retinal perspectives

30 days of (shiva nata) - want to join me?

i was randomly inspired to start a "30 days of shiva nata" practice. i've done the 30 days of (something) before - not very successfully, i might add - and it seemed like a good time to start again.

as it happens, shiva nata is a good (read, easy) thing to start with because my practice is reasonably consistent. i don't practice every day, but i usually practice 4-5 times a week. the trouble, and the real reason i want to do this, is that i am not very good at setting an intention for practice and i am not very good at journaling after practice. i really want to do both. ever since i got level 4, i have been having crazy big epiphanies all. the. time. (that's a lot of epiphanies. my inner world is constantly in turmoil.) i think the intention setting and journaling would help me process and integrate things better.

so, my intention for the entire month of june is permission. yay!

(my intention for the month was going to be letting go, but then i started thinking about what letting go meant to me. letting go meant things like letting go of extra weight, letting go of worry about atlas, letting go of fears, letting go of old unhealthy beliefs .. sounds like fun, right? because who wouldn't want to work on their hardest patterns all at once. ha. hence the reason my new intention is permission.)

anyway, that's the plan - 30 days of practice, starting june 1.

anyone want to join me? i could use the company. and it could be fun! there are so many ideas: 30 days of shiva nata, 30 days of yoga, 30 days of writing in a journal, 30 days of drinking more water, 30 days of random acts of kindness, 30 days of smiling at a stranger, 30 days of eating dessert, 30 days of telling yourself you love you .. you could even just set an intention for the month and see what happens.

i'll plan to check in on mondays in case you decide to join me and want to share how it's going.

let the month of june begin!

(truth be told, i started earlier this month after my sister left, but my real plan was to practice every day in june so i was just getting a head start.)

my wish for you

my wish for you today is that you know that you are worthy.

worthy of joy
worthy of laughter
worthy of kindness
worthy of compassion
worthy of love

you are worth all of that and more.

a sense of trust, volume 20

{my attempt to capture 52 photos that represent trust - my word for 2011}

when i saw the angel wings, i had to use this photo for my trust project, even though it's actually a photo from last week.

p.s. just for fun, i'm offering 20% off anything in my etsy shop over the long memorial day weekend. enter mem20 as the coupon code at checkout. happy weekend to you!

you belong among the wildflowers

"You belong among the wildflowers
You belong on a boat out at sea
Sail away, kill off the hours
You belong somewhere you feel free"

- lyrics by Tom Petty

learning to take road trip b

earlier this year, i read a book about pleasure. in the beginning of the book, the author described two road trips.

on road trip a, you are hungry, tired, and need to use the bathroom, but you won't stop because you just have to get to your destination as fast as possible.

on road trip b, you have friends, plenty of snacks and music and reading material, and you stop at intriguing sights along the way.

i have been thinking about this ever since because i immediately went, "oh my gosh! i am always on road trip a!"

this is true for road trips. this is true for driving in general. this is mostly true for life.

there is a reason i stop at dairy queen almost every single time i go to the coast for a hike. not that i think dairy queen is a bad thing. i would be happy to stop if i was doing it because a blizzard appealed to me. but no, i am stopping because i am so so hungry by then that i absolutely cannot make it the last 15 or so miles home and it's the first place i come to that has food.

i told my sister helen about my realization because she was there when i did my road trip from oregon to michigan. her response: "yes! i remember when we were going to stop for food once and we didn't stop at this one place because we thought we'd find something else and then we didn't and you wouldn't go back to the other place because it would be on the wrong side of the road so we had to get back on the freeway without getting food!"

(i am cracking up at myself because that is totally something i would do.)

the sad thing is that i wanted that road trip to be road trip b. in fact, we stopped three times in the first 60 miles: to let atlas run off-leash, for a picnic, and to see multnomah falls. then i quickly reverted back to my usual road trip a behavior.

i think it's a combination of two things: thinking that fun and pleasure aren't (or shouldn't be) important (especially when it's just me), and thinking that the destination is more important than the journey.

i definitely don't believe that the destination is more important than the journey, so i don't want to treat it as if it is. and if i believe that i am worthy of love and kindness, then i am worthy of fun and pleasure too. so i am learning to shift both patterns.

i used our road trip to the olympic peninsula to practice. there were a few slip-ups - old habits die hard - but i did pretty well.

want to hear the funniest slip-up?

we were hungry after wandering on the beach one afternoon, so we decided to have a picnic. i pulled out everything i needed from the cooler and started making sandwiches. i made helen her sandwich first. as i was moving the last three slices of meat from the package over to my waiting slices of bread, atlas grabbed them from my hand and ate them. there was another package of meat in the cooler, but what did i do? i decided it was too much trouble to open the cooler and get more meat out just for me so i had helen give me one of her slices of meat.

