Wake Up Happy

These days waking up seems like a tall order, happiness aside. 

And yet I am surprisingly optimistic. 

Our culture is trying really hard to wake up. We are seeing more clearly the injustices that have been plaguing us for centuries all in the midst of a very real plague. For the first time in maybe forever many of us are getting still enough to see more clearly the subtle and often insidious ways our hearts have become hardened to truth, to beauty, to one another, and to ourselves.

It is high time for all of us to wake up. 

Let's be real, waking up can be hard to do. And downright painful, literally and metaphorically.


Here is a gentle practice to ground our day in inspiration and positivity. Here is a gentle practice to move our bodies, our temples of the divine, so that we can move in places where we may have been a little stuck. It's a practice that I like to do each and every morning. You are, of course, free to make this your own by tweaking it to meet your needs.


We have to wake up if we are to keep moving forward as a human family. We have to start somewhere. Best to start from the ground up. 


As we celebrate International Day of Yoga on the heels of Juneteenth, in harmonious concert with the Summer Solstice let us bathe in the light of this longest day. Let us move and breathe and pray together until our hearts begin to soften toward ourselves, one another and our precious planet. Let us move and breathe and pray and not stop until we are all free.


If the grace of seeing were ours this day, we would see the divine in every living soul. Grant us the grace seeing this day. 

Grant us the grace of seeing.

Namaste and Love,
Connie

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created. 
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies. 
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere. 
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly, 
every morning, 
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy, 
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

~~Mary Oliver

Connie Bowman is an actress, podcast host, yoga teacher, and author of several books, including There's an Elephant in My Bathtub, Super Socks and Back to Happy. Follow her on Instagram @conniebowmanactressauthoryogior visit www.conniebowman.com. Join her for yoga Tuesday evenings here.

Link to John Phillip Newells book Celtic Benediction: https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/3904/celtic-benediction.aspx

Best Laid Plans

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

~~Robert Burns

Are you a man or a mouse? I am neither but I can relate to this quote by poet Robert Burns. My plan to meditate every morning and evening has gone awry, several times actually.

This video is part of my plan to bring meditation back into my life on a regular basis. I already practice yoga. I have other regular spiritual practices like prayer and sacred reading. I am even thinking seminary might be in my future. So why is meditating so difficult? Are you with me on this?

Problem is you gotta do it. I have been an on and off meditator since my twenties when I began suffering from anxiety and panic attacks. This year, blessed 2020, was my year to reinstate meditation. It didn’t happen in January. February came and went with no remarkable improvement. And then Covid-19 and the quarantine happened. 

Back in 2015 I interviewed Dr. Sara Lazar, the Harvard scientist who researched meditation and other integrative modalities to find out just what benefits they had to offer. Dr. Lazar found significant benefits from regular meditation practice. That video is here: https://youtu.be/xGvGbKuzQf8. 

I know it's good for me in so many ways; physically, emotionally, spiritually...

You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day, unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour.

~~Zen Saying

Still, I admit it has been a bit of a struggle. 

So I don’t have a perfect daily practice. I am practicing though. I invite you to join me.

But first, let’s practice a little yoga to loosen our joints and prepare the body and mind for a sweet, imperfect, short little meditation.

We can do this! 

Was it good for you? Let me know :)

Yoga is for everyone. However, while practicing with a video it is up to you to assess whether the class you have chosen is right for you. Please modify as needed and if you suffer from any specific injuries or diseases you should consult with your medical practitioner before practicing. Enjoy!

Namaste,

Connie

www.conniebowman.com

Silence and Speaking Up

Photo credit: Rick Kain

To see the Moon that cannot be seen

Turn your eyes inward

and look at yourself,
in silence.

In this world and the next,
Don’t talk about this and that;

Let him show you everything,

shining as one . . . in silence.

~~ Rumi

In yoga there is inherently an awareness of  a union of opposites; right and left, heaven and earth, in breath and out breath, silence and sound...We practice noticing the dualities or seeming opposites so that eventually we can transcend them. This we practice in different ways, asana, breath work, chanting, etc. With practice we can find a balance that can help us move gracefully even off our mats.

