Love can be the root of your breath.  Love can be the driving intention behind your responses to others. Love can guide you in service for the community.  In whatever guise Love appears, I hope you follow.  Go with the passions, the impulses, and your internal knowing  to lend yourself as a force for LOVE.

There are various situations that could sit you flat on the rear while you find yourself picking up the pieces of your life to examine the ways in which you may put them back together.

Before you go on that journey of repair you are absolutely vulnerable, exposed yet seeing no one and showing those who may pass nothing; you are still.  You are removed from yourself.  You are everything you were and everything you will become while skimming along the recognition of your dispensability and your indispensability. You feel your vitality hovering at it’s meekest pulse before it all falls into a mass of placated pieces.

It could be that you feign a crack free exterior for some time, not wanting to be broken.  However, if you can accept brokenness and make peace with the pieces in whatever manner they are presenting, mending can begin to happen.

With time, strength will come to take necessary action in gathering the parts you want to rebuild.  If you air on the side of optimism, you may be fortunate enough to find that being broken can mean being opened.

Being broken can mean holding unidentified space that allows you to shape what will be.

Being broken can mean a greater capacity for understanding others.

Being broken can be breathtakingly beautiful at times, if within the open space you let deep, cleansing inhalation stretch down into your toes with the warmth of light and love. The kind of breathing that heals and nurtures you.

There is a Japanese art form where potters repair broken pieces or sometimes purposefully break pieces and fill the cracks with lacquer and gold powder.  It is called kintsukuroi or kintsugi.  The belief is that the object is more beautiful for having been broken.  The gold traces the history, celebrating the story as it highlights places where the pieces have rejoined to become whole again.

“Expansion” by Paige Bradley is currently housed in a private collection (and while not a traditional example of kuntsukuroi, feels fitting for the purpose of this post). You can learn more about her work at http://www.paigebradley.com

Affirmation:

We are all golden links in the chain of good.  I see the light of others shining brightly within them.  I honor our likeness and our connection.

Seeing yourself and others in this way will work to change you from the inside out if you’ve been in doubt of the good in our world.  Look for goodness, be kindness, and you will find it is thriving.

 Gandhi did not realize one thing that I have known for a LONG time.  We share a birthday.  Somehow I doubt this would have changed his life, but it has changed mine.  When I realized that we share this day in my teen years I became fascinated with an amazingly kind and influential person.  Learning about him brought me to Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr as inspirations for Human Rights and my place in this equation.

I wanted to dedicate this day of ours to some thoughts – worth sitting with and repeating daily.

Try saying this out loud for an energy boost this week.   Repeat as often as your heart desires:
My life keeps bringing things that are better and better.  Every pathway unfolding presents a gift unexpected in it’s rich contribution and nourishment.   It feels as if goodness is reaching for me through the hearts of others.  I can see love and kindness reflected in the eyes of those interacting with me now.  I am fully aware of and grateful for these blessings as well as those to come!

A feel good alternative that’s natural and totally free of charge.  It will get you above the clouds and into the clear sky! (Providing that you believe the words… that ingredient must come from your own supply.)

Have you ever had someone do something kind for you but feel strange about the reception?  I currently have two thoughts on why this may be:

1. You’re out of practice in receiving.

2.  The intention of the giver was off.

When we offer an act of kindness, it is important that the act come from a want to nurture, uplift, or assist another human instead of from a need for personal gratification or control of a situation.  Anyone who is sensitive to the motivations of others will feel the source, and the action will take on the energy of the motivation instead of the outward appearance of kindness.

If the issue is the first suggestion, a change in awareness and opening up to receive may help.  Sometimes people offer to help out of obligation, but more often than not if someone is offering to help you – they want to!  You should let them! Take it as an opportunity to practice the art of graceful acceptance and gratitude.

I am progressively feeling the importance and worth of the words:

Trust. Love. Give.

And for the purpose of assuming all the parts of a balanced cycle:  Receive!

We have talked about giant friends, human friends, and now let’s give some credit and witnessing to our little critter friends.  They are so adaptable, fierce, and vulnerable all at the same time.  Finding a little critter and watching it quietly can be the perfect meditation for some afternoons.  Breathe, observe, let go of preconceived feelings about these tiny guys.  They are living life just as we are.

Learning how to breathe in a way that is helpful to our lives and Nervous System is not easy.  It takes practice and time when things are all going OK so that the tool and brain connection is there for you when the POOP hits the fan or someone cuts you off in traffic.  Here is a way to practice- If you find that you are often trying to; ‘calm down’ or ‘not over react’ or not yell at your kids and family- you are in need of DOWN REGULATION.  Nature gives us this with our Exhale.  Seems easy enough, however, most of us do not have access to a long exhale when we need it and we aren’t practiced with taking the time to breathe before we speak or act.  So give this a try.  pick a number between 5-10, find a candle (jars work great because it controls where the wax goes) and breathe the number of exhales that you chose into the jar, flickering the candle but never blowing it out.  See if your exhales can be at least 6-8 seconds.

There.  Done.  Now do it again tomorrow and the next day.  In a few weeks those neural pathways will be made to use this tool in life’s craziness moments.

Trust yourself to make the right decision.  There is no wrong decision, only what is happening and how you respond which will lead to what you experience next.  If you can get into a rhythm of trusting yourself, decision making won’t be a daunting task.  You may even begin to see the existence of options in a welcoming light.