduced to each other and the text we will be working with. We will arrive having read the short story “Skeleton Woman,” have a brief discussion, and set intentions for our time together.
Week 2: April 16th- Death in the House of Love
The second week we will dive a bit deeper into the concept of the life/death/life cycle and how it shows up in romantic relationships. We are familiar and probably really enjoy the initial “life” experience where we bliss out and get knocked off our feet. Inevitably the “Skeleton Woman” shows up, chasing us down fiercely to look at our own wounds. It’s uncomfortable and scary, and easy to turn around to try to find that original bliss. But what if there was something more intimate, more brighter, more sustainable on the other side of death?
Week 3: April 23- Untangling the Skeleton
In the third week, we will start to untangle our individual skeletons and get to know our habits and movements that hold us back and down. It’s an invitation to be in full participation with all the different parts of yourself. It’s a practice of self-love and loving yourself “even though” you are hurt or have been brokenhearted in the past. This week is an invitation to rest and trust yourself, and to feel into your power.
Week 4: April 30th- The Dance of Body and Soul
This final week, we will start to look at un baile con La Muerte, a dance with death. We’ll continue to digest and integrate the body/soul in intimate relationships- with ourselves and others. We will do some reflection and final sharing.
Book Club 2020
Book Club starts January 15th at 7 am, at Sight Glass coffee.
We have been gathering for over two years and it is time to make it official. A group of us meets after yoga to discuss one chapter of the current book we are reading & we would love to have you. We have read David Whyte, Tommy Orange, and Krista Tippett to name a few. We have read non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and short essays. We try to keep it diverse, relevant, and intentional.
Michael Stone
This year we are starting with one of my most favorite and inspiring authors, Michael Stone. His teachings are wise and relatable to the modern life. Through his words, he inspires action in response to social, economic, and environmental challenges. He defines Karma as “the effect of our actions,” and encourages a more awakened life.
Join us next Wednesday as we start the dive into his book, Yoga For A World Out of Balance: Teachings on Ethics and Social Action. We will take our time, reading just one chapter per week, starting with the introduction.
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On Mindful Creativity
collage by Chelsea Owens, MFT and ATR
Lately, as a way of engaging in this life, I’ve been shifting my attention as I wander around San Francisco, with the intention to creatively engage by paying attention to my surroundings. I’ve been trying to pay less attention to my phone and actually look up at the sky, clouds, at more trees, noticing their differences in shape and form and how differently they all dance when it’s windy. I’ve noticed short vignettes on my commute that make my heart swell up and remind me that I'm alive: catching a glimpse of a surly, tattooed, and mustachioed delivery driver head-banging to and blasting Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at 8am, or a small child’s innocent glee at the sight of his classmate, subsequent embrace and exchange of excitement for the day ahead of them. My intention is to write down ten new things I notice each day as a way to creatively engage in the world. It usually ends up being more like two, but a work in practice. Mindful creative engagement with the world could be play or it could be serious. It could be an afternoon adventure, sitting in a forest, chopping vegetables for a meal, or painting- all are our own response to the natural world.
Creative expression and art can be utilized as a modality to explore feelings, ease emotional conflicts, and foster self-awareness.
Art making and creativity has a potential to fulfill psychological and spiritual needs through personalizing spaces, expressing or reframing a narrative of one's identity, drawing attention to the immediacy of the present moment in one's body, or practicing as a concrete tool of grounding and self-soothing. Creative expression, when shared or cultivated in a community, can foster a sense of belonging and witnessing. Through exposing your vulnerable self, and opening to the fear or possibility of criticism, there is immense healing power through communion with others in understanding how completely brave it is to share parts of yourself in service of the hope of receiving acceptance and love, as well as understanding how completely we all feel and desire the same thing- to belong. The therapeutic application of mindfulness, or focusing one's attention and opening up awareness, can reduce anxiety and stress, and increase our ability to open to oneself and the world by shifting one's perspective of the world. Psychologist Ellen Langer states that mindfulness, or the noticing of new things, leads to more awareness of how things change depending on the context and perspective from which they are viewed- mindfulness then requires that we give up the fixed ways in which we’ve learned to look at the world.
Naturally then, the marriage of art making and mindfulness would be assumed to increase the possibility of healing parts of your wounded self, communicating thoughts and feelings, and noticing the ways you are or are not paying attention to yourself or the world. Creativity is not something that some people have and others don't- anyone can be creative. Our creative nature is a part of our daily lives, Langer says, from the way we speak to how we express our culture, and even in the seemingly mundane activities. However, often people’s self-imposed judgments show up as obstacles to expressing their creativity, such as what the end product “should” be, how things “should” look, or playing a script of fixed ways of looking at the world. In art therapy, we often address this- it’s not about the end product it’s about the process. Langer said we distinguish the product from the experience of creating it, and for most of us it is a terrifying prospect to imagine being judged in this way. If only we could put aside our concern for others’ judgment, creative engagement could transform our lives through whatever creative endeavors we choose. We often do things we know with certainty we will be good at. We often avoid things we know, usually without certainty, that we will not be good at. Who put that criteria there? Where did the good and bad come from and how could you challenge dichotomous thinking?
