Lessons from Clay

So I've started taking pottery classes. You know, the kind with a wheel. The experience is a bit like walking into a formal cocktail party wearing your bra and underwear on the outside of your clothes. Not that I've ever done that, but I'm just sayin'...

But nonetheless I remain committed to this self-imposed creative experiment and am starting to see the fruits of my labor - beyond just some pretty cool looking bowls.

I've come to vehemently believe one thing about pottery and working on the wheel: it's not about the clay. I have been continually amazed at the richness of the metaphor of throwing pots, much to the chagrin of my classmates, I'm sure (it's not easy have a coach in your midst...everything becomes a metaphor for living).

It's ingenious really, clay. Because embedded in it, mixed up with all the sand, sediment and water is, well, me. Who would have thought going to pottery class would have the same impact as therapy, coaching, intuitive reading and body work combined? Ok, so I'm exaggerating, but it's not far off base. Here are my latest lessons in clay to illustrate what I'm talking about:

Be committed, but don't get too attached

Working at the wheel forces you to recognize that something you've labored on and sweat over is simply a thing. That's all. No matter how much you love it and are proud of it, your creation can flop over, slop apart or shatter in a moments notice. Again and again. It kind of desensitizes you to material loss on a small scale. Until you realize that it is what it is. At which point, your focus shifts to the process of making the bowl instead of the destination of the finished product.

It takes time and patience to center, and you're dead in the water without it

Ah, centering...we meet again. "Centering" is the act of getting your lump of clay exactly in the middle of the wheel while the wheel is moving around and around. Sounds easier that it is, but it takes time and a boatload of patience to master. It's one of the hold-your-breath-wince-and-tense-up-your-shoulders kind of "simple" things. Like meditating, some would say. It makes you sweat even on the coldest of days and is the price of entry to any good pottery piece - if you don't center your clay, your pot is doomed to a long, slow and ugly demise. Ah, but once you pass through those pearly gates, it's all downhill sailing - life, I mean throwing a pot, is so much easier. Oh, and one bright spot on the centering front? I'm happy to report there is such a thing as "plenty centered", so no need to hold out for the "perfectly" category. Plenty will do just fine.

Fear won't serve you well at all, so just get over it

There is nothing more humbling than the realization that a half-pound lump of clay is holding you captive with fear. Seriously. And when that clay starts to take shape into something more functional, dare I say, beautiful, the stakes go higher and so goes the fear. Of failure. Of ruining something after running through all those gauntlets. It's like those feverish game show contestants, knowing when to say "deal" or "no deal" and cut your losses or go for the big bucks. As you watch the wheel spinning round and round you continually butt up against choice points and option "A" always seems to be "be afraid." This is not simply a trick question, it's an open invitation to see through to a different option, a different way of being. The lesson here is that you'll always have fear, it's like the loyal collie companion of living, always at your beck and call.

Keep the wheel moving

This has become my mantra - thanks to the multiple times during class I hear my plenty-patient instructor utter those very words as she passes by me. It reminds me of that physics law, "a body in motion stays in motion" and I have found, as in exercise, it forces me to breathe (you can only hold your breath for so long, you know...) Keeping the wheel moving is a practice that forces you to work with things as they are in motion, to match your form to a moving form, and to breathe independently of my actions on the wheel. In this start-stop, hurry-up-and-wait, want-it-now culture, I've found it's a radical act to keep my foot slow and steady on the wheel. Going zero-to-sixty, slamming on the brakes or making sudden herky-jerky movements just don't fly with the wheel world. Slow and steady she goes.

When you let go, let go gently

Yeah, this one was a one-two punch for me (in a good way). There's the whole "letting go" thing, but then kissing up against it is the whole "gentle" thing. Friends with benefits, they are. Here's how it looks: you're moving your hand across the bottom of the bowl and then smoothly up the sides to pull them up higher and higher and then - BLAM - you withdraw your hands like you've been jolted with a lightening bolt (in my case because I've run out of breath...which I've been holding.) So now a perfectly smooth and graceful line has a pinch and a wobble to one side. The letting go, well, that's an obvious lesson, but here's the subtle nuance when you overlay it with the "gentle" thing. My instructor watched me today and said, "right before you let go, you need to gently release pressure until you're no longer touching it." I nearly broke into tears with understanding. I thought of everything I loved so dearly - my children, my beloved and the life we've built together, my business that I adore. I thought of that adage, "if you loved something, let it go" and how it will come back to you. So letting go is about love and gently releasing our hold on it.

