We step into the Now

"When you feel the light inside your body, you are in the Now. And you're not scared anymore. The light helps you feel strong." 
- from Milton's Secret by Eckhart Tolle

Armed with a sense of true wonder within, we continue to investigate our feelings. Last Sunday we opened our circle by sharing moments when we had strong feelings. We named the feelings, gave them color, and took a moment to recollect where in our body we felt them. White, green, blue, pink, yellow, clear & vermillion infused the feelings & gave atmosphere to stories shared - some exciting, some downright painful, all helped connect us.

My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss lyrically explores the world of feelings - showcasing and encouraging  reflection with vibrant artwork that inspires self expression. A great way to get the conversation going.

 "When I'm feeling lost and lonely, and I don't know where to go I follow my breath and my breathing takes me home" - Jerusha

I Follow My Breath is a terrific song and a virtual road map to inner peace. Follow the lyrics and see how you do the next time you are hurt or angry. We developed our own funky beat with the song, and had a really good time! You can find this song on the Planting Seeds book CD soundtrack, or click here to go to the homepage sidebar for a look at the lyrics. 

 In Milton's Secret, by Eckhart Tolle, we step into the empowering world of the Now. This "children's adventure of discovery through then, when, and the Power of Now" tackles the difficult cycle of revolving thoughts & feelings. We follow Milton, though an episode of bullying, that has him worried and fearful and filled with constant dread. Learning about the Now changes all that, and gives Milton a new understanding of himself, and the present moment - along with a powerful tool of transformation.
We took a minute to try feeling the light inside of us by shining a flashlight of focus on our hands, then face, then feet - take a minute now, and see if you can make them tingle with your loving attention
 

"Worrying begins as soon as you want things to be other than they are right now." - Eline Snel

The connection between thoughts and feelings is one that can be demonstrated fairly easily - simply ask a child to imagine they are with their favorite person, or pet and then ask them how they feel - they will usually respond in the positive, feeling the emotional boost the image gave them. But this is only part of the picture. Getting them to realize that they are not their thoughts, that they in fact have influence over their thoughts, is an altogether trickier matter. 

The Conveyor Belt of Worries from Sitting Still Like a Frog by Eline Snel, was this weeks guided meditation. In this meditation, she addresses difficult thoughts and "teaches you how to move out of your head and into your body, and to focus on a place where your thoughts can't reach" Wonderful visual images like "lower your attention like a small spider on a thread, from your head right down into your belly" help to keep focus and create an internal visual understanding. 

By refocusing our attention, and noticing the conveyor belt of worry, we can clear away many of the obstacles to enjoying ourselves.

This Sunday we will focus on another way. Basking in the glow of kind words, deeds, and thoughts, helps us to root deep down into the heart of joyful living, and creates habits of dwelling there.  

Come Join us as we fill each others buckets, and celebrate kindness towards ourselves and others ! We sure hope to see you.

 

We affirm our truth

Last Sunday we celebrated our Island Within... our SAFE Place... our inner TRUTH. Through song, story, and careful reflection we investigated this place of POWER, and expressed our selves creatively - with poetry, movement and collage. 

The Island Within

" Breathing In I go back to the Island within myself. 

There are beautiful trees within the island, there are clear streams of water, 

there are birds, sunshine, and fresh air, breathing out I feel safe.

I enjoy going back to my island." -  Thich Nhat Hanh

Layering vocals and percussion, MUSIC was an exercise in mindful merriment, as we followed our conductor's guide and created an ebb and flow of volume, and tempo. The Island Within by Thich Nhat Hanh was the INSPIRATION for our rhythmic exploration. This beautiful song, is an excellent reminder that STOPPING and taking care of our feelings with a time-out, doesn't have to be boring or unpleasant - quite the opposite! Connecting to our inner place of PEACE can be as wonderful and magical an experience as each of us can dream up.  

Here are our friends Julian & Chad with their funky you tube version, as they weave it together with another. It's a song you'll want to keep humming! 

For POEM & Stretch this week, we composed our own snowy reflections. It was fun to recite & EXPERIENCE the snow through each other's words & movements. 
Click here to see all of our snowy reflections

Lyrical and DREAMLIKE, Nancy Tillman's The Crown on Your Head set our imaginations in motion & filled us all with a powerful sense of WELL BEING. Her magical illustrations create an atmosphere of pure POSSIBILITY, & naturally  encourage each to explore the places of WONDER within. 

