I am thinking still of the ways that nature can point the way to rest, to surrender, toward a kind of active peace. The inescapable, inexorable quality of nature is change. Presence with this truth can release us from the suffering that comes when we go against that grain. This is a buddhist argument: all is change. Resistance to change, fear of it, attempts to control it, are the root cause of suffering. It’s one thing to read and think this, another to experience it. And it is another matter entirely to remember, moment to moment.

Anitya — impermanence — is a central doctrine in Buddhism: all phenomenal, temporal things change. Or, all things with a cause are impermanent. When I think about all things changing, I can trip into worry or fear, anticipatory grief. And yet to surrender to the elemental nature of change, to be in harmony with it, is so comforting. Nature shows this, being knows this, when we let it be.

I have had a distinct desire to reach back into my memory and my notebooks, to dip into a current that was disrupted, four or five years ago. What was it, and can I still find it, to ride a part of it into now? Can I braid a lost wave into the current current?

Winter’s medicine is inward time. Making our life circles, in cycles, in waves: resting and dreaming, brewing, percolating, moving slow beneath the frozen earth, cold sea. Like sea lions and arctic whales, or the iron red rivers moving through the stones beneath my home since the last ice age.

It is natural to take time to reflect as the year turns — a time for meditative retreat in the darkest days after Winter Solstice. Let us close this year with a dedicated space for that reflection, to integrate and inquire…

December 28, 2020 – January 1, 2021 8:30–9 a.m.

I am excited to add a new yoga and meditation class to my weekly teaching schedule: Attune Body+Mind, Mondays at noon, eastern time. This 75 minute class includes a 15 minute meditation — if you only have 60 minutes, there will be a natural break to return to your day at 1 pm. The first class will be on November 16, 2020.

Look what came in the mail! I am so pleased to be included in this gorgeous issue of Uppercase Magazine — on words & images and art for healing. Check out this independent Canadian magazine “for the creative and curious.”

Does this feel like a week of new beginning? I am astonished at the amount of energy I have, now that the heavy wait for U.S. election news is behind us. I feel light and such joy — I hope you have access to something like this feeling too. I have been hearing from dear hearts, a great mixture of feelings. Relief manifests in many ways. It may need to pass through grief and uncertainty before we can fully absorb the lightening of any traumatic burden.