Don't take yourself so seriously

So how do you - or I, in this case - stay sane when all these thoughts and realizations are pouring out of me as the wheel keeps spinning and spinning around (make it stop!) Laughter. Thank heavens it comes easily to me - a saving grace, for certain. I look over at my neighbor and we both roll our eyes and exchange knowing nods and we chuckle. I watch as my classmates learn to make handles for mugs by "pulling from a pot" and I bust a gut at the suggestive nature of it (google it...you'll see what I mean.) I channel my friend, Katie West and the philosophy that is the basis of her Levity Institute and periodically chant ha-ha-ho-ho-ho or rehearse a laughter story I will tell later to my friends and clients. If none of that work, I just look down and see that I'm covered in head to toe in brown slop and slurry - is there anything more hysterical than a person trying to take themselves seriously looking like that!? I rest my case

Hip Hip Hurray!

I have hips. If I sound shocked it's because I'd forgotten (again). But this morning after taking my first Zumba! class, I marvelled at how foreign the sensation was to move my hips as they were meant to move - from side to side.

I've had this experience before, forgetting my hips. I remember taking belly dancing for the first time when I was 10 months pregnant with my first son and then again when I was pregnant with my second son. I liked the way the baby moved in response to my own movement and I liked how sensual and powerfully feminine it made me feel - even despite the newness of the dance to me. I remember the instructor speaking about the roots of belly dance being about birthing and how it is a celebration and an expression of women's power. Of women's stories. Of women's wisdom. Most of all, I remember being in labor with my sons and moving my hips in a figure eight for hour after hour as I brought new life into the world. I can't think of another time I felt more powerfully feminine.

And yet this way of being seemed to be the exception in my life.

Growing up in my tribe of white women, I learned to find my way in a world that values predominately the masculine. I let myself lose my connection to my hips. I became a runner and often joked that "I didn't have hips" because how my body was shaped, lean with a wide waist and narrow hips. I entered corporate america and learned to walk tall and straight, not a sashay or wiggle in sight.

As I think of it now, it makes me sad. Don't get me wrong, I love my masculine side - the part of me that stands firm like a mountain and moves directly in a line, swift and efficient. But that is only half of me and, truth be told, takes a fair amount of energy and consciousness. By denying or discounting the feminine in me, I had made a part of myself invisible - sawing off part of who I am without much thought. How terrifying how that happens. And it seems I'm not alone.

Last week, twenty-two women came together at my winter Tribal Gathering to talk about sensuality and power in women. We remembered our hips - indivdually and collectively - and honored their desire to move from side to side as something that is destinctly feminine. And powerful. We talked about connection between spirituality, sensuality and power in women and acknowledged how this feminine way of being in the world - being with the world - will heal us.

So let's move our hips again. It's time. When you have a free moment today, put your finger tips to your hip bones. Literally connect with them. And listen to what they have to say. Watch as start to move with ease from side to side as you walk. Give them a little shake or shimmy and celebrate how this ancient instinct still lives within you.

Dirty Harry

August plays a mean game of chicken. With September barreling toward us like a runaway freight train, August holds its ground like Dirty Harry in a desert town. "This town's not big enough for both of us", August sneers, its eyes squinting at the hot sun as a tumbleweed rolls on by. And September screeches to a halt, idling at a distance and biding its time. Like Clint Eastwood in those infamous Dirty Harry movies, there is something audacious and unapologetic about August. It doesn't care if there is work to do, plans to make or logistics to coordinate. It doesn't need your permission or approval. It really doesn't. With its heat and seductively beautiful days, August squeezes the last days of summer out of us and we are the better for it. We instinctively know that there is wisdom in the mandate of August to resign and resist sneaking peaks at the freight train waiting just outside the town line. "Stick with me, kid", August says, "it'll be waiting for you when I'm done."

Seek Out A Little Solace

It's a radical act to strike out on your own. On purpose. With intention. And yet, however terrifying that prospect might seem, I am firmly convinced it is elixir for the soul. Keeping good company with your own self is an exercise in unconditional love. Free from the distractions of prater and chatter, cell phones and wifi, friends and foes, the hum of our own operating system can be heard.

Every year, sometime during the week of my birthday, I take myself away for one night and two days. I started doing this the year I turned 39 and it's become something of a ritual. I always go to the same place up the coast. Every year on the day I leave it rains. And the kids whine and beg me not to go. And awful stories swirl around in my head about being selfish, inflicting unnecessary stress on my family and spending money on myself that could go toward something else. Something more important. But I somehow muster the fortitude to drag myself out of the house, into the car and up the coast.