During our MEDITATION, Eline Snel describes A Safe Place as "a place where you can't be disturbed, a place where you can be yourself". With her GENTLE guidance we are reminded that we can find PEACE and quiet inside by traveling in our mind to a place, real or IMAGINED, that we feel completely safe. "A place where you are perfect just the way YOU ARE. No need to think or do or take care of anyone - just BE in this safe place where things are GOOD and warm, and nothing needs changing." It felt good to just REST there.

AFTERwards we shared with one another some of the places of peace and wonder we visited during the MEDITATION. "Running on the BEACH", "Sitting on a CLIFF overlooking the ocean", "under my BED", "In a SECRET room", "SNUGGLING with my family", to quote a few.

WE dragged our ART Room out onto the floor as we continued our LIFE SIZE self portraits. This week we added our peaceful places using markers, COLLAGE, and paint to express and create! NEXT week we will finish them up, so come and share your inner world.


NEXT SUNDAY we will explore the present moment with Eckhart Tolle's book Milton's Secret , and Eline Snel's guided meditation The Conveyor Belt of Worry. Come relax, CREATE, and practice with us, we love to spend our SUNDAY Mornings with you!

We journey within

BLANKETS and blankets of SNOW! Layer upon layer, a little thaw, a little freeze, another dusting of powder. BEAUTIFUL and silent, or impossibly frustrating, what will this next snowfall bring? Our inner emotional life is often compared to the weather – and for good reason! FEELINGS come, and go, and sometimes pile up, making it very difficult not to get stuck… or carried away. Digging out fixed or HABITUAL thought patterns, and reigning in overblown REACTIONS, often requires careful honest reflection, and it begins deep inside. Last Sunday we began our INNER investigation, here is some of what we did…

Our MUSIC is beginning to take on a creative life of it’s own! A CIRCLE of sound is a lively way to gather and connect with each other in the moment at hand. Last Sunday we experimented with separating sounds, highlighting SOLO moments, and intentional LISTENING, alert eyes watched the “conductor” for musical cues. This will be fun to build on.

Swiftly moving from one POEM and STRETCH to the other, we practiced both the “Waking Up” & “Feelings” gathas, back to back… this week we will create our own mini mindful meditation! Dividing into groups, each will come up with a line or two of poetry & coordinating movements about the snow. We will attempt to share and shape our reflections into a new seasonal reminder. I can’t wait to see what we come up with.

Although we had planned on The Three Questions by Jon J. Muth, we’ll look forward to that later in our season…  we shuffled a few things around last Sunday, and settled instead on DAY & NIGHT by Teddy Newton. We wanted a story illustrating inner exploration both visually & figuratively and the adorable "cartoonification of Day & Night", in this book, did both beautifully.

Our Story prompted a lively conversation furthering our exploration of feelings. We began with the question “what feelings are inside of me, & how do I know?” Our first two sharings, were feelings of “freedom”; “when I ride my horse” and “when I climb trees”. Feeling “funny” when “with the sheep”, “sleepy when I am cozy at home” and “painful when my dog died” helped us realize just how alike we all are. No matter what feelings our neighbor might be expressing at any given moment, chances are we’ve experienced them too – at some time or another. This realization builds understanding and tolerance - good conditions for our kindness to grow.  

The Seven FOOD Contemplations introduce our snack, and encourage us to think about our food in a meaningful way. Colorful, abundant, and “quite a smorgasbord” are all good descriptions of last week’s BOUNTY, and all were very grateful. During snack, we invited the bell, and continued eating in silence for its duration. When it ended there was lots to share, as so much was noticed…

"the POPCORN tastes cheesy", "the crunch is noisy"

"the APPLES are noisy too", "the apples are wet and loud"

"the CHOCOLATE crackers are gooey, and get stuck in my teeth"

Thank you to Burt, Rhea & Stashu for the secret ingredient popcorn… D-LISH!

Our ART project, and story went hand in hand, as we began our life size self-PORTRAITS. Using large paper rolls and thick sharpies, we got down on the floor, and traced around our body, creating an outline on the paper, along the lines of those depicted in Day & Night. This week we’ll begin to fill in our blank outlines, with all sorts of images and ABSTRACTIONS. Using drip paint, marker, collage, and chalk, the idea is to reflect our INNER landscape of feeling. Come join us, and we’ll EXPRESS ourselves together!

This SUNDAY we will continue to celebrate our inner LIFE with Nancy Tillman’s The Crown on Your Head, whose imaginative dreamlike images mirror the PEACEFUL place of power we all carry within. Her rhythmic verses AFFIRM and echo a reminder that this magical place is our birthright, and we can CONNECT here whenever we “believe”.  

