The Four Riders from Nir Nadler & Chaja Hertog on Vimeo.
My friend, the filmmaker, Alla Kovgan, sent me this video. There are things that I like a great deal about it, but oddly, the horses feel as if they are missing. Nevertheless, I felt it worth a share.
I am interested: what do you see? What do you feel?
Yesterday on my drive to see Nelson the Mustang, I found myself checking for trouble. Scanning my mental horizons to see what trouble was lurking. I noticed that it felt like checking to make sure it was all still there, my little piles of trouble. “Isn’t that interesting,” I thought. My trouble piles are the things that I have a habit of worrying about. Money, health, safety, money, my daughters, the world, money.
Nelson is a stallion, and he poops in big “stud piles” around his field. They are his way of delineating territory, and he goes around and sniffs them from time to time to see if they need refreshing. I realized that my trouble piles are like that: I go and sniff them from time to time to see if they need refreshing. “Have I been worrying about this thing lately? Does it need a fresh worry?”
What I see is that I am habitually pointing myself at what I don’t want instead of looking around for the things that I can appreciate, the things that are nourishing and playful. I know this old habit, but thought I had pretty much cleaned it out. As it turns out it has just gotten a little more elusive, a little harder to detect.
The key was that as I was driving, I was feeling a little edgy, a little anxious, instead of welcoming the astonishing sunny beauty of the day and the gorgeous upstate New York scenery I was traveling through. Once I felt the feeling, then I started looking for things to enjoy. Simple things, easy things. Distracting myself from the trouble piles. Like looking for the shafts of sunlight, instead of the dark shadows.
If all you did was just look for things to appreciate you would live a joyous, spectacular life. If there was nothing else that you ever came to understand other than just look for things to appreciate, it’s the only tool you would ever need to predominantly hook you up with who you really are. That’s all you’d need. — Abraham
And just a reminder:
Breaking into Blossom: the eBook is available for purchase. Thanks to all of you who have purchased!
And I still have a couple one-to-one jump-start creative living FREE coaching sessions available. To make an appointment for a free call, either email me or fill out my form.
This is Jules snoozing in the sun yesterday. Jules is a BIG greyhound with a BIG intimidating bark. He has a sweetness and a gentleness about him that is extraordinary, but he is fiercely protective. We love that about him. No one is going to hear him and want to approach.
I have been writing a lot about the landscape of the body and the way that our bodies partake of and reflect the earth. About learning to enter the landscape of our own bodies, to become cartographers of our own terrain.
I had to lie very flat and quiet to take this picture, and was so focused on not startling Jules that I did not even see the crest of Indian Mountain behind the curve of his ribs or the bristles of winter’s grass in the foreground and his whiskers behind. I think that as I become a better photographer, I will see more of those things, but for now, I like the happy accidents.
Engaging the artist within is one-to-one coaching for those who want to jump-start their creative practice. Sessions include body dharma strategies (how to engage the body and let it inspire your work), improvisation & creative alignment practices.
My background as a movement educator, improvisational movement and theater artist, writer and somatics practitioner gives me unique ways of helping you to engage your deepest, most embodied creative self.
The other part of my background is that I spent many years having an out-of-body experience. This year marks 33 years since my last drink, and 25 years in recovery from eating disorders. I have been on the planet for a while. So for those of you for whom the body is not necessarily friendly territory, I get it, and I can help there too.
Beginning March 15, I am offering FREE COACHING CALLS. These are introductory 30-minute sessions to help you optimize your creative goals.
I will only offer 10 of these, so if you are interested, contact me soon. To make an appointment for a free call, either email me or fill out my form.