When I tell this to people - friends and clients - I get a lot of "well, that must be nice..." or "I wish I could do that, but it would be so hard to get away." Let me tell you right now, "nice" is not the word I would ever use to describe that journey, and it's never ever easy to get away. Ever. It's rugged and it takes every ounce of courage I have. But having fulfilled that commitment to myself for three years now, I am a believer. It's so worth the angst, the sweat and the money. It's my annual anchor and it deeply nourishes my spirit and soul.

Each year, I have many rituals I go through and very clear intentions for my time away. Some of them soothe my soul so I relax and some of them stir the pot and agitate me into a state of clarity. The best description of what I do, however, I found in the KT Tunstall song, Someday Soon:

Think it's time to put myself away
Seek out a little solace
Close the doors and sit a while
And walk a little

As I put my words away
The flow slows...

It is this same belief that inspired me to offer Homecoming: A Women's Retreat back in 2008 for the first time. Forty-one women joined me at that retreat back then. This October, I will be holding the retreat again and it's likely we'll have twice that number. It seems that "radical' is the new black. More and more women are putting firm stakes in the ground and are carving out time for themselves. Look at what a phenomenon Eat, Pray, Love has become (it opens today, by the way...)

Will it be hard to pull yourself away? Sure it will. Might you feel awkward or self-conscious at first? Of course. But that won't stop you, will it? Because if you're reading this, you're a believer, too. And if you need a bit of encouragement or a primer, check out this awesome YouTube video called Learning to Be Alone. It's a thing of beauty and calls to each of us to see ourselves as such.

The Flip Side of Anger

I’m quite confident I’m going to kick the hornet’s nest on this one, but let’s get it out there and see what happens, shall we?

I think anger gets a bad rap these days. It’s not surprising that this emotion is feared, denied, repressed and shushed. After all, “anger” has become almost synonymous with “violence” and it’s so pervasive these days, who in their right mind would become a “fan” of that page, eh?

But I was thinking about anger today. And actually feeling a bit sorry for it. I think it’s one of the most misunderstood emotions we have because it spends so little time in the light of day. It’s shunned and left to fend for itself in the darkness, mumbling in the cave and scuffing up the dirt in frustration like a petulant child. I don’t blame it – I’d be a bit ornery, too, if I were that devalued and misunderstood. Because at its essence, Anger is just really another form of energy, isn’t it? Unlike “violence”, Anger is not a behavior, it’s an emotion. It’s an emotion with Tabasco sauce sprinkled on top. And it generally has something for us to hear. Something that’s coming from a deep and meaningful place – like lava rising up from the depths and spilling out over the rim of the volcano.

I’ve been tracking Anger for a while now – in myself and in my clients – and I’ve come to actually appreciate it much, much more. And here’s why: it signals passion, conviction and a willingness to take a stand, draw a line and make a change. For a coach, this pay dirt when working with a client because all of the sudden we have access to a reservoir of potential energy for change that had previously been contained. Someone giving voice to their anger is a powerful thing to witness. Often it unfolds like a fiddlehead in the spring…beginning with sadness, maybe with a pinch of disappointment thrown in, then making its way gradually into annoyance and then finally entering into the realm of downright anger. Upon entry into that often “forbidden” land, I often see clients make passionate proclamations, and then clamp their hands over their mouths, their eyes wide and startled-looking as they kind of giggle at themselves. I love that place in working with clients…helping them to hold onto that which can be slippery and saying, “oh, hi there…well, well, well…what have we here…?” And then we listen. Deeply.

In writing this, I am reminded of that awesome book by Judith Duerk called A Circle of Stones (the very same book that was the inspiration for the title of my blog). In it, she poses the question: "How might it have been different for you if, earlier in your life, the first time you as a tiny child felt your anger coming together inside yourself, someone, a parent or grandparent, or older sister or brother, had said, “Bravo! Yes, that’s it! You’re feeling it!”

It’s about naming it. Honoring it. Bringing it out into the light of day. And listening to what it has to tell you. And then watching as it dissipate back to nothing. What it we were to stand before it and receive its gifts with a more loving and trusting heart rather than running from it, looking over our shoulder with fear? My guess is we’d be a mite more healthy.

What’s your take on it? Go ahead. I already gave the hornet’s nest a big ‘ole kick. They’re going to be angry at me, not you.

