Tag Archives: skillful understanding

March Mindfulness 2016

3jewels.marchmindfulness2016.png

It’s my fourth annual “call-to-action” to promote the practice of bringing skillful and compassionate awareness to how we engage, are impacted by, and then respond to the world around us.

March heralds the coming of Spring and, with it, a sense of renewal! Let us take a few moments to refresh our commitment to self-inquiry and spiritual self-care by tending to ourselves with loving awareness so that we may notice what moves, blooms, dissolves, transforms and even becomes reconciled within body, heart, mind, and relationships.‪

WHEN + WHERE:
MARCH 1st – 31st | RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!

HOW:
PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE!
What can you do each day to foster
compassion, skillful understanding, authentic connection, inclusion, freedom, belonging?
No action is too small!

RSVP TO SHOW YOUR COMMITMENT ~
 3 JEWELS YOGA | MARCH MINDFULNESS 2016

SHARE THE CREATIVE + THOUGHTFUL WAYS
THAT YOU ARE GENERATING COMPASSION
FOR YOURSELF + OTHERS ~
Submit stories + images to be featured on 3 Jewels Yoga’s site. Email: tara@3jewelsyoga.com


Post them to 3 Jewels Yoga’s Facebook page with the hashtag #MarchMindfulness2016

SPREAD THE LOVE + INVITE OTHERS!

embodied wisdom: on self-acceptance

selfacceptance.chinese calligraphy

~ from Mentoring: The Tao of Giving and Receiving Wisdom
by C.A. Huang + J. Lynch

In Body Awareness Bootcamp, practitioners are invited to “go deep to come home” and awaken clear comprehension and compassionate action (small steps, sustainable choices).  Home, to the center of the self: the heart, where the seeds of self-compassion, self-acceptance, and inner wisdom are bathed in breath and awareness. The invisible thread of breath connects body, heart and mind. As breath blossoms in the body, with our skillful effort, the heart and mind becomes synced with the steady and subtle song of breath. Space is created for all to unravel and unfold into its full expression. Toxins and tensions are freed and released. We feel rooted, connected and resilient enough to embrace our whole selves.  We gently shine the light upon the neglected parts, remembering all that makes us complete. Nothing is left out of our loving awareness. Now we freely bloom.

embodied practice: on whole body awareness

Living, the whole body carries its meaning and tells its own story, standing, sitting, walking, awake or asleep.

It pulls all the life up into the face of the philosopher, and sends it all down into the legs of the dancer.

A casual world over-emphasizes the face. Memory likes to recall the whole body.

It is not our parents’ faces that come back to us, but their bodies, in the accustomed chairs, eating, sewing, smoking, doing all familiar things.

We remember each as a body in action…

Thus the stuff of the ages goes into man’s thinking,
is interpreted and comes out in movement and posture again.
Personality goes into structure—by denial or affirmation into person again.
It is an aspect of life in evolution.

~Mabel E. Todd
The Thinking Body

embodied practice: on self care as self-preservation

via "panarchy" [http://miafortunato.tumblr.com/]

 

 

kiss your brain: a compassionate life lesson from a preschool teacher

Here’s a practice to help foster self-compassion + (it is hoped) to plant seeds of skillful understanding about the workings of the brain and the arising mind and behaviors. #KissYourBrain #CradleYourHeart

t scott-miller's avatardhamma for mama*

Last year, I worked as a substitute teaching assistant for a preschool program and had the opportunity to observe the dynamics between teachers, program assistants, and students in several classrooms.

One teacher quickly won my heart when I heard her say “Kiss Your Brain” in praise of the kids’ engagement in a group lesson. It wasn’t about having the “right” answer or being the best and smartest. It was a simple celebration of their ability and willingness to use their brain power—thinking, imagining, problem-solving, asking questions—and sharing it with others.

I’ve carried this practice into my home as well as into my yoga and meditation classes. With my son and the children that I teach, this phrase is a seed of self-compassion to nurture confidence and a sense of competency. It has the power to foster a love for learning without the pressure of performing to a certain standard of…

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embodied practice: on the suchness of sangha

“I could hear my heart beating.
I could hear everyone’s heart.
I could hear the human noise we sat there making,
not one of us moving,
not even when the room went dark.”

~Raymond Carver
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

This gem was quoted in the film Stuck In Love (so-so) and instantly evoked for me the image + energy of mindfulness + compassion that we cultivate in what I call the full embrace of sangha. It is the suchness generated within a community of spiritual practitioners + friends.

 

 


Explore:

Suchness, Tathata, Mahayana Buddhism ~ India Netzone

The Contemplation of Suchness (.pdf) ~ Jacqueline I. Stone

Tathata: The The ~ Richard Collins

embodied practice: the healing power of community

The energy of a community of mindfulness can help us embrace and release suffering that we could not reach by ourselves…

father's day practice.13a

If we open our hearts, the collective energy of the community can penetrate the suffering inside us.

~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Communicating

HEAR HERE [for deep listening]: The Biology of the Spirit |Sherwin Nuland + On Being With Krista Tippett


SN: Well, you just got the word. I’ve been sitting here on the edge of my seat, hoping, ‘When am I going to get to say this word, wonder?’

Wonder is something I share with people of deep faith. They wonder at the universe that God has created, and I wonder at the universe that nature has created. But this is a sense of awe that motivates the faithful, motivates me. And when I say motivates, it provides an energy for seeking. Just as the faithful will always say, ‘We are seeking,’ I am seeking.

We’re seeking different things. I’m seeking an understanding of this integrity of everything, of this unity of everything, of the equilibrium of not just the homeostasis, as the physiologists say, the staying the sameness, but of the closeness that we are constantly coming to chaos. I have had chaos. I’ve had chaos to the point where I thought my mind was lost, which gives me a deeper appreciation of equanimity, not just to continued existence but to continued learning, continued productivity, this kind of thing.

KT: …I mean you really do suggest that the human spirit is something of an evolutionary accomplishment.

SN: I think there is an evolutionary accomplishment of the human cortex, the cortex of the brain, and the way it relates to the lower centers of the brain and the way it relates to the entire body, the way it accepts and synthesizes information, uses information from the environment, from the deepest recesses of the body, the way it recognizes dangers to its continued integrity. And I think that this is precisely what the human spirit is doing. The human spirit is maintaining an equilibrium, and it largely is related to its normal physical and chemical functioning…

Consciousness is only a kind of an awareness of our surroundings, an awareness of our emotions, an awareness of our responses. The human spirit is something much greater. The human spirit is an enrichment. It’s the way we use our consciousness to, I keep using this word, to synthesize something better than our mere consciousness, to make ourselves emotionally richer than we in fact are.

HEAR HERE [for deep listening]: The Biology of the Spirit