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Shinrin-yoku. The medicine of forest bathing
In a world that seems to turn mechanical, I can’t help but feel drawn to all that is organic and pulsing with aliveness. My senses begin to awaken in such embodied presence. Some places take us to a state of connection we long to inhabit, where our essence can blossom, uninhibited, unbridled, and free. The noise of the world and the chatter in our minds begin to quiet down as we enter sacred space in nature, sacred space in ourselves. When I feel pain in my heart, stress in my body or confusion in my mind, I go to nature as a refuge and medicine for my weary soul, a…
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This fire in my belly and heart
How do you awaken the fire in your belly, the one you know was once there but life seems to have extinguished? I was asked this question by a sacred flow client recently. I humbly meditated on the nature of fire and its imminent absence in our bodies and souls. And I remembered this quote by Viktor Frankl: “What is to give light must endure burning.” Are you ready to burn? Like a fire in the wild, this fire in our souls needs to be nourished so it can inspire, radiate, and give warmth. At first one must simply listen to one’s heart and follow the inklings of…
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Mistakes, failure and growth
Hello dear ones, I just realized that this beloved quote by James Joyce ties in with my previous post on the meaning of doors. A beautiful coincidence. Also, Joyce speaks of errors as portals and today marks the summer solstice with a full moon in the northern hemisphere. A day celebrated by our ancestors in deep connection to the cosmos. “A [wo]man of genius makes no mistakes,” James Joyce wrote in Ulysses. “His [her] errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” What if mistakes where truly not wrongdoings but portals of discovery as James Joyce asserted so beautifully? Would our anxiety diminish over making a choice if we…
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On doors, aliveness, and letting life in
How do you greet life, dear ones? What do you invite into the intimacy of your home to nourish your soul? It feels wonderful to be greeted with care, attention, and love. Our whole being is able to exhale more deeply. I’ve been meditating on ways in which we let life in and out. What marks this passage in our physical spaces is the door, the entryway into our lives. The door is a threshold that demarcates the boundary between inner and outer. It mediates and adjusts the charge or transition between inside and outside. The entrance gives a glimpse of what is to come inside. It makes our…
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A creative space of flow
Dear ones, How do we open up to more creativity in our work and lives? Personally, I love the initial burst of inspiration but I also love the sustained rhythm of focus, tenacity and determination that carries my work through the valleys and peaks of expression. They work in unison, like the yin and yang of creation. Our creativity is not confined to our physical creative spaces as it is often fed by the activities that nourish our life force outside of them. Nevertheless, having a creative space can help us ground our being to feel the creative fire burning in our heart and new waves of flow taking us…
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The heart of feminine space–the spell of the sensuous bedroom
Hello beautiful ones, We earthlings are naturally wired to be drawn to spaces that nurture our life force. This winter, I can’t help but feel its call to dive in within the crevices of my heart in spaces and places that nourish my soul. Are you feeling the same pull? I am feeling drawn to explore the bedroom as a realm of sleep, rest, and dreamtime—a space that not only serves to nurture our physical bodies but one that also acts as a portal to other realms within ourselves and the universe, a space that catapults us into deeper states of being. In the spell of the sensuous This post…
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On the edge of the wild. The alchemy of plants
Hello beautiful ones, To balance my intense work in architecture these days and hence my more infrequent writings, I live now on the edge of the wild–where I find myself recharging, recalibrating, regenerating in a space of stillness and subtle flow. I moved to a beautiful place in Marin, surrounded by plants and animals bringing magic into my life. My home is on a street that becomes a trail in the Marin Headlands. In between two worlds, I am at home in this place that welcomes me into the wild terrain of this land. What is so compelling about living so close to the wild? Placing ourselves in this realm becomes…
