Posts Tagged ‘Heart’
Who Lives on in Your Heart?
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
The anniversary of my mom’s passing was Monday (July 12) and I can’t believe it has been 10 years. If I close my eyes, I can remember that day like it was yesterday. And yet, so much of my life has changed in the last 10 years. I’ve changed jobs twice, studied shamanism, facilitated drumming circles, traveled to Italy to stay in the Vatican, started my own healing arts company, journeyed to Louisiana to meet Mary Ann, and became a certified life coach. Through all of these transitions and changes, I have had incredible teachers, mentors, therapists, healers, and friends.
The world has changed a lot too. We have seen our first African American President in the United States. We watched the world come together through major tragedies like 9/11, a tsunami in Indonesia, Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, and an earthquake in Haiti to name just a few. We have helped one another through our times of change and turmoil.
What I have learned over the past ten years is that the earth below our feet moves and shakes. How we deal with a shaking and ever-changing earth is up to us. As the writer Dominique Browning says about life, “It never gets easy. But if we are paying attention, it can get simpler.”
For years I experienced my mom’s passing as the worst grief in my life. I have come to realize these past ten years that she never really left because she lives on through my memories of her, in my work, and in my heart. People never really leave our hearts.
The earth will shake again. This time I will pay more attention and I know it will get simpler.
Who lives on in your heart?
In loving memory of my mom,
Mary Anne
June OM Meditation
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Bathe in the sun and bring the light of the longest day of the year into your heart. Know that the light is always available, always there, and always ready to be shared with those around you. Spend time with some contemplative thoughts and questions and feel free to pass them on to others.
As an invitation, feel free to close your eyes, sit with your spine straight and take a few soft breaths. Then inhale a little deeper through your nose, and on the exhale, repeat the mantra OM (AUM). Do this three times. Allow yourself to really feel everything and become the observer of your thoughts. Feel free to focus on one question or statement below and just allow your experience to unfold.
What do you believe about happiness? What brings you joy?
Rest in the place of a loving and generous heart within.
Peace resides within, always, always…awaiting expression.
Compassion is our capacity to love – without the story attached to it. It’s the acts of doing and the heart of being. It’s being our own best friend & having the capacity to befriend others.
The invitation is to practice compassion with yourself. Notice ways you show yourself loving-kindness. Ask how does loving-kindness and compassion show up in my life and HOW do I respond when it does?
Each person will have their own experience so the invitation is to be open for whatever thoughts flow through you. Allow your mind and body to expand into the experience (without judgment). Feel free to start with whatever mantra calls to you.
May you bathe in the light of you!
Make at least 10 people smile today.
Mary Anne
Joyful Rhythms
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
I woke up early Saturday morning and headed to Park Slope in Brooklyn to give a Joyful Rhythms workshop to a group of women from the Joyful Heart Foundation. The day was about experiencing our heart rhythms through drumming circles, movement, meditation, and reflection. After many attempts to get into the yoga center, we realized we didn’t have a key to one of the locks. We waited outside the door and shortly before the group arrived, a locksmith pulled up and changed the lock. I smiled and said, “Isn’t this the way of it. How often do we close our own hearts and need a locksmith to open it and let love in?” And so the workshop began with a locked door and finished with open hearts.
Some of the women had never played a drum before. One of the participants from the workshop wrote an amazing poem after her experience of the day that she read to the group and provided to me to post.
I am a descendant of the drum.
Loud, mighty and strong is where I come from.
It’s love is a language that courses through my veins
If you strip away all other noise my truth remains.
– Tomika Anderson
And so, we are all descendants of the drum moving with joy and opening our hearts.
Joy-filled rhythms, always,
Mary Anne
Much love and gratitude to Allison Talis and everyone at the Joyful Heart Foundation~
From Grief to Grace
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Two years ago I wrote an article about grief that was published on-line. I was feeling the emotions of grief that revisited my heart. I wrote that when grief inhabits my heart it hits like the wave at the ocean. For a long-time I had an annual grief “visit” and the whole world would become silent and motionless.
I wrote in the article, “For some time, I push away the grief like a fly in my ear. But the grief begins to fill my entire body, each cell becoming morphed with endless emptiness. I search my mind for a cause. I look for the basic needs of the season; I need more sun! There is more than sunshine needed to replenish the parts of me lost and forgotten. I dig deeper and find that I have become disconnected to the necessary life cycles. I am distracted by what’s around me and not connected with who is around me. When there is deep grief, I believe there is often great loneliness. I am a sojourner on the grief path.
It’s the annual visit by grief that consumes my heart and opens the void. I know allowing grief to come and go freely, without judging or blaming, is the key. For me, grief reminds me of how many things I no longer remember and how I long to connect with loved ones that have crossed. I long to pick up the phone and tell my mom about my day, my new project, or a class I am teaching. But my mom passed away, and all I have is the belief that she will hear my voice when I tell her out loud.
There is a crossover between beginnings and endings. I am overwhelmed by the notions of life and death. I wonder if the word “breath” is really just a combination of birth and death.”
It’s been almost ten years since my mom’s passing and I am reminded again of grief as I watch a loved one learn about the return of malignant tumors. I am reminded of how precious each moment of life is. The gift of grief is that you are completely present to it.
Whether we know how much time we have with a loved one or not, it’s the lesson of “showing up”, even when it’s not easy. We show up with love and that is all grief needs to flow into grace. We show up with love because in the end that’s all we really need.
Mary Anne
This is dedicated to Lorene and her mom.