July: The Lazy River

Like a bright red juicy strawberry, July is dripping with sweetness and a sense of indulgence. With the fruits and vegetables swollen and nearly dropping off the vine by themselves, we kick back and give in to the seductive "don't lift a finger" mentality that is July. It's the siesta of the year, when everyone finds a shady tree to lounge under and contemplate our navels a spell. Making our way through July is like tubing down a river - you don't have much control (there's really no way to steer), you might not have a sense of where you'll come ashore or how you'll get back upriver, so you just rest your head and watch the world float by. Thoughts don't dally long in our heads and worries can't seem to get a foothold in this sweaty and swollen month. As the cicadas and kids call out to us, we lose focus, laugh at our inability to get things done, and eventually throw up our hands and say, "Oh well, it'll get done tomorrow, I guess..." And it does, or not. But July doesn't really care, now does it? Because it's all about those fat juicy moments filled with nothing that fill us up and make us rub our bellies and delight as the sweet juice drips off our chins. What are you going do, eh? Flow baby, flow.

Just Like She Said

I thought it was all my imagination – that feeling that we are on a cusp of huge change or are approaching a tipping point as a society. But it seems I’m not alone. At least there are thirteen grandmothers out there that would be nodding their heads in agreement as I write this.

For a while now, I’ve been fascinated by the Mayan prophecy of 2012. I love how it reminds me of the larger cycle of our evolution. It invites me to relinquish control (as if!), let go and have trust and faith in the natural order of things. The whole notion offers me tremendous hope - a far cry from the doom and end-of-the-world feelings that it has generated in others.

For those of you not familiar with it, the Mayan prophecy foretells of the approach of a signification date (Dec 21, 2012) – one that will signify we have completed a full cycle in our evolution and will begin another. In my mind, it offers a larger framework in which to make sense of all the crumbling – literally and figuratively – in the economy, our environment, our health and the organizations and institutions we have come to rely upon and view as indestructible. In the larger cycle of life, this is the death and destruction that makes space for something new to be born. It was this fascination with the Mayan prophecy and an incredible PBS special on the topic, that led me to the grandmothers.

So here’s the deal. In mid-October of 2004, thirteen indigenous grandmothers “from all four directions” of the world gathered in New Mexico to share their visions, prophesies and healing to inspire others to more consciously partake in the unfolding of our world. “So what?” you might think. Well, it’s really the story of how this group of grandmothers found their way into being a council that grabbed me the most. Apparently, this gathering of wise women from all over the world has been a long time in the making.

Here are some excerpts from the book Grandmothers Counsel the World that explain how and why this is all coming about:

• “The council, which had been spoken of in prophecy and seen in visions since time immemorial, finally emerged in the aftermath of 9/11. The Grandmothers’ participation in the council had been foretold to each of them in different ways. When they were very young, a few of the Grandmothers had been told by their Grandmothers that this was their destiny. All of the Grandmothers had been invited long ago, in a time before time as we know it, to meet at the time of the Great Turning to become a force for peace in the world. Prophecy revealed to each on that they must now share even their most secret and sacred ways with the very people who have been their oppressors, as the survival of humanity, if not the entire planet, is at stake.”

• “All of the Grandmothers who accepted said they knew deep within that they were meant to participate, even if at first they might have felt unworthy…they knew they were being called to action.”

• “The Grandmothers first learned that thirteen was the correct number of council members when tears welled up in Yupik Grandmother Rita Pitka Blumenstein’s eyes as she introduced herself on the first day of the gathering. She handed out thirteen stones and thirteen eagle feathers to each of the Grandmothers, a gift she had been holding and waiting to give for a very long time. The thirteen stones and thirteen eagle feathers had been given to Rita when she was nine years old by her great-grandmother, who told her to give them to the women of the Council of Grandmothers when they all finally met, a council Rita would someday be a part of.”

• “The return of the Grandmother has been foretold for hundreds of years. A vision of the Grandmothers Council has been seen by many peoples, indigenous and nonindigenous alike. The Grandmothers are gathering because, according to the prophesies of many religious traditions, the end of the world as we know it is near. The Grandmothers tell us that balance as a way of living is returning, balance in all relations, including with our Mother Earth. A thousand years of peace is being ushered in for those who will make the necessary changes in their hearts.”

The bottom line is this:

• “The Grandmother of all creation, the One who is the maker of life, the One whom we have forgotten, is calling us. She is not angry with us, but She is sad that we have forgotten who She is. She’s is coming back into our consciousness through prophecy and visions. She is bringing a profound nurturing, a depth of compassion, and a kind of love we not longer remember, but which was strong in ancient times. This pure female energy will awaken men as well as women, through a story we will already know in our hearts once we hear it.”

Imagine that!? Happy sigh. I don’t know about you, but it looks like being a Grandmother is totally where it’s at these days. Want to learn more about the specifics of their vision and prophecies? Read the book. Or just watch the world change. Whatever works for you.