From the hearts of dogs.

My most recent piece for the always lovely and inspiring Rebelle Society.

I love my dogs.

There is something about our animals that mends our spirits in ways we often cannot fully grasp, and dogs are certainly no exception. Unconditional love is what most would call it, and we know this because a dog’s love exists without the chains of unspoken criticism and quiet judgment.

But there is something else that I believe they are here to teach us, something deeper and more profound. Sometimes these realizations can be slippery and fleeting, mostly due to the tornado of demands that life spins our way.

However, if we can just hold on to these lessons, I think we will find them timeless and life altering.

  “Dogs are not our whole life but they make our lives whole.” ~ Roger Caras

I share my life with two wonderfully energetic, highly responsive dogs. They are effortless communicators, always effective and honest. They usually respond immediately to my gestures and tone of voice, knowing exactly what I want from them.

As all dogs instinctively do with their owners, they literally know me by heart, meaning they can feel my emotions intuitively, and a dog’s very nature is to operate from heart to heart.

They don’t know anything different, and every day when I bear witness to the bond these incredible animals are able to hold with us, I stand amazed, never taking their steadfastness and loyalty for granted.

Each morning, when I wake, I’m usually filled with anticipation and ready to jump-start the day.

Lately, I’ve been working hard at mastering a system in which I focus and prioritize, learning where best to put my time and energy that particular day, as I find it’s important to keep life in a healthy balance, and this balance seems to grow more important with each passing year.

But, a few mornings ago, I was tired. So tired. The kind of tired that demands every ounce of strength to merely crawl out of bed, start the teapot, and stretch your aching body. I felt a certain heaviness as though I was walking through fog as went through the usual weekday motions.

At times, we can be homesick for a place we aren’t sure of, or feel broken for reasons we can’t quite pinpoint. I was both of those and more so, I naturally blamed winter, based on my ongoing conviction that our bodies simply were not meant to withstand this type of weather for so impossibly long, and were, therefore either meant to live in warm places or hibernate.

Whatever it was, my usual system of operating simply wasn’t enough, and I was holding on to the promise of spring in the distant future. 

Enters Teddy, my rescue dog.

Having just turned one, has far more energy that his sister Rosie. In the mornings, he’s fairly predictable due to the promise of food awaiting. He’ll run outside, zoom at full tilt ‘round the snow-soaked yard, then bolt back into the house, ready for warmth again.

This was not that day. Hearing my familiar tone, Rosie burst back into the house, but Teddy stubbornly remained off to the side of the yard just beyond his favorite, large tree.

“Teddy, come inside!” I called, simultaneously burning my tongue on the still steaming tea, and glancing at the next few emails that’d suddenly appeared on the screen of the phone that my hand was now clenching. I looked again; he still wasn’t coming.

Frustrated and anxious to begin working, I retreated back into the kitchen, grabbed my coat, told Rosie to wait with a look, then headed out into the dark morning to retrieve Teddy, tensing from the sharp cold air, and wondering why I now live in a place where January feels so long and grey, and you can hardly tell day from night.

As I drew closer, Teddy briefly raised his soulful brown eyes with a brief wag of his tail in acknowledgement.

Then, he casually picked up a broken stick, lowered his lean body to the wet ground, and half-heartedly began to chew. It was as though he was purposely delaying having to go back inside the house by pretending he was involved in something that he actually wasn’t that interested in.

For a brief second I thought I should swoop pick him up and carry all 35 lbs of him in, but instead, I knelt down beside him, quietly devising a different plan to lure him back in.

But the longer I sat with him, the longer I unknowingly began to listen.

Then, somewhere between our breaths, I noticed the silence. It was a sweeping silence… The kind of silence that draws you in the way a painfully beautiful piece of music would, when, for a short time, the world seems to halt on its axis, and time crawls to a standstill. There was no wind, no rustle of leaves, and no echo of cars in the distance. It was just the silent dance of a winter sunrise, lighting rooftops and bare branches with warm golden light, as day began to break.

In that moment it occurred to me, I was feeling a pull of something larger than myself. It was a place of rest, refuge, and acceptance; and exactly what I’d hungered for lately, each time I’d feel the nagging uncertainty of what exactly made me ache.

A dog can bring this important type of peace the way another person may not be able to. It’s this very connection that rebuilds your broken parts, allows you to be moved, and renders you breathless with its beauty.

“There are moments of such pure, sublime, unparalleled perfection that will force you to close your eyes the best you can. Life is a series of these moments. Everything else is just waiting for them.” ~ Iain Thomas

Our lives will yield to the routines we inevitably cling on to with dependence, yet we must allow ourselves to be pulled past those boundaries we ourselves have built, or we’ll forget what is actually real.

