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!