We Build Understanding

Gathering together last Sunday we started out making music! Drums and assorted percussion raised the roof and the bar on our sing-a-long. Experimenting with volume, rhythm, and echo, we celebrated our togetherness and shared some joy. Here's a little bit about what else we did...

 “Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky

Conscious breathing is my anchor

Conscious breathing is my anchor”

Rooting our trunks deep into the earth we ground our hearts and minds and took on the form of our favorite trees for this blustery poem and stretch. Waving our arms and stretching on tip toes we sang the first 2 lines as the very embodiment of our trees in a windy stormy sky. We had Birch, and Oak, Maple and Apple, African savannah, Willow, and Palm, all swaying and bending in the wind. The second part of our poem reminds us what to do. By pointing the flashlight of focus on our breath, and noticing it coming in and out, we slow the wind, and help our trees transform. This is lovely to do in a circle, because by the end of the poem we are all in tree pose, making it is easy to imagine all our branches in bloom!

"In order to love you need to understand, because love is made of understanding.”

 – Thich Nhat Hanh

While exploring our kindnes & compassion theme we uncovered one of it’s most important elements… understanding. Last Sunday we followed that important connection in the book Zen Ties by Jon J. Muth. This story beautifully illustrates how understanding blooms compassion and kindness. Awash with gorgeous watercolor images, It is the second in a series about the giant panda Stillwater and his human friends Michael, Addie, and Karl– the children of a neighboring family. “Stillwater, introduces the three to Miss Whitaker, an elderly neighbor whose crabby outbursts have frightened them. Stillwater’s inward eye sees through her anger to her fear and loneliness. She turns out to be a marvelous spelling coach and when Michael wins a red ribbon in the School spelling bee, the pictures show the whole group sharing his victory with their own red ribbons.” Fantastical and beautiful  - an instant bedtime favorite.

Taking our exploration up on it’s feet, we played a Feeleez empathy game, and acted out our own true to life scenarios. 

Dividing ourselves into 2 groups, one group to roll the feeleez dice and create an emotional scenario based on the facial expression and body language of the illustration on the card, the other group to be the compassionate bystanders - ready to come up with a kind & helpful response.

 In the first round...

Group one decided the person on their card looked “left out”, “sad”, and “lonely” so they choose to set their scene in a gym class, where this person was picked last for a team event.

The second group  were the bystanders, their job was to come up with a compassionate response to the figure in the scene. The first effort by one of our bystanders was to go up to the teams doing the picking, and give them an earful of how wrong they were. No dice. this didn’t seem to make the situation any better, and when asked, the left out person still felt left out. The second attempt was no better, as another bystander went and shouted at the teams to stop.  It wasn’t until a group of 3 bystanders together walked over to the left out person and asked if he wanted to join them on their team that things turned around. The left out person felt better, and the 3 bystanders felt good too. Win win!

When the teams switched…

 our second scene was set in the parking lot, where a mom had just lost the keys to the car, and had 3 very upset children in tow. After the scene played, the actors were asked to freeze, while the group of bystanders came up with a response. A kind bystander asked the visibly distraught mom if she would like help looking for her keys, and together they found them. Afterward the bystander shared that “this exact thing happened to my mom” it was a great moment that really proved understanding does give rise to feelings of compassion, and a desire to be helpful and kind.

 After our sunny cantaloupe snack, and beautiful food contemplations, we practiced with…

“First aid for Unpleasant Feelings”.

This 6 minute guided meditation from Sitting Still Like a Frog is excellent.  Eline starts off by making a really important point… “No matter how you are feeling, don’t try to push it away. Don’t try to make it better or think you are stupid for feeling this way. See if you can bring your most loving attention to this feeling, the kind of attention you might get from your best friend.”  We like the way she frames it in a way kids can relate to. Keeping the focus on loving attention, the breath, and what is happening in your body at the moment, her tone is reassuring, encouraging, and non judgmental. “Quietly and curiously you observe all the different feelings inside your body”. It is also great how she stresses not pushing away your feelings, but rather letting them in as the  “fact of life” they are. so good. And they really loved it!

Off we went to the ART ROOM to finish our beautiful mobiles blooming with kindness, compassion, peace, friendship… check out our gallery photos

This Sunday we will continue our exploration of kindness and compassion by taking the search inward with another Jon J. Muth Classic : The Three Questions, Eline Snels  meditation, A Safe Place, and a new kind of inner self portrait in the art room.

We can’t wait to see you all!