“It’s not happiness that makes us grateful but gratefulness that makes us happy.” – Br. David Steindl Rast
Dear friends, I’m sending warm greetings from northern New Mexico where we are visiting family, enjoying the warmth and fragrance of a morning piñon fire, gazing into spectacular big skies, admiring ginormous flocks of Sandhill cranes wheeling overhead, and reveling in the hundreds of Crows who gather in the crowns of the nearby cottonwood trees…
Read MoreIn under a month, I’ll be beginning a 9-month journey with some wonderful beings in Women Embodied. I still have room for a handful more folks to join me. I believe this work is deeply important and needed in the world as well as in our personal lives and I’d like to share a bit more about…
Read MoreI’m grateful to be able to reach out to you today. I often think of this: Several years ago I heard from an acquaintance who lived with the Quechua people in Peru. She shared that in their language, the way they say “thank you” is to say “a little bird flies from my heart to yours.” …
Read MoreA Note from Erin: I’m sending warm-heart greetings from the one cool room on my home’s main floor where I’m lying in my bed typing under the fan. It’s been a hot one. Though I haven’t traveled much since the pandemic, we’re setting out soon to visit dear friends and family on the east coast…
Read MoreA Note from Erin: I’m sending warm greetings to you from my breezy front porch, surrounded by the songs of finches, sparrows, doves, and many flowers in bloom, – just now monarda and scabiosa and sunflowers and mullein and more – somehow staying vibrant even in July’s heat. I confess, July is not my favorite…
Read MoreLiberating Our Gifts During Whitewater Times
A Note from Erin: Hello, beautiful being. I’m sending warm-heart greetings from the one cool room on my home’s main floor where I’m lying in my bed typing under the fan. It’s been a hot one. Though I haven’t traveled much since the pandemic, we’re setting out soon to visit dear friends and family on…
Read MoreSoulful Soup A recipe by Erin Geesaman Rabke You’ll need: Space in your heart-mind Several excellent questions and insights The heat of your affection Curiosity And unhurried time. First, find the big stock pot or cauldron that lives in your imagination. Make sure it’s not over-full with exhausting information you do not need to know.…
Read MoreDear friend, During these hard times, I have big hope that we can stay in touch with the softness in the heart of our hearts. In this moment, I’m taking a spacious inhale and a long unhurried exhale. I’m softening my belly, unclenching my jaw, widening my gaze, lengthening my spine, and settling more fully…
Read MoreA note from Erin, November 13 2023 The Vast Heart This morning during meditation there were many tears, including my own. I woke after troubled dreams of finding bodies, of searching for bread. I woke with heartache and confusion and a felt sense of helplessness and so much care it hurts. It’s our great good…
Read MoreA note from Erin November 1 2023 Hello, kindred being, Would you like to join me for 30 minutes of spacious, unburdened intimacy with yourself and this precious, temporary body? I’m offering a free class today, 11 am MT, on the theme of Embodying Sustainability. If you can’t join me live, feel free to sign…
Read MoreA note from Erin October 27 2023 Hello, beloved Earthling, Would you like to join me for 30 minutes of spacious, unburdened intimacy with yourself and this precious, temporary body? I’m offering a free class today, 11 am MT, on the theme of Finding the Gifts Inside Pain. If you can’t join me live, feel…
Read MoreA note from Erin, October 20 2023 Embodied Presence, grown in stillness and movement, can be the river under the river of our lives, generously hydrating our deepest, wisest, and most vital selves through both challenging and beautiful times. Hello, beautiful human. Before I share about my new course, I want to send a little…
Read MoreA note from Erin, October 6 2023 The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude…
Read MoreBefore you read on, I invite you to soften your eyes and the muscles around your jaw, to feel the ground underneath you, and to notice if there could be a little more space in your torso to receive that next inhale. I want to share a poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer that Erin reminded…
Read MoreAnything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity can cause to be set in motion. Be outrageous in forgiving. Be dramatic in reconciling. Mistakes? Back up and make them as right as you can, then move…
Read More“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not include loss, and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.” -Francis Weller A note from Carl, August 8 2023 Like the land,…
Read More“We are all one gesture from being the cruelty we have suffered or one kindness from helping each other heal in the open.” ~ Mark Nepo A note from Erin, July 5 2023: This morning, I’m sending linden blossom and elderflower scented greetings your way. I’ve been savoring the early morning hours in the garden,…
Read MoreA note from Carl So much of what delights and troubles you Happens on a surface You take for ground. Your mind thinks your life alone, Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor, Yet it seems that a little below your heart There houses in you an unknown self Who prefers the patterns of the…
Read More“We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in…
Read MoreA note from Erin, April 15 2023 Why do praise and gratitude matter? Both of these practices are a kind of soul activism and one I believe we and the world need. Gratitude is a way of seeing. I think of putting on Mary-Oliver-perspectacles as one doorway to this way of seeing – seeing with…
Read MoreA note from Carl: Greeting friends, Tomorrow I begin a 6-week live, online course on Coming Home to Your Animal Body. When I use the term animal body, I am not referring to anything exotic or esoteric, but rather our own ordinary humanness when we are not lost in thought, disconnected from our bodies, and holding…
Read MoreA Note from Carl: When I was in fourth grade in 1982, Mr. Ostrander, the middle school music teacher, came in to do a demonstration of all the different instruments we could study in 5th grade. Before the presentation, I had decided on drums, I wanted to be a drummer. I was always moving, tapping…
Read MoreA Note from Erin: For the past many months, I’ve been in what’s not exactly a midlife crisis, but a midlife deep cocooning. It’s invited a dissolution of much of who I’ve known myself to be. I’m practicing trusting this transformation into imaginal cell goo and the Soul’s knowing of what is next, while understanding it…
Read MoreA note from Erin: I’m honored and enlivened to invite you to this beautiful and powerful immersion in one of the most important practices in a human life. I’m infinitely grateful to my teachers who showed me what is possible. – What is it? – Maitri: A Courtship with The Essential Ingredient. The Essential Ingredient…
Read MoreA note from Carl: As you read this, could you let your attention drop down to feel the sensations of your contact with the ground? Under your feet, under your pelvis, you are supported by this living Earth. Could you let yourself take in that felt sense of being supported? Is it possible, as you…
Read MoreA note from Carl: In 2005, when we were in the midst of our Feldenkrais training in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we had the opportunity one evening to see Robert Bly and Martin Prechtel together. Each of these men had a strong influence on us, and we were delighted to see these two wise, coyote…
Read MoreA Note from Erin: Hello, brilliant human! Whether you’re inspired, brokenhearted, grateful, tired, disappointed, deeply enchanted, or some swirl of all of these and more – I am sending warm-hearted wishes your way. Your happiness is my happiness. Your suffering is mine too. I’m radiating care and reverence into all the nooks and crannies of our…
Read MoreLimitation: A Generous Teacher When I was 14 years old back in the 1980s, I used to go to a bookstore at the mall with my girlfriend and we’d get all excited about discovering books on such far-out topics as shamanism, new-age philosophy, astrology, and anything remotely resembling an altered state of consciousness, as profoundly…
Read MoreOn Friday night I had the honor of opening the 14th season for the Jung Society of Utah with a talk called Half a Shade Braver (title inspired by a line from poet David Whyte.) As soon as I received the invitation to speak, inspiration started bubbling up and I wrote more than I could share in…
Read MoreA note from Erin: Hello, beautiful human, A teacher of mine used to say “Increasing complexity requires deeper roots,” and wow, how about the complexity these days? It seems to me we need to tend our deep roots. To have a tap root down deep, burrowed into what really matters, tapped into our sane, soulful,…
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