As we are using our voices to speak words that help proclaim that black lives matter, as a white woman (in this incarnation anyway!) I am acutely aware that silence can be dangerous to my black and brown brothers and sisters and my words are needed. However I am also aware that there needs to be deliberate, conscious silence between the words to assure that what I am saying is intentionally kind, and helpful and just. To speak simply for the sake of speaking runs the risk of our intended meaning being lost in translation.

Recently my husband shared a childhood memory of visiting a family in Germany, the experience clearly a formative one for him. The family lived on a dairy farm and, for some reason that my husband could not explain, his military parents who were stationed there dropped him off to spend an entire weekend. He recalled that his hosts, while very hospitable did not speak a word of english. He talked about feeling uncomfortable at first but eventually he relaxed and played games with the children where language was not a barrier. He recalls sleeping in a feather bed with a mattress on top of him instead of a blanket. They ate German food and drank fresh milk from the farm. In the morning when the mom asked my husband how he had slept, in German of course, it took a while to figure out what she had been trying to ask.  Eventually he understood, gave them a thumbs up sign and they all had a good laugh. 

Somehow, despite the language barrier, they showed him a good time and he learned about farm life in a small German town and about hospitality and caring for our fellow humans.

Similarly, several years ago I attended a ten day silent Vipassana meditation course. I signed up in advance and was put on a waiting list as these ten day courses are extremely popular. When I was notified that a spot had opened up during the upcoming month, I quickly rearranged my schedule so that I could attend.

I was a little nervous. Ten days was a lot of time to spend mostly in silent meditation. It actually went pretty well. I produced a podcast about the experience. You can check it out here.

What I want to talk about here though is the revelation I had at the end of the retreat when we were finally able to talk to our fellow participants. Although all of us were women, the group of us, about 20 total, were from all walks of life, different nationalities, socioeconomic groups and age ranges. We slept together in small rooms of three. My twin bed was in the middle of two others. My bunkmates were an Indian woman and another of Chinese descent. We didn’t speak as we made our beds and set out our things in our small quarters. We communicated non-verbally about logistics like storage space and bathroom sharing. It was interesting and challenging at first but as time went on, we got into a comfortable groove.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

~~Henry David Thoreau

By the end of the retreat, we had adopted a very sweet, very compatible co-existence. When one of us left the room while the others were sleeping or meditating, we made sure to close the door lightly. We respected each other’s space and privacy when needed. We ate meals together in quiet mindful appreciation of the food and one another’s company. Somehow, without even speaking a word, strangers became friends. 

True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable. 

— David Tyson Gentry

On the morning of the last day when we broke our silence and we were finally officially able to talk with one another, we were excited to share our experience, get to know one another and compare our early impressions to what we were now learning about one another. It was fascinating. I learned that my Indian roommate had two young boys and that she was the last member of her family to attend the Vipassana training. My other roommate had no children and worked as a scientist at a lab not far from my home. Most of us admitted to having certain ideas about the others in the group that changed as we neared the end of the ten days.

What I learned at that silent meditation retreat will stay with me for the rest of my life. Among many things, I learned that I make assumptions about people pretty quickly with little to go on but visual and verbal cues. I learned that although communication is essential to positive social interaction, words can sometimes get in the way. I learned that we can develop quality relationships with others who may seem different, by simply being present with them. I learned that caring for one another and mutual respect go a long way toward creating a peaceful, harmonious environment. No words were necessary for small acts of kindness.

In the absence of words however I was made acutely aware of the power of the word. The words we choose can heal or they can hurt. We must, in these times use our words to speak up against racism. Enough is truly enough. 

Ecclesiastes 3:7

a time to tear, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak

In the silence between our words, may we choose well. 
May we correct ourselves quickly when we choose poorly.
May our hearts be open to listen, especially when words fail us.
May our words contribute to a better, more loving world.
May these words that I write contribute in some way to the healing
of our black and brown brothers and sisters that they may know peace, serenity, safety, abundance and happiness.
May all beings everywhere be united as one family.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. 
~~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Connie Bowman is an actress, podcast host, yoga teacher, and author of several books, including There's an Elephant in My Bathtub, Super Socks and Back to Happy. Follow her on Instagram @conniebowmanactressauthoryogior visit www.conniebowman.comJoin her for yoga Tuesday evenings here.