What is your heartfelt wish for yourself in 2023?

What would have to shift for your life to align with your deepest values?

How can you bring more compassion, kindness and empathy into your life this year?

Compassion is the daily practice of recognizing and accepting our shared humanity, so that we treat others and ourselves with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering. It is fueled by understanding and accepting that no one is immune to pain or suffering. Compassion is not a practice of “better than” or “I can fix you”.

Our heart’s natural state is open and loving, so that is what we experience when it is clear of blockages. How do we remove the obstacles? Love everything you do and everyone you see. Choose to focus your awareness on the love instead of your lower self. Love is a natural force in the universe feeding us from the inside. Michael Singer, Living Untethered

It’s easy to bring “them” to mind. They are the ones who activate us into a survival response, like the fury we direct at someone who won’t respect our boundaries. Other times we might encase our heart in ice and refuse to care about them. Being in relationship with people pushes our buttons. We need each other, and we are so deeply hurt by each other.

“The goal of this journey is not to change our thoughts or emotions. It is to stay in the seat of Self while accepting the shifts that are taking place.” Michael Singer, Living Untethered

The heart is more sensitive than the mind, and we have much less control over feelings than thoughts. Some emotions feel like the sensation of wind flowing over you like a gentle breeze. Others are more like being out in a fierce storm.

We relax and release back into our seat of consciousness, and witness the part of us who is complaining about life not being the way we want it to be. We practice letting go of smaller daily irritations to build the resilience and strength we need to handle tougher situations in life. How do we do that? This is where the objective witness comes in.

“How can we touch and live in expanded consciousness? What are the obstacles inherent in the human predicament, and how can we let them go?” Michael Singer is practical. This is how it is. Do you see what happens when you don’t accept reality? How can I help you see? To be free?

We’ve all been there. We try to meditate, but our mind gets in the way. We have a predictive brain with a negativity bias that remembers everything bad that ever happened to us. The worry, anxiety and catastrophic thinking that disturb our peace are essentially our nervous system “helpfully” trying to keep us safe.

In my life’s important areas: what am I not saying no to?

Where did I sense a no that I stifled, conveying a “yes” (or a silence) instead?

How does my inability to say no impact my life?

What bodily signals have I been overlooking?

“Ancient cultures have long understood that we exist in relationship to all, are affected by all, and affect all. Our brains and minds are not independent operators. Nothing about us, mental or physical, can be comprehended apart from the many-faceted milieu in which we exist. It is a reality of our interconnected nature.” Gabor Maté, MD

I’ve been meditating for 29 years. I remember reading that about people and thinking wow! What would that be like? I was sure that after meditating so long, people would be peaceful all the time. It turns out that’s mostly true! Meditation changes our mind.

“I have come to believe that behind the entire epidemic of chronic afflictions, mental and physical, that beset our current moment, something is amiss in our culture itself, generating both the rash of ailments we are suffering and crucially, the ideological blind spots that keep us ignorant of the connections that bind our health to our social-emotional lives. Chronic illness is not a glitch, it is a consequence of how we live.” Gabor Maté, MD

If we want a just world, we have to fight for it. We are not personally responsible for systemic racism, colonialism, the patriarchy, and oppression. No one person is responsible for this system. We are each responsible for understanding, grappling with the complexity, and taking action now. Seeing and speaking truth in community changes us. When we do, it changes the world.

I was raised to be racist. I was eleven and had just purchased We Shall Overcome, a songbook from the US Civil Rights movement. I brought it with me on a visit to my mom’s parents farm. I vaguely remember her discouraging me from bringing it. It would have been better if she had outright told me no, but then she would have had to tell me why.

“We step up and face the situation (clean pain), or we fold and shrink away. We either grow up or flee. We make an internal commitment to growing up.” Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands.

When people are in fight/ flight/ freeze, they don’t have reliable access to higher level brain development. Driven by competition, fear and survival, it’s “us against them”. We can know these are trauma responses, yet still have a hard time staying connected and not shutting down. We need clarity and to be strategic.

My meditation skills and yoga philosophy help to heal the layers of fear in the mind, breath and body. Fear for my safety became a huge issue for me the year after the assault and it was not just fear of another assault.

Don’t rush into forgiveness. It is natural to be angry at people who commit violent crimes. They have harmed you and temporarily stolen your health and peace of mind.

Some days people in the office act like we are in Junior High or Middle School. You know, back when the pre-frontal cortex wasn’t fully developed and our decision making was highly influenced by peers, the threat of social shaming, and what could stimulate the most adrenaline in the moment. It happens in families too. We carry our old roles and status into our adult life.

In April 2022, I facilitated a 5 day retreat for women and gender queer artists about sexual health and their relationship with their bodies. Although I have facilitated many retreats, it was my first time in a documentary. The director Amy Trefry and I strategized about how we might support the participants feeling emotionally safe enough to share while being filmed about such a personal topic. It turned out that we didn’t need to worry.