Animals are unconditional love, not only because of their endless acceptance of our whole selves, but also because they allow us to recognize these moments that show us what is real.

We  humans see moments, and for that reason the moment always escapes us. A dog sees the moment but cannot see through it, and for that reason, time escapes him.

On that cold January morning, right there in the yard, I realized that I felt whole.

Teddy taught me to be in the moment, because within that unpredictably perfect moment, all I had, as well as just being myself… was enough.

The still point of the sun.

Happy winter solstice. :)

Allow yourself to rid the old for the new to be born in this gorgeous transition of seasons into a new day, new era, and new sun. Remember that every loss opens the way for something else, and we must draw the strength and courage to go forth and change our world as we know it. :)

 Here is one of my favorite winter poems, written and perfected by the lovely Margaret Atwood.

"This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold
and unlocking, where the past
lets go of and becomes the future;
the place of caught breath, the door
of a vanished house left ajar.

Taking hands like children
lost in a six-dimensional
forest, we step across.
The walls of the house fold themselves down,
and the house turns
itself inside out, as a tulip does
in its last full-blown moment, and our candle
flares up and goes out, and the only common
sense that remains to us is touch,
as it will be, later, some other
century, when we will seem to each other
even less what we were.
But that trick is just to hold on
through all appearances; and so we do,
and yes, I know it’s you;
and that is what we will come to, sooner
or later, when it’s even darker
than It is now, when the snow is colder,
when it’s darkest and coldest
and candles are no longer any use to us
and the visibility is zero: Yes.
It’s still you. It’s still you."

-Margaret Atwood

photo source: here and here.

Breathing in snowflakes.

Oh Birdy you continue to amaze and inspire me. You know the feeling before tears? That place behind your eyes that fills with emotion when something pulls your heart to the extent of losing control of time and space and control in itself? 

You must.

She sometimes gives me that feeling.

"White lips, pale face
Breathing in snowflakes.."

Photo source

That home.

"If only you could sense how important you are 
to the lives of those you meet;

how important you can be to people 
you may never even dream of.

 There is something of yourself that you leave
 at every meeting 

with another person."

-Fred Rogers

photo by anavicky

I just wanted to wish everyone a lovely Thanksgiving. 
Now, if you aren't nostalgic already (given it's the holiday season) are you now ready to feel an ache rise from your bones to the soon-to-be goosebumps on your skin's surface?

I'm sure I've shared this breathtakingly gorgeous song before 
and tonight,I just couldn't help but share again. 

It's the kind of song that haunts you beautifully 
where you can feel it.

I admittedly regret not learning how to play the piano as a child as I've always been deeply moved by piano notes, particularly in magical, heart swelling songs such as this piece of heaven. 

"Where the doors are moaning all day long

Where the stairs are leaning dusk 'til dawn

Where the windows are breathing in the light

Where the rooms are a collection of our lives

This is a place I don't feel alone

This is a place that I call my home."

Love the darkness.

My recent article for the fabulous Rebelle Society: 

Life is difficult and complicated. It’ll knock you sideways, upside down, and at times land you flat on your face. You’ll regain your footing, but if life isn’t ready for you to stand quite yet, you’ll be pushed into yet another direction with another roadblock, or another seemingly un-mountable wall to climb. You’ll hold the tremendous pain of something that may have happened or perhaps worse, the pain of something that never will, along with the crushing weight of anything and everything else that is sad in this world.

 Let’s be honest- we all go through it.

 C’est la vie.

“Woken by thinking

Into hours too small

to permit free association,

I lie beneath the weight

of night. Darkness crushes

like a room with shrinking walls.”

-Peter Goldsworthy

Life is also glorious and magnificent. In the depths of our darkest despair, the light sweeps it’s way back in as though the universe knew you couldn’t bear one more failure or disappointment, to take you by the hand, and whisper, “I am here. Come this way.” One door will open after the next, and everything will fall into place effortlessly, as if a path of petals unravels before you, leading the way to only joy and bliss.

"What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again."

-Anais Nin

Whether you’re in the sun, the shade, or the lingering stillness between, life will continue to change with sometimes shocking speed because no feeling or situation is ever final.

When we are young, some of us dramatize our very existence as though we are the only ones that “attract” the drama. Some of us pour the ups and downs into our art with great fury, creating sentences, music and vivid paintings. Some of us can’t seem to fathom why “what goes up must come down’, and vice versa, so unable to tolerate any uncertainty, so we become fearful of life itself, resisting any form of change at all.