(i have been laughing about this ever since. really? i thought it was too much trouble to get out more meat? goodness. i really do need to practice.)

anyway, i am in love with this idea of road trip b. for everything, not just for road trips. i know that i want to enjoy the journey, and i am always thinking about what road trip b person would do. come to think of it, i think about it enough that i might need to add the book to my list of books that are my favorites because they changed my thoughts (and subsequently my life) in some way.

the adventures of atlas

i keep wanting to make that photo book - the adventures of atlas - for myself. one day i will do so.

some thoughts on atlas' view of our road trip to the olympic peninsula.

he had the entire middle seat to himself. i used our pillows and blankets to raise one side of the floor up to seat height so he essentially had 3/4 of the entire space to make himself comfortable. at one point, i said how cute and comfy atlas looked and my sister helen noted that she could not think of a single instance where atlas' comfort was in question. (ours, on the other hand, often was.)

he does not love sleeping in a tent. i wish i could change this. maybe we just need to do more camping? it might be that most of the tent (under the rain fly) is mesh - he generally seems on high alert whenever he's inside it.

we stayed at a b&b near forks that had a trail around the property where atlas could roam off-leash (as long as i was aware that there might be elk or bobcats or ..). he had a glorious time exploring. on the last morning, he found a cat. when i caught up with him, he was literally climbing a tree after it. (then he fell backward and off. it was very funny.)

he very much enjoyed the smells on our hike through part of the hoh rain forest. (the bogachiel river hike outside forks was ok for dogs. yay.)

while we watched the sunset one night, atlas resigned himself to boredom and began chewing on a giant log on the beach. clearly the beauty of the sunset was lost on him.

all in all, i think atlas had fun on our vacation. especially since i was there. he is pretty sure that wherever i am is where he needs to be.

the view at the top of the world

i must confess that i was tempted to not visit hurricane ridge after the ranger told us how much snow they had gotten, but i decided to be brave. (i do not enjoy driving in snow or snowy weather.)

instead of views of the olympic mountains and port angeles, there was a lot of white. but it was beautiful nonetheless.

a sense of trust, volume 19

{my attempt to capture 52 photos that represent trust - my word for 2011}

trust is

slowing down
turning inward
watching my thoughts pass by
waiting
listening
for the silence.

evolution

there is something rolling around in my mind. i feel the need to get it out so it can begin to coalesce, even though it may be slightly unformed and pointless right now.

i was looking at my photos from the olympic peninsula and it occurred to me that there are very few photos (even fewer as i review and delete) that show me a scene - a landscape, as it were - that let me see what i was looking at in that moment. i used to take a lot of those photos, especially in nature. i can look at them now and see what i saw back then, in photo form.

i have almost none of those photos from the olympic peninsula. in fact, it occurred to me that you could look at most of my photos from the trip and not really know where they were taken.

at the same time, i see the photos and i remember exactly how i felt when i took them and it brings everything back in a way that the other photos never did.

but that's me, the photo-taker.

it is making me think about why i take photos and why i share them and what i hope they will do and where i want to go from here with all of that. i just don't know. i don't know if photography is the point of it at all.

i don't even know if it's about beauty. or maybe it is. maybe it's about what can be needed in order to see the beauty and light in everything, which often means seeing the same thing - something you've seen a million times before, or only once before - with new eyes. the thing i know from my own self-work, from looking at my own patterns, is that this can be far from easy.

maybe it's about pausing, even internally, even for a second, in our very fast-paced day and world.

maybe it's about remembering when you were little and still believed in endless possibility and magic. when the world around you was whatever you decided it to be, and that could change in an instant.

maybe it's about all of that. or something else entirely. i don't know. i am waiting to see.

the sound and the fury

oh, people, if only i had the photos or words to show you yesterday's ocean.

we stopped at a beach above kalaloch - beach 4, to be specific - on the olympic peninsula on the drive home. the tide appeared to be coming in because the water was nearing the cliff. the waves were crashing in, breaking almost at the shore, and it felt like many of the waves were almost as tall as me.

i took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants, and waded into the pounding surf with camera in hand to have some fun. the breaking waves were irresistible, as was the fast and furious and glorious rush of the water toward me.

my dear little nikon got soaked toward the end, but it seems to have recovered.

if only i could have captured the absolute chaos and power of that ocean. or the sheer enjoyment of feeling like a participant in something so magnificent.