Ellen Langer says the more mindful, the less self-conscious we are; the more we know what we’re going to do before we do it, the more opportunity there is to be self-conscious and to process mindlessly- art can make us more mindful, and being more mindful may increase our ability to do and appreciate art.
““I am an artist…I am here to live out loud.”
”
Contemplation:
How can you let your creativity and expression play, explore and be open to the world around you?
How do you want to expand?
*for further reading: Ellen Langer’s book On Becoming an Artist is a great resource on this topic, as well as her book Mindfuless.
collage by Chelsea Owens, MFT and ATR
JUST BEYOND YOURSELF
Just beyond
Yourself.
It’s where
you need
to be.
Half a step
into
self-forgetting
and the rest
restored
by what
you’ll meet.
There is a road
always beckoning.
When you see
the two sides
of it
closing together
at that far horizon
and deep in the foundations
of your own
heart
at exactly
the same
time,
that’s how
you know
it’s the road
you
have
to follow.
That’s how
you know
it’s where
you
have
to go.
That’s
how you know
you have to.
That's how you know.
Just beyond
yourself,
it’s
where you
need to be.
-David Whyte
Chelsea Owens is a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified art therapist committed to restoring balance between the mind, body, and spirit. Based in San Francisco, CA, Chelsea uses creativity, reflection, and expression with her clients to help illuminate communication from the inside out. Through joyful, light energy and her passion to empower retreat participants to access their true potential, Chelsea looks forward to help creativity flow at the Wise and Wild Women’s retreat. For more information, please visit Chelsea at www.chelseaowenstherapy.com
Sit With: A Wise and Wild Women's Meditation
“There is a soft and yet FIERCE compassion to the feminine.”
Welcome to another episode of Sit With: A Meditation and Contemplation Podcast. Today's episode has been designed for women, though anyone is invited and encouraged to practice. It's a sneak peak to what will be offered and explored in this year's Wise and Wild Women's Retreat in Sayulita, Mexico. This meditation invites you to connect to and nourish the source of the feminine, the creative, and the intuitive. It's an offering of breathing sweetly, moving freely, and expressing powerfully. We spend some time connecting heart to womb and then rocking the pelvic bowl forward and back and around in circles, churning and stirring the feminine pot. This is a practice of awakening and owning the power of creativity and intuition, and expressing fiercely through dance, painting, writing, speech, or simply being present.
May this practice nourish, heal, and inspire ourselves, families, communities, and societies.
OM NAMASTE
Wise and Wild Women's Meditation Practice
place hand over heart and breathe
gently touch in and slide hand down to womb and breathe
tilt pelvic bowl forward, reach your sitting bones back and allow belly to fall forward
rock pelvic bowl back, reach your sitting bones forward and allow belly to fall back
breathe sweetly and continue to rock forward back for a few minutes, inviting a softness and suppleness through low back
start to churn in circles, stirring the feminine for another few minutes
pause and notice what you feel
It's Time: Reclaiming the Wise and Wild Woman
It's not that she isn't there- in fact, she is right here and always has been. However, she may be buried deep, silenced, or asleep due to the patriarchal society telling us to be small, polite, and quiet. Don't move too much, don't speak too loudly, and don't make a scene.
Well... NO!
She has had enough- we have had enough- and it's time to AWAKEN the WISE and WILD Woman. You know who she is. Maybe you remember her freedom and imagination from childhood or maybe you catch glimpses of her in moments of creativity or on the dance floor. You probably hear her whispering in your bones and in your soul- to move freely, express fiercely, and create beautifully.
Now is the time. It's time to listen, trust, and unleash the Wise and Wild Woman within and it's time to gather and do it together!
The wise and "wild" woman is not some crazed, irrational, or over-emotional being. Rather, she is our natural, raw, and true state. Our wildness is our intuition, our emotions, our sexuality, and our creativity. Our wildness is our knowing and our connection to living our most honest and fulfilled lives. Our wildness is our birthright.
On October 27th, 2018 we will gather for a week in the nourishing land of Sayulita, Mexico to explore, heal, and inspire the feminine. Energetically, the feminine is the "Maha" or Great Creator. It is She that has the power to bring new life in the world- whether this be in the form children, art, or relationships. She has the graceful ability to influence families, communities, and societies in her own subtle and yet fiery way- through words or dance or painting AND by her strong and loving presence.
The Wise and Wild Women's retreat will be an intentional gathering of women of all ages and abilities. Together, we will dialogue around and support each other through some of the most powerful cycles that are entry points to the creative- the menstrual cycle, sexuality, pregnancy and birth, and menopause. Together, we will build a strong community to be seen for the wise women we are and together we will lift each other up.
There will be individual and collective space to contemplate emotionally, express intuitively, and move, breathe, and create freely. This exploration, remembering, and owning of the feminine will not only heal and empower ourselves but also contribute to the well-being of all life on Earth.