Such efforts to control life won’t work; instead they will only confine us to smaller and smaller comfort zones, shrinking our individual worlds as we know them, and severely limiting us to experience any pleasure in life at all.

As we gather years under our belts, we should learn how to grow more capable of accepting the ups and downs as “normal”, and embrace the rollercoaster that is life. In Buddhism, the “it is what it is” quality is called such ness—tathata—in Sanskrit—as it is.

I remember as an impressionable teenager, I used to stand in great awe of my wise Grandmother’s nonchalant shrugs accompanied by knowing grins when life delivered yet another blow that I at the time, couldn’t possibly fathom handling in my own future. Now, I understand.

It’s liberating to recognize the struggle as an essential part of the learning process. We are too often so afraid of failure that we forget that the heartbreak, defeat, mistakes and regrets give us the very grit and strength we need to get through the next obstacle, as well as the humbleness we must acquire to appreciate the light; and the light will come back, as it always has.

 As it is in nature, nothing is stagnant; everything is fluid and will change, which is crucial to our adaptation, and perfect in itself.

So embrace it; embrace everything: the light, the dark, the rising and the falling. The uncertainties are beautiful, and the wisdom acquired to carry with you forward even more so. Wake each morning with trust, and always allow yourself to be vulnerable whether you’re in the shadows or sun.

“Happy and sad, elated and miserable, secure and afraid,

loved and denied, patient and angry, peaceful and wild,

complete and empty…. all of it.

I would feel everything.

It would all be mine.”

-Stephanie Meyer

When all else melts away.

"One looks, and looks long, 

and the world comes in."

-Joseph Campbell


"Don't blink your eyes or you might lose your balance." My teacher's voice is confident and stern, sometimes wavering on the line of arrogant, but done in such a way that something tells me to trust it. The words are simple and clear, gently trickling from the podium on which the teacher’s stands, surrounding and seeping into my mind until they essentially become my master. Line by line, minute by minute I obey this dialogue, stretching and straining through each of the twenty-six postures done twice in the humid, 105 degree room, hyper aware of each subtle step, ache, and release, even down to every precise drop of sweat that falls from my body to the soaked towel planted firmly beneath my feet.

I've been practicing Bikram Yoga since January, the yoga that is often misunderstood and even frowned on by many, skeptical of the extreme temperatures, the quirky founder, and over-sexualized reputation, yet this yoga is more adored than criticized. Now I know there is good reason for the passionate, cult-like following of this practice, as it's swept me up into its web, luring me with the pain and pleasure that so many have come to know and love.

 I never understood prior to starting Bikram why it was referred to as a “journey,” but now as I continue to practice, I realize there is no better word. Bikram is a journey to unravel yourself through what at times feels torturous... the pain of breaking through stored injury, stress and emotion the body accumulates through the years of simply living, and rediscovering inch by painful inch everything the ever-connected body and mind have tried to forget, storing these toxic parts deep into the psyche and muscles, protecting you from their harmful grip. There are no short cuts in this journey, and the right way is certainly the most difficult way. Over time there are improvements and there are set-backs, but you continue the practice with improved strength and belief because you know that every tiny step leads you to wellness and self-discovery in ways you’d never expected when you first begun.


To do this yoga, you must face yourself. You are vulnerable and stripped down in every way possible; very little clothing to bear the heat, watching your body unflinchingly in the enormous mirrors, eyes stinging from sweat, muscles straining through the postures commanding every last ounce of strength they have, and having to consciously choose to remain calm and focused in what at times can feel like chaos. The chaos is created by the mind, wanting to just run- run out of the room and into fresh air, where you don't have to face the pain, the truths, the work, and the parts of yourself you dislike. We often do this in our everyday lives, attempting to run and fill them with unnecessary busy tasks, self-medicate with various unhealthy "Band-Aids " or actively seek any other external validation that ultimately won't fulfill us. All of these created escape mechanisms are the equivalent of running out of the hot room, but the way I see it, when you are brave enough to face who you are there is goodness. Often it is through struggle, and adversity where immense wisdom can be drawn.

“Truth is something outside to be discovered, 

it is something inside to be realized.”

-Osho

 Sometimes, in tough classes the dialogue is my enemy. I'd rather be anywhere else than class, and every movement is a great struggle. In my best classes, the dialogue is my lover; the other students and heat have melted away, along with my usual whirlwind of daily worries, anxieties, and ever expanding “to do” list, and I'm able to fully surrender to this moving meditation, alone and at one with only myself and the words. Ultimately, the dialogue is my route back into the part of me I've so often neglected: my true self. In life, it is there in the hot room that you can once again face yourself, and be introduced to your soul with stunning clarity when all else melts away. 

Photo source: here